Parashuram blog

Website publishes images captured by X-ray body scanners

Well, this won't do much to tamp downover the TSA's use of X-ray body scanners: U.S. Marshals at a federal courthouse in Florida saved 35,000 images of people passing through scanners that were supposed to be destroyed. The tech website(Warning: Though the images are very indistinct, in theory, at least, not all of them are safe for work.)

Explaining the decision to publish the grainy images, Joel Johnson, Gizmodo's editor-at-large, writes that the idea is to show "the security limitations of not just this particular machine, but millimeter wave and X-ray backscatter body scanners operated by federal employees in our courthouses and by TSA officers in airports across the country. That we can see these images today almost guarantees that others will be seeing similar images in the future. If you're lucky, it might even be a picture of you or your family."

Somewhat surprisingly,finds that more than 80 percent of Americans support full-body scanners in airports despite the recent uproar about incidents involving their allegedly intrusive use. It should be noted, however, that CBS commissioned this poll before America's pilot, Capt. Sully Sullenberger,this morning. Telling CNN's Kiran Chetry that his wife "was touched in sensitive places" by a TSA agent during a recent trip, Sullenberger said the stepped-up security measures are ineffective as well as intrusive: "I can tell you from my perspective as an airline pilot for three decades, this just isn't an effective use of our resources."

Surely, if anyone can turn around the opinion of an 80 percent majority, it's Captain Sully.