Full-body scanner debuts at O'Hare airport
Michael Tarm, Associated Press
Issue date: 3/8/10 Section: News
CHICAGO (AP) -- Some air travelers already uneasy about a range of security checks at the nation's second-busiest airport can add another potential anxiety: The first full-body scanner at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport made its debut Monday.
The imaging technology, which effectively sees through clothes by scattering low-dose x-rays at a passenger's front and back, is one of 150 such scanners bought with federal stimulus money last year and now being deployed at major airports across the United States.
"It's another layer - technology being used to provide a more secure environment," Rosemarie Andolino, the commissioner for Chicago's department of aviation, said Monday during a demonstration of the equipment.
Civil libertarians, however, have complained that the new machines can violate a passenger's privacy.
The Transportation Security Administration has been deploying the body-scanning technology in an effort to ensure that airports can detect hidden explosives and other weapons in the wake of an attempted bombing on Christmas Day. In that case, a Nigerian man is charged with trying to set off explosives that had been hidden in his underwear.
The first scanners paid for with stimulus money were deployed last week at Boston's Logan International Airport. Others go to airports in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; San Jose, Calif.; Columbus, Ohio; San Diego; Charlotte, N.C.; Cincinnati; Los Angeles; Oakland, Calif.; and Kansas City.
O'Hare's new scanner, consisting of two blue machines the size of phone booths set a few feet apart, is surprisingly unobtrusive. It stands in an existing security checkpoint amid older detectors and, unless they're looking for it, many passengers might not even notice it's there.
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Harry Shaft
posted 3/18/10 @ 9:35 PM CST
Leave it to the ACLU to object to this technology as "virtual invasion of privacy". What crap. Frankly I'd prefer racial profiling but with nutjobs like "Jihad Jane" and "Osama's Mama" now in the mix, it'll be harder to rely solely on phenotype. (Continued…)
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