The hue and cry over new security procedures used by the Transportation Security Agency have swept through the public consciousness. From cable news to talk radio to letters to the editor in daily newspapers, air travelers are up in arms over the TSA’s use of strip-search scanners and recently-adopted intrusive pat-down procedures in airports.

The TSA has used strip-search scanners in selected U.S. airports since 2007, but they came to prominence in the media following the attempt of Farouk Abdulmutallab to light an explosive-laden pair of underwear on his way into Detroit Metropolitan Airport last December 25. The scanners use electromagnetic X-rays to take a picture of the traveler without any clothes, allegedly to see if the person is hiding anything. The images are viewed in a separate room by TSA officers. It is claimed that the digital “amateur porn” images taken by the scanner are neither stored, printed nor otherwise kept, and that faces are blurred out.

If someone refuses the strip-search scanner, they are now subjected to a rather intimate grope by a TSA officer. On October 28, new pat-down procedures were put in place that require the person to allow a security official to run their hands, either with the palm or the back touching the person, through the hair, around the neck, up and down the length of the arms, around the torso, along the inside of the waistband, down the hip and around the buttocks, down the outer leg, around the ankles, up the inner legs, and over the whole genitals.

A person cannot refuse a search by the TSA. The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that people cannot “refuse consent” to a search, claiming that, in a “post-9/11 world,” terrorists would “attempt to penetrate airport security ... until a vulnerable portal is found.” John Tyner, a computer programmer, refused consent to a search at San Diego International Airport, telling officers bluntly, “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.”

Tyner now faces a TSA investigation that could cost him $11,000 in fines and penalties. Numerous organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Air Line Pilots Association, are exploring legal challenges to the TSA’s policy. The ACLU rightly claims that the scanner and pat-down procedures violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. However, the administrator of TSA has made it clear: “I’m not going to change those policies.” And he will point to the courts as his justification.

The pilots’ unions are also concerned about the safety of the strip-search scanners. Pilots are concerned about the type and level of radiation these scanners are emitting. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wrote in reponse that the scanners were tested by government and private laboratories. However, a scientist at one of the private labs told CNN that the scanners were not tested for their safety, only for a TSA-preferred level of output.

Airports are often used as a testing ground for intrusive and unconstitutional procedures. Historically, they have helped to create public acceptance of such intrusive technology and procedures as metal detectors, X-ray scanners of bags and personal items, random searches and pat-downs, security cameras, and so on. Within a generation of their introduction at airports, these procedures and machines become a silent presence in all of society.

As corporatism and the “homeland security state” bear down more on the remnants of Americans’ democratic rights, we should expect more of these intrusions and attacks on people’s civil and human rights. While the current TSA procedures may be currently “too excessive,” there is little doubt that the state will eventually impose even worse on us all.