It's sad that this isn't terribly surprising at this point.
HN friends, please, please, make sure you opt out of the body scanners. If for nothing else, I can assure you the dude that's feeling your junk is far more embarrassed than you are and if he has to do it often enough, maybe he'll quit.
Last time I flew, I got a new guy. It was his first time and one of the veteran BT's had to coach him through it. He seemed mortified and I think that might have been his last day on the job.
Maybe it's just the airport I was flying out of (LGA), but I noticed that the TSA signs explaining the millimeter-wave scanners no longer say that you can opt-out of them. Where it used to say (IIRC) in smaller print at the bottom that you could opt-out and get a manual pat down in a private space if you so chose, there was now boilerplate text about how there were no health and safety risks associate with getting scanned by the machine, and that it wouldn't produce a photo-realistic image of me.
Once I opted-out by walking to the metal detector and (after being told to go into the other line for the L3 ProVision unit) asking for a pat-down, the agents handled it as usual (a bunch of awkward shouts for a "male assist at station 3", an embarrassed guy walking over and asking if I knew how this process worked and had done it before, and then a pretty perfunctory pat-down) - but if I didn't a priori know that I had that right, it wasn't listed on any of the many signs in the security scanning area.
I thought it was the backscatter ones that people objected to. The millimeter-wave ones are much less intrusive and there's no concern about health risks.
I took a plane trip a couple days ago, and I had a new guy too.
Unfortunately he was coached to move his hand along my inner leg until he 'felt resistance' which to him meant banging his hand, hard, against my testicles. It hurt.
I'm not sure if I'll continue to opt out. If it's a choice between being seen without clothing and possibly being punched in the nuts, I think I'll choose the former.
Or replaced by someone else with decency, and then another, and then another, and then ... The training costs add up, for one, potentially leading to change.
Let's supposed eventually that position is filled by "someone with no decency." Then passengers getting screened become more and more annoyed and outraged, complaints rise, and potentially leading to change.
Now, that change might be to no longer have opt-out. But in either case, the possible course of events is likely not as simple as what you outlined.
Every time they have to hire a new screener, they have to spend money on training. If the job of screener is well-known to be unpleasant, they'll have to start paying the screeners a higher salary to compensate them. If passengers routinely opt for the time-consuming manual patdown instead of submitting to the pornoscanner, they'll have to hire more screeners to cope with the demand. Each of these things make the screening process more expensive. If we make it expensive enough perhaps they'll stop doing it. There doesn't seem to be any other way to get rid of it.
Just to play devil's advocate, TSA could also put pressure on airlines to build the cost of the screenings into the price of air travel. Travelers could wind up paying for it (beyond taxes).
Ever look at the itemized list of costs on your air ticket? There is a "9/11 Security Fee," and I'm guessing the airlines don't have much input into its amount.
Airlines have also historically been the beneficiary of government subsidies and patronage, which could be withdrawn.
While I agree that they'll be reluctant to raise prices, the damage of being represented as the airline that refused to "contribute to public safety" would be worse.
HN friends, please, please, make sure you opt out of the body scanners. If for nothing else, I can assure you the dude that's feeling your junk is far more embarrassed than you are and if he has to do it often enough, maybe he'll quit.
Last time I flew, I got a new guy. It was his first time and one of the veteran BT's had to coach him through it. He seemed mortified and I think that might have been his last day on the job.