By Calvin Biesecker
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is making a “concerted effort” to balance the privacy and civil liberty concerns of United States citizens with the security demands posed by a changing threat environment when it comes to the use of whole body imaging (WBI) technology at the nation’s airports, the nominee to lead the agency in the Obama administration said Tuesday.
Moreover, the images generated by the WBI machines are “moving toward almost a stick figure image so that what can be identified are those objects attached to the body,” Erroll Southers, who is currently the assistant chief for Homeland Security and Intelligence for the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at his nomination hearing.
“What’s important here is a very concerted effort on part of TSA to balance the security enhancements with the civil liberties and privacy and I think that’s a delicate balance that has to be maintained going forward,” Southers said in response to questioning Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah).
Bennett said some of his constituents have “serious concern” regarding the WBI screening technology, which essentially produces an image of a person that is “electronically naked if not physically naked.” Another Utah lawmaker, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R), earlier this year introduced an amendment approved by the House that would prohibit the use of WBI systems in a primary screening application at U.S. airports (Defense Daily, June 12). However, the Senate has not taken up the legislation.
TSA has purchased and pilot tested millimeter wave-based WBI systems from L-3 Communications [LLL] in primary and secondary screening modes and has decided that the technology will work in primary applications. More recently, the agency awarded OSI Systems‘ [OSIS] Rapiscan division a contract for 150 of the company’s backscatter-based WBI systems to be used for primary screening of airplane passengers at aviation security checkpoints.
TSA currently balances privacy and security concerns by placing the screening officer who reviews an image from a WBI machine in a place where he or she cannot see the person being screened. Also the images cannot be stored or printed.
The use of the personnel imagers is optional. TSA has said previously that if a passenger opts out of using the machines, he or she will receive a pat down search instead.
Southers said that one of his priorities as TSA Administrator will be to enhance the agency’s relationship with the Science and Technology branch of the Department of Homeland Security “to better identify technologies” that can detect the new threats posed by peroxide-based explosives. There are more explosive threats that are non-metallic and can be concealed, representing a detection challenge.
Southers also said in written responses to the Senate panel that resiliency needs to be a “hallmark of security.” He broke this down into two components, pre-incident and post- incident resiliency.
London and Israel do a good job with pre-incident resiliency by creating a “prevent, detect, deter, defend posture,” Southers said. In both cases, a public education campaign to make citizens more aware of the threat is part of the security approach.
“Going forward what we have to do is reach out to our public, make them more aware, better educated,” Southers said. TSA is already attempting this, he noted.
As for post-incident resiliency, Southers said it comes down to being able to “keep our way of life going if we were so victimized.” He said that DHS has two pilot projects with Los Angeles International Airport that are focused on continuity of operations in the event of a chemical or biological attack.
“We’re engaged in two pilot projects, DHS, at LAX focused on continuity of operations in the event we were to have a chemical and or biological attack. So the ability to respond and be resilient and keep our way of life going if we were so victimized is important as well.”