Feds Admit Storing Body Scans

Scanners capable of storing, sending images
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 6, 2010 1:42 AM CDT
Feds Admit Storing Body Scans
The TSA's millimeter wave body scan.   (TSA)

The "virtual strip search" images taken by airport body scanners, which federal agencies have long insisted can't and won't be stored, have been stored in the tens of thousands. The US Marshals service has admitted that over 30,000 of the über-revealing images were stored at a single courthouse, CNET reports. The machines will soon be in use at almost every major US airport, according to Homeland Security.

The TSA claimed last year that the machines cannot store nor transmit the images, but officials later admitted that the agency required manufacturers to include those functions for "testing, training, and evaluation purposes." The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a lawsuit, demanding a federal judge pull the plug on the TSA's scanning program. "This is the Department of Homeland Security subjecting every US traveler to an intrusive search that can be recorded without any suspicion," the group's director says. "It's outrageous." (More TSA stories.)

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