Airport security tightens with nine more airports kitted-out with body scanners

Calcutta News.Net
Saturday 6th March, 2010

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has announced that an additional nine airports in the US will receive full-body scanners within the next week.

Three machines will go online Monday at Boston's Logan International Airport, to be followed by units at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; San Jose, Calif.; Columbus, Ohio; San Diego; Charlotte, N.C.; Cincinnati; Los Angeles; Oakland, Calif.; and Kansas City, according to the TSA's Lee Kair.

The body scanners have become a point of international discussion and controversy following the attempted bombing of a US-bound Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Day, and President Obama’s vowel, along with many other world leaders, to tighten air travel security.

The body scanners were controversial because of their new imaging technology, allowing the operator to see the contours of the body in great detail, essentially rendering one naked. Across Europe there has been widespread and vocal opposition to the scanners, which are seen as an infringement on traveler’s rights.

In America, however, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released in January showed that 78 percent of respondents said they approved of the scanners, and 67 percent said they are even comfortable being examined by one.

The body scanners are touted as a revolutionary way of protecting passengers. But some analysts remain skeptical of their actual benefits.

Bruce McIndoe, President of iJET Intelligent Risk Systems, a global risk and security company based in Annapolis, Maryland said he thought the numbers in which the machines are being deployed is “overkill”, adding that they have to be operated, calibrated, and maintained – which is expensive on top of the already significant purchase price.

Sam Kamin, an associate professor of criminal law at the University of Denver, feels that the costs should not only be thought of in monetary terms, but in the functionality of the industry as well.

“This is not going to replace metal detectors anytime soon,” Kamin, who has written about high-tech scanning and detection at airports and the possible constitutional implications, told the Associated Press. “If this did, it would take you four hours to get on your flight, and it would cripple air travel."

Passengers will have the option of accepting or declining a body scan. Those who do – and pass – will not have to pass through a metal detector or other security equipment. Those who decline must walk through a metal detector and submit to a pat down.

But like so many of our security systems at airports, the body scanners are reactionary, before the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines plane, no governments were forcefully advocating the installment of these machines, and certainly not in such numbers.

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