Amy, you are already going through the metal detector and you have been for years. The full body scan is a different machine. Paris would be worth flying to, but try to get on a non US carrier. That way you will have less screening and fewer problems on the way home instead of getting it both ways on American like I did last year in Rome.

Unfortunately employees of the TSA are immune to lawsuits in the performance of their official duties. The TSA is also immune from lawsuit. Would that it were different but until a court strikes down the immunity you would not be able to obtain recourse through a lawsuit (or even criminal charges of assault).

It would be nice to have a forum of lawyers and travelers who have been through the device and pat downs giving advice on what would be a defensible protest to make. ((Amy, while that's not your usual forte, you could actually arrange that in form of an online forum, blog, guest bloggers, panel at your house, ....))

Or have a civil liberties group from the ACLU to Judicial Watch describe the kind of protest they would defend and recruit several people to go through it.

National Opt Out day is a good idea, http://www.optoutday.com/ , but they fail to provide anything other than encouragement to be a minor pest. No discussion on what a reasonable legal protest will be, and what a reasonable individual protest should strive for (delaying the line? Stripping to show the TSA, what precisely?

Jeffrey Goldberg suggests we wear kilts, commando style, but I think that's what the TSA would prefer we do.

I've thought about stripping just before the pat down down to a speedo or some legal on a beach swimsuit, but again, why wouldn't the TSA just say, "Thank you citizen" to that effort?

On the other hand, the NYTimes tells today of a missed opportunity by Boehner. He's taking commercial flights home, so good for him, but he's bypassing security. If he wanted to show us how much Republicans care about these issues, he would have demanded the pat down. Instead he leaves it to Ron Paul and a few minor Democrats.

I don't fly enough to make it a big deal in my life, but I do take my daughters through the airport once a year, and I do think this exercise is not intended to make aircraft safe from Terrorists as much it is to train the population to accept this intrusion at the airport, online, and IRL in every day life, and to get the Supreme Court to allow this in the name of security and fear.

Ah, my intertube is working again.

I think the most effective protest at the moment is to protest the local airport office, and the local city council and get them to toss the TSA out, or threaten to.

Second is to protest your local congresscritter when they get on or off their aircraft, and to protest Napolitano on her daily journey.

I'm not saying that opt out day at the airport is a bad idea -- I think it's a great idea. I just wish there was some effort made into making it an effective idea.

The cyclists do this, often times, is a broken manner with their Critical Mass rides. Agree with them or not, but the rides are effective in making the cyclists protest, and in exercising what they believe are their rights.

I think part of that is that it's known where the critical mass will be ahead of time, it's not just one or two passengers on wondering if they should protest and what the consequences will be, and also because Critical Mass occurs once a month.

Oh, and I think that "the people" should be educated about instant online streaming from Qik and Ustream using their smartphones, and encouraged to upload video and tweet about it using a hash tag like #tsawatch.

It would be interesting to see someone completely strip down before going through the scanner. If arrested for doing so, they could defend themselves on the basis that they only did what the machine does anyway.

I haven't seen Walter Olsen write anything about this whole mess yet...

(Hat tip to psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross)

The five stages of understing the TSA:

Denial: This can't be as stupid as it seems. The TSA must have thought about this, and it must have come to a sensible determination of what is needed for our safety. I will show that I am strong by complying with the rules.

Anger: This is so degrading, useless, and a waste. Why me? It is obvious that I am not a terrorist. I'm travelling with my family. My 3 year old isn't a terrorist. Don't they have eyes, or a bit of common sense? What is the sense in these rules? I'm flying from New York to Kansas, for crying out loud.

Bargaining: OK, I'll go through the machine. Just don't pick me out for "special treatment". If I'm very cooperative, I can hold on to my 3 year old, right? And you won't fondle my child, right? I'll give you my toothpaste if you let him keep the teddy bear, right?

Depression: This is terrible, but what can I do? I will comply. I will just think happy thoughts as he (ugh! oomph!) does what is required, and I hope not more. Is anyone looking? It doesn't really matter. This will all be over in a while. I can't do anything about this. I will just hope that they improve their policy in the future. I'll wait. It might get better, or maybe not, who cares.

Acceptance: I now see. The TSA is part of bigger government policy. Beyond the TSA, there is a government that wants to do so much good. And, now they are doing it to me. I wanted a government which would "nudge" people into proper choices. I now see that they have the power, and no restraint.

They won't stop themselves, and I don't have the power to stop them. Even "we" don't have that power for now. My concern can't be just the TSA. I must be concerned about government power in general.

This is an example of what they are willing to do in the complete open. What must they be doing behind the scenes in thousands of ways?

I must endure the TSA for now. My fellow citizens must endure all of those government agencies for now. If I accept that government always goes too far, I will have the courage to take away most government power. Instead, I'll rely on policies that I can accept or reject as an individual. I will support the politicians who will limit the government.

"The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches."

Part of the problem here is that most Americans confuse behavioral profiling with racial profiling. Behavioral profiling is an extremely effective security precaution, but Americans hear "profiling" and think "racial profiling" followed swiftly by images of the Rodney King video. Hopefully the new interest in Israeli airport security protocols will lead to a new education of the public.

Why isn't the ACLU doing something about this? Or are they doing something? Maybe they're too busy showing pictures of FBI agents to suspected terrorists?

Anyone living near the northern border can drive to Canada and then fly from a civilized country. Of course that doesn't help if your destination is within the US but not near the border and you plan a round-trip.

Honest question: Has the TSA stopped any malefactor from boarding a plane with the passenger screening? Every time I hear about an attack being stopped it's passengers and/or flight crew.

Expert Bruce Schneier: TSA Scans "Won't Catch Anybody"

PM: Has there been a case since 9/11 of an attempted hijacker being thwarted by airport security?

Schneier: None that we've heard of. The TSA will say, "Oh, we're not allowed to talk about successes." That's actually bullsh*t. They talk about successes all the time. If they did catch someone, especially during the Bush years, you could be damned sure we'd know about it.

And the fact that we didn't means that there weren't any. Because the threat was imaginary. It's not much of a threat. As excess deaths go, it's just way down in the noise. More than 40,000 people die each year in car crashes. It's 9/11 every month. The threat is really overblown.

Here's something that I have to say about Schneier: his expertise is considerable, but said expertise is in encryption and communications security. In that field, it's undisputed that he is an expert. But when he makes authoritative statements on physical security, he's pretending to an expertise that he doesn't actually have. Schneier several years ago acquired a bad case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, which I see he still has.

He's right about the scanners, but maybe not for the reason he thinks. Here's a quiz: how many pre-9/11 hijackings were foiled by the metal detectors? I don't know of any. However, it's undeniable that in the pre-9/11 world, the metal detectors cut down greatly on hijackings. How did this happen? Deterrent effect. Would-be hijackers gave up on that idea because they knew the odds of getting on the plane with a gun was near zero.

So could the feel-and-fly scanning be having a deterrent effect? Remains to be seen, but I think the answer is no. For one thing, I can think of any number of ways that one could get on board an aircraft with explosives, none of which involve stuffing chemicals up one's orifices. But here's the other thing: the search methods are so intrusive that they have the dual bad effects of creating a lot of chaos at the checkpoints, and (judging by recent statements) creating a false confidence in the people responsible for implementing it. Such conditions are ripe for exploitation. (I had a scenario written in here describing a way to exploit it, but I thought better of posting that. Use your imagination.)