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<h1>Nader unites us all in the fight against ‘federal fondlers’</h1>
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<div class="postmetadata"> <span class="author">By <a
href="http://dailycaller.com/author/mikeriggs">Mike Riggs - The Daily
Caller</a></span> 3:13 AM 11/12/2010</div>
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<p>The X-ray <a id="KonaLink0" target="undefined" class="kLink"
style="text-decoration: underline ! important; position: static;"
href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/12/nader-unites-us-all-in-the-fight-against-federal-fondlers/print/#"><font
style="color: green ! important; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: 13.8px; position: static;"
color="green"><span class="kLink"
style="border-bottom: 1px solid green; color: green ! important; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: 13.8px; position: relative; background-color: transparent;">security</span></font><span
style="position: relative;" class="preLoadWrap" id="preLoadWrap0">
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style="border: medium none ; width: 22px; height: 22px;"
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</span></a> machines coming to an airport near you have been called “<a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-first-time-the-tsa-meets-resistance/65390/">dick-measuring
devices</a>” by seasoned travelers, <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/07/tsa-screener-attacks-coll_n_568229.html">inspired
TSA employees to commit crimes of passion</a>, and eaten up the
Transportation Security Administration’s <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/11/airport_insecurity">allocation
of stimubucks</a>. In short, no one likes them.</p>
<p>Consumer rights advocate and perennial presidential vote-splitter
Ralph Nader is here to help. Not only has he joined forces with the<a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1700811/ralph-nader-and-epic-take-on-full-body-airport-scanners">
Electric Privacy Information Center and the Council on American-Islamic
Relations</a><a target="_blank"
href="http://nader.org/index.php?/archives/2210-Letter-to-Members-of-the-Senate-Committee-on-Homeland-Security-and-Governmental-Affairs.html">
to protest the machines</a>, he also told The Daily Caller that he paid
a visit this week to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform meeting
to recruit conservatives in his fight against “federal fondlers.”</p>
<p>“I said to ‘em, ‘I want to say a few words to this group, who are
fully employed, fully insured, and fully clothed.’ And I said, ‘Get
ready for naked insecurity.’”</p>
<p>Airport X-ray machines, says Nader, are a bipartisan issue.
Republican Senators Tom Coburn, Susan Collins, and Richard Burr have
all raised concerns that the machines emit a dangerous amount of
radiation, “and you should know,” Nader added, “that the Libertarian
Party, at my urging, came out with a tough statement last week against
them.”</p>
<p>The list of critics is growing by the day. A group of 11,000 airline
pilots have objected to the scanners on the grounds that they could be
dangerous. (They’ve also whined that it’s unprofessional for TSA to
give full-body pat-downs to pilots who decline to use the X-ray
machines in full view of their passengers.)</p>
<p>The travel industry is frustrated because the machines cause delays,
pilots are upset because the machines are degrading, consumers are
upset because strangers get to see their genitals, and “academic
scientists” are upset, said Nader, because the backscatter X-ray
machines emit a radiation dose “10 times higher than what the <a
id="KonaLink1" target="undefined" class="kLink"
style="text-decoration: underline ! important; position: static;"
href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/12/nader-unites-us-all-in-the-fight-against-federal-fondlers/print/#"><font
style="color: green ! important; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: 13.8px; position: static;"
color="green"><span class="kLink"
style="color: green ! important; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: 13.8px; position: relative;">government</span></font></a>
says.”</p>
<p>Italy, after a 6-month trial period using the machines, is
abandoning them. “Italy called them ‘ineffective and slow,’” Nader said.</p>
<p>“Susan Collins has requested information from TSA, but DHS is an
exceptionally secretive and inaccessible, unresponsive bureaucracy. So
it’s very hard to get information.”</p>
<p>TSA “knows best,” said Nader. Or thinks it does. “They just blew $32
million on puffer machines. You ever see one of those?”</p>
<p>The Daily Caller admitted that we had, in fact, seen the puffer
machines.</p>
<p>“They blow air. You get into a cage and they blow air at you. Too
many false positives.”</p>
<p>The backscatter X-ray machines are more of the same, Nader argued.
“They don’t work how they are supposed to, they are hazardous in terms
of radiation, and they are wild invasions of privacy.”</p>
<p>Also: “They store these images of you naked.”</p>
<p>If you don’t want to go through the machines, “they grope you like
you would not believe,” said Nader, who has yet to face either an X-ray
machine or a pat-down. When asked if he would submit to a groping in
lieu of having naked images of himself stored on a machine, Nader
said, “I don’t think we should have government gropers or federal
fondlers.”</p>
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Read more: <a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 153);"
href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/12/nader-unites-us-all-in-the-fight-against-federal-fondlers/#ixzz158NsbQFx">http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/12/nader-unites-us-all-in-the-fight-against-federal-fondlers/#ixzz158NsbQFx</a></span></div>
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