Really? Seriously? Have you seen the images that get generated from these scanners? It’s not like someone took their clothes off and had their picture taken, it’s more like a featureless grey human-shaped blob.
Well, there are certain features that do stand out.
Well, if a checkpoint had more than one, sure, they might have everyone go through it, in which case you’d probably have a male and a female line. I suspect manual searches will remain common for quite awhile though - at smaller airports the cost of a body scanner probably can’t be justified
Which means nothing because there is no way to differentiate between someone with big breasts or a fat ass. The last terrorist event would have easily passed a pat down with his underwear bomb. And there is no way to discover internally stored objects. Drug dealers have been using mules to carry stuff inside the body for years.
I take your point, Magiver, about the actual usefulness of screening, but I still think it will be females scanning females and males scanning males.
Agreed. It would certainly be F/F and M/M screening.
I don’t think they are too intrusive. I experienced them for the first time this past October when I flew through Miami, and got the full treatment. There was a really long wait for a single scanner, shaped like a glass cylinder. As I stepped inside, the glass door shut around me. I had to stand with my arms up in the air, and a rectangular panel swung around my body. It took a while to do the scan, then I got the full pat down treatment and stuff. After the scan, I was expected to stand on a certain part of the floor and just wait there until I was cleared. By the time I went to pick up my bags, someone had dumped my passport, boarding pass, and wallet out of one of the plastic gray boxes that went through security. It took me awhile to find them all, as some were wedged in between the rollers…luckily nothing got stolen, but I panicked for a bit.
I can imagine someone with claustrophobia having a problem with these scanners though.
Just based on the picture shown in the CNN article, it doesn’t seem like it really shows all that much, or at least, not enough to make me feel “undressed” (and I’m pretty modest). I’d to see more examples at full resolution before I judge it.
I voted “Yes, too intrusive,” but I don’t believe any other method should be used either.
It’s not that I object to some TSA yokel seeing my body; I really couldn’t care less. But on sheer principle, this idea that we should arbitrarily sacrifice privacy of any sort in the name of security (either real or imagined) just galls me.
I have no problem with this. I’d prefer the RF device over a full-body X-ray despite the fact that the X-Rays would be pretty weak. But intrusive? Not an issue.
But I have a fairly large surgical scar, I wonder how that would show up, if at all. The more careful security sort may think there’s something in there until shown otherwise.
Of any sort? I’ve had to empty pockets and boot up laptops and describe in detail why I’m checking in with a bunch of radios and cables and antennas. I’ve been patted down and had my space invaded by imposing women wielding wands. These are invasions of privacy of a sort, and it’s the kind of thing flyers have had to deal with for years.
I guess I can see why it would bother some people, but I honestly don’t care. Like someone mentioned earlier, I’m just glad I’m not the one with the job. I would imagine it isn’t a pleasant thing.
The image that was on the front page of the Drudge Report seemed more explicit than most. After you fix the URL, you can see it here http:// Pregnancy intimate piercings genitals - What can the naked scanner really see | News | BILD.de
Possibly NSFW.
Seconded. It would be one thing if every third plane was getting blown out of the sky by a suicide bomber, but right now the response seems wildly disproportionate to the threat. Not to mention the basic cost benefit ratio – huge loss of privacy for everyone for a marginally increased chance of preventing another attack.
Meh , looks like that gizmo in Total recall.
Declan
Yeah, the article seemed pretty vague/contradictory as to what exactly these scans show. If it’s simply like an x-ray, then all you’re seeing is the relative density of your body/clothing/whatever else – metal shows up hard white, flesh shows up a middlin grey, explosives show up at a somewhat different density.
I can’t say that I’d be shy about x-rays… I’ve seen my own chest x-rays (for medical purposes), and it’s not like you could see boobies or anything. Hell, you could just barely see the mammary glandular tissue – the heart and lungs were far more prominent.
On the other hand, then the article goes on to say they’d “blur out faces” to accommodate for privacy concerns. You can make out a face on an x-ray?
I’d also have safety concerns. Medical professionals try to keep CT scans, x-rays, and the like down to “only when necessary.” But a lot of business professionals are going through multiple airports every week. That damage, if damage there is, would build up pretty quickly over time.
But these aren’t x-rays. Not at all. It’s non-ionizing radiation (not harmful, like radio waves), and besides which it can’t penetrate more than a few millimeters into the skin, and that’s only certain kinds at high power. The ones used in airports are designed to go through clothing and stop at the skin.
I was reading that the English tested them and they are weak at showing plastics and liquids. It would not have found the underwear bombers bomb.
We have to have a full body cavity search foe every flier.
Maybe I missed it but… Is the image only seen by the screener, or is this something that can be seen by everyone in the screening area?
I have a problem with something other than the privacy issue. Based on the description above it sounds like a lot of waiting and standing while the thing works. Also, based on the news the other night, one of the things that went wrong with not discovering Captain Underpants’s presence on “the list” or whatever, was that his name was misspelled on some check-in document or another.
In my industry, if you misspell an entry on a manifest and the manifest is audited, it can be up to a 27,500 dollar fine, per violation, per day that the violation stands. Why aren’t similar regs in place for Homeland security for crying out loud? Seems like having the TSA and homeland security folks do their jobs properly would be a better solution than forcing people to do more and more invasive and ridiculous screening procedures. Seems like cavity searches aren’t far off.
If I lived in the states it wouldn’t bother me so much, I’d just drive, or take the train or something, but we don’t really have much of a choice if we want to arrive somewhere in a reasonably timely manner.
Blurring out faces and genitals? Gimme a break. I don’t care if some security worker sees me naked, in person or on screen. And I don’t care if they’re male or female either. If their job is looking at images of thousands of fatasses like me going by every day, I’m sure that they’re not particularly interested in checking out the face that goes with my hoo-ha. Or the hoo-ha that goes with my face.
In other words, I don’t think body scanners are too intrusive from a privacy standpoint.
BUT–I have serious concerns about them. Particularly the question of whether they’re a good value in terms of the costs vs. benefits.