Is there a motive for U.S. Government to harass traveling public?

via komonews

It seems odd to me that the rules on pat-downs were changed so drastically this past week. Now the TSA agents are required to shove their hands down inside the underwear of American travelers? Yikes! And the alternative is to submit to irradiation via naked body scan? Yikes!

Could it be that more people are opting out of the body scan due to reasons of modesty or avoiding radiation*? Could it be that the government WANTS people scanned? Could the new pat grope-down rules be an attempt to punish people for refusing the scan? Could the government want to compile biometric data on us? Or is it all due to the latest terrorist threats?

Just askin'.

* Possible health risks: 'They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays,' Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University's prestigious school of medicine, told AFP.
'No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner,' he said.
A group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raised scanner health concerns in a letter sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology earlier this year.
'While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high,' they wrote.

And what about those of us who have cancer in the family or skin cancer in the past? Should we not opt out of any radiation that could trigger cancer?