Video from the airport demo shows how it works
The future of air travel security debuted at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport on Monday, and the government is doing all it can to dispel fears that the full-body imaging scanners at checkpoints invade travelers' privacy.
For the second time in four days, the airport brought in the Transportation Safety Administration's regional director to vouch for the new system's privacy protections and to reiterate that any traveler can opt for the old-fashioned metal detector and a pat-down.
Ray White wanted to show reporters how the images are captured, and the various measures TSA is taking to ensure that no one can ever see what a specific traveler looks like under his or her clothes.
About 20 feet from the L3 ProVision cylindrical glass chamber, where travelers are scanned, an agent sits inside a secure, smoke-glass cubicle to view the images that pop up on a computer screen. The image reviewer cannot have any cell phones or recording equipment when he or she enters. The reviewer also never sees the travelers being scanned and the security personnel never see the scanned images, White said.
To drive that point home, TSA had a male employee go through the scanner, arms aloft so electromagnetic waves could capture his image, but then showed reporters scanned images of a female employee, who apparently had gone through the imaging process while reporters were behind a barrier.
White and other TSA officials seemed almost proud of the murkiness of the images. TSA spokesman Jim Fotenos pointed out that the woman scanned for the media Monday had an "anomaly on the front right hip." It wasn't apparent what it was and Fotenos wouldn't say, noting that it was not the image reviewer's job to identify questionable items, but simply to notify the agents at the checkpoint of their existence.
The ghost-like image of the woman was revealing in a way that makes some opponents of the new technology nervous: The outline of her breasts and the edges of her undergarments were visible. But a computer algorithm automatically blurs the faces of all passengers before they ever appear on the reviewer's screen.
While privacy advocates cry foul, the TSA said surveys found 98 percent of travelers chose it over other security checks. Travelers at the New Orleans airport seemed resigned to a more intrusive world for security's sake.
"I think it's a necessary evil," said Kim Strick, who passed through the new scanner on her way back home to Austin, Texas. "I think it is kind of intrusive, but it helps keep us secure. I think there are other nations that go to much more extensive means to make sure they're safe and I think we're just now starting to catch up to some of those."
But opponents say the scanners are an Orwellian harbinger of the loss of liberty. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has sued to block TSA's use of the equipment, which already is used in 59 airports. Using a Freedom of Information request, EPIC found that U.S. Marshals Service had retained images taken with an X-ray-based technology at Florida courthouses.
White said the TSA's images are not as revealing as those shown by opponents at an Aviation Board hearing last week, and he promised that the agency will have no ability to retain them. U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, questioned that promise, however, wondering aloud why the government contracts required the imaging systems to be equipped to store the images.
Acting TSA Administrator Gale Rossides told Thompson the storage was for testing purposes only and those functions will be disabled on the equipment used to check actual passengers.
Travelers, who will still have to take off their shoes, belts and metal jewelry and remove metal objects and wallets from their pockets, will be released as soon as the image reviewer notifies the checkpoint agents that there are no threats detected. As soon as that happens, the image is deleted, White said.
White acknowledged that this lack of retention means the images are of no use in determining how an inadmissible object got onto a plane. That, along with the fact that anyone can choose to go through the old metal detector and pat-down, has caused some to question the need for the new devices.
But White said the advanced imaging technology definitely makes travel safer.
"It takes it to the next level," he said. "We can now find non-metallic items hidden on the body, and we've already found dangerous items hidden on bodies" in airports where the full-body scanners have been deployed.
TSA has been testing the technology for years, but is now moving quickly to deploy 1,000 scanners in U.S. airports by the end of 2011 because of concerns raised last Christmas by a would-be terrorist who smuggled plastic explosives onto a flight in his underwear. That flight originated in Amsterdam.
White said the International Civil Aviation Organization is working on setting new international standards to ensure that travelers flying into the U.S. have to pass similar security checks.
The U.S. government is using money from the 2009 stimulus package to pay for the program.
David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3322.