Seal the toothpaste and shampoo in zip-close bags, remove your laptop from its carrying case, take spare change out from your pockets, take off shoes and jacket, place your carry-on items in bins to be X-rayed, walk through metal detector and strip and remain calm while strangers inspect your naked body for possible threats. Board your plane and have a nice flight.

You don’t have to take your clothes off, but airport body scanners provide a complete stranger with a visual of your naked body. Of course, there are features of this imaging technology that protect your privacy, according to the Transportation Security Administration website. The officer who analyzes the image is in an isolated location, millimeter wave technology blurs out facial characteristics, and the image is automatically deleted (supposedly). Although the images are meant to be just an outline of the human body, some reports say breasts, buttocks and sexual organs are visible.

It’s OK if people see us naked as long as it helps keep us safe from all those terrorists roaming the airports, right? Besides, you have a choice. If you dislike the idea of someone being able to see body parts that you normally cover in public, or don’t want to be exposed to potentially harmful radiation, you can have another stranger grope you and pat you down like a criminal.

Between privacy rights and safety concerns, the scales are tilting more toward safety. However, I for one, am not keen on giving up personal liberties and privacy. I’m tired of the government spreading fear to restrict the freedom of its people. These body scanners can only reveal items hidden underneath clothing. When people’s intent on harming others gets around this by concealing threatening objects inside their bodies, what will follow? Body cavity searches?

The American Civil Liberties Union website refers to the scanning as a virtual “strip-search,” insisting such screening measures be used only when there is probable cause. It also raises the question as to whether the technology could have “detected the ‘anatomically congruent’ explosives Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab hid in his underwear.” It concludes that although it is the government’s duty to protect its citizens, we should not give up “our privacy for ineffective policies.”

Some bloggers claim that these searches are a violation of the Fourth Amendment, since it subjects passengers to unreasonable searches. The amendment states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Another concern is that we don’t know the personal integrity of the agents viewing the images, as there have already been complaints about airport staff security abusing the scanners. A Miami International Airport employee, Ronaldo Negrin, was arrested after allegedly attacking a co-worker who had made fun of the size of Negrin’s genitalia.

A similar incident published in The Register occurred in London, when a female security operative accidentally stepped into a body scanner and a male co-worker scanned her and made remarks about her anatomy. If this goes on with co-workers, what’s to stop them from looking critically at our bodies? And do we really know that these images are being deleted and not stored for some alternative purposes?

I wear clothes in public for a reason, and don’t feel comfortable with the idea of strangers seeing an image of my naked body, nor with the possibility that there are some perverts out there that get off on seeing these images, especially when it comes to children. The scanners break UK child porn laws, therefore they do not scan anyone under 18.

So next time I fly, assuming body scanners have not become mandatory, I’d rather go through the cumbersome but familiar pat-down (adherence to Islamic dress code automatically grants me this special treatment without any other probable suspicion) instead of performing a virtual strip for a stranger.