The headline event of the month seems to have been those security scanners, and the related personal pat-down searches, that have become the height of security fashion in airports. Luckily, it appears that not too many people chose to participate in the boycott of the scanners that had been urged for the Thanksgiving holiday; this demonstrates that most people don't care that much, or perhaps just that they thought better of inconveniencing themselves and many others by causing delays on the busiest travel day of the year.
Either way, it seems the scanners and pat-downs are probably here to stay; their legality is being challenged in court now, but I can't imagine they'll be banned. The scanner, it seems, can be made less "revealing," and that seems to satisfy many people. I'd be happier if they could be made more effective in detecting what they're supposed to detect; if the machines could be relied on to detect about 99% of all potential threats, and only people who raised a flag in the scanner were searched, that would eliminate most of the pat-downs.
I find it interesting that here in the U.S., the rule seems to be that you'll be either scanned or searched. Having just completed a trip to Europe, coincidentally through Amsterdam where the scanners are getting special emphasis, I found that most passengers, if not all, are being both scanned and patted down. U.S. travelers should be prepared for that eventuality; their constitutional rights, even if supported by the courts here at home, won't do them much good in the rest of the world.
It's hard to say that we don't need these security measures, or that they're not doing any good at all. But I would say that neither the TSA nor the average air traveler are assessing the situation clear-headedly. The screening in most cases, once set up and applied broadly in most airports, won't detect many would-be terrorists because they'll avoid the screening and look for other avenues of approach; in that sense, passengers who accede to the screenings in the belief that it makes them somehow safer, are probably deceiving themselves.