Air travelers already give up their shoes and bottled water to pass through security at New York City’s airports. Some will now also be asked to part with their modesty.
The Transportation Security Administration has begun implementing a slow rollout of high-tech body scanners at the city’s three major air hubs. The machines give screeners the ability to see beneath a passenger’s clothing to search for weapons.
At Kennedy International Airport on Friday, select passengers passing through the security checkpoint at an American Airlines terminal were directed to bypass the metal detectors and instead step inside a big X-ray machine.
There, they posed awkwardly for a few moments with their arms raised, and then were sent on their way.
The devices, called “backscatter” X-rays, have been turning up in a growing number of airports in recent years. The scanners use a low dose of radiation to create a computerized image of a person’s body, visible only to a screener sitting alone in a windowless cubicle across the room.
The black and white images are detailed enough to show a person’s genitalia, but with bones and eye sockets also ghosting through, they resemble something more likely to interest a surgeon than Hugh Hefner.
People will have the option to refuse the screening, although if they do they will have to undergo a physical pat-down. A sign warned that the search would be “thorough.”
Some travelers at Kennedy found both options uncomfortable.
“At 72 years of age, this is what it has come to?” asked Joan Wiesmann, of Manorville, N.Y. “Taking off my shoes, having someone go in by bag — I guess you have to do it. But this I have an issue with.”
Asked if she would decline the screening, though, she shrugged and said probably not. “I don’t feel like having someone pat me down either.”
Her husband, John, a retired fire department lieutenant, was more accepting. “Whatever they want to do, as long as it’s safe,” he said.
Some people have raised concerns about the effect of radiation of travelers’ health. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who was on hand at Kennedy as the machines were demonstrated to the media, said she was confident the risks were extremely low.
“These machines have been tested and retested and retested,” she said.
She said the technology is a necessary security upgrade because terrorists can use weapons that aren’t metallic and won’t be picked up by metal detectors.
Newark Liberty International Airport and LaGuardia Airport will be getting scanners over the next few weeks, including some that use radio waves, rather than X-rays, to produce images.
Similar technology has been tested at Kennedy before. In 2008, the airport was one of several around the country to test body scanners during a pilot project.
Right now, the TSA has around 300 of the scanners deployed at 61 airports nationwide.
It may be some time before the machines become a routine part of the airport experience. Backscatter machines like the ones introduced at Kennedy cost $150,000 apiece, and require new people to be hired and trained.
TSA plans to have only 450 deployed nationwide by the end of the year, meaning that for most travelers, the trip through security will continue to look much like it has for years.
Even at Kennedy’s Terminal 8, where two of the machines were ready for operation Friday, the majority of people passing through the checkpoint were funneled through metal detectors.
About 1,000 machines are due to be installed by the end of 2011.