Now the TSA denies what the DHS proposed before:
– Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano Proposes Full-Body Scanners For Trains, Boats, Metro (The Hill)
– US: Full-Body Scanners Popping Up At Courthouses (AP)
Body-scanners are so ‘safe’:
– Inside TSA Body Scanners: How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart Human DNA
– Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hide your wife
– Dr. Russell Blaylock: Body Scanners More Dangerous Than Feds Admit
– TSA: Top US Government Officials Exempt From Screenings
– Airport Body Scanners: Why You should REJECT ‘Routine’ NON-Diagnostic X-ray
Full documents obtained by EPIC through a Freedom of Information Act request
Epic Body Scan Foia Docs Feb 2011[1]
Updated with the TSA’s response below, which denies implementing airport-style scans in mass transit.
(Forbes) — Giving Transportation Security Administration agents a peek under your clothes may soon be a practice that goes well beyond airport checkpoints. Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.
The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of of new anti-terrorism technologies that EPIC believes raise serious privacy concerns. The projects range from what the DHS describes as “a walk through x-ray screening system that could be deployed at entrances to special events or other points of interest” to “covert inspection of moving subjects” employing the same backscatter imaging technology currently used in American airports.
The 173-page collection of contracts and reports, acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, includes contracts with Siemens Corporations, Northeastern University, and Rapiscan Systems. The study was expected to cost more than $3.5 million.
One project allocated to Northeastern University and Siemens would mount backscatter x-ray scanners and video cameras on roving vans, along with other cameras on buildings and utility poles, to monitor groups of pedestrians, assess what they carried, and even track their eye movements. In another program, the researchers were asked to develop a system of long range x-ray scanning to determine what metal objects an individual might have on his or her body at distances up to thirty feet.
“This would allow them to take these technologies out of the airport and into other contexts like public streets, special events and ground transit,” says Ginger McCall, an attorney with EPIC. “It’s a clear violation of the fourth amendment that’s very invasive, not necessarily effective, and poses all the same radiation risks as the airport scans.”