TULSA — The 35-year reign of airport metal detectors began its slow descent this week in Tulsa, where for the first time some passengers are skipping metal detectors. People are instead being screened in a 9-foot-high portal with glass shields that rotate to produce vivid pictures of what is underneath passengers' clothing.The machines use electromagnetic waves to create pictures of energy reflected off people. The metallic-looking images show outlines of private body parts and blur passengers' faces. Two Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners in a closed room near the checkpoint view the images on computer monitors and relay information on radio headsets to checkpoint screeners.
The $170,000 body scanners could be installed at airports around the USA and would close a major security loophole by detecting non-metallic weapons such as plastic and liquid explosives. TSA testing shows the body scanners excel at finding hidden items as small as a plastic button, agency spokesman Christopher White said.
Now the TSA has more questions: How quickly do the scanners operate, and do passengers like them? And will they evoke more privacy concerns from critics who say the machines take security too far, because they can show the outlines of private body parts?
As the TSA expands its test for airports in San Francisco, Miami, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque in coming weeks, it will be listening to passengers' reactions.
"They are not pornographic at all," Tulsa screener Debbie Shacklett said. "I don't look at them as people. I look at them as a thing that could have something on it."
Some passengers Thursday said they wished the TSA had posted signs near the body scanner with a reproduction of the image. "I might not have wanted to go through if I had seen that," said Susanne Nicklas of Grove, Okla. "I'm 72, and I don't have the figure I used to."
(Excerpted from a USA Today article)
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