Seventy-Eight Percent Okay With TSA Full-Body Scanners

From USA Today, "Most OK With TSA Full-Body Scanners":

Air travelers strongly approve of the government's use of body scanners at the nation's airports even if the machines compromise privacy, a USA TODAY/Gallup poll finds.

Poll respondents appeared to endorse a Transportation Security Administration plan to install 300 scanners at the nation's largest airports this year to replace metal detectors. The machines, used in 19 airports, create vivid images of travelers under their clothes to reveal plastics and powders to screeners observing monitors in a closed room.

"It would seem much more thorough than the process that we're doing now," poll respondent Joel Skousen, 38, of Willcox, Ariz., said. "It would put me more at ease getting on a plane."

In the poll, 78% of respondents said they approved of using the scanners, and 67% said they are comfortable being examined by one. Eighty-four percent said the machines would help stop terrorists from carrying explosives onto airplanes. The survey was taken Jan. 5-6 of 542 adults who have flown at least twice in the past year.

More at the link. Also, at Gallup, "In U.S., Air Travelers Take Body Scans in Stride." (Via Memeorandum.)

I suppose folks like Paul Campos and Glenn Greenwald will now call the great majority of Americans "hysterical wingnut fearmongers"!!

Either that, or they'll saw we should be like Germany! See, "From Granny to Nearly Nude Germans, Everyone's Raising Cane at the Airport."