This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 20, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

As you head out for the holiday, know this. The TSA now admits many of those naked body scanning machines at airports don't safeguard

your privacy nearly as well as they used to claim.

It may be a good year to opt out.

Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, comments.

This is from USA Today.

The Transportation Security Administration has put 91 of its full-body scanning machines worth $14 million in storage because of privacy concerns.

Officials told a house hearing on Thursday, the machine so-called backscatter machines use x-rays to scan passengers, produced near naked images of travelers.

The TSA said that software that was supposed to replace the near naked image on the machine

with a stick figure was flawed and could not be used

to ease privacy concerns.

This is not the first that we've heard about this.

This has been going on for some time, this issue related to privacy

and TSA's use of these particular machines.

The Strip Search machines, two different varieties of machines, but the differences aren't terribly

relevant, had been moving along for a couple of years. and

machines but the differences aren't terribly relevant.

I had been moving along for a couple of years and really took energy after the 2009 underwear bombing attempt.

The fellow who is now in prison for life having failed to ignite a bomb

sewn into his underwear. Probably because of that incident these machines were

pushed forward and have maintained their use in

airports where they should have gone the route of the puffer machines.

...