Are your privacy concerns lessened with new full body scanner software?
 

Hi everyone,

We’ve been following the news that TSA is removing some of their full body scanners due to privacy issues. The FAA now requires updated scanners to use Automated Target Recognition (ATR), which shows a stick-figure like outline of the person being scanned instead of near nude images. The new software machines are supposed to make security faster because agents can monitor the images at the lane and not in a separate room. Travelers will still be able to choose the pat down option over the scanner. You can read more here: http://blog.tsa.gov/2013/01/rapiscan...-contract.html.

How does this change the way you fly? Does it make you more or less inclined to use full body scanners?

I'm still unhappy. On this issue see: http://www.elliott.org/security-2/so...s-to-scan-you/

Especially:
"Rapiscan couldn’t develop software that sufficiently obscured our anatomy. That, in itself, should tell you something about what the machines could do. But it also suggests something about the other scanners. Maybe their manufacturers just write better code? Does that mean the privacy software on the remaining scanners is being used as intended? I wouldn’t bet on it.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that pictures of your naked body are still being taken and possibly stored somewhere."

I've never considered it an invasion of my personal privacy, nor should you.

thursday, you're concerned about random naked pictures? Half the world is seemingly seen naked in one form or another on the internet.

I could care less. I could probably make some royalties as the "before" in some ad about abs or weight loss.

Big deal.

We've never worried about our privacy. Whatever it takes to make us as safe as possible while flying is more than OK with us.

I very much doubt that the naked picture machines do any good as far as making the trip safer. The things I don't like about the machine are: having to take everything out of my pockets, the <i>stand right there</i> in the footprints that makes me feel like a bovine about to get a bolt in the brain, and raising my hands over my head and standing still.

I would be willing to strip naked if that was necessary to get on a plane and go somewhere, as long as everybody else had to do it.

I never cared in the first place.

Like Rasta...I could[n't] care less. Never give it a thought. Just want to get on the plane and go.

And in the interest of full disclosure: since I enrolled in Global Entry and the TSA Pre-check program, three or four trips ago, I haven't been through a scanner in the US, and hope I never will again.

I posted at some length in another thread, a couple days before this one. Let's see if this works.

http://www.fodors.com/community/air-...y-scanners.cfm

Reading the blog post that Amy_D linked to (and comments from rather cynical FlyerTalk folks), it's interesting that TSA is very careful NOT to say that this is for privacy reasons, but rather that it's because Congress made them do it. I assume this is because TSA always insisted that the scanners weren't a privacy invasion anyway.

Personally, I agree with other folks that I'm less concerned about the privacy issue. I'm more concerned about the health issue, and the colossal waste of government money for a totally useless (and possibly <b>less safe</b>, see below) system.

On the health issue, this TSA decision is good news, as there was legitimate scientific debate on the safety of backscatter x-ray scanners, whereas there's no known science on why the millimeter wave scanners might be dangerous.

From the waste of government money issue, it appears that Rapiscan has sucked their share of government money dry, and now it's some other company's turn to get the contract to replace all the Rapiscan machines.

BTW, I had always been under the impression that, although the machines aren't worthwhile because terrorists have already demonstrated their willingness to use bombs that the scanners can't detect (e.g., in body cavities), I had assumed the scanners were more effective in detecting weapons than the walk-through-metal-detectors we all know and love. However, I recently saw this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olEoc_1ZkfA
(If you can ignore the guy's hairdo, it's quite an eye-opener. The guy has demonstrated how terrorists could sneak guns, or pretty much anything, past the new scanners.)

I worry about the TSA agents in close proximity to the body scanners and the radiation given off during an eight hour shift.

The privacy issue doesn't bother me at all....although I had to laugh going through security Newark a couple of weeks ago when they sent me back through the scanner a second time because, in the words of the agent, they "mistakenly entered me as a man the first time and the results didn't match."

The biggest pain is having to take a belt off...and a couple of times I didn't check my pockets carefully enough and missed one single coin and then had to be patted down as a result.

TSA Pre has been great for avoiding them when available, but it's not in all airports/terminals (including, unfortunately, one that I use often, PHX T2) or for trips with international segments.

The TSA is multi-billion dollar security theater.

The TSA does not make you safer. The TSA makes you less free. And the TSA is coming to a railway station, balll game and intersection near you - look up VIPR teams.

I am amazed that so many people in the "land of the free" are so willing to throw the Fourth Amendment out of the window. What was required after 9-11 was hardened cockpit doors, which has been done (should have been done before), and better intelligence, which has hopefully been done. By the time a terrorist has reached the TSA line it's way too late - and s/he has the opportunity to kill a lot of people without ever getting near a plane.

"We've never worried about our privacy. Whatever it takes to make us as safe as possible while flying is more than OK with us."

---------------------------------

Totally agree with this post above.

I really don't care about the privacy issue. I care about whether all the "theatre" actualy makes us safer. All of the data indicates that it does not.

For the "whatever it takes to make us as safe as possible" folks, how far does your belief really go?

We have the nude scanners because of the Underwear Bomber.

We take off our shoes because of the Shoe Bomber.

We have our little liquid baggies because of a 2006 plot to blow up planes with liquid explosives (thankfully foiled by British police
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_tr..._aircraft_plot
)

Given that Al Qaeda has <i>already</i> used a bomb hidden in a body cavity in an assassination attempt ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_al-Asiri ), the course we're following naturally suggests the way to "make us as safe as possible while flying" would be to make searches comparable to what prison inmates face: strip searches and body cavity searches.

So, is that OK, too? The threat is real. But is <i>whatever it takes</i> really the best solution?

How does this change the way you fly? <b> Not at all.</b>

Does it make you more or less inclined to use full body scanners? <b> Makes no difference.</B>

I only had sympathy for the person looking at my image anyhow.

Thanks for the comments everyone. We just published a story on this subject and some of your comments are featured. You can see the full story here: http://www.fodors.com/news/tsa-remov...vacy-6369.html

I see I'm late to this party, but I couldn't care less about full body scanners. Yes I've been thru them a few times now.
Completely non-issue to me.