Flying, where privacy is just a fond memory

August 5, 12:17 PMCivil Liberties ExaminerJ.D. Tuccille

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Images as seen on a millimeter-wave scanner
Source: TSA

Ticket prices are up, flight choices are down, and now some airlines are even charging for pillows. Could air travel get even more unleasant?

Well, how about a choice between getting groped or getting stripped at security checkpoints?

Maybe that's an unkind way to put it. Strictly speaking, passengers at a growing number of airports are being asked to choose between being scanned by technology that allows TSA agents to see through their clothing, or else submitting to pat-down searches. Two types of whole-body imaging scanners are used: backscatter scanners, which use narrow, low-intensity X-ray beams, and millimeter-wave scanners, which use beams of radio frequency (RF) energy in the millimeter wave spectrum. Both technologies deliver on what those X-ray specs in the backs of comic books only promised -- to peer through clothing. Truthfully, the images aren't exactly made-for-Penthouse, but there's no question that little is left to the imagination.

The scanners are being rolled out at airports across the U.S. through 2008. Says the Transportation Security Administration:

TSA began piloting backscatter passenger imaging technology at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) in February 2007. Testing of millimeter wave technology began at PHX in October 2007.

Millimeter wave is used in random continuous screening protocol except at PHX were it is used in secondary screening. At PHX, JFK and LAX, backscatter technology is used in secondary screening. More than 90 percent of passengers in Phoenix opted for millimeter wave over the traditional pat-down procedure during the pilot.

Millimeter wave will be deployed to airports nationwide during 2008 to include: Baltimore-Washington, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Denver, Dallas/Fort-Worth, Detroit, Miami, Ronald Reagan Washington National, New York John F. Kennedy, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Boston, Indianapolis, New York LaGuardia, Tampa, San Juan, San Francisco, Buffalo, Chicago O'Hare, Richmond, Tulsa, Jacksonville and Raleigh-Durham.

For the time being, passengers are randomly selected to undergo scanning; those who refuse must submit to pat-downs. It's easy to imagine that everybody will be subjected to scanning in the near future. Perhaps not unaware that the technology just might lend itself to peeping-tom-style abuse, the TSA promises that images will not be printed or saved, and that officers viewing images will be located well away from the screening process itself. Presumably, that's so they can't steer the screening process toward particularly attractive targets. 

But attractive or not, a growing share of air travelers will literally have to bare it all for TSA officers, electronically stripping naked for perfect strangers. If privacy and dignity have any value in and of themselves, that should raise concerns. The ACLU states the case succinctly:

This technology produces strikingly graphic images of passengers’ bodies. Those images reveal not only our private body parts, but also intimate medical details like colostomy bags. That degree of examination amounts to a significant – and for some people humiliating – assault on the essential dignity of passengers that citizens in a free nation should not have to tolerate.

Whole-body imaging is acceptable, says the ACLU, as an alternative to physically intrusive searches, such as body cavity searches, but only when there is probably cause to justify such a procedure.

That sounds like a reasonable compromise, but an unlikely one in a country too accustomed to the demands of the security state. The last few years have been a case study in how easily liberty and privacy surrender to claims of necessity when people are afraid.

It's worth pointing out that, no matter how sincere the TSA's promises of respecting privacy during the deployment of whole-body scanners may be, the agency's track record isn't especially good. Just yesterday, the TSA admitted that the Clear registered traveler program took a serious body blow when an unencrypted laptop containing pre-enrollment records of approximately 33,000 customers was stolen.

Ouch.