You may have heard about those high-resolution full-body scanners being deployed by the TSA in airports across the country, which a lot of people do not like.
The reasons for this dislike are many; they provide high-resolution images rendering the person scanned basically naked, and while it’s been said that the images will never be saved, this has been proven untrue on similar machines; the alternative, per new regulations, is a procedure now widely known as “junk-grabbing“; there are concerns that the backscatter technology used in about half of the scanners could cause cancer, although the jury’s out on that one. (The other half of the scanners use millimeter-wave technology, which uses harmless electromagnetic waves, but can be confused by folds in clothing.) Bruce Schneier has written a very comprehensive timeline of the TSA backlash.
A relevant question as many people gear up to fly away for the holidays: Which airports are actually using the new scanners? According to the TSA, the following 68:
- Albuquerque International Sunport Airport
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport
- Boston Logan International
- Bush Houston Interncontinental Airport
- Boise Airport
- Bradley International Airport
- Brownsville
- Buffalo Niagara International Airport
- Charlotte Douglas International
- Chicago O’Hare International
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International
- Cleveland International Airport
- Corpus Christie Airport
- Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport
- Denver International Airport
- Detroit Metro Airport
- Dulles International Airport
- El Paso International Airport
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International
- Fort Wayne International Airport
- Fresno Airport
- Gulfport International Airport
- Grand Rapids Airport
- Harrisburg International Airport
- Harlingen/Valley International Airport
- Honolulu International Airport
- Indianapolis International Airport
- Jacksonville International Airport
- John F. Kennedy International Airport
- Kansas City International
- LaGuardia International Airport
- Lambert/St. Louis International Airport
- Laredo International Airport
- Lihue Airport
- Los Angeles International
- Luis Munoz Marin International Airport
- McAllen Miller Airport
- McCarran International Airport
- Memphis International Airport
- Miami International Airport
- General Mitchell Milwaukee International Airport
- Mineta San José International
- Minneapolis/St.Paul International Airport
- Nashville International Airport
- Newark Liberty International Airport
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport
- Oakland International Airport
- Omaha Eppley Field Airport
- Orlando International Airport
- Palm Beach International Airport
- Philadelphia International Airport
- Phoenix International Airport
- Pittsburgh International Airport
- Port Columbus International
- Raleigh-Durham International Airport
- Richmond International Airport
- Rochester International Airport
- Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport
- Salt Lake City International Airport
- San Antonio International Airport
- San Diego International Airport
- San Francisco International Airport
- Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
- Spokane International Airport
- T.F. Green Airport
- Tampa International Airport
- Tulsa International Airport
This is only the beginning, though; while there are currently 385 scanners deployed nationwide, that number is planned to more than double to over 1,000 by the end of 2011.
Published: Nov 19, 2010 01:11 pm