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The Transportation Security Administration says its technology failed to create software that would make passengers appear less naked when they go through scanners, so it is removing the devices.
What Can Tsa Body Scanners See
You do realize that those nice people in Transportation Security Administration uniforms have been examining your naked body, right?
Here’s What Airport Body Scanners Really See
You do realize that scanning machines arrived at US airports so quickly that there was no time to write software to preserve what’s left of your modesty – if you put your hands up in surrender just so you can fly to Seattle?
No, not that kind of coverage. The TSA has decided it’s had enough of staring at your disfigured self — maybe we’re not all such pretty sights — and so it’s removing the scanners.
Bloomberg offers that no matter how hard it tried, OSI Systems, the company allowed to write modesty-enhancing software, discovered it couldn’t do it in time.
Congress – after objections from organizations such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center – had asked OSI’s Rapiscan to write software that would create more neutral images of passengers.
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Now, however, the remaining 174 Rapiscan machines will be rapidly removed from our airports. 76 had already retired last year.
However, the TSA will rely on scanners from other companies that supposedly offer a more discreet form of degrading security (see image below).
On its own blog, the TSA explains how L3 Millimeter Wave scanners offer a more palatable image to the naked eye.
However, Blogger Bob, the TSA guy behind this blog, also explains that the Rapiscan machines will be “stored until they can be redeployed to other mission priorities within the government.”
Airport Scanners Will No Longer Reveal Lumpy American Flesh
There will always be those who are suspicious of the effectiveness of the scanners. One blogger believes that you can strap metal objects to your body and get through.
However, it seems that going through security at airports will remain a long process. The officials on duty may or may not be charming. The machines will still require you to present yourself for examination. It has been a long and winding road, but the Transportation Security Administration has finally removed controversial backscatter body scanners from American airports after bowing to months of increased pressure.
The TSA says it has terminated its contract with Rapiscan, a unit of OIS Systems Inc., due to the company’s “inability to deploy non-imaging Automated Target Recognition (ATR) software by the congressionally mandated deadline of June 2013.”
“The TSA has strict requirements that all suppliers must meet for security effectiveness and efficiency,” the administration said. “By June 2013, travelers will only see machines that have ATRs that allow faster throughput. This means faster jobs for the traveler and improved security.
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Rapiscan CEO Deepak Chopra (not the New Age guru of the same name) said that he was “happy to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement with the TSA,” and added that Rapiscan would help the agency move the $180,000 machines to other US government agencies. The company had about $5 million in backlog related to the ATR software development, which Chopra said will be written off.
Rapiscan’s full-body scanners were once active in about half of all US airports and use low-level X-rays to create near-naked images of travelers’ bodies. Designed to detect concealed weapons at screening checkpoints across the nation, many passengers found the images the machine produced invasive and humiliating. Others complained that the backscatter scanners expose passengers to a small dose of ionizing radiation, which at higher levels has been linked to cancer.
In late 2011, the European Commission banned security scanners that use X-ray technology “so as not to risk endangering the health and safety of citizens.” European officials removed some of the last remaining backscatter machines in England from the United Kingdom’s Manchester Airport just last September.
Roughly 75 of the machines quietly disappeared from U.S. airports in October, though the TSA said it was just running them. TSA Director of External Communications David Castelveter confirmed at the time that the units had been removed from Boston Logan, Los Angeles, Chicago O’Hare, Charlotte Douglas, Orlando, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy in New York. Castelveter said the agency is “still evaluating” which airports will receive the units, although it now appears they have remained in storage. The remaining 174 will be gone from airports after June.
Naked Airport Body Scanners Coming I’ll Go First, Take My Picture!
A second type of scanner, built by L-3 Communications Holding, uses millimeter-wave technology to produce a cartoon-like image of the human body. The low-energy radio waves are similar to those in mobile phones, and they pose no known health risks.
The TSA has installed the millimeter wave technology machines with greater frequency over the past year compared to the year before, although various tests (none sponsored by the TSA) show the false alarm rate to be between 23 percent and 54 percent, compared to the TSA. backscatter scanners’ 5 percent.
Last October, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought by Florida-based blogger Jonathan Corbett, who maintains the website TSA Out of Our Pants!
Corbett argued that the TSA’s use of advanced imaging technology and “invasive” patdowns violate passengers’ protections against illegal searches under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He argued in court papers that the TSA does not have unilateral authority to adopt such procedures.
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The TSA rolled out the backscatter scanner machines in October 2010 after three years of testing and then authorized enhanced patdowns, which can include touching breasts, buttocks and genitalia, for passengers who do not want to submit to those scanners. The machines went on to become the most contested anti-terrorism weapon in the TSA arsenal.
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For decades, airport security officials depended on metal detectors to screen travelers for concealed weapons. The technology was safe and simple, but had one glaring flaw: it could not detect non-metallic threats, including plastic explosives. In 2009, the infamous underwear bomber used that mistake to almost devastating effect.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/VHXGBNLYR5LIDCS4QA5W76SJGA.jpg?strip=all "What Can Tsa Body Scanners See")
In the aftermath of that near-tragedy, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) moved quickly to update its screening procedures and technologies. By 2010, it had implemented two new types of full-body scanners.
What Do Airport Body Scanners Really See? Can They See You Naked?
One of these, called a millimeter-wave scanner, uses radio waves to search for hidden weapons or devices. These are the full-body scanners you’ll encounter at U.S. airports today — the ones where you stand with your feet apart and your hands above your head — and experts agree they shouldn’t worry you.
The second (and much more controversial) of the two is called a “backscatter” X-ray scanner. You will remember this as the machine that produced public images of the full body of passengers that many found to be unnecessarily intrusive.
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Tsa Removing ‘virtual Strip Search’ Body Scanners
In addition to the privacy questions raised by the use of the backscatter technology, some experts were also concerned that those scanners could expose travelers to potentially dangerous amounts of radiation. “We determined that the exposure from those machines was about 10% of what you would get during a chest X-ray, which is significant,” says John Sedat, a professor of biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco.
“There were probably some very small cancer risks associated with those X-ray machines,” says David Brenner, a professor of radiation biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center. “We know there are biological mechanisms by which X-ray exposure can cause cancer … it seemed likely that those backscatter scanners would carry some small risks.”
European authorities almost immediately banned the use of the backscatter X-ray machines, and the TSA followed suit in 2013 — though the agency never formally acknowledged that it ditched the scanners because of health concerns. (It also did not rule out bringing them back.)
“Scientists can never say that something is 100% safe, but I would say that there is no plausible evidence that millimeter waves can damage DNA,” says Brenner. “If the risks are there, they are extremely small.”
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Andrew Maidment, an associate professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, agrees, saying that today’s scanners are “not a concern.”
Maidment has published dozens of studies on radiation exposures and human health, and he is responsible for ensuring that all Penn Medicine medical equipment is safe for patients. He explains that microwave-emitting devices – from the heating device in your kitchen to the smartphone in your pocket – are believed to cause health damage only if they are powerful enough to cause molecular changes. The radiation emitted by airport millimeter wave scanners does not come anywhere near this level.
“I was on a panel that investigated
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