Biometric Devices: Criticism Growing Against Scans in Airports
According to a recent article published in USA Today, New York’s JFK and LaGuardia airports will be newly equipped with full-body imaging scanners in the coming months. The “virtual strip searches,” as some fliers are calling it, use E-rays or electromagnetic waves to detect weapons on 3-D images of passengers’ naked bodies. We’ve discussed body scanning technologies in past posts on Eye Tracking Update, as we occasionally cover topics like biometrics, but new reports are causing a stir in the airports.
There’s a backlash growing as many frequent fliers make complains about privacy and time. The machines have been dubbed by fliers as a virtual strip search, and to make things worse, the new devices are much slower than walking through a metal detector which only makes the already inefficient airport security procedures more time consuming. The scanners were installed in a number of airports last March after a Christmas day bombing attempt. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has spent more than $80 million for about 500 machines, and there are 130 or so installed at this point. Their plan is to install about a thousand by the end of next year.
Some of the complaints, as listed by an USA Today article, are that the International Air Transport Association, which represents 250 of the world’s airlines, says that TSA lacks a strategy and vision of how the machines fit into a comprehensive checkpoint security plan. Their spokesman Steve Lott called it “putting the cart before the horse.”
Security officials in Dubai are protesting the machines, saying they violate personal privacy and that there hasn’t been enough proper testing of any side effects on health the scans may have. The European Commission also wrote in a report that a “rigorous scientific assessment” of potential health risks is needed before they will allow the machines to be placed in airports there and recommended that, at least in the meantime, alternative screening processes should be used on pregnant women, babies, children, and people with disabilities.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said last year that the TSA had been deploying the machines without fully testing them and assessing whether they could detect “threat items” concealed on various parts of the body. According to them, it’s still unclear as to whether the machines would have detected the explosives the police allege Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate on a jet last Christmas.
The TSA is saying that the machines have not slowed screening at airports and that the agency has taken steps to ensure privacy and safety. Apparently, the TSA is giving passengers the option of refusing screening and opting for a pat down or a metal detector, which kind of defeats the purpose it seems.
Take a look at the article – we expect to see lots of news covering the debate in the coming months as more machines are installed.
Backlash grows against full-body scanners in airports
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