Remember when comic books carried those great ads selling anti-gravity machines and X-ray glasses? The ad for the
glasses always had a kid checking out a woman, and giggling as the goodies beneath her dress (um, you know, her
underwear). Of course, in our hearts most of us knew such things were fake, but there was always a childish hope that
someday, yes, Virginia, there would be x-ray glasses.
And so here we are. Sort of.
Turns out the Transportation Security Administration
has been testing a new device called a backscatter that beams low-level X-rays through people’s clothing and can
reveal a great deal more than the keys in your pocket, and especially if you really ARE happy to someone. In fact, the
pictures can be so revealing that the good ol’ American Civil Liberties Union has
called the backscatter a “virtual strip search.” But the government wants to push ahead, believing that this may be the
best thing to happen in security since that fancy metal-detector wand thingy.