The controversial body scanners at U.S. airports are being removed for good. The "naked" body scanners caused an outrage as they showed revealing, personal images of passengers as they passed through them.
The Transportation Security Administration is pulling the plug on their 174 full-body scanners at airports around the country. The TSA is ending a $40 million contract for the machines because the developers can't create a software on time that would keep the machines from showing such revealing images, the Washington Post reports.
The machines caused a huge controversy when they were introduced to airports two years ago because many felt they were too intrusive. Some compared the images to pornography since they were so detailed.
The TSA tried to work with the creators, Rapiscan, to make the images less revealing, but Rapiscam wouldn't have been able to do this by the June 1 deadline established by Congress.
"TSA has terminated part of a contract with Rapiscan since the company is unable to deploy non-imaging Automated Target Recognition (ATR) software by the Congressionally-mandated June 2013 deadline," the agency said in a statement, according to the Washington Post.
"By June 1, 2013 travelers will only see machines which have ATR that allow for faster throughput. This means faster lanes for the traveler and enhanced security. As always, use of this technology is optional."
The TSA started to remove the machines from some of the biggest airports in the country like LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International Airports in New York to try to reduce the wait time at security checkpoints in this busy airports.
With nearly 200 machines being removed, the TSA is attempting to upgrade its other type of scanner. The millimeter-wave scanner looks like a phone booth and it uses radio frequencies to determine if someone is hiding an object under their clothes.
These machines are software based. When someone is hiding something, a TSA agent is alerted and yellow boxes mark the areas where the passenger may be hiding something. These suspects are then subject to a pat-down and further inspection.
These machines are more efficient as they don't require many people to operate them, they're smaller than other scanners, and it scans in just two seconds, which will help speed up security lines. The machines are supposedly much safer as well as they don't use much radiation.
The TSA still uses standard X-ray scanners and pat-down methods at security checkpoints.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
