"FAA seeks machines to body scan"

Saturday, December 1, 2001

FAA seeks machines to body scan 
Knight Ridder News 


ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - In its quest for better devices to screen airline
passengers in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Federal Aviation
Administration is looking at some body scanning machines that were once
considered too invasive of privacy, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey said
Wednesday. 

Retired Adm. Paul Busick, the agency's associate administrator for
security, insisted the FAA would not opt for new technology that would
show an image "as if I were undressed." 

But that's what some vendors are pushing at the FAA's International
Aviation Security Technology Symposium here. Like the FAA, they'd like
to see upgrades to the current metal detectors designed in the 1970s. 

For example, the Rapiscan 1000 uses X-rays that pass through the target
and reflect back to the machine to provide a detailed three-dimensional
image of the subject. The U.S. Customs Service and prisons use the
machine, offered by Rapiscan Security Products of Hawthorne, Calif.
Airports will be next, if Rapsican's Peter Modica has his way. 

A subject stands in front of the scanner for seven seconds, then turns
around for another seven seconds. Next to the closet-sized gray machine
is a video screen that shows him, without clothes, as a somewhat shadowy
figure. 

It shows a hidden cell phone, the subject's metal belt buckle and body
parts that he'd rather not be seen. 

"It is specific," concedes Modica, vice president for sales, wiping away
the picture from the screen before asking: "Are we ready to give up some
of our privacy for more security?" 

The FAA's Garvey isn't. She sidestepped the Rapiscan booth during her
exhibit hall tour Wednesday, choosing instead a machine that shows no
body image. 

FAA security officials, who privately call Rapiscan's product "the
clothes stripper," also have something more modest in mind. 

They're pursuing something called "the cloaker" that fuzzes up private
body parts, one official said. Busick himself favors something he calls
"the Gumby figure." Instead of showing each of a body's curves, it would
show a generic figure - much like the animated television character -
and locate any metal or solid on the body's image. 

Rapiscan could work on that, Modica said, "maybe through FAA grants." 

One problem is that many scanners now in use were designed for prison
populations. 

One example is the B.O.S.S. Body Orifice Security Scanner, touted as
"fast and non-intrusive" by Ranger Security Detectors of El Paso, Texas.


A person sits on an odd-looking chair, setting off an alarm if metal is
hidden on the subject's body. The scanner also says what part of the
chair the hidden metal is near, according to sales specialist Les Burk. 

It yields the same results as full body searches, says Burk, without
having airport security employees "looking at somebody's backside."

 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?conf=DCConfID8

*****************************************