Here Come the Body Scanners – TSA To Expand Use
October 4, 2009 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
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The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) plans to increase it’s use of body scanners by installing 150 of the high tech units at airport checkpoints around the country. Use of the body scanners has not been without controversy. Various groups have cited the machines as intrusive due to the amount of detail revealed in the images viewed by TSA personnel during the screening process.
Currently there is a measure before the Senate that would restrict their use to passengers ‘flagged” during other screening processes such as metal detectors, etc.
The installation will vastly expand the use of the controversial body scanners, which can reveal hidden bombs and knives. But the devices have been labeled as intrusive by some lawmakers. The House of Representatives in June overwhelmingly passed a measure that would restrict their use by the TSA to passengers flagged by other types of screening, such as metal detectors. The measure is pending in the Senate.
TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee said the machines are “critical” to stopping terrorists with homemade bombs that may elude metal detectors. The agency hasn’t decided which airports will get the machines, Lee said.
The $100,000 scanners shoot low-intensity X-rays that penetrate clothing, bounce off a person’s skin and create images that show solid objects as dark areas. The TSA machines have privacy additions to create images that look like etchings. Screeners view them on a monitor in a locked room near a checkpoint and delete them immediately after viewing.
via Source.
to tell you the truth. if viewing my body parts and everybody elses body parts stops a mass murderer blowing up a fully loaded commercial airliner that is ok for me. if i had to do a full strip search including body cavity searches as long as everybody else i wouldn’t mind.
IF YOU HAVE “NOTHING TO HIDE”, WHY “BITCH”, IF THESE SCANNERS SO THEIR WORK??
SEMPER FI, fred
the world has changed. we see what used to be called pornography and strip-teasing on the TV and internet everyday and it is available. So why do people complain ? the only people who might have a problem are some with image concerns, who might have plastic \ silicon etc in their private parts, or who are transvestites and would be emotionally hurt if people can scan that they are of the opposite sex, etc.
The world has changed and democracy is becoming an empty word confronted by masses of people born into the world with no destiny or prospects
you won’t see as much in one of these scanners as you can see on any beach in the summer. what’s the big deal? somebody’s going to see i’m fat?