The US government is quietly removing full-body X-ray scanners from seven major airports and replacing them with a machine that produces a cartoon-like outline instead of the naked images that have been compared to a virtual strip search.
The Transportation Security Administration says it is making the switch to speed up lines at crowded airports, not to ease passenger privacy concerns, but civil liberties groups hope the change signals that the old equipment will eventually go to the scrap heap.
"Hopefully this represents the beginning of a phase-out of the X-ray-type scanners, which are more privacy intrusive and continue to be surrounded by health questions," said Jay Stanley, an American Civil Liberties Union privacy expert.
But the machines will not be retired - they are being moved to smaller airports even as the US Congress presses the TSA to adopt stronger privacy safeguards on its imaging equipment.
The machines that are being pulled out of New York's LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, Chicago's O'Hare, Los Angeles International and Boston Logan, among others, have gone to airports in Mesa, Arizona; Key West, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The switch is being made as the TSA is under political pressure. Legislation approved in February gave the agency until next June to get rid of the X-ray scanners or upgrade them with software that produces only a generic outline of the human form, not a blurry naked image.