Designers are working on an electronic fig leaf to spare a few blushes
News reports today say the United States government is considering the introduction of x-ray machines that reveal a naked image of passengers.
Present security systems used at US airports are not capable of revealing plastic explosives or weapons not made of metal; the new system reveals anything that is not human flesh.
The director of the Transportation Security Administration, Susan Hallowell, posed to show how the system works. While still wearing a skirt, blazer and underwear, she appears to be completely naked except for a fake bomb and gun she concealed under her clothing. She admitted: “It does basically make you look fat and naked.”
The system has already been used in prisons as well as in diamond mines in South Africa, but never in airports. According to the online news provider Ananova, Ms Hallowell admitted passengers may not be too keen on airport workers effectively seeing them naked, but said programmers are trying to devise an “electronic fig leaf” that distorts certain parts of the body for the viewer.
For an idea of what kind of image the machine produces, visit http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_794215.html?menu=.
