When the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced today it will begin testing a body-scanning machine that could ultimately replace the metal detectors airline passengers walk through at airports, it set off some alarms - particularly at the ACLU.
The alarms are in response to tests - which are scheduled to begin today at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport - of a new screening system that uses radio waves, known as millimeter wave imaging technology to scan passengers and detect foreign objects hidden underneath clothing.
The millimeter wave technology creates a three-dimensional image of the passenger from two antennas that simultaneously rotate around the body. Once complete, the passenger will step through the opposite side of the millimeter wave portal. And here's the rub: to ensure privacy, security officers view images from a remote location. From this location, the security officer cannot ascertain the identity of the passenger, either visually or otherwise, but can communicate with a fellow officer at the checkpoint if the passenger presents a potential threat. A security algorithm will be applied to the image to mask the face of each passenger, further protecting privacy, TSA said. "Privacy is ensured through the anonymity of the image: it will never be stored, transmitted or printed, and it will be deleted immediately once viewed," said TSA Administrator Kip Hawley.
Despite such privacy precautions, the ACLU and others don't trust the TSA ‘s claims. "This technology produces strikingly graphic images of passengers' bodies. Those images reveal not only our private body parts, but also intimate medical details like colostomy bags. That degree of examination amounts to a significant - and for some people humiliating - assault on the essential dignity of passengers that citizens in a free nation should not have to tolerate," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program. "I continue to believe that these are virtual strip searches. If Playboy published them, there would be politicians out there saying they're pornographic."
On storing images Steinhardt went on to say that protection would certainly be a vital step for such a potentially invasive system, but given the irresistible pull that images created by this system will create on some employees (for example when a celebrity like George Clooney or someone with an unusual or "freakish" body goes through the system), our attitude is one of ‘trust but verify.' We would like to see strong independent and legally binding assurance that the policy will be enforced and unchanged, he said in a statement.
TSA says imaging technology provides a valuable alternative for travelers who would prefer not to submit to a more invasive physical pat-down during secondary screening. TSA began piloting another technology called backscatter, at Phoenix in February. To date, 79% of the public has opted to try backscatter over the traditional pat-down in secondary screening, TSA said. Backscatter has its own issues, namely concerns that it might harm users with the amount of X-rays it uses to gather information.
Ironically, the TSA this week pulled the plug on one of its other trial technologies - a shoe screener system capable of detecting explosives, either concealed in shoes or traces of explosives on passenger shoes or legs to a height of 18 inches from the floor without the passenger having to remove their shoes. Deployed in Orlando International Airport in January the ShoeScanner was shut down after the machine failed its latest test at finding explosives hidden in shoes.
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The ACLU Continues to Fill the Role of Clown
The ACLU is one of those universal constants in an otherwise dynamic world, that being their unending role as the consummate buffoons of public service. The ACLU needs to take a stand either as utter prudes or as total porn freaks, since they are just as likely to be defending pornography collectors as they are to be attacking this latest effort by the TSA to protect the public safety.
Take for instance their complaint about the millimeter wavelength imaging (MWI) passenger screening equipment and the TSA's accompanying anonymous scanning procedures. The claim that MWI technology is going to be able to produce a photographic-quality nude image of a passenger is just about as valid as the claims that $5.00 "X-Ray Vision" glasses hawked in the back of Popular Science magazines could do the same. In case you have any doubts, the x-ray glasses are bogus.
Any images that would be produced by the MWI scans would not be photographs or of photographic quality, but instead would be much more akin to what would be seen by an aerial radar scan of the ground. They would definitely not be something of the quality that "Playboy", or even the lowliest of the low, "The National Enquirer", would ever want to publish.
Secondly, the ACLU must be assuming that somehow, some sort of "pervert" might conceivably be tasked by the TSA to review these scans, and conceivably be turned-on by those images, based on their assessment that such images would be "pornographic". I'm supposing that no ACLU member has ever had a full body physical exam by a doctor, either. Heck, to some people, seeing a bare foot is a turn-on, yet people run around all over the place with bare feet, and nobody is up in arms about that fact. I personally am more embarrassed by my revealing major butt crack after I take off my belt, and by the horrible foot odor that wafts around when I take off my shoes, in the TSA screening lines for the current metal detector systems, than I would be about an anonymous scan of my clothed body.
Somewhere along the line the ACLU needs to slither back to reality and determine how many aircraft need to be blown up by terrorists before they will quit whining about necessary safety precautions, especially one as non-invasive as MWI.
The Pictures are actually pretty good
A year or so ago, the TSA spokeswoman for this project demonstrated it, using herself, and even a grainy low-res press-release copy of a phone was fairly detailed, though in black&white rather than color. At that time they were claiming that they'd use a version that fuzzed out the target's crotch, rather than their face; it's interesting to see the change in philosophy. (A number of the criticisms made at the time were that obviously that's where you'd hide your knife, but on the other hand this version addresses privacy only in a limited sense, like going naked with a mask on - and you *know* that a system like this would be designed to save the real image in case they had to prosecute someone found carrying weapons.)
As far as the "TSA perverts" discussion goes, a friend of mine used to travel regularly from her home in Peru to the US or through the US to Europe, and US Customs was very consistent about always searching her more often than other Peruvian women with smaller breasts; you can draw your own conclusions about which passengers underpaid overworked TSA guards will spend their time watching naked pictures of. And I get enough spam advertising amateur-porn voyeur websites that I assume there's a significant market for pictures that aren't airbrushed enough for Playboy, and the British equivalents to the National Enquirer happily put paparazzi snaps of sunbathing celebrities on the front cover.
Airport security is embarrassing!
It's funny you should mention that in your article, I recently had an awful experience at the airport when I had to remove my belt and revealed major butt crack to everyone behind me, including my three cousins who thought it was the funniest thing in the world. The screener didnt seem to care either, he made me stand there like that while he scanned me...Im considering wearing a plastic belt next time...