Terrorism and planes: Is it time to bare all?

Technology that reveals objects hidden under clothes exists, and many experts say it would have detected the explosive carried aboard the Detroit-bound flight last week. But the machines have been fought by privacy advocates who say the technology is too intrusive, leading to a newly intensified debate over the limits of airport security.

Screening technologies with names such as millimeter-wave and backscatter X-ray can show contours of the body and reveal foreign objects. Such machines, properly used, are a leap ahead of metal detectors used in most airports, and supporters say they are necessary to keep up with potential terrorists.

"If they'd been deployed, this would pick up this kind of device," said Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary, referring to chemicals hidden in the underwear of the Nigerian man who federal officials say tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day.

But others say the technology is no security panacea, and that its use should be controlled carefully because of risks to privacy, including the potential for its ghostly naked images to show up on the Internet.

"The big question to our country is how to balance the need for personal privacy with the safety and security needs of our country," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who sponsored a successful House measure this year to require that the devices be used only as a secondary screening method and to set punishments for government employees who copy or share images. (The bill has not passed in the Senate.)

"I'm on an airplane every three or four days; I want that plane to be as safe and secure as possible," he said. However, "I don't think anybody needs to see my 8-year-old naked in order to secure that airplane."

Full-body-imaging machines are in use in 19 U.S. airports and are used as the primary method of screening at six — San Francisco; Las Vegas; Salt Lake City; Miami; Albuquerque, N.M., and Tulsa, Okla. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) this year announced plans to buy 150 more machines and to use them as the primary screening method for passengers.

That prompted a coalition of 24 privacy groups to send a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the American Civil Liberties Union. "Your agency will be capturing the naked photographs of millions of American air travelers suspected of no wrongdoing," it said.

Images produced by the machines in the days before privacy advocates began using phrases such as "digital strip search" could be startlingly detailed. Machines used in airports today, however, protect privacy to a greater extent, TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee said.

Depending on the specific technology used, faces might be obscured or bodies reduced to the equivalent of a chalk outline. Also, the person reviewing the images must be in a separate room and cannot see who is entering the scanner. Machines have been modified to make it impossible to store the images, Lee said, and the procedure "is always optional to all passengers." Anyone who refuses to be scanned "will receive an equivalent screening": a full pat-down.

Since the Christmas bombing attempt, supporters of tighter security have raised their voices in criticism of privacy advocates. "I do think the privacy groups have some explaining to do," said Stewart Baker, a former homeland-security official in the administration of President George W. Bush.

However, he added, body-imaging technology has limits — the machines, for example, can't detect objects stowed in bodily orifices or concealed within the folds of an obese person's flesh.

Bruce Schneier, a security expert who has been critical of the technology, said the latest incident had not changed his mind. "If there are a hundred tactics and I protect against two of them, I'm not making you safer," he said. "If we use full-body scanning, they're going to do something else."

The millions of dollars being spent on new equipment, he said, would be better invested in investigation and intelligence work to detect bombers before they arrive at the airport.

Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said his group had not objected to use of the devices, as long as they were designed not to store and record images.

Chertoff said he found such statements a "strategic retreat" from more strident positions taken before last week's terrorism attempt. He acknowledged that "nothing is 100 percent," but added, "the more difficult you make it for someone to conceal weapons, the fewer people who are going to be willing or capable of concealment" and the harder it would be to make effective weapons.

Information from McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.