I’m sure this is an ignorant question, but I’m confused…
I just read this piece by Susan Jacoby. She writes:
I didn’t know your head gets blocked out. I didn’t go home this Thanksgiving; how does the security work? What I mean to ask is, where is the TSA officer who is looking at your body on the computer sitting in relation to you? It sounds from what she wrote like he can’t see you…is that true?
My understanding is that they are in a room entirely separated from the security point, and that they just signal to security that the passenger is OK or not OK.
As Buck said, the person who can see the image is in a separate room (or even a separate building) without a view of the people passing through security.
This is in agreement with the explanation offered by the TSA, and with my own personal travels through dozens of airports over the past few weeks. At each, I stepped through the scanner and waited just on the other side for a few seconds while a TSO listened in for a go/no go.
Here are some images of TSA scans. In one the face is blurred out and this is apparently how the screener sees the image.