US airports install body scanners that see under passengers' clothes
| |  | | | Scanner images - some bits blurred
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11 JUN 2008: Body-scanning machines that show graphic images of people under their clothing are being installed by the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in some of the nation’s busiest airports. Body scans are already in use on randomly chosen passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and at New York's Kennedy airport. The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers' faces (not that it’s their faces people are concerned about) and deleting images right after viewing. As the images are detailed - clearly showing a person's gender – post-viewing deletion just doesn't quite cut it for some travellers.
Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport in Washington starts using a body scanner last week. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.
The scanners bounce apparently harmless "millimeter waves" off passengers who are selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal detector. A TSA screener in a nearby room views the black-and-white image and looks for objects on a screen that are shaded differently from the body. Finding a suspicious object, a screener radios a colleague at the checkpoint to search the passenger.
The security devices reveal intimate body parts and are quite detailed. "You can actually see the sweat on someone's back," said James Schear, the TSA security director at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where two body scanners are in use at one checkpoint.
Schear added, "It's the wave of the future."
The scanners could eventually replace metal detectors at the nation's 2,000 airport checkpoints and the pat-downs done on passengers who need extra screening.
"We're just scratching the surface of what we can do with whole-body imaging," Schear said.
The TSA effort could encourage scanners' use in rail stations, arenas and office buildings, the American Civil Liberties Union said.
Scanners are used in a few courthouses, jails and U.S. embassies, as well as overseas border crossings, military checkpoints and some foreign airports such as Amsterdam's Schiphol.
They are intended to strengthen airport security by spotting plastic and ceramic weapons and explosives that evade metal detectors and are the biggest threat to aviation. Government audits have found that screeners miss a large number of weapons, bombs and bomb parts such as wires and timers that agents sneak through checkpoints.
"I'm delighted by this development," said Clark Kent Ervin, the former Homeland Security inspector general whose reports urged the use of body scanners. "This really is the ultimate answer to increasing screeners' ability to spot concealed weapons."
The scanners do a good job seeing under clothing but cannot see through plastic or rubber materials that resemble skin.
Typically, passengers’ reactions vary. Some simply do not like what they consider an ultimate invasion of privacy, some are concerned at not being warned in advance, some said the fact that the screener is in a separate locked room makes the process impersonal, many suggested that it was all part of the hassles of today’s travel experience.
"Most passengers don't think it's any big deal," Schear said. "They think it's a piece of security they're willing to do."
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