If you are planning on travelling to the United States, your
picture,
visa, finger prints and retina scans are no longer enough.
US immigration
officers can now also scan your private parts in
detail for Weapons of Mass
Destruction of course! If you are a
person with some sense of privacy...
there is no problem: your face
won't show, only your bottom
will.
Scanners that see through clothing installed in US airports
http://afp.google.
NEW
YORK (AFP) — Security scanners which can see through passengers'
clothing
and reveal details of their body underneath are being
installed in 10 US
airports, the US Transportation Security
Administration said
Tuesday.
A random selection of travellers getting ready to board
airplanes in
Washington, New York's Kennedy, Los Angeles and other key hubs
will
be shut in the glass booths while a three-dimensional image is made
of their body beneath their clothes.
The booths close around the
passenger and emit "millimeter waves"
that go through cloth to identify
metal, plastics, ceramics,
chemical materials and explosives, according to
the TSA.
While it allows the security screeners -- looking at the images
in a
separate room -- to clearly see the passenger's sexual organs as
well as other details of their bodies, the passenger's face is
blurred,
TSA said in a statement on its website.
The scan only takes seconds and
is to replace the physical pat-downs
of people that is currently widespread
in airports.
TSA began introducing the body scanners in airports in
April, first
in the Phoenix, Arizona terminal.
The installation is
picking up this month, with machines in place or
planned for airports in
Washington (Reagan National and Baltimore-
Washington International)
Detroit.
But the new
machines have provoked worries among passengers and
rights
activists.
"People have no idea how graphic the images are," Barry
Steinhardt,
director of the technology and liberty program at the American
Civil
Liberties Union, told AFP.
The ACLU said in a statement that
passengers expecting privacy
underneath their clothing "should not be
required to display highly
personal details of their bodies such as evidence
of mastectomies,
colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and
the size
of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a
plane."
Besides masking their faces, the TSA says on its website, the
images
made "will not be printed stored or transmitted.
"Once
the transportation security officer has viewed the image and
resolved
anomalies, the image is erased from the screen permanently.
The officer is
unable to print, export, store or transmit the image."
Lara Uselding, a
TSA spokeswoman, added that passengers are not
obliged to accept the new
machines.
"The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the
pat-
down," she told AFP.
TSA foresees 30 of the machines installed
across the country by the
end of 2008. In Europe, Amsterdam's Schipol
airport is already using
the
scanners.
************
WORLD
VIEW NEWS SERVICE
To subscribe to this group, send an email to:
wvns-subscribe@
NEWS
ARCHIVE IS OPEN TO PUBLIC VIEW
http://finance.
Need
some good karma? Appreciate the service?
Please consider donating to WVNS
today.
Email ummyakoub@yahoo.
To leave this list, send an email to:
wvns-unsubscribe@
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe