Full Body Scanner - Usage

Usage

Schiphol in the Netherlands was the first airport in the world to implement this device on a large scale after a test with flight personnel the previous year. On May 15, 2007 two of 17 purchased security scans were installed. A longer list of airports with full-body scanners can be found on bigbrotherwatch.org.uk.

Full-body scanners have been installed in at least one Florida courthouse and are starting to appear in courthouses around the US.

At least one New Jersey PATH train station used full-body scanners in 2006. This was a two-week trial.

As of November 20, 2010, the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) reported that there were 385 full-body scanners now in use at 68 United States airports, which were listed in an article of that date on USAToday.com and ABCnews.com.

The United States plans to deploy 1,000 full body scanners by the end of 2011. The US Government has also hinted at the possibility of deploying the full body scanners at train stations and subways.

The Italian government had planned to install full-body scanners at all airport and train stations throughout the country, but announced in September 2010 plans to remove the scanners from airports, calling them "slow and ineffective."

Because of the privacy issues, in some locations people are allowed to refuse this scan and opt for a traditional pat-down. In other locations, use of the full-body scanners is mandatory and refusing to submit to a scan at the airport will bar the person from taking the flight. A bill called the S.A.F.E.R. A.I.R. Act has been introduced in the United States by Senators Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). If it passes it will make full-body scanners mandatory in the U.S. by 2013.

It is claimed that the head is excluded from the scan and the images are instantly erased, though in one case, images had been stored and 100 of them were later leaked online.

The analyst is in a different room and is not supposed to be able to see the person being scanned, but is in contact with other officials who can halt the scanned person if anything suspicious shows up on the scan.

The European Union currently allows member states to decide whether to implement full body scanners in their countries:

It is for each member state to decide to authorise the use of scanners in national airports. That will not change ... But where this scanning technology is used it should be covered by EU-wide standards on detection capability as well as common safeguards to ensure compliance with EU health and fundamental rights provisions. —EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas

Australia plans to pass a law in July 2012 to make scanning all passengers, including pregnant females, compulsory. So far, scanners are only installed in Melbourne and Sydney airport and only passengers exiting via international flights are affected. Passengers who refuse a scan may be banned from flying. The scanners proposed to be used in Australia have shown a high rate of error in testing. Public outrage over the nude images created by the body scanners being collected by policy has resulted in a lawsuit to stop body scanning.

Civil rights groups in Britain, where body scanning on exiting the country is compulsory by law, have raised issues relating to the body scanners being used to create child porn.