Federal agencies have long claimed that body scan images like those taken at airport checkpoints are discarded as soon as they’re viewed. In fact, the TSA have claimed that the machine is not even capable of storing the images.
According to CNET, this week the U.S Marshalls Service admitted that it had saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.
An earlier disclosure of the TSA revealed that they indeed require that all the airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and even transmit these images for “testing, training and evaluation purposes .” (PDF) The agency however claims that the feature is not normally switched on when installed at airports.
It wasn’t long ago when Transportation Security Administration screener Rolando Negrin attacked a fellow co-worker after his co-worker had made fun of him after seeing his “private parts” and it’s size through one of these machines. Negrin “stated he could not take the jokes any more and lost his mind,” said the report. He is charged with aggravated battery.
The TSA have also claimed that female agents look at female passengers and vice versa. I have personally witnessed male and female passengers walk in and stand in these machines one after the other. Who’s looking at these images? Male agents or females?
Update: I had just called the TSA Umbudsman phone line obtained from the TSA.gov website. The operator stated that the TSA agent assigned to look at the image does not change with the sex of the passenger going through the body scanner. The reason they gave me was that they don’t see actual flesh or the actual passenger passing through. They however explained to me that the agent can absolutely distinguish between male and female passengers.
(Credit: TSA.gov)
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