DHS Chief Pushes Controversial Full Body Scans

The last year has seen the proliferation of full body scanner technology in the world's airports, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom. Passengers are literally "baring it all" for the sake of aviation security.

But even as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Janet Napolitano plans to urge some 190 nations at the 37th assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization to unify airport security standards, including the incorporation of full body scanners, the technology is taking a beating in the press, mainly for its purported inefficiencies but also -- and more importantly -- for its humiliating the very people its supposed to be protecting: the passengers.

Full body scanners (FBS), which use millimeter wave or backscatter technology, have been been compared to enduring a "virtual strip search" -- and for good reason. The images captured of individuals leave almost nothing to the imagination. They've been slowly integrated into the nation's airports since 2007, but now there are 242 machines in 58 airports across the country, the growth spurred by a near-attack on a U.S.-bound airliner from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The so-called "underwear bomber," Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had managed to get on a flight wearing plastic in his pants, but only managed to set himself, not the plane on fire.

The scare, however, put FBS technology in demand. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which resides under DHS, had insisted that the images captured of passengers are only seen by the TSA officials conducting the screening, and that the images could not be saved, printed, uploaded or transmitted.

Well, it turned out they were wrong. Not only do the machines have the ability to do all of those things, but the agency in January admitted that it requires each machine it purchases to have the ability to store and transmit images for "testing, training, and evaluation purposes." More recently, it was reported that the U.S. Marshals service admitted it had saved tens of thousands of images captured at a single federal courthouse in Florida. The activities have prompted a lawsuit by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a Washington-based privacy rights group. (Read more after the jump.)

"This trickle of disclosures about the true capabilities of body scanners -- and how they're being used in practice -- is probably what alarms privacy advocates more than anything else," wrote CNET's Declan McCullagh last month.

Calling the machines' use slow and ineffective, the Italian government said this week it will be dropping their use in Italian airports altogether. Officials also cited privacy concerns that have been exacerbated by news stories that put everything the manufacturers and security officials have said about the machines -- mainly that they would not violate individuals' privacy -- into question.

For example, jokes about a TSA worker's genitalia made after he walked through the scanner during working hours prompted a physical assault and the arrest of the aggrieved worker in May. Reports say Rolando Negrin, 44, was charged with aggravated battery after he allegedly struck his co-worker at Miami International Airport repeatedly. According to reports, Negrin had been mercilessly teased over the course of days by co-workers who had apparently viewed his scan during a training session.

The incident came on the heels of the March investigation of a London Heathrow Airport security official who allegedly harassed a co-worker about her breasts after seeing her own full body scan. A month earlier, Indian film star Shahrukh Khan accused officials at the same airport of capturing his full body image and circulating it -- a charge which has been denied by the airport.

The government of Dubai, a key hub of business travel in the Middle East, has also opted out of using the scanners, according to USA Today, citing privacy concerns. The European Commission, in a report (.pdf) issued in June, found that while it believed FBS technology could improve detection capabilities, their deployment on a wide scale required uniform standards and "a rigorous scientific assessment of the health risks," particularly of passengers' exposure to radiation.

Meanwhile, TSA officials in the U.S insist that the full body scans are optional. Those passengers who opt-out must endure a pat-down instead. According to officials, some 98 percent of passengers take the FBS over the pat-down, though some complain, as in this recent New Jersey Star Ledger report, that they didn't know the scans were not compulsory.

It is also quite possible that Americans remain uninformed what the privacy risks are. Red flags should have been raised after TSA contradicted its earlier claim that the FBS machines could not capture, save and transmit images of individual passengers. Without a more effective airing of these issues -- without more push-back from individual fliers --  "opting out" may not be an option for long.

Photo Credit: procomkelly