The point of the courthouse image leak is that everyone says these images are not supposed to be saved and policy dictates that they not be saved, printed or transmitted and must be deleted after a passenger is cleared. However, the specifications for the bid required that the machines be able to do all this and there is NWIH that someone somewhere isn't going to violate that policy. Statistically, there's no way some images won't be handled inappropriately.
So that's one strike against the public's ability to have confidence in the system. It isn't a big leap to go from that to "are the machines really as safe as they say they are?" I'm not anti-government, but when I take all this and add in the fact that you have other government officials making what I feel are ridiculous, dangerous statements (which could lead to ridiculous, dangerous policies) like Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood saying he/his agency is looking at technology to disable cell phones in cars to save lives...I really start to wonder just who knows what they are talking about and are we pursuing policies that will at worst do more harm than good or at best create needless inefficiency and controversy. I know the LaHood example is unrelated but it's indicative of a larger issue of trust and reliance on the agencies.
I'm still somewhat up in the air about the whole process and I am not sure what I will do when confronted with the scanners for the first time. I'm actually more on the side of security vs freedom, but I am not fully convinced that the trade off here is worthwhile. In this country we are awfully good at guarding against the previous threat as if people who want to do harm will just keep running the same play. They aren't - they've already testing cargo. We saw that this month.
