World | USA
Full body security scan in spotlight
Airports in five other US cities are also using full body scanners at specific checkpoints instead of metal detectors.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 January 2, 2010
- Image Credit: AP
- Transportation Security Administration programme analyst and instructor Sherrie Soto stands in the body scan unit at Salt Lake City International Airport.
San Francisco: As Ronak Ray hunted for his flight gate, he prepared for the prospect of a security guard peering through his clothes with a full body scanner. But Ray doesn't mind: what he gives up in privacy he gets back in security.
"I think it's necessary," said Ray, a 23-year-old graduate student who was at San Francisco International Airport to fly to India. "Our lives are far more important than how we're being searched."
Despite controversy surrounding the scans, Ray's position was typical of several travellers interviewed at various airports on Wednesday.
Airports in five other US cities are also using full body scanners at specific checkpoints instead of metal detectors. In addition, the scanners are used at 13 other airports for random checks and so-called secondary screenings of passengers who set off detectors.
But many more air travelers may have to get used to the idea soon. The Transportation Security Administration has ordered 150 more full body scanners to be installed in airports throughout the country in early 2010, agency spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said.
Explosives
Dutch security officials have said they believe such scanners could have detected the explosive materials Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab of Nigeria is accused of trying to ignite aboard a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight Christmas Day.
Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport has 15 full body scanners, but none were used to scan Abdul Mutallab when he boarded. In Europe and the US, privacy concerns over the scanners' ability to see through clothing have kept them from widespread use. The technology was first used about two years ago to make it easier for airport security to do body searches without making physical contact with passengers.
The idea of an electronic strip search did not bother Judy Yeager, 62, of Sarasota, Florida, as she prepared to depart Las Vegas. She stood in the full-body scanner on Wednesday afternoon and held her arms up as a security official guided her through the gray closet-sized booth.
"If it's going to protect a whole airplane of people, who gives a flying you-know-what if they see my boobs — whatever," Yeager said. "That's the way I feel, honest to God."
Trevino said the TSA has worked with privacy advocates and the scanners' manufacturers to develop software that blurs the faces and genital areas of passengers being scanned.
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