Full Body Scanners at Airports

Boston Logan International Airport officially unveiled 3 new full body scanners on Friday that it hopes will help TSA agents better identify threats among air passengers.

Full Body Scanners at Airports Nick Barber: Boston Logan International Airport officially unveiled three new body scanners on Friday, that it hopes will help TSA since better identify threats among air passengers. Made notorious by privacy advocates for their somewhat revealing body scans like the ones seen here, the units used Backscatter technology to project low level x-ray beams over the body. Lee R. Kair: Imaging technology safely screens passengers for metallic an none metallic threats, including weapons, explosives and other objects concealed under layers of clothing without physical contact to help TSA keep the traveling public safe. Nick Barber: Well the advanced imaging technology or AIT Units will be used as a primary screening method at Logan. Passengers are not required to use it and can request a pat-down in metal detection instead. Ones passenger stepped into the machine, it takes about 20 seconds to scan and review the image. Cares so that privacy concerns we’re unfounded. Lee R. Kair: The officer attending the passenger will not view the image. And as an additional precaution, the officer viewing the image will be remotely located and the image won’t be stored, transmitted or printed and deleted immediately ones viewed. In fact the machines have zero storage capability. A privacy filter will also be applied to the image. Nick Barber: That means that faces of travelers will be blurred out for image reviewers. He also said that radiation exposure in the machine is very low and equivalent to what a passenger would experience in an aircraft for two minutes at 30,000 feet. Logan Airport became one of the first 11 airports in the country to receive AIT Units purchase with money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which allots one billion US dollars to the TSA for aviation security projects. This new backscatter x-ray technology machine being installed in Boston Logan International today is one of 450 going into use across the country in 2010. All for the price of between a $130,000.00 and a $170,000.00 each, reporting from Boston Logan. I'm Nick Barber, IDG News Service.