WASHINGTON, US - Nine of the busiest airports in the United States have introduced a high-tech security screener that offers an alternative to the traditional pat-down method of detecting concealed weapons.
Security officials are calling the new devices the first significant addition to the checkpoint since metal detectors and X-ray machines were introduced in the 1970s.
They are in use at the capital's Baltimore Washington International airport, New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and the Los Angeles International Airport, among others.
The millimetre wave scanner is supposedly a better way to detect concealed weapons, explosives, drugs and other contraband items.
And the process, which involves the passenger stepping into what looks like a plexiglass phone booth and holding his arms outstretched for a few moments, is quicker and efficient to administer.
But the images that the scanner produces by bouncing harmless radio waves off the passenger's skin are revealing to the extent that they show the body contours and outline of the breasts and genitals.
A prominent civil liberties group says the three-dimensional black, white and grey pictures are graphic and amount to a 'virtual strip search'.
But security officials say passenger privacy is assured and the passengers are free to turn down the scan if they are uncomfortable.
'The image looks like a fuzzy photo negative,' Ms Lauren Wolf, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), told The Sunday Times. 'And we have procedures in place to protect privacy.'
The face of the passenger is blurred in the images and the security officer who operates the scanner is not the one who views the images, she added.
The officer viewing the images is remotely located in a walled-off room and sees them on a computer that is not connected to a printer or the Internet, thus ensuring that an image cannot be associated with a face and the pictures cannot be stored or distributed.
For now, passengers are randomly selected for scanning and can opt to have a pat-down instead. So far, most of them have gamely gone ahead. At Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where the scanners have been tested since late last year, 90 per cent of passengers have opted for the scanning rather than the pat-down.
But some concerns linger. Said Mr Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty programme: 'Those images reveal not only our private body parts, but also intimate medical details like colostomy bags. That degree of examination amounts to a significant and, for some people, humiliating assault on the essential dignity of passengers.'
He maintained that passengers consent to such scans without knowing how revealing they are.
For the moment, the passengers do not seem alarmed. Most say it is a price worth paying for security.
'If they're going to touch you anyway, why not give them a peek?' said Ms Celia Haywoode, 76, who was interviewed at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport which introduced the scanner last week.
'At my age, I'm honoured someone's willing to look,' she said with humour.
The TSA plans to deploy the rest of the 38 machines it has acquired in the coming weeks. But the authorities have not said whether the scanning, now in the pilot phase, will become a mandatory security procedure in future.
The scanners are also in use in Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and some Canadian airports.
