The other thing I'd like to point out...

[nwhiker]

Let's pretend that what the TSA says is true and they don't keep the nekkid people images from their backscatter x-ray machines.

Let's pretend that Flight ABC on a Boeing 747 leaves Seattle en route for Japan with 400 people on board.

Let's pretend that Flight ABC blows up over the Pacific Ocean, leaving a zillion square mile debris field and/or not a lot of debris (see Air France Flight 447. They didn't find a lot of stuff from that one, and certainly not the "black boxes").

What happens next?

Since no scans were kept and no wreckage found, we can't figure out which passenger carried the bomb on board. Oh yeah, we can investigate 400 people, in probability order using profiling and names etc, flinging lots of person-power into the investigation, and waste critical early time, while the accomplices of the bomber slip quietly out of the US on commercial flights to points unknown. Too bad so sad. It would have been good to have those people arrested.

Anyone believe that to be likely?

Ummm.... Not! I don't think the US government/TSA is that incompetent. They have got to be keeping those scans, just in case there is a problem, so they can go back and review then, see if they did in face miss something on the nekkid scanner, or if someone shoved a bomb up their rectum.

Anyhow.