When reality starts imitating the Airplane! movies of the early 1980s, you have to start to wonder about the evolution of airline security.
The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) has begun deploying full body scanners at some U.S. airports as a high-tech alternative to the manual pat down that TSA officials administer as a secondary screening method. Using technology known as "millimeter waves," the new full body scanners are able to "see" beneath clothes, producing black and white images of passengers that are robotic-looking but anatomically correct. The results bring to mind the scene in Airplane! (or was it Airplane II?) where an airport screener enjoyed titillating views of passengers walking by.
The new screening method, now available at Phoenix Sky Harbor, New York's JFK airport, LAX in Los Angeles, and Baltimore's BWI, is touted by TSA officials as being less invasive and more secure than manual pat downs. (Recently, a CNN report found that contraband items could be smuggled past airport screeners by being concealed in a back brace.) Passengers selected for secondary screening at those airports now get a choice: a pat down in person, or a front and back scan that will be viewed by someone in a private office who you will never meet. Think of it as a once-over from Big Brother.
TSA claims that more than 85% of passengers prefer the body scan to the manual wanding, and the agency is moving to introduce the scanners at more airports soon. But that doesn't equate to it being the right method for secondary screening, or one that has standalone public approval. Just when and how will the images of passengers be destroyed, as TSA promises us they will? What exactly are the risks of exposure to the millimeter waves? Before we're laid bare, we're owed a full undressing of the technology