Suck in your gut if you volunteer to be screened at Salt Lake City's airport by a body-scanning machine that looks through clothing for weapons, explosives and other items that could cause harm or take down an airplane.
Though civil liberties advocates are wary, as early as next month, the Transportation Security Administration will launch a body-scanner test at a Terminal Two security line to see whether the $170,000 machine can replace walk-through metal detectors as a passenger-screening tool.
The technology has been proved as a backup at 20 airports around the country. The experiment in Salt Lake City and a handful of other airports will determine if body screeners can be used as TSA's primary tool to screen passengers, spokesman Dwayne Baird said Monday.
But civil libertarians worry that whole-body screening is an invasion of privacy. Although the procedure can detect items metal detectors can't, the machine also penetrates through layers of clothing to make three-dimensional images that are certain to embarrass some people, they say.
"They are virtual strip searches. You see a fairly graphic picture of the naked body. It's not quite Playboy quality, but it's graphic enough," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program.
Officials at Salt Lake City International Airport were concerned enough several months ago to urge TSA to test the devices elsewhere. The federal agency agreed to a delay until now, airport spokeswoman Barbara Gann said.
"We were concerned about the reaction and wanted it to be used somewhere else first so we could make sure it was an appropriate fit for our community," Gann said.
"We still have concerns and we are very aware that it is disturbing to some people. Therefore, we were insistent on the ability [of people going through security] to decline the whole-body imaging."
Those who decline to be screened will undergo metal detector screening and a pat-down by a TSA officer.
In tests elsewhere, passenger Natalie Miller described the screening experience to USA Today as "pretty cool" after passing through a scanner at the Tulsa, Okla., airport. "I thought the machines just detected metal."
It is unclear whether TSA will roll the machines out across the country. Baird said "there is no indication" that the 9-foot-tall devices will replace the magnetometers that have screened passengers since 1973.
Baird discounted allegations that the images reveal too much. He said faces are blurred. Images are viewed by a TSA officer in a separate room away from the checkpoint. Attending officers can't see the image.
The officer looking at images in the remote location cannot print, export or store them. The depictions are deleted as soon as each passenger clears security, Baird said. "It's more like a black-and-white negative of the outline of the body. It's not graphic enough in detail that … would be pornographic."
Baird's assurance doesn't sway Steinhardt. He calls whole-body screening a "gross indignity," and said the ACLU may take legal action if TSA decides to put the machines in the nation's airports.
"In the latest iteration [of the machines], they attempt to blur out faces. But it's a little like being asked to parade naked with a bag over your face to board a plane," he said.
The test will be staged in the terminal that Delta Air Lines passengers use to reach their gates.
Airline spokesman Anthony Black said the carrier has been aware of the devices since TSA began testing the technology more than a year ago.
Passengers who opt to take part in the experiment will enter the screening machine. They will be asked to stand in two different positions for a few moments.
Radio-frequency energy in a millimeter wave spectrum will be beamed over the passenger from two antennas rotating around the body.
The other cities where this round of experiments are being conducted are Albuquerque N.M.; Las Vegas; Miami; San Francisco.
