Passengers who intend to board a commercial airline flight in the US endure at least one and perhaps two levels of personal scrutiny. Upon arriving at a security checkpoint they are asked to empty their pockets of keys, coins, nail clippers, pens, PDAs, mobile phones and anything else metallic. Should they still set off the magnetometer, they receive aviation's equivalent of the Full Monty: Shoes off, belt unbuckled, arms and legs spread wide apart while a security screener politely runs a wand over arms, legs, torso and everything in between. They may arrive at their destination to discover that the bags they checked were opened along the way and inspected as well. Yet when they finally take their seats onboard, they will be sitting above several tons of packages, some large, some small, that have received nary a glance since they left a loading dock some-where and arrived on the tarmac.
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