Treating the airport checkpoint as part of the new security regime, this article concentrates on three issues. First, it considers the working conditions of Transportation Security Agency (TSA) employees whom the US government pays to screen passengers, and emphasizes the enduring physicality of their labor despite the technologization of the checkpoint. Second, it explores new techniques of inspection implemented at TSA checkpoints and delineates practices of `close sensing' that establish continuities between looking and touching. Finally, the article describes the object-oriented visual economy that takes shape at the checkpoint, and suggests that the x-ray sequence ultimately exposes the state's inability to regulate the flow of objects and matter in the age of globalization. Thus the searches, exposures, and probes that define this threshold should be understood not just in terms of individual privacy invasions, but rather as an opportunity to focus on structural changes in federal labor, state surveillance and globalization that have emerged since 9/11.
` Airport Insecurity' (2004) Seattle Times Special Report, 11 July. URL (consulted March 2006): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/nation-world/airportinsecurity/breaches/
2.
Arsenault, M. (2005) `What Screeners Central Is Doing FOIA', Screeners Central, undated. URL (consulted Feb. 2006): http://tsa-screeners.com/start/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3738
3.
Associated Press (2004) `Women Complain about Airport Patdowns', MSNBC, 30 Nov. URL (consulted March 2006): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6617853/
4.
Augé, M. (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso.
5.
Barr, S. (2006) `In Unusual Request TSA Seeks $10 million to Address High Turnover', Washington Post, 10 February B02.
6.
Beller, J. (2002) `Kino-World: Notes on the Cinematic Mode of Production ', in N. Mirzoeff (ed.) Visual Culture Reader 2.0, pp. 60—85. London: Routledge.
7.
Cartwright, L. (1995) Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine's Visual Culture . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
8.
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) ( 2005) `Spotlight on Surveillance: Transportation Agency's Plan to X-ray Travelers Should be Stripped of Funding', June. URL (consulted March 2006): http://www.epic.org/privacy/surveillance/spotlight/0605/
9.
Frank, T. (2005a) `Airport Screeners' Strains, Sprains Highest', USA Today, 10 Jan. URL (consulted Feb 2006): http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-10-TSAinjuries_x.htm
10.
Frank, T. (2005b) `Demands of the Job Strain Airport Screeners, Airport Security', USA Today, 23 Feb. URL (consulted Feb. 2006): http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2005-02-23-tsa-strained_x.htm
11.
Goo, S.K. (2004) `Airport Pat-Down Protocol Changed', Washington Post, 23 December: E01.
12.
Goodman, A. (2004) `US Operating Secret “Torture Flights” ', Democracy Now, 17 Nov. URL (consulted March 2006): http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/17/1525208
13.
Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2004) Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire . New York: Penguin Press.
14.
Hirsch, M.Hosenball, M. and Barry, J. (2005) `Aboard Air CIA', Newsweek, 28 Feb. URL (consulted Feb. 2006): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6999272/site/newsweek/
15.
Joyner, J. (2004) `Bad Attitude Punishable? Banned Items in Luggage Bring TSA Fines', Outside the Beltway, 20 Feb. URL (consulted Oct. 2006): http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2004/02/bad_attitude_punishable/
Lippit, A. (2005) Atomic Light (Shadow Optics). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
18.
Marks, L. (2002) Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
19.
Miller, L. (2003) `Airport Screeners May Get X-ray Vision', Associated Press, 25 June. URL (consulted Oct. 2006): http://campaignfortruth.com/Eclub/210703/CTMairportxray.htm
20.
Morse, M. (1998) Virtualities: Television, Media Art and Cyberculture . Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
21.
Naim, M. (2005) Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global EconomyNew York: Double Day.
22.
Novotny, M. (2005) `TSA on E-Bay,' MSNBC, 28 April. URL (consulted March 2006): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7670500/
23.
Parks, L. (2005) Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
24.
Petro, P. and Martin, A. (2006) Rethinking Global Security: Media, Popular Culture, and the `War on Terror'. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
25.
Project on Government Oversight (POGO) (2006 ) `Survey of Airport Screeners Shows Problems at TSA', 20 Jan. URL (consulted March 2006): http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2006/01/survey_of_airpo.html
26.
Rapiscan (2006a) `Advanced Technologies/TIP and TIP Net'. URL (consulted March 2006): http://www.rapiscansystems.com/tipnetn.html
27.
Rapiscan (2006b) `Advanced Technologies/Target '. URL (consulted March 2006): http://www.rapiscansystems.com/target.html
28.
Reece, K. (2005) `This Is Not Right', KOMO TV News, Des Moines, Iowa, 1 June. URL (consulted Feb. 2006): http://www.komotv.com/news/story.asp?ID=37150
29.
Sharkey, J. (2004) `Airport Hurdles and the Nonflying Nuns', The New York Times, 2 March: C9.
30.
Sharkey, J. (2005) `Airport Screeners Could Get X-Rated X-ray Views ', The New York Times, 24 May: C5.
31.
Strohm, C. (2005) `Lawmakers Seek Investigation of TSA Labor Abuses ', GOVEXEC.com, 4 Oct. URL (consulted Oct. 2006): http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=32482&dcn=todaysnews
U.S. House (2000) Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Aviation of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Aviation Security (Focusing on Training and Retention of Screeners), 16 March. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
34.
U.S. House. (2003) Hearing Before the Committee on Government Reform. Knives, Box Cutters, and Bleach: A Review of Passenger Screener Training, Testing and Supervision, 20 Nov. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
