It does not take much to come face to face  or hand to buttock  with the controversial inner cordon of our nation’s antiterrorist strategy. You don’t have to break into Langley or crack open an encrypted file. All you have to do is snake your way through the airport security line, then step up to the person monitoring the metal detector or the full-body scanner and say, “Manual, please.”

A stoic Transportation Security Administration employee (male or female, in accordance with your gender) will snap on a pair of latex gloves and brace himself or herself for yet another encounter with the public’s privates.

Last Monday at Kennedy International Airport, as I went  ticket in hand  to experience it for myself, a uniformed officer informed me that she would be patting me down from head to toe, using a new enhanced technique. On “sensitive areas”  the breasts, buttocks and groin  she would use the back of her hand.

Did I have any metal objects in my pockets? No. Would I prefer a private screening area? No.

Then the officer’s hands did as she warned me they would. They poked around the back of my collar, they extended along my shoulders, they ran up and down my arms, they smoothed down my back, they slid inside the back waistband of my pants and they glided down my butt. The officer bent down and I felt her hands skate up the back of my left thigh  all the way up  and then do the same on my right. Then she rose, came around in front of me, and began again.