Greetings. The body image scanner lobby is out in full force to convince governments around the world to buy their products, and to scare the flying public into sheepishly putting up with these invasive devices that will not even be effective in stopping dedicated terrorists.

But money talks -- as demonstrated by Bush-era Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff making the TV rounds promoting these scanners. Oh, by the way, he now works for one of the companies that manufacturers the scanners. Surprise!

There's lots of false or misleading information floating around regarding the scanners themselves.

First is the claim that there's nothing to worry about related to the radiation from these devices. There are two types of units -- millimeter wave and backscatter x-ray. The former do not produce ionizing radiation, but recent research suggests that they still carry risks of cellular changes. X-rays we know far better, and the proponents of this technology make various claims about how little dosage is involved in each scan.

These dosage numbers seem to vary all over the place, even changing dramatically from day to day on Web sites that purport to be giving accurate information. Comparisons with background radiation at altitude and time spent in the sunshine is fine, but the bottom line is that statistics clearly indicate that subjecting mass populations (including frequent flyers) to even small amounts of additional radiation will result in additional cancer deaths. Many deaths? Probably not that can be proven, anyway. But if your "lucky" number comes up, too bad for you.

Another issue -- the claims of safety regarding these scanners all assume accurate calibration. Yet we've recently seen that major hospitals -- including right here in L.A. -- have been found to have medical CAT x-ray scanners that in some cases massively overdosed patients (not just on one bad day, but over long periods of time) with radiation, enough to cause burns and hair loss, not to mention other potential problems down the line. That's in relatively calm and clean hospital environments. If airport body scanners end up badly calibrated -- as is typical for baggage x-ray units that vary widely in intensity -- the risks are obvious.

The many detailed naked images floating around the media and Net from various scanners are widely known. The level of detail can be astonishing. A recent YouTube video purported to show how easy it was to digitally reverse such images to show a naked positive (I noted this video earlier today in another venue.)

That video turns out to have been doctored but was convincing. Why? Because my own experiments have shown that reversing such images does indeed yield almost identical effects. Here's my reversal [Adults Only] of an image provided by TSA as part of a widely seen demo.

Pro-scanner propaganda screams that new scanners don't show this level of detail.

That's only partly true. There are newer systems that display more "symbolic" imagery (e.g. "chalk line" body images). But the fact is that many of the units in use today do display full detail.

Perhaps of even more concern, my sources that have been involved in the evaluation of body image scanners in security contexts tell me that the ability of such scanners to actually find contraband on body areas where it can theoretically be detected (e.g. not in body orifices, etc.) varies directly with the level of detail shown. The less detailed the image, the more likely bad stuff will slip through. Also, I'm told that in practice it's often necessary to have two-way communication between the security personnel at the scanner and the remote scanner viewer, in order to instruct the scanning target to reposition themselves in various ways to get a full scan. And of course, the full detailed scan is the initial result internally in all cases, whether or not a simplified image is actually displayed to the operator.

The irony of all this is that the use of a "booty bomb" -- explosives inserted into the body in various ways, is an effective mechanism to evade all of these body imagery systems that don't use body-penetrating x-rays.

Unfortunately, the more clearly one looks at the reality of these scanners and how they're being promoted, the murkier the image actually becomes.

--Lauren--