The TSA’s new airport security guidelines are overlooking a basic human right to privacy. Call me a prude, but I don’t think that some random airport employee has any right to to watch other people’s bodies as they walk through the full-body scanner.

In my opinion, this invasion of privacy is practically free porn. The TSA claims all ‘”unmentionables” are blurred out for courtesy, but even the picture that was continuously flashed on NBC News and the Colbert Report wasn’t hiding anything.

To all of us that can see, there was no mistaking what was in that image.

Airport security has become increasingly more invasive. I understand that there was an ‘underwear’ bomber last Christmas, but there’s no need to be checking every single individual in the millions and millions that travel by plane. I mean REALLY? The fact that one person in the history of airplanes has ever slipped a bomb in his “tighty-whiteys” doesn’t mean that anyone else will ever try that.

Worse still,  if you refuse the scan, a full-body pat down is required. The palms of the hands are used, which makes the rub feel too close for comfort. Besides, are airports truly looking through every single employee to check if they aren’t closet sexual deviants? Yes this is paranoid of me, but truly, what is separating this procedure from sexual harassment?

I just think the new security protocols have gone too far.  There is officially nothing that can be hidden from strangers anymore.

Though the TSA stated that scanners cannot record or save any images, a new report on MSNBC has called this into question.  The article reports that 35,000 images from a similar scanner in a courthouse have been leaked to the public. 

Steven Colbert, of the Colbert Report, has continuously mocked the TSA’s extreme security measures.

On his show, Colbert jokingly said, “you better wax before you go to the airport.”  Inappropriate, yes, but incorrect? I don’t want to find out.

To view the MSNBC article, visit : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40218074/?gt1=43001