The U.S. Transportation Security Administration today promised to protect air travelers' privacy as TSA personnel peer through their clothes.
... "We are committed to testing technologies that improve security while protecting passenger privacy," said TSA administrator Kip Hawley in a statement. "Privacy is ensured through the anonymity of the image: It will never be stored, transmitted, or printed, and it will be deleted immediately once viewed."
Ensuring privacy, as the TSA describes it, involves having security officers view images from remote locations. Thus, the security officer cannot identify the passenger, visually or by some other means, but can send word to fellow officers if a threat is detected.
According to the TSA, the scanning system applies a security algorithm to further protect passenger privacy by obscuring the passenger's face.
Not everyone finds such assurances credible. In a statement, Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program, spelled out three objections to the TSA's plans.
Source - InformationWeek
