Xray Scan Technology Equipped Vehicles Deployed and Now Roving America's Street

Why does America need full body xray scan technology equipped vehicles deployed and roving through its streets? Originally contained to courthouses and airport security checkpoints, these are no longer the only places where backscatter x-ray scan vision is being used. The same technology which is capable of seeing through clothes and walls is now, also rolling around your neighborhood and throughout other U.S. streets.

The general public may not have any great expectation of privacy in public places, however they do have an expectation of privacy under their clothing. Just how much? Earlier this year, a TSA employee was charged with assaulting a co-worker who made jokes about the size of his genitalia after he received a full-body scan. He has also filed a law suit.

The most popular unit in use, the Z Backscatter Vans (ZBV), manufactured by American Science and Engineering (AS&E) of Billerica Massachusetts, scans do not capture nearly as much detail of the human bodies as their airport counterparts, because their primary purpose is to image vehicles and their contents. Their scans cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, sex or age of the person, according to the manufacturer.

Z Backscatter Vans is the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever. More than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, have been sold this year. The biggest buyer of ZBV vehicles has been the U.S. Department of Defense operations and law enforcement agencies, who have deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

In addition to the privacy risks involved, the health effects of this kind of x-ray technology has a lot of people up in arms. Are women of childbearing age at risk? There are no warnings signs at the airports notifying women of childbearing age of the potential dangers they may be subject to while being submitted to a full body x-ray scan, let alone, where they are in public places that they are being x-rayed.

Joe Reiss, vice president of marketing for AS&E confirmed the average dosage of xray radiation received by a human from these backscatter vans is exceedingly small, in fact, it is far smaller than that of a medical x-ray and falls well within the health standards set by American National Standards Institute. The company's sales material states the scan's x-ray levels are equivalent to the dosage received in fifteen minutes inside a typical airplane.

But what about the cumulative effect? All of the makers of these devices claim the xray emissions to be within standards and guidelines. Do these standards specifically address what these systems effects are on pregnant women and more specifically, on fetal development? What guidelines have American Medical Association or the American Gynecological Association established? Are they the same as the American National Standards Institute?

Even is there is no real health concern, the question yet to be answered is, does it make it right to use it? What authority does any government or law enforcement agency have to make decisions to radiate and scan others knowingly or unknowingly? Such scans, just like those in use at the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. Without a warrant, no company, government or law enforcement agency have the right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause.

The Fourth Amendment provides that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. At the very core of the Fourth Amendment stands the right of every U.S. citizen to retreat into their own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.

In KYLLO V. UNITED STATES, the Supreme Court ruled..."the use of a thermal-imaging device aimed at a private home from a public street to detect relative amounts of heat within the home constitutes a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment." Wouldn't this ruling find the use of xray scan technology also a Fourth Amendment violation?

According to the TSA, airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure. Now if these type of scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, what justification is their to allow routine use of them on the city streets of America. What are the public benefit from these scans? With our government and law enforcement agencies feeling the need to scan our citizenry, aren't we creating a society of fear in which everyone is presumed guilty...scan them all, until proven innocent...your scan turned up negative?

It is no doubt that the use of these type devices is another segment in the gradual erosion of the rights of law-abiding citizens. Sort of like the boiling frog syndrome. On its own, the xray scan technology may not be cause for alarm among the populous. The mass media will report how it was used to halt a potential calamity or find a missing child and it will receive a lot of positive press. But when you consider it alongside the dozens of other privacy-eroding technologies currently in use, it does represent another privacy invasion step backward for American society. Is that this the type of society you wish to live in?