Apr 21 2008
More Airports to Roll out the Whole Body Image Machine
Welcome to Scuttlebutt Pipeline! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up to receive email notifications of new entries.
Also, don't forget to check out Fifty for the Fall, your chance to win $50 cash - no strings attached!
It started out as a test in Phoenix, Arizona, but after 90% of the travelers showed a preference for a whole body image scan versus a full body pat down, the whole body imaging machines are being rolled out at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and the Los Angeles International Airport in California soon after. The Transportation Security Administration will be purchasing, at least, another thirty machines to be placed at various U.S. airports this year.1
The TSA claims that the images are non-invasive, the faces are blurred to protect one’s privacy, and the person (screener) viewing the travelers is situated in an enclosed booth and cannot see the passengers faces as they enter the machine or leave it. They also assure travelers that images are not stored at all.2
It truly seems like TSA is watching out for traveler’s privacy rights while, at th same time, using the best methods available to keep security tight. At least until you read this segment in the CNN article:
Travelers will continuously and randomly be selected to go through the machine. While signs will inform them of the pat-down option, screeners will not announce that choice. But passengers electing not to go through the millimeter wave machine will be given the option of the pat-down.
We know people are notorious for not reading or paying attention to signs. So if you don’t believe you have a choice in the matter and are told you have to go through the body scan machine or kiss your flight goodbye, what are you going to do? The machine of course! Now if that isn’t underhanded and sneaky I don’t know what is.
- Taken from this CNN article. For more details, please read this article. [↩]
- Read this article to get a better understanding on how it works. [↩]
