Germany, Netherlands & Chicago To Introduce Body Scanners

O’Hare to get body scanners

Chicago Sun Times | December 30, 2009
MARY WISNIEWSKI

Privacy advocates worry that new body-scanning security equipment due to come to O'Hare Airport next year will interfere with passengers' rights to keep their body images to themselves.

But the former head of security for the Federal Aviation Administration believes the scanners, which see through clothing, are long overdue.

"We should have had them in already," said Billie Vincent, now CEO and president of Aerospace Services International Inc., an electronics security company. He said the technology should be used for secondary screening of passengers selected for extra inspection. "It's a very necessary part of the system. O'Hare needs it."

Chicago Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino said Tuesday that the Transportation Security Agency plans to bring full-body scanners to the airport in the first half of the year -- possibly by April. She did not give details on how the scanners would be deployed.

Body-scanning technology, which can reveal plastic or chemical explosives or non-metallic weapons, might have prevented the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a jetliner that landed in Detroit. The suspect in that case, who was believed to have hidden explosive material in his trousers or underwear, didn't go through a full-body scan when his flight began in Amsterdam, though the Dutch airport has such a unit.

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