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A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate requiring all airports to use full-body scanners lacks sufficient privacy safeguards, says a prominent watchdog group.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center says the bill, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), "contains particularly weak privacy provision[s] that ignore many of the problems with the devices already uncovered."

Allied Pilots Association president Dave Bates is suggesting that American Airlines pilots go through a pat-down search by Transportation Security Administration personnel rather undergo the repeated radiation from the “advanced imaging technology” body scanners used.
“While I’m sure that each of us recognizes that the threats to our lives are real, the practice of airport security screening of airline pilots has spun out of control and does nothing to improve national security,” Bates wrote.

The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that it would retest every full-body X-ray scanner that emits ionizing radiation — 247 machines at 38 airports — after maintenance records on some of the devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.

Liberty-minded Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) announced plans this week to re-introduce a bill that would hold Transportation Security Agency (TSA) liable for violating laws on sexual assault, as well as laws on the production of lewd images and potentially causing harm through mass radiation of passengers with naked body scanners.

This video is here to demonstrate that the TSA’s insistence that the nude body scanner program is effective and necessary is nothing but a fraud, just like their claims that the program is safe (radiation what?) and non-invasive (nude pictures who?). The scanners are now effectively worthless, as anyone can beat them with virtually no effort. The TSA has been provided this video in advance of it being made public to give them an opportunity to turn off the scanners and revert to the metal detectors. I personally believe they now have no choice but to turn them off.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Transportation Security Administration confirms that it is getting rid of airport body scanners that produce a naked image of travelers.

Right now the TSA uses two types of scanners. One makes a generic image showing where agents should look for an object on the traveler's body. Those scanners are staying.

TSA says the X-ray scanners will be gone by June. It says the company that makes them, Rapiscan, was not able to come up with a software fix to make the scanners comply with the Congressional mandate.

TRENTON NJ— Senator Michael J. Doherty (R) and Senator James Beach (D) today announced they will present resolutions to the Senate and Assembly calling on the U.S. Congress to end TSA screening procedures requiring full body scans and pat downs at U.S. airports Their action comes in response to widespread concerns over privacy and radiation, as well as reports of inappropriate conduct by TSA agents during the screening process.

Full press release http://bit.ly/c0n2FL

They look a little like giant refrigerators and pack a radiation dose big enough to peer through clothing for bombs or weapons, yet too minuscule to be harmful, federal officials insist.

The TSA is in the process of moving its "old" radiation-emitting backscatter x-ray machines to smaller airports and replacing them with new millimeter wave machines in big airports.