The government brought in the TSA to take over checkpoints and relieve the air transport industry for liability for failures of and abuses at the checkpoints as part of the post-9/11 air transport industry bailout; the checkpoints had existed for a long time.
Yep, pre-911 you still had to go through a metal detector and get your stuff x-rayed. Taking off your shoes and no fluids are the only new restrictions really.
The TSA was a huge improvement over the understaffed and indifferent private contractors that used to run airport checkpoints when it first started. Things didn't get bad again until the shoe bomber.
Not that I like the millimeter wave scanners, but like the metal detectors I think they use low-energy non-ionizing radiation, so its not really a change in the kind or significance of radiation exposure.
Conventional metal detectors use electromagnets and don't emit any ionizing radiation. Backscatter scanners used in airport security screening do emit ionizing radiation but a very small amount.
The government brought in the TSA to take over checkpoints and relieve the air transport industry for liability for failures of and abuses at the checkpoints as part of the post-9/11 air transport industry bailout; the checkpoints had existed for a long time.