Fail. So I decided: not flying anywhere until this idiocity is over. Not that I fly that often, but let's say that they have lost X dollars a year on me. Hopefully, more people will commit to this as well and after some airlines go bankrupt, the rest will get the message and hire their own lobbyists.
Call them "porno scanners". It's a sticky, effective, accurate label that offends the sensibilities of the sort of people who make public policy. Who wants to be in support of something called a porno scanner, after all?
Saying you wouldn't go through the "porno scanner" makes you sound weird, and doesn't always convey what what you might want it to mean.
I fly regularly through two of the first airports to test these out. The name that's stuck is the XXX-ray. Pronounced "triple-X-ray". It rolls off the tongue pretty easily in conversation too.
"Hey John miss your flight?"
"Yeah I got held up at security because I wouldn't go through the triple-X-ray"
Pro pornographers everywhere are insulted! At least what they do involves consenting adults. Germans call them "Nacktscanner", naked scanners or, better, strip scanners, which really gets the point across.
The other thing we have to prepare for is that Rapiscan and L3 will introduce still less graphic renderings as a result of this outcry, but the scanners will still be capturing the same naked photo data. And questions about Therac-25-type problems will still stand.
Meh, I think if you are going to call them something you should label them correctly: virtual strip search seems to fit that well.
It is especially awful if you can explain that your choices boil down to being seen naked through a virtual strip search or being physically violated through an overly invasive pat down. These don't even take stretches of the imagination to define what the TSA is doing.
