"SEE THROUGH" SECURITY SEARCH Coming to Chicago, O'Hare Airport!
SOME CALL NEW TECHNOLOGY A "VIRTUAL REALITY STRIP SEARCH"!
Fear remains high across the U.S. that Al Qaeda-trained terrorist bombers will again use airplanes to attack. According to Kip Hawley, of the Transportation Security Administration, small, powerful bombs can be attached to a terrorist's body, or camouflaged inside ordinary travel items, still represent the Number One Threat to security at airports.
"If despite all our best efforts we fail to keep a [would-be] terrorist off an airplane, at least we must make sure that suicide bombers cannot smuggle the explosives they need to cause a catastrophe past the airport checkpoint and onto the aircraft," said Hawley.
Hawley's comments come as new technology is in line to be introduced at O'Hare Airport in Chicago beginning this fall. The new device would perform a full body scan of, for now, randomly-selected travelers. The device would peek through clothing, and could reveal specific - and intimate -body parts - although the facial details of the passenger would be obscured, and the photos would be deleted immediately after screening.
Those random passengers refusing to submit to the new scanning machine would receive the current pat-down frisk search.
Civil Liberties Groups, most notably the ACLU, are crying foul. "This technology literally demands that one go through a virtual strip-search and that all sorts of private information, such as medical situations like a mastectomy or a colostomy, be looked at by a screener for the privilege of being able to get on an airplane," said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "That goes too far."
The new detailed scan has already been tested with success at other airports. But its expansion this fall to O'Hare, as well as eight other airports across the country, increases the number of potential passengers who might be randomly selected.
The new scan takes just a few seconds. Selected passengers would proceed to a scanning chamber about the size of a telephone booth, raise their arms over their heads, and place their feet on special markings on the floor. Weapons, and other items forbidden in the passenger compartments of aircraft, would appear darker on the scans.
In addition to these new full-body scanners, additional new equipment feature advances for scanning carry-on luggage, as well as the contents of bottles of liquid.
Initially, the new scanning equipment will be set up in the O'Hare International Terminal, as well as the domestic terminals for American and United Airlines. The full-body scanners use Radio Frequency technology, as well as low-dose X-Rays, not harmful to the passengers being screened.
One controversial element of the process is who will view the full-body scanner images. Plans call for the same security officers screening the images of all passengers, male or female. Physical pat-downs, however, would only be conducted by screeners of the same gender.
To minimize contact with passengers being screened, those security officers checking the full-body images would be some distance away from the security checkpoints, in a remote, central location. They will not have direct contact with the passengers being screened.
Detractors, however, continue to balk at the new scanning technology, instead preferring a less-invasive, less graphic search.
Today's article by Jon Hilkevitch in The Chicago Tribune provides more detail.
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