Word: smartcheck
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Dates: during 2007-2007
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...next time you’re at the airport security checkpoint, your luggage may not be the only thing that gets X-rayed. As reported in a recent New York Times article, the SmartCheck body scanner, the newest innovation in transportation security, made its debut at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix earlier this year. The scanner can see under travelers’ clothes to detect if they are carrying anything dangerous on board. But before you freak out, you should know the facts. The SmartCheck scanner causes negligible harm and may greatly improve airport security...
...SmartCheck machine is designed to scan a passenger’s body for guns and explosives and aims to increase the efficiency of secondary searches, which are conducted only after passengers have passed through the metal detector. The scanner provides those passengers selected for such searches with a less intrusive alternative to the pat-down or strip search. The machine is still in its testing stages, but is scheduled to eventually make its way into JFK and Los Angeles International airports...
...prospect of implementing the SmartCheck nationwide should sound great to most rational people, but the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) disagrees. The ACLU has wasted little time in rallying its lawyers to persuade Congress to ban the use of such technology for routine security screening. Because X-rays pass through clothing, an ACLU officer, quoted in the New York Times, dubbed the scan a “virtual strip search,” claiming that the additional security of the scan is not worth the loss of passenger privacy...
Questions have also been raised about the machine’s safety. X-ray exposure is generally considered unhealthy, so if passengers had to receive a hefty dose of them every time they were about to step on a plane, using the SmartCheck would be a blatant violation of civil liberties...
...otherwise, legitimate criticisms in the future will be dismissed offhand. The government has never been afraid of targeting civil liberties in the name of national security in the past, but we would be foolish to assume that this is true for all governmental policies. In this particular case, the SmartCheck scanner, aside from being another minor inconvenience, certainly does not infringe upon our civil liberties any more than the ordinary metal detector...
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