The United States Transportation Security Administration recently invested $1 billion in body scanner technology it claimed would make air travel safer, but the scanners have come under fire since the agency first revealed its intentions. Some people argued that the nude scanners were an invasion of privacy while others were concerned with radiation emitted by the machines. Now, however, it appears as though past arguments pale in comparison to recent information brought to light by scientist and blogger Jonathan Corbett. Read on for more.
According to Corbett, who was the first person to sue the TSA when it introduced the scanners in early 2010, people can bypass the devices by simply fixing items they want to hide to their sides. The scanners bounce electromagnetic waves off of a subject to create an image that shows metallic items in black against the human body, which appears in bright white on the TSA’s equipment. The background of the scans is also black, however, so objects held in clothing on a person’s side will not appear over the dark background in the TSA’s scans.
