150 new body scanners are deployed to airports around the country

This week, a fleet of 150 brand new full-body imaging scanners, devices that use "millimeter waves" to see through clothing to detect hidden weapons, were shipped out to airports across the country. The first devices of this batch will appear at Boston's Logan and Chicago's O'Hare. So if you happen to be flying out of one of those cities, you can plan on two things: all the departing flights will be totally safe, and a random stranger might be closely examining your naked parts on a computer monitor.

Until the last couple of months, these devices were never really discussed. In fact, without much fanfare or opposition, 19 airports in the United States were already equipped with body scanners years before the infamous Underpants Bomber attempted to blow up an airplane over Detroit on Christmas Day last year. Some of the airports already sporting body scanners include Los Angeles, Denver, Baltimore, Albuquerque, New York (Kennedy), Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, and Washington, D.C. (Reagan National).

Incidentally, I'm flying round-trip to Los Angeles later next month, and I never look forward to the endless and infamously long security lines at LAX. Now I get to look forward to a potential body scan at the end of the insufferable and soul-crushing rainbow.