House Votes against “Strip-Search” Machines
Yesterday the House adopted an amendment to the Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act that would prohibit the TSA from using Whole Body-Imaging machines for primary screening at airports and require the TSA to give passengers the option of a pat-down search in place of going through a WBI machine, among other things.
You can read the amendment here, and the roll call vote will soon be up here. Use it to decide whether to cheer or jeer your member of Congress.
More on strip-search machines here, here, and here.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
House to Consider Ban on Body Scans
. . . or at least serious limitations, NextGov reports.
Something like the bill I discussed in a previous post may be included in the TSA Authorization Act. I wrote some about “strip search machines” back in February, too.
Filed under: Foreign Policy and National Security; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Limiting the TSA’s Use of “Strip Search Machines”
I wrote here in February about the push and pull over “strip search machines,” also known as “whole-body imaging” and “millimeter wave scanning.”
The question is joined: How do you maintain privacy with a technology that’s fundamentally intrusive? Maybe by using it less. This week, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) introduced a bill to limit the use of whole-body imaging.
H.R. 2027, the Aircraft Passenger Whole-Body Imaging Limitations Act of 2009, would place several limits:
- Whole-body imaging could not be the sole or primary method of screening a passenger, and it could only be used as a follow-up to other methods like metal detection.
- Passengers would have the right to opt for a pat-down search instead of whole-body imaging.
- Passengers subject to whole-body imaging would have to be provided information about the technology and the images it generates, on privacy policies, and the right to have the pat-down search instead.
- Images of passengers generated by whole-body imaging technology could not be stored, transferred, shared, or copied in any form after the passenger has passed through the security system.
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