Does anybody remember how politicians insisted that luggage screening must (in the name of safety) be done by American government employees? Over 30,000 low wage luggage screeners quickly became federal employees (with salaries jumping). It was then decided that (in the interest of fairness) they would just keep the people already there. So, net result being that nothing changed except that the airlines no longer have to pay for screening and a lot of people who couldn't get a good job are grandfathered into good paying, benefit loaded government jobs.
Everybody pretended that having the Feds run the screening would have prevented 9/11. Actually, nothing "slipped by" the screeners on 9/11. If they had come across the box cutters they wouldn't have done anything about them as they were not prohibited at the time.
The new scanners are in the same category as the "virtual fences" along the border. Metal detectors and bomb sniffing dogs would do just fine.
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