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New airport scanners are providing security workers with the super power every child dreams of: x-ray vision. This alternative to the traditional pat down allows workers to see beneath your clothes to draw attention to any non-human items you are packing on your person.
A random selection of travellers getting ready to board airplanes in Washington, New York’s Kennedy, Los Angeles and other key hubs will be shut in the glass booths while a three-dimensional image is made of their body beneath their clothes.
The booths close around the passenger and emit “millimeter waves” that go through cloth to identify metal, plastics, ceramics, chemical materials and explosives, according to the TSA.
In additional to drawing attention to foreign objects, your naked body will be on display for a the assigned voyeur stationed in another room. Is a virtual strip search really the best way to ensure safe flights? Aren’t these scanners a violation of our privacy?
“People have no idea how graphic the images are,” Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told AFP.
The ACLU said in a statement that passengers expecting privacy underneath their clothing “should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane.”
We’re not talking rough outlines of your body. . . we’re talking details down to your pores.
There I was in all my glory. My face was blurred out but the rest of my body was clear as day.
She rotated the black and white 3-D image so I could see every contour of my body, including my private parts. I could see sweat under my arms, the rivets in my jeans and a pack of gum in my back pocket.
While Transportation Security Administration workers are quick to point out
“Where do you think the bad guys hide stuff?”
At what point have we throw our civil liberties to the wayside to protect against the possibility of terrorist actions? At the end of the day, where there’s a will, there’s a way. If someone is meant to cause great harm, they will do what it takes to get results. How much privacy should we have to sacrifice in the name of security?
For the moment it seems that a lack of information is guiding travelers.
Passengers scanned in Baltimore said they did not know what the scanner did and were not told why they were directed into the booth.
Magazine-size signs are posted around the checkpoint explaining the scanners, but passengers said they did not notice them.
Darin Scott of Miami was annoyed by the process.
“If you don’t ask questions, they don’t tell you anything,” Scott said. When he asked a screener technical questions about the scanner, “he could not answer,” Scott said.
TSA spokeswoman Sterling Payne said the agency is studying passenger reaction and could “get more creative” about informing passengers. “If passengers have questions,” she said, “they need to ask the questions.”
Passengers can decline to go through a scanner, but they will face a pat-down.
Personally, if ever directly towards a booth, I’m going to ask for the pat down.
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Comments
06.13.08
You know, privacy is relative. I don't want my neighbor to see me naked, because I know him and I have to live next to him. But if some nameless, faceless TSA employee see's my body, but doesn't see me or my face, and doesn't know me, then what's the big deal?
It should be pointed out that the images are viewed from behind closed doors. The TSA employee does not see the passenger, they only see the image on the screen. The face of the passenger is blurred out, so the employee could later pass you in the terminal and never know they just saw you naked.
I'm no exhibitionist, but this seems resonable to me.
Now if you would prefer that someone run their hands all over your body in an actual physical examination, rather than have someone looking at a faceless computer image of you, go right ahead.
I'll take the scanner and be on the plane before you.
06.13.08
Next I heard that Big Bro wanted to put special TV's in each of our houses where they can see what is going on to ensure we hate on the party. Then again I might have just committed a thoughtcrime...
Do the house Pigs have to go through these scanners to?
To may Orwell references? maybe? but we have to draw the line somewhere don't we?
I'm not always on the same page with you Zak, but this is getting out of hand!
06.13.08
I would take the scanner option just for the hell of it, request a printout of myself in all my glory - have it digitally blown up to a life-size cardboard cutout - then prop it up in my kitchen at my next house party.
But in all seriousness, that is kind of creepy.
06.13.08
I tend to have problems with these sort of machines not because of privacy issues but due to the false sense of security they create. People see the screening machines and think they make airports safer. Until the government begins to use the money to actually create security rather than the appearance of security, I think they should keep their eyes off my body.
06.13.08
Vanessa makes a good point. Danger won't come by way of the airport check-in line.
06.13.08
I'm all for x-ray body scanners. If it gets me through the airport faster, check out my assets, buddy!
I would feel safer, and could care less what the TSA dude thinks about my pores in the 15 seconds that he gets a sneak peek.
06.13.08
Doesn't anyone have concern for the poor TSA worker who has to look at all sorts of nasty nakedness for 8 hours a day?
Yikes, I just vomited a little in my mouth thinking about all the people I see at the airport naked.
06.13.08
I'm wondering how you screen prospective scanning image viewers to eliminate people who get their jollies from such a slide show?
06.13.08
This airport security thing has gotten way out of hand. They couldn't physically force me through one of those scanner. I do not consider a privacy nut, but this has gone way too far. There are to many other holes, what about that guy who shipped himself cross country, have they fixed that? If this is the way this country is going to go, how long until we become a police state?
06.21.08
"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."
- Edward R. Murrow
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