The student news site of Guilford College

The Guilfordian

The student news site of Guilford College

The Guilfordian

The student news site of Guilford College

The Guilfordian

Full-body airport scanners invade personal privacy

In the weeks following the attempted detonation of plastic explosives on a flight into Detroit, the Transportation Security Association (TSA) announced that it will perform random enhanced screening methods. One method includes full-body scans of passengers arriving from countries that the United States categorizes as sponsors of terror. Full-body scans are a scary trend that violates our privacy and gives us a false sense of security. Upon entrance, extremely high frequency radio waves produce an image that is ghostly in appearance and extremely revealing, prompting critics to describe the technology as a “virtual strip search.”

Proponents of the technology say images are sent to a private room where they are viewed and immediately deleted. But the Electronic Privacy Information Center posted documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealing that the scanners have the functionality to store and transmit images. These are contrary to the TSA’s claims.

Even if the images are not stored and are immediately destroyed after viewing, an image of a nude body, regardless of its quality, should require consent to be taken. According to The Guardian, ministers of the United Kingdom may have to exempt those under the age of 18 from the full-body scans because of child pornography laws. This raises questions about how we should treat images of adults too.

The TSA claims that many people prefer the full-body scanners to the pat-down search. But how many of these people have been truly informed about the nature of the images created?

It would be easy for a person to accidentally have an image taken of them not realizing the power of the machine, because they simply followed the TSA officer’s instructions.

If we sacrifice our privacy in the name of security, it follows that what we gain should outweigh what we give up. The TSA has spent millions of dollars on these scanners. It is admittedly hard to measure their effectiveness since no terrorists have been caught with this technology.

This technology only defends us against specific threats, and it is many shortcomings. It is easy to accidentally bring liquids or knives aboard a plane. In 2003, Nathaniel Heatwole, a Guilford student, made a point to bring box cutters, matches, and similar items aboard an aircraft. And by only screening from some countries, the TSA gives terrorists an avenue of attack. The Detroit bomber got on in Amsterdam.

The TSA’s actions make this hard to take seriously. The Voice of America recently reported a security scare at a California airport. A bomb squad was brought in and two TSA officers were treated for fume exposure. The suspicious material in question was honey. According to the Associated Press, a well-meaning passenger boarded a plane with ammunition.

Bruce Schneier, a security expert, has been saying for years that only two things have improved airport security since 9/11: locked cabin doors on aircrafts and attentive passengers. The recent Nigerian bomber proved him correct, and the events that took place that day should be considered a security success, instead of a security failure. If we want real security, then our country will have to fix its broken foreign policy.

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