Bare All: Full Body X-Ray To Be Tested At U.S. Airport

Taken from The Daily Mail, UK, 1st December 2006

A disturbing new screening system with the amazing and unsettling ability to strip the human body and reveal its most intimate curves in x-ray photographs is to be tested at an U.S. airport.

The federal screening system, which takes photographs like the one shown below, can detect concealed explosives and other weapons.



The technology, called backscatter, has been around for several years but has not been widely used in the U.S. as an anti-terrorism tool because of privacy concerns.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration said it has found a way to refine the machine's images so that the normally graphic pictures can be blurred in certain areas while still being effective in detecting bombs and other threats.

The agency is expected to provide more information about the technology later this month but said one machine will be up and running at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport by the end of December.

A handful of other U.S. airports will have the X-rays machines in place by early 2007 as part of a nationwide pilot program, TSA officials said. The technology already is being used in prisons and by drug enforcement agents, and has been tested at London's Heathrow Airport.

The security agency says the machines will be effective in helping detect plastic or liquid explosives and other non-metallic weapons that can be missed by standard metal detectors.

Some say the high-resolution images - which clearly depict the outline of the passenger's body, plus anything attached to it, such as jewelry - are too invasive.

But the TSA said the X-rays will be set up so that the image can be viewed only by a security officer in a remote location. Other passengers, and even the agent at the checkpoint, will not have access to the picture.

In addition, the system will be configured so that the X-ray will be deleted as soon as the individual steps away from the machine. It will not be stored or available for printing or transmitting, agency spokesman Nico Melendez said.

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This is a good step into securing the airports and hope this machine will be available all round the world to help every country fight the threat from terrorism (although will be capable of showing body parts that you wouldn’t a stranger to see).

The main issue will be if diplomats arriving into a country will be going through these machines. These are the people capable of carrying material that will be unchecked and undetected by security staff. This applies to every country around the world.

Most importantly, I wonder how much radiation will be exposed to passengers and what the effects will be on those who are frequent fliers on business trips. This should be researched before putting this machine into use.