Michael Chertoff Plans To Cash In On Scanning Your Naked Fanny

By James Fox on January 16, 2010, 3:54 pm

Immediately after the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt, former homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, began an obvious campaign to push for the adoption of full-body scanners in our airports. Currently, there are 40 of these $150,00 units in use at 19 airports. Plans are to increase this number by at least 300 units as soon as possible. If we leave it to Mikey, that’s just the beginning.

He’s Everywhere! He’s Everywhere!

From his January 1st OP ED piece in the Washington Post to his appearances on CNN and other networks, Chertoff made sure he was in the middle of all the attention and speculation surrounding the bombing attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. When all our rage and all our fears were reawakened by the potential tragedy of this incident, there was Chertoff, an apparent expert, looking us in the eye and telling us what we need to do to be safe.

He Seems To Have All The Answers

In a pre-emptive strike against any opposition to his opinion, he immediately addressed the questions that thoughtful people might raise. He admonished that the deployment of these expensive machines would be opposed by certain groups of people. His message seemed to be that concerns for civil liberties and personal privacy and dignity were unimportant and that worries about exposure to excess radiation were uninformed. He also dismissed the idea that we concentrate on better intelligence as a way to foil the terrorists.

 

But What’s The Bottom Line…?

Chertoff admitted in an interview with Campbell Brown, that his company, the Chertoff Group, a risk management and security consulting firm, represents a company that manufactures this type of equipment. By encouraging the government to invest millions of dollars into installing these scanners, he could be insuring a nice profit for his client, Rapidscan Systems, Inc., and, ultimately, a nice payday for himself.

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