There is plenty of discussion about the TSA scanners – they are too invasive, they won’t work, etc. I did a quick survey on Mechanical Turk of “people living in the U.S.” (I didn’t actually verify this, but that was in my prerequisites) to see what their opinions were. I chose two dimensions – first whether they thought the scanners would “help” or not and second, whether the individual supported the new measures.

Here is the question I asked:

US Only: the TSA has more comprehensive body searches for airplane flights – will they work and is it worth it?

Here are the results:

• 38%   New TSA procedures will help and I support them
• 15%   New TSA procedures will help and I don’t support them
• 8%     New TSA procedures will not help and I support them
• 39%   New TSA procedures will not help and I don’t support them
• (n=149)

So, a pretty even split among the help/support and not help/don’t support contingents. It is hard to determine why the 8% of the sample who don’t believe the procedures will help would support them anyway – either they didn’t care what option they selected (I did pay .01 for each response) or they are believers that the appearance of security has value (something I generally agree with).

It might be interesting to note that I did a similar (though not the same) survey among information security professionals on ISSA Connect (membership required) where 11% said “it was worth it and can be successful” while 69% agreed with the statement “it is futile and intrusive”.