The TSA scanner images produced by the body scanning will not be saved or printed, according to the TSA. As well, the TSA has this to say about privacy and your body parts:
- "For additional privacy, the officer viewing the image is in a separate room and will never see the passenger and the officer attending to the passenger will never see the image. The officers have 2-way radios to communicate with other in case a threat object is identified."
Passengers who "qualify" (and the definition of that seems to change from airport to airport, time to time, and agent to agent) for a normal pat down from a TSA agent when proceeding through airport security may opt to be scanned by the backscatter machine instead of receiving the physical patdown. Updated February 2009: And, if you opt out of the "voluntary" millimeter wave scanner/x-rated x-ray machine at an airport where it's been put in place of the now-old metal detectors, you will get a pat down. Which may be intimate. What the TSA says: "TSA will pilot millimeter wave technology in the place of the walk-through metal detector at six airports (San Francisco, Miami, Albuquerque, Tulsa, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas) and will examine the operational efficiency of this configuration."
That's an actual TSA scanner image of two scanned bodies from the TSA backscatter body imaging machine above at right -- gives an idea what the TSA agent will see when he or she looks at a passenger's naked body through the backscatter body imaging machine. See a larger image from the TSA scanner here:
The millimeter wave machines have been being tested at Phoenix's Sky Harbor and LA's LAX airports since 2006/7. The TSA has already or will, in 2009, install the backscatter devices at the following US airports:
- Albuquerque
- Atlanta
- Baltimore
- Dallas
- Denver
- Detroit
- Indianapolis
- Jacksonville
- Las Vegas
- Los Angeles
- Miami
- New York's JFK
- Phoenix
- Raleigh-Durham
- Richmond
- Salt Lake City
- San Francisco
- Tampa
- Tulsa
- Washington (Reagan airport)
Alarmed curiousity aroused? Read more from the TSA:
- Catch a Wave and Avoid a Patdown
- Safety & Privacy Concerns Regarding the Millimeter Wave Whole Body Imager
- Millimeter Wave Images
Pure Opinion
I don't plan to tape oversize tubes of shampoo to my torso, but even if I were so inclined, I would rather have them discovered through a pat down than have my abs of non-steel image sent to a TSA agent, who has complete authority to save them and print them (though the TSA promises that those functions are disabled on the machines... but also that that will only happen if I pose a threat to national security -- which I must, since I periodically get the wand and pat down). I prefer trains as a mode of transport to begin with, and these body imaging machines at airports provide me with another good reason to take the train, I think... and start finding out more about freighter travel.Read more:
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