Full body scanners are on their way out of New York airports. Hello millimeter waves, goodbye, TSA porn!
The TSA has officially announced they'll be trading backscatter technology machines out of busy airports like LaGuardia and JFK and moving them to less populated terminals. The old scanners will be replaced with millimeter wave machines that show generic outlines of bodies rather than detailed scans, which we're sure is disappointing to the agents assigned to the terminal for flights to South Beach, but is great news for anyone who doesn't feel like flashing airport security.
Not only will these machines keep your clothes on, they also might riddle you with fewer tumors: while the TSA keeps insisting that full body scanners don't give you cancer, many health experts think otherwise, and see non-X-ray millimeter wave machines as a safer technology. "We do not know the long term public health consequences of exposing many millions of passenger to very low doses of x rays," radiology expert David Brenner told the Star-Ledger. "So from a public health perspective this change in policy, which also brings us more in line with the policy in Europe, is most welcome."
But beware, travelers! The new machines won't prevent the sometimes-not-super-effective TSA from getting grabby and stealing your iPad, though they will find those brass knuckles you stashed in your backpack, which we can all agree is probably a good thing.
