The Back Scanners Are Either Useless or Extremely Dangerous
 

I went through security and got the backscanner. This airport has no lounge so I wanted to go outside. I went through 3 backscanner xrays. I did it with a full bag and a bandage on my tattoo. Not one alarm.

Either the backscanner doesn't show anything--and is useless. Or, more likely, it shows a great amount of detail with a high radiation cost (we don't know this because the government doesn't publish the data.

I know what kind of radiation it takes to distinguish between feces and paste.

I support the millimeter scanners, but after today will always opt out of the backscanner

Actually, no imaging technique can tell the difference between feces and explosives, or a colostomy and a bag of prohibited paste. But thanks for confirming what we all knew - it is security theater at best, and a cancer-causing tool at worst. The truth is probably that they did not see it. Humans are remarkably bad at visually detecting rare objects.

I brought this up before in other threads, but this bears repeating here.

What was passed by congress was a law that required the Secretary of DHS to “give a high priority to developing, testing, improving and deploying, at airport screening checkpoints, equipment that detects nonmetallic, chemical, biological, and radiological weapons, and explosives, in all forms, on individuals and in their personal property.” 49 U.S.C. § 44925(a).

The current equipment in use does not detect "nonmetallic, chemical, biological, and radiological weapons, and explosives". They image.

The problem really stems from the very basic incomprehension of scientific method the general population has. People cannot grasp the idea that peaks produced by HPLC detectors are, indeed, indicative of explosives. The concept is too far from their reality. On the other hand, an image is something we can all grasp. Therefore, they think imaging techniques are good, when the truth is they are not.

The wave scanner worked much better and I had further inspections eberytime with that. THe back scanner they were more interested in my shirt sleeves.