Scan This

Cavity searches by angry minorities may be a thing of the past at the airport.

Tests were scheduled to begin Thursday at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport with passengers pulled out of the security line for secondary screening. And no, the screening process was not at all connected with the death of Carol Gotbaum some weeks ago. Passengers may request the full-body scan — which blurs faces so the person being screened cannot be recognized — instead of the traditional pat-down used across the country. The new machine uses radio waves to detect foreign objects.

Since February, airport has been testing a similar machine that uses so-called backscatter radiation to scan the entire body. The backscatter uses a narrow, low-intensity x-ray beam that's scans the entire body at a high speed. The amount of radiation used during this scan is equal to 15 minutes of exposure to natural background radiation such as the sun's rays, or a tanning bed, if you live in LA.

Officials are trying to determine if the body-scan machines are a more effective search tool than a pat-down. Both types of machines check for explosives, metal, plastic and liquids — anything hidden on the body.

The new type of device being tested, called a "millimeter wave" machine, doesn't use radiation - it uses electromagnetic waves to create an image based on energy reflected from the body. A person walks into a large portal — nearly 9 feet tall and 6 feet wide — pauses and lifts his arms while the machine takes two scans using radio waves. The scans take 1.8 seconds, and it takes about a minute for the image to appear on a computer screen in a separate location.

To protect privacy, the image will be shown on screens in a completely different area than where the screening is taking place. The TSA officer doing the screening will never see the computer image, and images will not be saved, TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said.

Reporters were only shown an example of a female body image, which was a three-dimensional image of a very fit woman in her brassiere and underwear. TSA describes this as similar to a "fuzzy photo negative." But privacy advocates say the images are more graphic than that.

"If you want to see a naked body, this is a naked body," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's program on technology and liberty. If that's the case, you can go see some naked peeps at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and the Alexandria, Va., federal courthouse, who both use the millimeter wave machines.

Total Recall? Yeah, we're there now.