Passive millimeter-wave technology promoted as solving privacy, health concerns

other TSA-approved technologies — active millimeter wave and backscatter technologies.

• Active millimeter wave technology bombards a passenger with radio frequency energy. The energy reflected off the body and other objects generates a three-dimensional image of the passenger’s body and anything else carried on the passenger’s body. The downside of this technology is that the resulting image is anatomically detailed. Currently, the TSA assuages privacy concerns by making sure the person that views the image is in another location and therefore never sees the physical passenger. The technology also blurs the face of the person screened as well.
• Backscatter technologies raise fewer privacy concerns because the image generated looks like a chalk outline of a person. Backscatter technology, however, evokes another concern from critics: radiation. It uses weak X-rays to generate a two-sided image of a passenger and anything else on that person’s body. Harwood notes that doctors have vouched for the safety of backscatter machines. Dr. James Thrall, chair of the American College of Radiology and chair of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told ABCNews.com that a passenger “would have to take hundreds and hundreds of trips requiring screening to even reach what would be considered a negligible dose.” Nevertheless, health concerns persist.

These privacy and safety fears should help Brijot market its SafeScan system, which the company says should be TSA approved by summer. The privacy issues have now become religious issues as well:

• Last week, two Muslim women bound for Pakistan refused to a full-body scan at Manchester Airport in the United Kingdom because of religious and medical reasons. The London Times reports the full-body scanners they would have entered were manufactured by Rapiscan, which uses backscatter technology.
• Last month the Fiqh Council of North America, which interprets Islamic law for residents of the continent, declared full body scanners unislamic. In a statement on its Web site, the council declared it “emphasizes that a general and public use of such scanners is against the teachings of Islam, natural law and all religions and cultures that stand for decency and modesty.”

Brijot’s hoping its system will be approved by Muslims and other communities worried about full body scanners. Brijot spokeswoman Rachel Wanner told Harwood that a version of passive millimeter wave technology currently protects Saudi Arabia’s royal palaces. The company, she says, is also actively reaching out to Muslim and secular civil liberties organizations, including the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

One more advantage SafeScreen would have over its competitors is its size. Wanner told Harwood that the machine takes up 62 percent of the footprint size that TSA currently requires, saving valuable real estate inside airports.

“While SafeScreen was specifically designed to meet TSA specifications, Brijot has similar units deployed across the United Kingdom and the United States and has ongoing trials in Hong Kong and Thailand,” Harwood writes.