Making Airport Scanners Less Objectionable

Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that one of the researchers who helped develop the software for the scanners says there is a simple fix that would make scanning less objectionable. The fix would distort the images captured on full-body scanners so they look like reflections in a fun-house mirror, but any potentially dangerous objects would be clearly revealed, says Willard 'Bill' Wattenburg, a former nuclear weapons designer at the Livermore lab. 'Why not just distort the image into something grotesque so that there isn't anything titillating or exciting about it?' asks Wattenburg, adding that the modification is so simple that 'a 6-year-old could do the same thing with Photoshop... It's probably a few weeks' modification of the program.' Wattenburg said he was rebuffed when he offered the concept to Department of Homeland Security officials four years ago. A TSA official said the agency is working on development of scanner technology that would reduce the image to a 'generic icon, a generic stick figure' that would still reveal potentially dangerous items." Reader FleaPlus points out an unintended consequence: some transportation economists believe that the TSA's new invasive techniques may lead to more deaths as more people use road transportation to avoid flying — much more dangerous by the mile than air travel.

Comments

Re:Great...now just one more issue....

[falsified]

It's definitely true that the ticket price alone doesn't tell the whole story. However, I don't think the extra fees work out to $42 a person. Most people don't check luggage when flying domestically, and many of those that do have elite status that let them check bags for free.

There are WAY more elite customers per plane than people realize; my gold status on Delta got me a first-class upgrade maybe 15-20% of the time, on shortish (fewer than three hours) flights that would have had few to no people actually paying for first-class tickets.

The GP says that ticket/fee prices are going up to offset fewer air travelers; while there was a drop in '09, that was more about the recession than anything else, and the number of tickets sold is back up in 2010. I can't find any older data, though I found an article describing 2007 as a "record year" for number of air travelers. It seems that if there was a drop between 2001 and 2007, there was also a recovery.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no apologist, and I think money is at the root of a lot of this (I mostly think that the Obama administration doesn't want to find out if it can afford a baseless "SOFT ON TERR-UH!" attack by implementing reasonable measures), but the money is coming from these security corporations more than anything else. Just look at these firms coming out of the woodwork offering to take over inspection from the TSA, and the new, allegedly "small-government" congressmen coming in to vouch for them.