Body scanners replace metal detectors in tryout at Tulsa airport

[babylonsister]

Body scanners replace metal detectors in tryout at Tulsa airport

By Thomas Frank, USA TODAY


WASHINGTON — For the first time, some airline passengers will skip metal detectors and instead be screened by body scanning machines that look through clothing for hidden weapons, the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.

An experimental program that begins today at Tulsa International Airport will test whether the $170,000 body scanners could replace $10,000 metal detectors that have screened airline passengers since 1973. Airports in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, Albuquerque and Salt Lake City will join the test in the next two months, TSA spokesman Christopher White said.

The scanners aim to close a loophole by finding non-metallic weapons such as plastic and liquid explosives, which the TSA considers a major threat. The machines raise privacy concerns because their images reveal outlines of private body parts.

"We're getting closer and closer to a required strip-search to board an airplane," said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Privacy advocate Melissa Ngo fears that passengers won't understand that the scanners take vivid images that screeners view.

more...

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2009-02-17-detectors_N.htm

[ixion]

1. Disband DHS and TSA and restore our republic... before full-body cavity searches are

required to board a plane.

[madokie]

2. All I can say to that is if they think they will see an outline of my private body parts

fax me the results so's I can see that its still there myself.

In all honesty though the world the neoCONs built for us sucks, huh

[zipplewrath]

5. They can store these images

This technology may be short lived about the first time Nicole Kidman or Tom Cruise's "body scan" is stored and then "leaked" to the internet. The part I find most disconcerting about the technology is that these images are "information rich" and it just cranks up the governments ability to misuse information. Everything they try to do with facial recognition today, will become all that more falible with these. A bandaid will become an excuse for a strip search. A bruise or rash will mark one as "suspicious". A tattoo in the wrong place will be an "identifying mark" that puts one on some restricted/do not fly list of some sort.

I'm all for looking for dangerous PEOPLE instead of THINGS. But these machines don't identify danger, they just enable unjustifiable biases.

[MadHound]

3. This is just getting ridiculous

And sadly, the American people will go along with it out of fear.

And the ACLU is right, pretty soon we'll all just have to do a strip and cavity search before boarding a plane.

This sort of over hyped security is the main reason why I haven't flown since 911. I don't take well to being herded like cattle into a truck, which was already a problem with airlines. Now they want to further degrade me in the name of security? Fuck it, unless it I'm going overseas, I'll drive where ever I need to go, and even then, if I'm going abroad I might just take a boat.

[Clarence Birdseye]

4. Security or industrial kiddie porn?

It seems that this technology violates about 50 statutes regarding images of minors.