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Published: April 2010

Full body scanner program violates privacy and doesn’t work

Privacy coalition members sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security's Secretary Janet Napolitano and Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan asking that the full body scanner programs now being deployed at airports in the United States are intrusive and ineffective.

Below is an excerpt from the letter:

We the undersigned privacy, consumer rights, and civil rights organizations hereby petition1 the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) and its component, the Transportation Security Administration (“TSA”) to suspend the ongoing deployment of the TSA’s Full Body Scanner (“FBS”) program. The TSA program uses FBS devices (also called “whole body imaging” machines) to screen air travelers in the United States. 

We strongly object to the TSA’s use of full body scanners as primary, mandatory screening at security checkpoints. On May 31, 2009, twenty-four privacy and civil liberties groups wrote to the DHS requesting, inter alia, that the DHS conduct “a 90-day formal public rulemaking process to receive public input on the agency's use of ‘Whole Body Imaging’ technologies.” The DHS failed to initiate a rulemaking. Instead, the TSA recently announced its intent to deploy approximately one thousand additional FBS devices to American airports. Although the TSA failed to conduct a formal rulemaking, it is clear that the TSA has established a rule mandating the use of body scanners at airport checkpoints as primary screening. EPIC petitions the TSA to repeal that rule, and suspend the Full Body Scanner program.

The deployment of Full Body Scanners in US airports, as currently proposed, violates the U.S. Constitution, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”), the Privacy Act of 1974 (“Privacy Act”), and the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”). As described below, the FBS program effectively subjects all air travelers to unconstitutionally intrusive searches that are disproportionate and for which the TSA lacks any suspicion of wrongdoing. The FBS Program also violates the RFRA because it requires those of sincerely held religious beliefs to be subject to offensive intrusions by government officials. The program violates the Privacy Act because the system gathers personally identifiable information—a detailed and unique image of the human body easily associated with a particular airline ticket—yet the TSA failed to publish a System of Records Notice. The TSA Chief Privacy Office violated its statutory obligations to ensure that new technologies “sustain and do not erode” the privacy of Americans when it effectively approved the program.

Further, substantial questions have been raised about the effectiveness of the devices, including whether they could detect powdered explosives—the very type of weapon used in the December 25, 2009 attempted airliner bombing. The full body scanning program is enormously expensive, costing taxpayers at least $2.4 billion dollars. There are less intrusive and less costly techniques available to address the risk of concealed explosives on aircrafts. For example, last week, U.S. Senators asked the DHS to evaluate alternative technologies that could “address many of the privacy concerns raised by the scanners DHS is currently testing.”

Lead Organization

Electronic Privacy Information Center

Other Organizations

Electronic Privacy Information Center | American Civil Liberties Union | American Policy Center | Asian American Legal Education and Defense Fund | Bill of Rights Defense Committee | Calegislation | Campaign for Liberty | Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights | Center for the Study of Responsive Law | Citizen Outreach | Consumer Federation of America | Consumer Travel Alliance | Consumer Watchdog | Council on American Islamic Relations | Cyber Privacy Project Essential Information | Government Accountability Project | The Identity Project | Liberty Coalition | Muslim Legal Fund of America | National Center for Transgender Equality | National Workrights Institute | Patient Privacy Rights | Privacy Activism | Privacy Rights Clearinghouse | Public Citizen Litigation Group | Republican Liberty Caucus | Rutherford Institute U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation | World Privacy Forum

More Information

http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/backscatter/petition_042110.pdf

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