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McCarran Debuts Whole Body Screening

New Technology Sees Beyond Customers' Clothes

POSTED: 8:06 pm PDT September 30, 2008
UPDATED: 10:35 pm PDT September 30, 2008

New airport security is in place at McCarran Airport.

But is one part of the new security too intrusive on patrons’ privacy?

Since 9/11, there has been a push to improve security at airports nationwide, but has one measure gone too far?

"Over my right shoulder is McCarran's new C annex security checkpoint," said Randall H. Walker of the Clark County Department of Aviation.

It’s the new 12-lane checkpoint at McCarran. It has added TSA staffers and the latest technology, millimeter wave detection. It is advanced X-ray equipment – a whole body imaging system, which has the ability to look beyond what customers are wearing.

"This technology includes whole body imagery that uses harmless millimeter waves to create an image that enables TSA, without physical contact, to detect weapons, explosives and other metallic and non-metallic objects concealed under layers of clothing," Walker said.

But not everyone is on board whole body imaging.

"This is a highly invasive technology that I think if people understood fully, would be troubled by," said Gary Peck of the ACLU.

Peck said even though who will go through is random, it is an invasion of privacy.

"The images created are essentially of a person that make them, for all intensive purposes, naked to the eye and can reveal all sorts of private information," Peck said.

But the new imaging machines are the wave of the future, and McCarran could have more on the way.

ACLU officials fear people don't understand the imaging system, so they want to educate as many as possible.


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