Hope you've been getting into shape, because the new full body security scanners will debut at LaGaurdia and JFK airports in the coming weeks, a TSA spokesperson promises. Despite lawsuits raising privacy and health concerns, NYC will finally get the scanners, which have been popping up in airports nationwide. The Daily News reports that LaGuardia and JFK will be using the "backscatter" type of full body scanner, which uses low-level radiation to let TSA workers "see" through your clothes (but not through your flying pasties). Sure, it's creepy, but is it safe?
The Electronic Privacy Information Center [EPIC], which is suing to stop the rise of the machines, claims these scanners "use high-energy X-rays that are more likely to scatter than penetrate materials as compared to lower-energy X-rays used in medical applications. Although this type of X-ray is said to be harmless, it can move through other materials, such as clothing... The image resolution of the technology is high, so the picture of the body presented to screeners is detailed enough to show genitalia."
Experts say the machines are harmless, but experts are always saying that about the machines, aren't they? All the same, you can't argue with the director of cardiac CT research at Columbia University Medical Center, because the guy's name is Einstein. "A passenger would need to be scanned using a backscatter scanner, from both the front and the back, about 200,000 times to receive the amount of radiation equal to one typical CT scan," Einstein tells Business Week. "A pregnant woman will receive much more radiation from cosmic rays she is exposed to while flying than from passing through a scanner in the airport." Whatever you say, Einstein!
But if you're still unconvinced and want to avoid the X-rays, you'll want to book your flights out of Newark, which is getting the "millimeter wave" scanners that use radio waves. These are more discreet as well; they only show a demure silhouette of a passenger in 3-D. Nevertheless, Ginger McCall at Epic says both scanners "are pretty graphic. Both are unacceptable." At NYC airports, fliers will be chosen at random to pass through them, and those that refuse will be given a pat-down. Meanwhile, in Italy, after six months of testing, they gave up on the scanners, because they take too long. "It does take a longer time, no question about that," said one spokesman for a travelers' advocacy group back in August.
