In Retreat, TSA Pulling 'Backscatter' Naked-Image Scanners from Airports

The roughly 200 of the 800 or so whole-body images being used at 200 U.S. airports -- the backscatter ones made by a company called Rapiscan -- will be removed by the TSA, which lost a battle with Congress over the issue of the naked images the machines record.

This today from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which has led the fight against the machines on the ground of privacy intrusion:

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Latest News - January 18, 2013

TSA to Pull Naked Body Scanners Out of US Airports

The US Transportation Security Administration will end the contract for backscatter x-ray devices. As a consequence, all devices that produce a detailed naked image of air travelers will be removed from US airports. Beginning in 2005, EPIC and then a coalition of privacy advocates, scientists, legal experts and lawmakers urged the TSA not to deploy the devices. The groups petitioned DHS Secretary Napolitano to suspend the program pending a thorough review. The agency went forward and EPIC sued. In EPIC v. DHS, the DC Circuit held that the devices could be used as long as passengers were able to opt-out. The federal appeals court also ordered the agency to "promptly" begin a public rulemaking. That process will likely begin in March 2013. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS and EPIC: Body Scanners.

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TSA Body-Scanners: Follow the Money

The story about Michael Chertoff's financial interests in working as a consultant for a major manufacturer during the $2.4 billion initial phase of awarding contracts for airport body-scanner machines has been around since the Washington Post first timidly wrote it, and then quickly backed off early this year. The Post news story, interestingly, was published the same say that the same newspaper published an op-ed piece by Chertoff arguing the case for the machines. A disclosure notice about Chertoff's financial interests was added to the online version later. The Post story and the op-ed piece both ran on New Year's Day, when nobody reads a newspaper.

Till recently, the media haven't paid a lot of attention to the fact that, while he was Homeland Security secretary and afterward, when he was making money from it, Chertoff energetically promoted these machines, which cost over $100,000 apiece. The TSA now has 400 deployed at 70 airports, and another 600 due on line in the next year.

Generating fear is famously and historically profitable on many levels. As always, following the money is an excellent tip for figuring out the evidently unfathomable. Here's a good summary of the Chertoff scandal in the Huffington Post today.

And here is a nice wrap-up USA Today did the other day on the whole sordid money-generating framework around this issue, including the lobbying spending by the manufacturers of these machines.

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