My understanding of these machines is that they are initally to be used for those unlucky ones who are selected for secondary screening. The theory being that the secondary process would be significantly faster. i.e. no need for the hand wanding and pat downs. With all technology there are definate downsides. GE entry scan is not the quickest thing in the world, but it is effective. Heck they had one at the mall here and it works quite well. They had some explosives (a bullet) and it picked it up.

The backscatter machines are good and bad. Exposing us to radiation isn't good, though the radation levels are suposidly less than you get in 8 hours of flight time. Then there are the privacy issues and the issues of abuse. The latest proposal that I have seen has a program to place blackouts over the genital areas and the breasts for women. The only time a screener would see below that would be if there was an alarm item there. (software programing to determine this). The advantage is that there is almost no place for a person to hide an item of any material on them, short of swallowing them.

The issue will become how are the machines used. TSA has a goal of no more than 10 minutes in line, so until the processing times are fully known, I think these machines will be used for sampling and SSSS and not become part of the regular screening process.

The above "latest proposal" won't work tomorrow. And even with the machines set at the "advertised" levels of "safe", there are ways to still hide items on person that are well short of swallowing thems. Can we find a bookie to handle bets on when the first "celeb" body images will show up in the tabloids or other publicized domain.

If we get lucky with these applications, we'll catch ourselves some idiots, some unfortunates and a few terrorists acting like members of an "advance team". If we get unlucky, we are, to some degree, going to find ourselves passively twiddling our thumbs until the next "grandiose" terrorist plot comes aviation's way (or gets shifted elsewhere). In the air or on the surface, communicable disease or improvised chemical explosions may come to mind and the current applications, even if tweaked, will do little except fight the last fight.

That's what I would think too.

They have had these things in Gulfport, Mississippi, for quite a long time. It's a small airport that nothing happens in. Weird...

TSA putting our tax dollars to work in the way we have come to expect. Thank you, feds.