You know those x-ray body scanners that not only expose you to radiation but reveal your nakedness to security agents? That unsettling experience will be a thing of the past at many major airports, because the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been quietly removing them, according to ProPublica.
Over the past few weeks, backscatter x-ray scanners from airports in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando and New York's JFK, have been replaced with safer millimeter wave scanners.
Those new devices use less-harmful radio waves similar to cellphone signals rather than the ionizing radiation emitted by x-rays, and they show a cartoon-like figure to the security agent instead of a realistic negative image of a traveler's body.
The new scanners are smarter, too -- able to automatically detect which items are threats and then showing them on the screen alongside that cartoon figure. Using this technology, agents will only need to view those images when the computer has detected a threat.
Many of the removed backscatter machines will be sent to smaller airports. Meanwhile, the TSA says the new millimeter wave scanning machines will move people through airport checkpoints faster, because the old backscatter X-ray machines require a TSA agent to view each image.
The TSA spokesman told ProPublica that the backscatter X-ray machines weren't removed because of radiation dangers, which experts have characterized as "trivial." The resulting exposure is compared to the amount of radiation a person would encounter during two minutes of flying on an airliner.
The new millimeter wave scanners aren't perfect, either, deemed in a European study to deliver from 23% to 54% false positives. They're also easily fooled by sweat or folds in someone's clothes. But in this case, it seems better to have more false positives than negatives.
The new scanners are part of $490 million worth of government contracts with L-3 Communications Corp. and American Science and Engineering, Inc.
Is it worth it? Let us know in the comments if you're relieved those backscatter x-ray scanners will be gone from major airports, and if you welcome the new, allegedly safer technology. Also let us know how you feel about the airport security process -- is security theater that's not really making us any safer, or is it saving lives?