The ridiculous security theater that our government puts on at airports has recently taken on a new, more ball-grabbing, yet no more effective tack.

Seems people were opting out of the TSA's fancy new back-scattter x-ray machines too often—concluding they'd rather not have the feds taking pictures of their genitals and bombarding them with radiation. The feds, of course, are going on and on about how this is perfectly safe (they've been testing it for weeks!) and they really super swear they're not keeping the pictures of your boobs.

Since those x-ray machines are really expensive, and the companies who have the contracts for them have more powerful lobbies than you, the TSA is discouraging opt-outs by making the alternative terribly embarrassing: They'll touch you "down there."

More important than any of the privacy implications is the fact that these machines don't increase security.

Israel's airports have some of the tightest security in the world, for good reason, and by all accounts it's incredibly effective. And yet the security service at Ben-Gurion airport has a goal of getting passengers from the parking lot to the gate in a maximum of 25 minutes. Israelis are accustomed to a climate of potential terrorism, and they won't put up with inconvenience in the name of fake security. They demand real security.

"Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don't take s—- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, 'We're not going to do this. You're going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport."

This whole article on Israel's airport security is very illuminating.

Personally, they can feel my balls all they want, I'm not going through that stupid machine. I'm not paranoid, I'm just sick of this stupid crap.