Approximately 14 months ago the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) were order to hold a public hearing regarding their use of body scanners. Needless to say they haven’t complied and were taken to court over their refusal to comply. Luckily for the TSA they are a part of the same state that controls the court system and therefore have been granted extra special privileges:
A federal appeals court on Tuesday said it was giving the Transportation Security Administration until the end of March to comport with an already 14-month-old order to “promptly” hold public hearings and take public comment concerning the so-called nude body scanners installed in U.S. airport security checkpoints.
The public comments and the agency’s answers to them are reviewable by a court, which opens up a new avenue for a legal challenge to the agency’s decision to deploy the scanners. Critics maintain the scanners, which use radiation to peer through clothes, are threats to Americans’ privacy and health, which the TSA denies.
By the time March comes around you can be assured that another extension will be given. The state has a great deal of interest in forcing its subjects to submit to pointless authoritarianism. A public hearing would likely reveal that the body scanners aren’t as safe as the TSA advertises and that would cause the proles to be less than happy about the dangers they’ve been put in in the name of security theatre. I doubt we’ll ever see an actual public hearing regarding these body scanners. At most the old models will be phased out for a new and improved model. After the new models are in place the TSA will claim all previous health concerns are even more misplaced than before and another long series of lawsuits will be required before the TSA is required to hold a public hearing on the new body scanners.