ON THE CUTTING EDGE: Phoenix Airport Tests Screening Device That Sees Through Clothing
Just in time for the holiday travel season, Sky Harbor International Airport will be one of several US airports participating in a nationwide Transportation Security Administration (TSA) pilot program to evaluate an X-ray technology that can penetrate clothing to reveal concealed plastic or liquid explosives and other non-metallic weapons that can easily pass through metal. The new X-ray will initially be installed in Terminal 4, where the international flights arrive and depart.
The technology, called backscatter, is already used in prisons and by drug enforcement agents, and has been screenig passengers at London's Heathrow Airport since 2004. Until now, the TSA hesitated using this X-ray as an anti-terror screening tool because of privacy concerns, but the images captured by the machine can now be altered so that overly graphic high-resolution pictures of secondary sex characteristics can be blurred without also obscuring potential threats. As an added measure to protect privacy, the system will be configured so that the image will be deleted as soon as the passenger walks away from the machine, and will not be stored, printing or electronically transmitted to any other device or location.
The TSA plans to use the X-ray to take a closer look at passengers who had failed the standard screening process. But such passengers will be given the option of choosing the X-ray screening or being patted down.
The Stiletto is waiting with bated breath to see what objections the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Islamic rights groups will raise about a machine that can see beneath burqas. Already, Muslims object to having bomb-sniffing dogs around them, as they consider dogs unclean and accursed creatures. But neither the dogs, nor this invasive X-ray technology, would have been necessary were it not for the unfortunate penchant Muslims have to blow airplanes out of the sky. So it’s only fitting that they suffer the same indignities we all have to suffer for the privilege of boarding a plane.
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