TSA expands use of body scanners

WASHINGTON, Oct 01, 2009 (The Salt Lake Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- LKIN | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- The Transportation Security Administration is adding 150 new body image screeners at airports across the country despite an effort by some in Congress to ban the machines they see as overly invasive.

The devices, similar to those now in use at Salt Lake International Airport and a few others, will be installed in several other airports as a primary screening device.

TSA officials say the devices, which use low-intensity X-rays to peer through travelers clothing, provide a more thorough screening and nearly all passengers presented with the option take advantage of them.

But critics, including Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, say the machines go too far in attempting to secure airplanes. The House passed legislation earlier this year to ban the devices as a primary screening tool, though the Senate has yet to take up the bill.

"I thought it was fairly cocky of them to purchase more machines given that 318 members of the House voted against their usage at every checkpoint," Chaffetz said Thursday.

Chaffetz recently had his own tiff at the Salt Lake International Airport when he declined to enter a whole body imaging machine and instead was subjected to a pat down, as called for by TSA operating procedures.

But Dwayne Baird, a spokesman for Salt Lake's TSA office, says in testing these backscatter machines -- which produce a chalk-like image of a traveler and can detect weapons

and explosives -- showed that more than 98 percent of passengers willingly accepted that screening versus going through a metal detector and being subjected to a pat down.

"We're following the recommendation of the 9-11 Commission," Baird said. "They mandated that we invest in technology to strengthen the security and efficiency of aviation. So imaging technology is an integral part of that effort."

The American Civil Liberties Union slammed TSA's move as an attack on the "essential dignity" of passengers.

"This new body scanning technology is a frontal assault on personal privacy, with virtual strip searches revealing private body parts and intimate medical details," said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU Legislative Counsel for technology and privacy. "Passengers expect privacy underneath their clothing and should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies in order to fly."

While the imaging machines in use at Salt Lake's airport utilize millimeter rays to peer through clothing, the new machines the TSA purchased -- using $25 million in stimulus funds -- use low-level X-rays that Baird says are equal to the same radiation as three minutes of at-altitude flying.

tburr@sltrib.com

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