[privacy] 10 airports install body scanners

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080606/a_bodyscan06.art.htm
 
10 airports install body scanners 
Devices can peer under passengers' clothes 

By Thomas Frank
USA TODAY 

BALTIMORE - Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath
their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation's busiest airports in
one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body
parts.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently started using body
scans on randomly chosen passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver,
Albuquerque and at New York's Kennedy airport.

Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month.
Reagan National Airport in Washington starts using a body scanner today. A
total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.

"It's the wave of the future," said James Schear, the TSA security director
at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where two
body scanners are in use at one checkpoint.

Schear said the scanners could eventually replace metal detectors at the
nation's 2,000 airport checkpoints and the pat-downs done on passengers who
need extra screening. "We're just scratching the surface of what we can do
with whole-body imaging," Schear said.

The TSA effort could encourage scanners' use in rail stations, arenas and
office buildings, the American Civil Liberties Union said. "This may well
set a precedent that others will follow," said Barry Steinhardt, head of the
ACLU technology project.

Scanners are used in a few courthouses, jails and U.S. embassies, as well as
overseas border crossings, military checkpoints and some foreign airports
such as Amsterdam's Schiphol.

The scanners bounce harmless "millimeter waves" off passengers who are
selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal
detector. A TSA screener in a nearby room views the black-and-white image
and looks for objects on a screen that are shaded differently from the body.
Finding a suspicious object, a screener radios a colleague at the checkpoint
to search the passenger.

The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers' faces and deleting
images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a
person's gender. "You can actually see the sweat on someone's back," Schear
said. 

...

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