A newer technology has been in use at Lihue Airport since last month - advanced imaging devices, which can look though a person's clothing to produce full-body images. Other airports in Hawaii are supposed to get them in months to come, and approximately 125 units have been installed nationwide to date.
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Concerns include complaints that some airport officials do not inform passengers that they can refuse the whole body scan but instead choose to go through a regular type metal detector and pat-down (conducted by a person of the same gender). Conversely, the whole body imaging machine can be manned by a person of the opposite gender.
What are your thoughts about this? Do you see it as a potential invasion of privacy, or just something to be accepted in these days of terrorism?
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The imagers use one of two technologies: backscatter, which uses low-level X-rays to produce images that look like chalk etchings; or millimeter wave, which uses electromagnetic waves to create vivid black-and-white images not unlike photo negatives. The Lihue scanner is a backscatter device.
"The amount of radiation from backscatter screening is equivalent to two minutes of flight on an airplane, and the energy projected by millimeter wave technology is 10,000 times less than a cell phone transmission," a TSA website says.
What are your thoughts about this? Do you see it as a potential invasion of privacy, or just something to be accepted in these days of terrorism?
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