With all of the privacy concerns being registered regarding the whole-body scanners, we don’t even know if the machines work … we’re just taking the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA’s) word. And TSA doesn’t really know if these scanners really work and can’t be circumvented.

What we have here, based on fairly basic research, is an expensive new whole-body scanner technology being deployed nationwide by TSA over the howls of numerous privacy groups, without independent testing, using the manufacturers’ claims, all being lead by the former head of the Department of Homeland Security saying, basically, trust us.
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The Obama Administration announced their fiscal year 2010 budget proposal today. Under the administration’s proposal for DHS appropriations, the TSA’s annual budget would increase by more than a billion dollars from 2009 to 2011, with most of that going toward the purchase of “up to 1,000″ new virtual strip-search (”Whole Body Imaging” or, in the latest euphemistic language of the budget, “Advanced Imaging Technology”) machines.
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Originally published by Edward Hasbrouck on PapersPlease.org.

Already this week the TSA was caught in a lie about what it likes to call whole body imaging (virtual strip search) machines, when the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) obtained documents showing that, despite TSA claims that “this state-of-the-art technology cannot store, print, transmit or save the image,” the TSA actually requires all of these capabilities — image storage, printing, and transmission — as part of the contract specifications for the body scanners.

But the TSA can’t seem to keep their nose from growing: the post in their official propaganda blog responding to EPIC’s analysis of TSA documents contains even more lies about what they see when they look under your clothes with these machines.

According to the TSA blog, “Below, you will see accurate examples of what our officers see while using advanced imaging technology. Anything else you see is inaccurate.”

Above, we’ve linked directly to the images on the TSA website, exactly as sized and posted by them.

In fact, it’s the images posted by the TSA that are inaccurate and misleading. The actual images seen by the people in the back room (they watch you through your clothes, but you can’t watch them) are: (1) full-screen, not thumbnail-sized like those the TSA posted in their blog, (2) higher-resolution than those on the TSA blog, and (3) capable of being zoomed even larger, on the actual TSA displays, using the magnifying-glass tool in the lower right corner of the TSA-provided thumbnails.

Accurate images are visible in the video below (although even if you click through to the full-screen version the video doesn’t have as high resolution as the displays used by the TSA, especially when they zoom in on areas of the body that attract their interest):

Note also that the video clearly demonstrates that the TSA policy for pat-down searches to be performed by a person of the same gender won’t be applied to the virtual strip-searchers.

EPIC has now filed another FOIA lawsuit against the TSA for failing to disclose what the images look like. Notably, the EPIC complaint filed in court today confirms that our experience with the ongoing TSA FOIA black hole wasn’t an isolated incident. EPIC’s request for expedited FOIA processing was made on July 2, 2009 — more than six months ago — and referred to the TSA by the DHS on July 16, 2009. On July 31, 2009, EPIC filed an administrative appeal of the constructive denial of its request. An expedited request should have been acted on within 10 days, and an appeal within twenty days. But to date, according to the complaint, the TSA has made no response whatsoever to either the request or the appeal. In our experience, this is typical of the TSA’S complete contempt for the FOIA law.

We aren’t reassured by the TSA’s further claim in the same blog post that, “These machines are not networked, so they cannot be hacked.” Apparently they’ve never heard of an inside job, or anyone hacking a computer from the keyboard. (Security hint to the TSA: The keyboard is the easy way way, compared to having to carry out an attack over a network.) That just reconfirms that the TSA’s threat model is grossly deficient and that they aren’t really even trying to rein in the temptations (can you say, “naked celebrity pix”?) that the virtual strip-searchers inevitably will face.

Finally, the TSA is still saying that “Use of advanced imaging technology is optional to all passengers.” What they don’t say is that your other “option” will be to submit to a full manual pat-down, regardless of whether you would have set off the metal detector. So if the alternative to a virtual strip-search is a non-virtual strip search, can someone explain to us how that’s a “choice” that should make us more willing to submit to either option?

If we have to be exposed to the TSA, maybe we should just expose ourselves when we get to the airport.

P.S. We forgot to mention the TSA claim that no 8-year-old is on the no-fly list, debunked today in the New York Times. Maybe 8-year-old Mikey Hicks isn’t on a watch list, but his name is, and the effect is the same: He can’t fly without getting the 3rd degree. What did that entail? We can’t show you. The TSA demands the right to look (and feel) under your clothes, but they wouldn’t let Mikey’s mother take pictures of how he was frisked.

From Tripso.com

For the past year, TSA has been testing full-body scanners at airports across America. Though they claim that 90 percent of the passengers who have the option to use them agree, Congress and privacy advocates are not so sure.

In fact, the TSA is so happy with the results of the whole-body scanner testing at test airports, they are planning to roll them out to all the airports in the nation and start retiring the current inventory of metal detectors.

Not so fast.

The first vote on limiting whole-body scanners is scheduled for the House tomorrow. If the U.S. Congress goes the same way as the European Parliament, whole-body scanners will be banned.

This would be a good time to let your Congressman know how you feel about basically being strip searched whenever you want to board an airplane. Though TSA has instituted controls on the system such as keeping the “watchers” in closed cabins where they can not physically see the person being scanned, electronically blurring the face of each passenger and deleting the images right after viewing (how long after viewing, is probably secret).

The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers’ faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person’s gender. “You can actually see the sweat on someone’s back.”

The last time I checked, there was a law about “reasonable suspicion” before subjecting someone to a strip search. Is simply the act of getting on a plane now considered “reasonable suspicion”?

TSA goes to great pains to tell the public that passengers are comfortable with this technology. Heck, they don’t complain and they choose to use it.

“Over the course of testing this technology as the primary screening procedure in six airports, 99.6 percent of passengers choose this technology over other screening options,” a TSA spokesman said. “Passengers who do not wish to receive millimeter-wave screening can use the walk-through metal detector and undergo a pat-down procedure.”

Now there is a choice — do I want to be x-rayed or groped? What happened to the choice of merely walking through the metal detector like passengers at hundreds of other airports without getting groped.

I’ll bet that the screeners did not clearly explain what was happening and probably did not have sample scan photos available for passengers to see what was being revealed before they made this decision.

It will only be time before some of these screen shots start making their way to the Internet and some of the videos show up on YouTube. Already, when joking with TSA personnel, they say volunteers are lining up to be the “watchers” in the remote cubicle. That tells me a lot.

Let your congressman and senator know you have no interest in being strip searched whenever you travel. If you don’t mind yourself, perhaps you are not particularly interested in having your daughter or wife strip searched and visually groped.

The current bill, H. R. 2027, states, “Whole-body imaging technology may not be used as the sole or primary method of screening a passenger under this section. Whole-body imaging technology may not be used to screen a passenger under this section unless another method of screening, such as metal detection, demonstrates cause for preventing such passenger from boarding an aircraft.”

Click here to find an easy way to send a message to your representative.
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(Springfield, VA, June 3, 2009) TSA has alerted me that the photo above is taken with a different technology — backscatter technology and not millimeter wave. They claim that backscatter is more revealing than millimeter wave. Here is the photo that TSA has released.

TSA public affairs has said that they will try to set up a demonstration of the millimeterwave whole-body scanner at DCA later this week. More to come.