US airports install body scanners.

10 airports install body scanners.

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080606/a_bodyscan06.art.htm

The scanners bounce harmless “millimeter waves” off passengers who are selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal detector. A TSA screener in a nearby room views the black-and-white image and looks for objects on a screen that are shaded differently from the body. Finding a suspicious object, a screener radios a colleague at the checkpoint to search the passenger. The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers’ faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person’s gender. “You can actually see the sweat on someone’s back,” Schear said.The scanners aim to strengthen airport security by spotting plastic and ceramic weapons and explosives that evade metal detectors and are the biggest threat to aviation. Government audits have found that screeners miss a large number of weapons, bombs and bomb parts such as wires and timers that agents sneak through checkpoints. (…) Passengers can decline to go through a scanner, but they will face a pat-down.Schear, the Baltimore security director, said only 4% of passengers decline.In Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where scanners have been tested since last year as an alternative to pat-downs, 90% of passengers choose to be scanned, the TSA says. “Most passengers don’t think it’s any big deal,” Schear said. “They think it’s a piece of security they’re willing to do.”

If newspapers didn’t keep trying to outwit security to get a story, this may not have been necessary.