Editor's note: Marc Rotenberg is president of Electronic Privacy Information Center and teaches privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center. He frequently testifies before Congress on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues. He is lead counsel in EPIC v. DHS before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
(CNN) -- Body scanners that peer through clothes are deployed in airports across the country. Travelers who object are subject to "enhanced" pat-downs. Parents watch as their children are groped before boarding a plane.
The elderly are asked to raise their arms high above their heads so that the body scanners can capture a naked image of a 78-year-old man or an 81-year-old woman.
No other country in the world subjects its air travelers to the combination of screening procedures that Americans are being asked to endure.
"Although the constitutionality of airport screening searches is not dependent on consent, the scope of such searches is not limitless," wrote a federal court not long ago.
That is the starting point for a case presented by my organization, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, that the Transportation Security Administration has crossed a line and the airport body scanner program should be halted.
The government contends that travelers are happy with the new procedures and there are hardly any complaints.
But those claims ring hollow in the face of Americans' real experiences at the airport. In documents obtained by EPIC through the Freedom of Information Act, travelers routinely described the body scanner experience as embarrassing and humiliating. Pregnant women worry about the effects of radiation. Men and women liken the pat-downs to "sexual assault."
Umm... this is ridiculous. Soo what's next? Checking people's ass cracks for substance?
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