Free Talk Live

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."

Opposition to new full-body imaging machines to screen passengers and the government's deployment of them at most major airports is growing. Many frequent fliers complain they're time-consuming or invade their privacy. The world's airlines say they shouldn't be used for primary security screening. And questions are being raised about possible effects on passengers' health. The machines — dubbed by some fliers as virtual strip searches — were installed at many airports in March after the false flag underwear bomber incident.

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.

The government should not have the ability to virtually strip search anyone it wants. The problem is compounded in that if you do not want to go through the naked body scanner, the government has made the alternative perhaps worse! In an effort to try and make everyone comply with the scanners, the government has instituted "enhanced" pat downs. Travelers across the country have reported the TSA now touches the genitals and private areas of men, women and children in a much more aggressive manner.

"Air passengers already tolerate a large invasion of their privacy," the committee said in a report, citing pat-downs and bag searches as specific examples. "We do not feel that full body scanners add greatly to this situation."

The privacy fears raised by the deployment of full body scanners at airports are overblown, a committee of British lawmakers said Wednesday, adding that the technology was no more of a threat to passengers' rights than pat-downs or bag searches.

Two respected scientists say they have discovered a flaw in airport full body scanners that could potentially allow terrorists to outsmart the machines.

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.

The 3D full-body scanners procured for thorough body check of passengers at the nation's major airports for security reasons are now being abused by security officials from the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria

Saying that body scanners violate Islamic law, Muslim-American groups are supporting a "fatwa" — a religious ruling — that forbids Muslims from going through the scanners at airports.