No More Naked Pictures at Airport Security and Other Changes

Feb. 16, 2011 — -- Maybe the last time you gave airport security a thought was just before the holidays when that fellow in San Diego became the latest YouTube sensation with the immortal words, " Don't touch my junk."

The 31-year-old software engineer had privacy and health concerns about airport body scanners, and balked at the alternative aggressive pat-down. Result: neither junk nor trunk got touched, but he didn't fly, either.

About those privacy concerns: changes are coming to airport security that may alleviate "naked picture" fears (and more on that, coming right up). In fact, there are so many changes going on with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), it's giving me whiplash trying to keep up.

Pay attention, because some of these changes could affect whether you want to keep flying or not. Let's take a look.

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The good news is, it looks like we're entering the era of the Gingerbread Man image. Instead of security officers pouring over blurred but recognizably human pictures that raise a lot of modesty issues, the TSA is now testing new software that shows a simple cookie cutter outline only -- sort of like a child's asexual stick figure. As our friend in San Diego might put it, the new images are 100 percent junk-free.

This software is now being used at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas and will be tested at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson and D.C.'s Reagan National in short order. Kudos to the TSA for acting relatively quickly on this.

However, this does not address the health concerns of some passengers who wonder how safe the body scan machines are, especially for frequent fliers who may undergo repeated exposure. The TSA's own fact sheet describes the safety of the backscatter X-ray Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) this way: "An airline passenger that has been screened receives an equivalent dose of radiation from less than two minutes of flight at altitude." But a lot of people think there should be more studies on this, myself included.

Plus, this new software doesn't do much for those who worry, quite rightly, that there are no guarantees these security precautions will catch all terrorists. Yet we keep going through all the drama, or as frequent business traveler Michael Cary puts it, "You feel like a shoeless criminal with your arms up undergoing arrest."

On the plus side, this new software does get us away from that "secret room" (my term) where the lone security officer views the current, more explicit passenger images while looking for explosives or whatever. Now those officers can operate out in the open because all they'll be looking at is an anonymous stick figure.