New Airport Screening Bares All

(CBS)  The latest technology for screening passengers at U.S. airports gets a closer look at you than anything that's been used before.

It's called a "whole body imager," and it can indeed see your whole body underneath your clothing, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.

San Francisco is one of 19 domestic airports where the scanners are deployed. Forty machines so far across the country, with 250 planned for next year, at $170,000 apiece. Passengers get to choose whether to pass through the body imager or a traditional metal detector.

"I was just pretty impressed at how quick it took, said Jared Thomas, an airline passenger. "She said two seconds - it was two seconds."

Two seconds to see whether you have something suspicious on your body, perhaps made of plastic. The worst case scenario is an improvised explosive device. When a passenger goes through, a TSA screener checks out the revealing image in another room. The passenger's face is blurred, but the body is fully exposed.

"Once that evaluation is complete, the scan is deleted, and it's gone forever," said Nico Melendez, a TSA spokesman. "So we can't capture, we can't print, we can't transmit. We don't hold the image at all."

At first, the TSA offered the body imager as an alternative to a pat down for passengers who set off a metal detector or who were selected for extra, so-called "secondary" screening. Now, in San Francisco and five other cities, the machines are an option for "primary" screening. That bothers privacy advocates.

"The technology is very invasive," said Lillie Coney, the associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center also worries that travelers don't realize how revealing the body imagers are.

"Is this really a violation of privacy if the person who's looking at your body is locked away in a room, doesn't know who they're looking at and can't record the image?" asked Cordes.

"Absolutely! If you think about it - privacy is a very fundamental right," said Coney. "It's about the collection and use of personally identifiable information. And your unclothed body is as personal and identifiable as you can get."

But the TSA says that's just what makes the device so effective.

"It's better than the one that blows the air at you," said Kris Wafler, an airline passenger.

Those "puffer" machines - meant to detect explosive residue - are being eliminated after five years - a $36 million mistake. They kept breaking down due to dirt and humidity.

That's not an issue with whole body imagers, which don't use x-rays, but electromagnetic waves - that the TSA says, emit less energy than a cell phone.

[Ankhorite]

Call them what they are: Forced Nudity Machines.

And then wait for the first time a politician, especially a female politician, finds out that the guys watching the machines in their secret rooms can use their cell phones to photograph the machine's screen, and then post their nude photos on the internet.

GET RID OF THESE THINGS.

[peetrerb]

Hey, we all want safety, and I dont like waiting.. so what's wrong with this?

[aka_KJB]

++ Whether we like it or not, this is what the world has come to. If this is necessary for our safety then we must submit to it if we want to be allowed to board the planes. I think in years to come we will be giving up a lot more of our privacy to be safe. This is only the beginning.
Posted by ladypirate2 at 12:59 AM : May 26, 2009 ++

If that is what you truly believe is what we need to "make us safe", then we will never, ever be safe. It won't stop at boarding planes - how many buses are bombed around the world? And just like metal detectors at every local, state and federal building, we'll eventually have to get a full body scan just to enter. That's not safety, that's really close to a police state, exactly the sort of thing this country ISN'T supposed to be.

The quote was reprinted earlier in this thread and it is so true - anyone who is willing to give up their freedoms doesn't deserve them in the first place. Count me out.

[ladypirate2]

Whether we like it or not, this is what the world has come to. If this is necessary for our safety then we must submit to it if we want to be allowed to board the planes. I think in years to come we will be giving up a lot more of our privacy to be safe. This is only the beginning.

[aka_KJB]

++ How interesting you can ridicule and degrade, but can't refute with logical argument or you would have. So apparently you have no electrons for serious thought or investigation, yet you certainly wasted plenty of electrons offering nothing but your contempt, which any fool can do, as if an exercize in flapping your gums is somehow worthy of spewing forth.

You refuse any evidence regardless of it's validity, because you've decided you already know.
Posted by nofoolling at 5:48 AM : May 25, 2009 ++

No, I don't refuse ANY evidence but the "evidence" you cite is hardly that. And this isn't a discussion thread on 9/11 or I could have gladly gone on for pages as to why 99.9% of all the conspiracy theories on the event are complete and utter cr@p. I've come to these conclusions not through any sort of divine revelation or prejudice, I've come through them by asking the same questions you have, only I was willing to look deeper, research further and get facts from disinterested sources, not from the very people trying to promote one theory or another. It's not surprising in an environment where research papers are purchased off the internet that a majority of people would choose to get their 'facts' from someone with no credentials who just sounds like they know what they're talking about. Having said that, I expect no one to take anything I say as gospel without doing their own checking. It's called being informed and if a populace is truly informed with facts, it can never be enslaved. But they have to be the FACTS, not somebody else's version of the facts that are just being regurgitated into society.

Back to the actual subject of the comment thread - I agree, regardless of the operator's ability to save, transmit or print out poster size for their dorm room (although I still contend that camera phones are going to be making their presence felt on this subject sooner, rather than later) that most imaging systems have an information cache system. They have to in order to function. It's nothing to have 'backups' stored in the internal memory, initially for 'only an instant' but that amount of time if software controlled, not hardware controlled. All it takes is a tweak and the cache will slowly fill up until it hits a dumping point, which can just be a straight memory dump into the ether or a dump to a secondary storage. Doesn't take rocket science to do this. And if you wonder just what could be in a memory cache, pull up the cache for your browsers sometime and see just how many porn sites are in there just from random links that have shown up on various websites that you didn't even see. I've seen the browser cache for 10 year olds look like they were trying to corner the market on net porn (and yes, we were able to confirm that the 10 year old user hadn't actually visited any of the sites).

I think targeting the manufacturers in a NON-VIOLENT way would help a lot. If they're aware that any transgression is going to put them in the public's cross-hairs then they're likely to do more than just set the units up and service them when they go off line (I almost said down but with the previous porn discussion, I thought better of it). They'll hopefully keep an eye on the machines and make sure nobody tries to do any third party tweaks so they can launch their new YouTube channel, "Stuff I Saw At The Airport You Wouldn't Believe".

[jjoensuu]

I agree with ya "aka_KJB".

Besides that, ok so these folks claim that the pictures are deleted. As if to reinforce that statement, they add that "we can't capture, we can't print, we can't transmit. We don't hold the image at all." That could also be the truth AS FAR AS THEIR OWN ABILITIES ARE CONCERNED. In other words, perhaps THEY CANNOT do any of those things.

But HOW ABOUT SOME EVIDENCE that the pictures are not kept? I do not care about what functionality is available to those end-users - I care about what is really and actually stored.

How ABOUT SOME EVIDENCE that the pictures are not transmitted to some government database somewhere else. IN FACT I BET YOU $10K that they are - and that, one way or another, we will find out about this later.

[nofoolling]

The picture at the very bottom of the website listed below shows the thermite signature (which burns at 2500 degrees or hotter) from the explosives used on core girders in the controlled 911 demolition of the twin-towers.
Keep asking questions.
Posted by nofoolling at 12:17 AM : May 25, 2009

I rarely say this because it sounds like I don't appreciate the asking of questions and public discourse, which I back in no uncertain terms. Having said that, you're a moron. I hate it when people who have limited or no scientific training or even education pull these conspiracy theories out of their scrotum. I suppose next you're going to regale us with theories about where the government is really hiding the passengers of the fourth plane or where they were secretly buried after they were shot. Look, I like a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone else (maybe even more - I write SF, after all) but that stuff is such a pantload that even the Flat Earth people think you're talking out your a$$ (and those guys don't even believe we've mastered *flight*). I could tear apart every one of your pseudo-scientific 'explanations' for why the Twin Towers was an inside job but I'm not going to waste the electrons. Do a quick Google search and if you're still convinced it's an Illuminati plot, then try to Google Dan Brown's contact info. I'm sure he's looking for material for his next crap novel that they'll turn into a crappier Tom Hanks movie.
Posted by aka_KJB

How interesting you can ridicule and degrade, but can't refute with logical argument or you would have. So apparently you have no electrons for serious thought or investigation, yet you certainly wasted plenty of electrons offering nothing but your contempt, which any fool can do, as if an exercize in flapping your gums is somehow worthy of spewing forth.

You refuse any evidence regardless of it's validity, because you've decided you already know.

[slantedview]

This is a massive invasion of privacy to be used "routinely" for the average American and we should not allow it to be used in airports or on the public at large (with or without their knowledge) when what we are doing now is obviously working. Where is the Civil Liberties Union?

However, I think it would make an excellent screening device in jails and the prison system as a routine scanner for prisoners (especially after visiting day) without having to do body cavity searches which is de-humanizing and degrading for everyone except the sick twisted bas***** who enjoy mentally, physically and emotionally raping the inmates. That would put a stop to that.

[aka_KJB]

The picture at the very bottom of the website listed below shows the thermite signature (which burns at 2500 degrees or hotter) from the explosives used on core girders in the controlled 911 demolition of the twin-towers.
Keep asking questions.
Posted by nofoolling at 12:17 AM : May 25, 2009

I rarely say this because it sounds like I don't appreciate the asking of questions and public discourse, which I back in no uncertain terms. Having said that, you're a moron. I hate it when people who have limited or no scientific training or even education pull these conspiracy theories out of their scrotum. I suppose next you're going to regale us with theories about where the government is really hiding the passengers of the fourth plane or where they were secretly buried after they were shot. Look, I like a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone else (maybe even more - I write SF, after all) but that stuff is such a pantload that even the Flat Earth people think you're talking out your a$$ (and those guys don't even believe we've mastered *flight*). I could tear apart every one of your pseudo-scientific 'explanations' for why the Twin Towers was an inside job but I'm not going to waste the electrons. Do a quick Google search and if you're still convinced it's an Illuminati plot, then try to Google Dan Brown's contact info. I'm sure he's looking for material for his next crap novel that they'll turn into a crappier Tom Hanks movie.

[aka_KJB]

I have a time machine, you could go back to the 1800's for a nominal fee...
Leaches?
Posted by gravyboat45 at 7:36 PM : May 24, 2009

I think you mean "leeches". And in case you hadn't noticed, they've made something of a comeback in modern medicine. Seems they really did have some medicinal uses, after all. Of course now you're just expected to pop a few in your mouth and let them dissolve slowly. This isn't the Dark Ages, you know. When you're finished looking that up, take a look at how maggots have been used for cleaning out infections from wounds in recent years.

You've got a time machine? Oh great! Mine's on the fritz (needs a new dematerialization circuit) but I've been dying to check out what life was like before Bush-Cheney. It seems like so long ago and nobody seems to remember anymore.