Is the body scanner hysteria getting a little out of hand?

With terrorists now hiding bomb components in all corners of their bodies, we now find ourselves at a difficult impasse between more advanced, 3D scanning and passengers' privacy. Pit the ACLU and the TSA against one another and one is guaranteed a lifetime of bureaucracy, litigation and name calling, nothing of which puts the traveler's mind at ease.

Inflaming the situation are the mainstream media, left and right howling that these new generations of scanners can see right through you, with great erotic detail -- and maybe even into your soul. And that's when things start to go haywire. It's true that there are a few different technologies available for 3D scanning, but will anything really show your buck-naked body to a nefarious TSA worker? Drudge Report and bild.de seem to suggest so, showing an attractive woman in full 3D detail on both of their sites.

Further complicating the matter is the buzz on the internet purporting that the negative of the exact same image reveals the person unclothed. The image above on the right was taken from Drudge this morning, while that below is the negative image as processed by Photoshop.

But is the above image real collected data? Not one other picture on the web from an x-ray or microwave scanner yields the same result, and most of them are so muddled and blurry (as a 3D microwave/x-ray scan should be) that it's impossible to pick out fine details. Gadling's friend and Photoshop expert proffered this alternative mechanism, suggesting the image is fake:

The girl was backlit, then they take the color out and blur the edges, and then invert the color. Either her top is skintight, or she wasn't wearing clothes at all, and those were added in a separate layer.

Whether or not the image is manufactured or not, this whole concept of 3D scanning just needs to be accepted. More and more airports are installing the devices, which means at some point in your travel career, some sad TSA worker is probably going to see what's going on under your sweater. Better start toning up with your Shake Weight now.

Filed under: Airlines, Airports