Is Airport Security Safe for Travelers Assignment

Is Airport Security Safe for Travelers - Assignment Example The Transportation Security Authority (TSA) has continued to maintain the safety of these machines but there are plenty of people who question these results. Known as Rapiscan backscatter scanners, these will be removed from service by the end of June 2013. Millimeter wave scanners will remain in service instead to carry on with the required scanning for all airport travelers. The reason for the TSA canceling the contracts was presented more as the issue of body pictures resulting from the scans which many travelers felt were very intrusive rather than the fact that radiation might be harmful. Rapiscan, however, was not able to meet the deadline for designing software that would change the body images into stick-like figures rather than the actual body imagery that caused much of the controversy. As a consequence, the contracts were canceled and the scanners will be fully removed. The European Union has already banned all usage of x-ray body scanners in order to avoid any potential risk to EU travelers’ health and welfare. There have been claims from scientists over the years that testing criteria by the company, Rapiscan, had not been accurate from one machine to the next and that there was also leakage on several occasions. While not necessarily a concern to passenger so much, for TSA agents who monitor these machines over a length of time, the residue could add up although this was not addressed at any point. Some previous reports had shown clerical and mathematical errors in test results which, when redone, showed radiation levels at 10 times higher than what was previously expected.