Once again our federal government is overreacting to the most recent aircraft terrorist attack attempt, on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Now our federal government is frantically pushing the use of full body imaging scanners on Americans to improve air travel security. But do we really need to resort to these very intrusive electronic devices in order to provide security in air travel?

Let's recap why we almost had an aviation disaster on Christmas Day. Suspected terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab bought a one-way ticket, with cash, and checked no baggage on an international flight to the United States. Any one of these three conditions should have resulted in secondary screening of this passenger. Add to this that his father alerted U.S. officials about his son's radicalization and U.S. intelligence agencies had warnings of a potential attempt against the U.S. by al-Qaida over the holiday period, and it becomes crystal clear that the system failed. All the red flags were there. This should n ot have happened.

Anyone who knows me knows that rarely, if ever, have I found myself agreeing with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). You can imagine my surprise when I read a recent article about full body scanners and found myself agreeing with the majority of what the ACLU had to say on the matter.

While serving as Alaska's commissioner of the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, which oversees state Homeland Security, I questioned the use of full body scanners at airport security checkpoints. I quickly determined their use was an excessive and unnecessary invasion of personal privacy.

With the attempted terrorist attack by Abdulmutallab, my questions and discomfort with the concept of full body scanners are back. I believe most Americans share with me a desire for secure air travel. With terrorist threats continuing throughout the world, we must improve our efforts to detect those that wish to do us harm. However, we can accomplish this without violating our privacy.

Full body scanners create graphic images of our bodies that, as the ACLU pointed out, are "pictures of virtually naked bodies that reveal not only sexual organs but also intimate medical details such as colostomy bags and mastectomy scars." Full body scanners amount to a visual strip search by depicting a naked electronic image viewed by a federal agent.

We are told that the images will be immediately deleted from the system after the passenger exits security. Really, we already know that e-mails are not eliminated when deleted from computers and that these images can be reconstituted.

We also are told that these images would never be released outside of TSA. Unfortunately, we received the same assurances about electronic banking, Social Security numbers, medical records and other personal information, only to see this information repeatedly compromised and made public by hackers. Federal officials can't provide guarantees that full body scanning images will not have the same public release problems.

The ACLU got it right: "We should invest our security resources in investigations based upon reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing so we can more effectively identify and stop attackers before they get to any airport." Let's start by enforcing existing procedures. As increased detection is needed, implement non-intrusive methods. For example, add more explosives-detecting dogs in terminals and non-uniformed agents who observe passengers, prior to check-in, for characteristics of criminal/terrorist behavior. These are effective measures used in other countries.

First and foremost, our federal government needs to start by effectively using all the options already available to it.

We can achieve safety without infringing on personal liberties. Abdulmutallab's explosives would have been detected if existing security procedures, already in place, had been fully utilized. We don't need knee-jerk reactions that deprive Americans of yet another civil liberty in the name of security to ensure air travel is safe.