Dec. 11 — Is it necessary for X-ray machines to look underneath everyone's clothing to increase security? In the current rush for safer airports, one technology has already caused controversy.

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A full-body X-ray machine can examine every person who comes through an airport checkpoint as an alternative to a pat down.

Recently, U.S. Customs began testing the full-body system in roughly 10 airports across the country. Given recent events, officials are considering rolling out these X-ray machines in all airports, for all passengers.

Peter Williamson works for Rapiscan, one of a few companies working on full body X-ray. He says inquiries into rollouts of the technology have increased dramatically since September 11.

Your Image in Their Hands

The images generated by the X-ray machine are not photo quality but they are good enough to tell gender. Security officials can download and save X-ray images, raising the possibility of misuse.

For Jay Stanley with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that raises privacy issues. "We think this is an extremely intrusive technology," he said. "Passengers when they fly have a right to expect that they will not be seen naked."

Reasonable Security

Harry Martz of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, sat on a national panel studying the viability of full-body X-ray scans on all passengers.

"I believe walking through a full-body X-ray is less intrusive than a full-body pat down," said Martz. "I would believe in the future as the threat increases, the traveling public would accept it, so their concerns about privacy issues would decrease."

Reasonable Privacy

The ACLU strongly opposes full-body X-ray scans.

In an X-ray picture viewed by CyberCrime, you can clearly determine a scanned person's gender but you can also see a plastic knife. That's a potential weapon that a standard metal detector couldn't locate.

Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, shares some of the ACLU's concerns.

"I think the ACLU is pragmatically correct because my expectation is that the way these technologies will be developed… will violate important privacy issues," Lessig said.

Lessig feels that companies could build the X-ray machines so that the machine does more of the detection work and doesn't violate privacy.

This report was first published on September 25, 2001 and was put together by CyberCrime staff.