Kenneth Johnson dreads airport security. With two titanium shoulder replacements and an artificial knee, Johnson, 65, often has to endure pat-downs that require him to hold out his arms as agents frisk him for weapons. The five-minute ordeal is painful.
On Feb. 23, Johnson became the first passenger in the world to opt for a new screening procedure being tested in Phoenix. After a peek at the brochure, he stood briefly in front of a blue wall and raised his hands for a few seconds as he was scanned front and back.
In a booth 15 metres away, a security officer examined his image on a computer monitor and gave the all-clear. Johnson was on his way.
While the SmartCheck machine has brought protests from privacy advocates, Johnson gave it the thumbs-up.
"It was no big deal," said the Phoenix man, who still shudders at being strip-searched in a Nigerian airport in 1985.
"It's faster" than a pat-down, he said, a common security procedure for passengers who have been selected for secondary screening. "It's less pain for me."
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is the first airport in the United States to conduct a pilot program with the SmartCheck security scanner, which uses backscatter X-ray technology, a form of low-level radiation that penetrates clothing.
Its creator, Boston-based American Science and Engineering Inc., says the "personnel-screening system," which comes with a price tag of about $113,000, has been designed for prisons and government buildings as well.
Similar systems were developed in the 1990s, says vice-president of marketing Joe Reiss. But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, his company presented a refined system to skittish U.S. security officials.
An early generation of images, however, proved too revealing, with bodies clearly defined. That triggered an outcry from such privacy protection groups as the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Transportation Security Administration, which oversees security in 425 U.S. airports, agreed that the pictures were invasive and asked for changes.
The company complied. The machines now blur some details and render an image similar to a chalk outline that still shows some body creases while promising to disclose "all types of threat objects," Reiss said.
Implants larger than small pins, such as Johnson's shoulder and knee replacements, would also show up, TSA officials said.
But security authorities will not divulge exactly what does and does not show up on a SmartCheck image and will not say whether the machine has nabbed any passengers carrying suspicious objects.
Authorities in New York and Los Angeles are believed to be considering their own pilot programs with the scanners, Reiss said.
No Canadian airports are using the machines, but "we're studying the backscatter technology in the United States," said Anna-Karina Tabunar, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, which is responsible for screening procedures at Canadian airports. Any new technology, she said, would require Transport Canada approval.
Tabunar said CATSA is aware of the privacy issues surrounding backscatter technology.
Those issues have the ACLU on alert. "We oppose the use of this machine as a routine screening tool," said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU's Arizona chapter. "People should be balancing security with privacy."
For screening, Meetze favours the puffer machine, also known as an explosives trace-detection portal machine, in which a passenger is subjected to a series of blasts of air that dislodge and detect even microscopic particles of gunpowder or bomb residue.
The devices, which produce the sound and sensation of a fun house, are in use at dozens of U.S. airports, the Statue of Liberty and Toronto's CN Tower.
"This is a less invasive, less intrusive tool," Meetze said.
Still, the ACLU has taken no legal action against the use of backscatter technology while X-ray screening remains voluntary. Passengers who set off security alarms at metal detectors can still choose a traditional pat-down.
