This Time, X-Rays are OK

The next time you’re at the airport security checkpoint, your luggage may not be the only thing that gets X-rayed. As reported in a recent New York Times article, the SmartCheck body scanner, the newest innovation in transportation security, made its debut at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix earlier this year. The scanner can see under travelers’ clothes to detect if they are carrying anything dangerous on board. But before you freak out, you should know the facts. The SmartCheck scanner causes negligible harm and may greatly improve airport security.

The SmartCheck machine is designed to scan a passenger’s body for guns and explosives and aims to increase the efficiency of secondary searches, which are conducted only after passengers have passed through the metal detector. The scanner provides those passengers selected for such searches with a less intrusive alternative to the pat-down or strip search. The machine is still in its testing stages, but is scheduled to eventually make its way into JFK and Los Angeles International airports.

The government believes that use of the scanner will greatly improve airline safety. A full body X-ray scan can reveal carefully concealed plastic weapons or liquid explosives that metal detectors miss. A 30-second scan in place of a pat-down or strip search would also greatly expedite travelers’ painfully slow passage through security.

The prospect of implementing the SmartCheck nationwide should sound great to most rational people, but the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) disagrees. The ACLU has wasted little time in rallying its lawyers to persuade Congress to ban the use of such technology for routine security screening. Because X-rays pass through clothing, an ACLU officer, quoted in the New York Times, dubbed the scan a “virtual strip search,” claiming that the additional security of the scan is not worth the loss of passenger privacy.

The ACLU, however, has acted rashly in declaring that this promising new technology infringes on our inalienable right to remain clothed.

The imaging software used only displays outlines of each passenger—anything exciting thankfully remains blurred—and security employees, who are required to be of the same gender as the scanned passenger, view the images in small, private rooms. Furthermore, images are never stored or distributed for any reason.

Questions have also been raised about the machine’s safety. X-ray exposure is generally considered unhealthy, so if passengers had to receive a hefty dose of them every time they were about to step on a plane, using the SmartCheck would be a blatant violation of civil liberties.

Fortunately though, this is not the case. Although X-rays are never good for you, the machine uses only 10 microRem of X-rays per scan, an extremely low dosage level that some experts deem inconsequential, even for pregnant women. In fact, according to the machine’s manufacturer, a single scan constitutes the same amount of radiation exposure that passengers receive for every two minutes spent in the air. In other words, getting scanned is roughly the equivalent of spending a couple of minutes extra on your next flight.

The unwarranted concerns voiced by the ACLU illustrate the fact that all the evidence must be fully examined before leaping to a judgment—otherwise, legitimate criticisms in the future will be dismissed offhand. The government has never been afraid of targeting civil liberties in the name of national security in the past, but we would be foolish to assume that this is true for all governmental policies. In this particular case, the SmartCheck scanner, aside from being another minor inconvenience, certainly does not infringe upon our civil liberties any more than the ordinary metal detector.


Jimmy Y. Li ’09, a Crimson editorial comper, is a neurobiology concentrator in Leverett House.