The Transportation Security Administration has designated NYC’s airports for security scanners using “backscatter” X-rays that see through clothes, the NY Daily News has learned.
Travelers will be visible to security agents in a chalky and detailed naked outline – front and back.
Newark Airport, which is also receiving new scanners, will have to settle for PG-rated models: “millimeter wave” technology devices that can detect objects hidden under clothes using radio waves.
Newark security screeners will see a silhouette of a passenger in 3-D.
Both versions have slowly been showing up at airports around the U.S. since the TSA announced last March that 450 units would be installed nationwide.
The TSA has put 292 of the machines in place at 61 airports since March, but it will take a while longer for them to show up in the New York area.
The machines were supposed to arrive last summer. Then it was September. Now it will be “in the coming weeks,” said TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis.
The delays result from “installation issues,” Davis added.
She insisted they haven’t been slowed up by lawsuits filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center to stop the placement of the machines as an invasion of privacy.
Both versions “are pretty graphic. Both are unacceptable,” said Ginger McCall, an assistant director of the open government program at EPIC.
The group has argued for more testing of the scanners that McCall charged “may not even pick up” the objects they are designed to detect.
The TSA opted to install the scanners after Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit last Christmas by setting off explosives hidden in his underwear.
When the new machines are operational, passengers will be selected randomly to go through them. Those who refuse will get a patdown.
The TSA maintains the images shown are deleted about 20 seconds after a passenger passes through.
The new scanners have received a mixed reception in Europe. After six months of testing, Italy last month gave up on the machines used in Rome, Venice and Palermo.
“It takes a long time to examine a person, more than with a manual inspection,” said Vito Riggio, head of Italy’s aviation authority.
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(Source: NY Daily News)
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12 Responses
seriously i dont think these people will be doing anything with the images anyway.
#1 they are not particularly detailed, aside from shape.
#2 there is better a few clicks away for free on the internet.
Even if they don’t do anything with the image, I wouldn’t want anyone looking at me that way even for a few seconds or minutes. Especially not if it’s a male.
It has nothing to do with what the officials will or will not, can or cannot do with the pictures. It has to do with the propriety of human beings revealing themselves in front of total strangers. Even if no record was made of the images. Certainly if a pat-down (by like gender individual is sufficient), their is no reason to submit to this. Putting personal freedoms aside and putting halachah aside, humans are not animals.
#2&3in addition to being a humiliating and immodest, one has to receive a dose of radiation from the examiner. Thanks but no thanks. If one is flying to another city in the US, travel by bus or train. Traveling overseas travel by boat.
they’re pointless anyway because anyone can opt out of going through the machine– so anyone with explosives in his underwear is just going to refuse the machine and get a quick pat-down.
devorahle – anyone that refuses the machine will be getting a serious pat down, they are not refusing for no reason.
real-brisker – Lav davka. I’d probably refuse just because I don’t want my image seen, not because I have something to hide.
chaimss – they will still be more choshesh
When the pictures of a full body scan are discussed, invariably we are shown a picture which is similar to a print negative which isn’t clear.
I just saw an article showing that these scans can be inverted, similar to when a picture negative is printed, which then produces a clear full color picture of the person, totally naked.
Very troubling.
The comment that I just posted, based on another site, that the pictures can be inverted to show the body in full color may be erroneous. I just saw another site that points out that the pictures shown on the first site are fake.
I’m still troubled because while the today’s technology may not be there to produce it, tomorrow’s may be.
And the winner is . . . Envelope please . . . Drum roll . . . Racial Profiling!
As long as our “travel safety” is in the hands of Obamanicks, we are not safe. They refuse the best methods of the Israelis, which must include personal face-to-to-face interviews by trained and skilled people of a decent level of intelligence, which disqualifies the 7-11 dropouts. Further, having seen the Obamanicks in JFK and Newark, I see they are more interested in potential illicit relationships with other “screeners” than they are in spotting possible Moslem or other terrorists.
Separate, more basic, point: first we are taking off our shoes, then our coats, next will be the “body scanners” (foisted on us as a profitable business scheme by an ex-bureaucrat of the TSA) .
The ultimate objective: accustom the American public to being embarrassed and humiliated and losing their personal dignity. Does this remind anyone of not-so-past history?