What Happens to Your Image After the Airport Scan?

August 23rd, 2010. By Hunter West

A group known as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), working through a Freedom of Information Act request, obtained what was described as a “representative sample” of more than 35,000 ‘whole body images’ of attendees at a US courthouse in Orlando. 

The images are captured by millimeter wave technology and are ghost-like, not showing much detail. 

However, what bothers the EPIC and privacy advocates everywhere, is that the images were even available at all. 

The Bijot Gen2 imaging system scans and captures the images of people entering the court facility, for security purposes. US marshals have the capacity to view the current image, and the previous two images, while on security detail. 

But instead of being automatically purged the images—according to an August 4^th CNN report—are automatically stored in the system’s hard drive. While the images are available for viewing after the fact, they can only be accessed with the use of a system pass code. 

Privacy advocates maintain that this type of archiving makes them nervous with regard to the use of backscatter X-ray machines at the nation’s airports. While the full-body scans are designed to make air travel safer, the images are much more revealing than the grainy, ghost-like images inherent to the machines currently used by US marshals. 

Marc Rotenberg of the EPIC agreed that the Marshals Service’s images are “not particularly revealing” but said the experience highlights the necessity for prohibitions on government’s use of backscatter technology, which can capture far more revealing images by using X-rays to provide detailed images in, or under a person’s clothing. 

“The only thing that is preventing the TSA from [storing images] is that we keep raising this with them,” Rotenberg said. 

The EPIC and other privacy groups have filed suit against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), in an effort to block the use of revealing body imaging machines at airports. 

While such an outcome may not be realistic, there is no question that the storage (and potential access) of revealing body images needs to be conclusively addressed. 

Now, I’m as shy as the next guy and I hate like hell the thought that a machine is going to be looking through my clothes to see if I’m concealing a dangerous weapon anywhere on my person—and the various parts of my personage that may be revealed in the process. 

But hey, if it’s going to make the plane more safe for my fellow passengers, and myself so be it. 

But why is there the need to store those images indefinitely? For a period of time, perhaps—in the event of a problem with the plane, requiring investigators to return to the scanner images for a second look. 

But indefinitely? 

To me, that’s an invasion of my privacy and my human rights. Scan me as I walk onto the plane—but once that plane safely lands at its destination there is no further need for that image of me, and it should be gone. 

TSA, in written comments to CNN claimed that images at airports “cannot be stored, transmitted or printed” when in normal operation. 

“TSA has clearly demonstrated the extensive steps and strict measures that have been taken to protect passenger privacy,” the agency said. 

But is that enough? 

What’s to prevent a disgruntled employee with security clearance from mining the storage capability for images that wind up on the Internet? Faces are blurred out. But what if I have a mark, a growth or some other feature that makes me unique and identifiable? 

And here’s another revelation… 

CNN reports that the Marshals Service tested a machine similar to that used at the Middle District of Florida courthouse in Orlando, back in 2007 and 2008. The test was done at a US courthouse in Washington for about 90 days, was for testing purposes only and not used to screen individuals entering the courthouse. 

But images were taken and stored, automatically, in the hard drive. 

Then the machine went back to the vendor. 

The vendor now, has control of those images. Not full-body scan, backscatter images, mind you. No, these are the ghost-like and less-revealing images of the millimeter wave technology. 

But you can see the potential for danger. 

If a full-body imaging machine at an airport goes on the fritz, who fixes it? And who has access to those images then? 

If the machine is replaced, are the images deleted before the machine is returned to the vendor? And what about backup files? Are they erased, too? 

Clearly this has to be debated in the hallowed halls of Congress before people start suing as a matter of habit, every time they fly, to have those images deleted once and for all, once the plane safely lands.

Tags: Airline, Airport Security, Privacy

This was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 10:31 am and is filed under Airlines, Intellectual Property . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.