Airport Scanners to Dress Up 'Naked' Images

Software replaces everyone with generic guy in baseball hat
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Suggested by winterfairy
Posted Sep 8, 2010 2:31 PM CDT
Airport Scanners to Dress Up 'Naked' Images
A sign next to a body scanner describes what TSA officers see on their computer screens, as volunteers go through the first full body scanner installed at O'Hare International Airport, March 15, 2010.   (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

Good news, frequent fliers: Pretty soon airport security won’t be looking at sort of naked computer-generated images of you when you step into the full-body scanner anymore. Thanks to an ingenious software upgrade, those scanners will soon instead show a generic image of a man in t-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap, no matter who steps into the machine. The display will then mark areas of the body that should be checked.

The changes “certainly address most of the privacy concerns,” an executive from the company making the software tells Bloomberg. The TSA hopes to install the upgrades in all its scanners, which can currently be found in 51 airports. But the Electronic Privacy Information Center isn’t satisfied; the machines, they note, are still capable of taking pictures, and they’re worried they’ll eventually save them alongside a passenger’s name. (More airport scanners stories.)

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