Remember when President Obama took a few days off before springing into action to thwart future terror attacks? Remember when he made full body scanners a central part of his war on... whatever he calls it?
Yes, yes... Of course you remember. Well, do you remember when we were assured that body scanners could not possibly store or transmit photos of your scanned body?
Well, you're not going to believe this, but that was a falsehood:
A privacy group says the Transportation Security Administration is misleading the public with claims that full-body scanners at airports cannot store or send their graphic images.
EPIC, a public-interest group focused on privacy and civil rights, obtained the technical specifications and vendor contracts through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.The written requirements also appear to contradict numerous assurances the TSA has given the public about the machines' privacy protections.
"The machines have zero storage capability," the TSA Web site says.
A TSA video assures passengers "the system has no way to save, transmit or print the image."
Source: CNN
CNN is right - take a look at this screenshot from the TSA website (taken on Jan. 11, 2010):
And watch the response of this TSA agent when asked "What happens to this image now? Is that stored anywhere?"
It's bad enough that tuberculosis patients on no-fly lists are somehow able to board airliners - less than two weeks after the Christmas terror attack - but blatantly lying to the public about the capabilities of our airport security system is icing on a really awful cake.
