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March 6, 2007

Will you be photographed naked for your country? Can we Google it later?

Yesterday, 1,991 people clicked on a blog item I wrote nearly two years ago, on May 25, 2005, on the handmade blog page I used before blog software: Nude X-ray photos at airport security?

Nearly 500 more have come by so far this morning. Virtually all of them arrived via this Google Images link. The AP photo bringing them here in droves is of Susan Hallowell, Director of Security Operations for the Transportation Security Administration, fully clothed. It's the number one result of a search on her name at Google Images.

I suspect the ruckus was caused by William Saletan of Slate, who began his Saturday column -- with links and headlined Digital Penetration: Invasion of the naked body scanners at Slate, and linkless in the Washington Post on Sunday as Naked Came The Passenger -- with,

Psssst. Want to see Susan Hallowell naked? Look at the Feb. 24 New York Times. She's on page A10.

Hallowell runs the Transportation Security Administration's research lab. Four years ago, she volunteered to be scanned by a backscatter X-ray machine, which sees through clothing. She was wearing a skirt and a blazer. But in the picture, she's as good as naked.

Last week, TSA began using backscatters to screen airline passengers for weapons. The first machine is up and running in Phoenix. The next ones will be in New York and Los Angeles. The machines have been modified with a "privacy algorithm" to clean up what they show. But even the more cartoon-like images they now display tell you more than you need to know about the people seated next to you.

Are you up for this? Are you ready to get naked for your country?...

Susan Hallowell was. How long before the rest of the flying public are enshrined in similar galleries in our birthday suits?

Saletan's piece ends,

Hallowell volunteered for this notoriety. But what happened to her mustn't happen to others. In the age of body scans, privacy means keeping your name, your face, and your nude image apart. That job doesn't end at the security gate; it begins there. Will your scan leak? "Images will not be printed, stored or transmitted," TSA swears on its Web site. Directly above that assurance, the agency has posted four nude pictures—"actual images shown to the Transportation Security Officer during the backscatter process." And you thought airport screeners had no sense of humor.

Enough with the fairy tales. We lost our innocence when the planes hit the towers. Now we're losing our modesty. If we're going to be ogled, at least protect us from being Googled.

Does anybody really believe that the raw images won't leak? How much do you think an airport screener could get for nude celebrity backscatter scans? The celebrity mugshots at The Smoking Gun didn't come from the celebrities' publicists, after all.

Road trips look better all the time.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 10:19 AM | Permalink