1. Sorry trans people (I am one...) but you SHOULD be inspected more closely if you are wearing prosthetics of any type. Same for anyone with medical equipment, other prosthetics, etc. The machines are doing their job if they detect this stuff.

2. Yes, they collect data that can be saved and can be used to create an image. The TSA, however, does neither.

3. Of course they're similar to prison procedures - the goal is the same - know what is coming in.

Neither you nor anyone on this board knows that to be certain.

Although I agree with you that ATR-equipped MMW units don't display an image on a screen for a TSO to view, the original configuration of these machines DID create a nude image of the body, which was displayed on a screen and viewed by one or more TSOs. In fact, if memory serves, the original-original configuration, when the first few test units were deployed, didn't even have the screens in a segregated private room - the so-called perv box - until some public complaints about the nude imagery were made, and subsequent units had the viewing stations moved to an enclosed remote room.

I don't object to the term NoS, despite the current ATR configuration. I believe that the machines currently create no image, but instead send the raw scan return data to the ATR software for analysis, but the imaging modules were most likely not removed when the ATR upgrades were installed, only disabled or bypassed. This is my belief, based on the knowledge of the machines I've gleaned from reading articles and my own knowledge of things like software coding and data analysis, but I don't have any concrete proof to back that belief up.

I have no philosophical objection to a machine that scans you without making an image - it's precisely what a WTMD does, after all - but these machines are also horrendously expensive, time-consuming, and nearly useless as a true screening tool, so I'm still in favor of their removal, or at least their removal as a primary screening methodology.

1. WHY should people who have prosthetic body parts be treated any different than those with all original parts? That is a ridiculous and egregious singling out of people for no good reason - merely having a prosthetic body part in no way makes you more of a security risk than anyone else. It's horribly discriminating to treat such people differently, except for those practical differences mandated by their conditions, i.e. some people are physically incapable of walking up stairs, so they are required to take elevators or ramps.

2. As petaluma said above, nobody here is absolutely certain of that. I tend to believe that they don't save the data, simply because there is no real need for it, but I can't rule out the possibility that the data are being saved or transmitted.

2. The goal may be the same, but there the similarity ends - prison procedures are used on convicted criminals, whose rights have been legally abridged by their conviction, AFTER they receive the due process guaranteed them under the Constitution. Travelers, on the other hand, are NOT convicted criminals in a prison, and the full force of Constitutional protections are still accorded their rights. Thus, procedures which may be legally used in a prison may not necessarily be legally used on innocent travelers without warrant, probable cause, or articulable suspicion.

This.

Exhibit 1 is Alaska Rep. Sharon Cissna: full article here.
Exhibit 2: Tom Sawyer: article here

Note: TSA did this to Mr Sawyer twice: http://news.travel.aol.com/2011/07/2...own-urine-aga/

Exhibit 3: Cathi Bossi: article here

Forcing women to remove prostheses? Prodding ostomy bags until they burst? Twice? Looking under a kid's bandaid? None of that is justified.

It's justified because a prosthetic is a foreign object, plain and simple. It could EASILY be concealing explosives or, and this is MUCH more likely, narcotics.

First, please demonstrate that there is a statistically significant correlation between terrorism and the wearing of a prosthetic device.

While you are attempting to track down a relevant study, please consider the extension of your original statement to ingested substances and substances carried in body cavities. Your rectum could EASILY be concealing explosives or narcotics, you know. Please also consider that it is not TSA's job to find drugs.

It is not the TSAs job to look for drugs (or "large" amounts of cash, or flash cards, etc).

Poking, prodding and forcing removal of medical devices and prosthetic's is not required for any sort of sane, effective screening purpose. There is a fast, simple, cheap and effective way of screening such objects without assaulting, traumatizing or harassing the traveling public. ETD swabs. Anything more then that is unjustified, unnecessary and in breach of what the courts allow for the Administrative Search that TSA is supposed to be following.

Food in the stomach constitutes foreign objects too.

Rather than being tasked to harass people for harmless objects or even narcotics, the administrative special purposes search conducted by the TSA has been lawfully allowed for purposes of interedicting contraband weapons, explosives, incendiaries.

The food and drinks you consumed for breakfast, lunch, dinner or snacks between meals is no more or less a security risk than a harmless prosthetic, bandage, diaper or other excretion/excrement collection sack. Perhaps the TSA should perform gastric biopsies too to make sure the food in your stomach is food and not some other sort of foreign object?

Piling on a bit: the TSA is legally forbidden to conduct general-purpose "looking for anything illegal" searches. The only way they are able to stay even slightly on the correct side of the Fourth Amendment is by conducting administrative searches for narrowly-defined lists of items which pose a direct threat to aircraft/traveler security.

General-purpose searches for anything that might happen to be illegal require probable cause or a warrant for each individual person to be searched, which is something not even the most desperate-to-get-elected "secure the homeland" politician could make happen.

Are narcotics a threat to aviation? Are large sums of money being carried domestically?

If someone wants to get something past the checkpoint (prosthetic full of contraband, large sums of legal cash, guns), it's much more likely to happen with the compliance of TSOs. Heck, if you've got a TSO working with you, you don't even need to bother with 'artful concealment'.

A BDO in BUF (who had been fired and re-hired once already) was convicted of using her position to escort drug couriers carrying large sums of $ around the checkpoint.

There was a very recent bust that involved a airport/airline employees carrying guns around the checkpoint unchallenged and handing them off to a pax already inside the sterile area - this went on for months and occurred multiple times. TSA sets the security standards and permits this unfettered access, although the gun smuggling problems in Florida have gotten so out-of-control that some airport employees are now screened at MCO and MIA.

goalie posts TSA's weekly fabrication of confiscated items. Do you recall TSA ever finding anything 'artfully concealed' in a prosthetic or an ostomy bag or an adult diaper? Given TSA's reputation for bullying, particularly TSA's penchant for mistreating the handicapped, do you think they wouldn't go out of their way to remind the public that there's a very real reason to squeeze ostomy bags until they burst or insist on visual examination of a wet adult diaper?

The highlighted part of your post begs me to question; was this the recent incident at ATL? If so it wasn't a TSO but an airport worker who entered through employee access doors without any screening enabling him to bring in the 129 guns in multiple entries without being detected.

Only police work in New York led to the discovery of how the guns were being moved.

You are correct! Same one-time background check and unchallenged access to the sterile areas, but it was airport employees. Thanks for catching that, I will correct my post.

TSA HQ is responsible for allowing employees unfettered access - except, apparently, in MIA and MCO, where multiple gun smuggling problems led to some screening for airport employees.

Nope, the OP is talking about the "random" alarms at the WTMD, after which even at PreCheck checkpoints you get sent to the nude-o-scope, or, optionally, a grope-fest.

Up until a couple of months ago, these were handled by means of an ETD swab of the pax's hands and occasionally bags, which though annoying wasn't nearly as big of an impediment as the nude-o-scope. IME, the "random" trips to the nude-o-scope do incur a significant delay (more than the ETD, typically), while your items are sitting on the belt out of your sight.

The whole point of Pre is supposed to be that the pax is trusted enough to not need to be sent into the scanners; it's a "trusted traveler" program. I won't get into the whole "randomizer" nonsense of sending non-Pre pax to the Pre lanes; that's nothing but an advertising gimmick to convince pax they should shell out $85 to be treated the way all airline pax should be...


I've found that being sent to the nude-o-scope easily adds 2-3 minutes to the checkpoint experience... sure, "just" 2-3 minutes, but when there's a line for the scanner (as there was last time I flew), and a shortage of screeners to pat down the alarms (from the screen, my necklace alarmed, the button on my back pocket did, and my contact lenses in my pocket did--had to wait another 2-3 minutes for someone to come and grope these spots).

I'm a bit worried about my next trip in that I'm still wearing surgical dressings on a healing incision, and I guarantee they will alarm the nude-o-scope. I can just see it now: "Sir, I have to remove these and check to make sure you're not concealing anything..." I do have a doctor's note advising me not to travel until 2/1 due to surgery, but I guess I now have to go back and ask for one saying, "Mr. Exerda has a surgical dressing on his wound which should not be disturbed."

I prefer the term Surrender Box(TM) as regardless of what the machine actually does, one has to put one's hands in the air in the surrender position in order to comply with the demands of those who perate it.

That recently happened to me at TPA. I initially thought I'd set off some alarm (shoes have before) until realizing once or twice in the past they've just sent me through the WTMD again, like in the "good old days."

A symbolic pose indeed.