Are we ready for full body scans? I’m not.

I had my first up close encounter with an airport full body scanning machine last weekend.  I was making a short trip to Vancouver and I had been warned about the increased security at the airport.  I’d heard about the rumors the machines would cause cancer, naked pictures of your scanned body would be used by security offers to get off or end up on the internet.  I had looked into each of these and was pretty confident I didn’t think they were valid concerns and I thought I’d be happier to let a machine scan me than to have a person physically search me.

Boy was I wrong.  I got to the airport security during peak time and it was moderately busy.  During most of my wait no one agreed to go into the machine, all opting for a thorough pat down instead.  And by thorough I mean the pat down of my chest area, which I’ll agree I could be hiding a fair bit of stuff in, was as invasive as my recent breast exam by a doctor during my annual physical.

My decision to be pro-technology and opt for the body scan dissolved quickly when I saw the machine.  I wish I had been able to use my phone to take a picture but they had ‘no cell phone’ posters up quite prominently.  The machine was something out of Dr Who when the insane scientist goes into a big circular tube and turns into a raving monster, or the sitcom Better Off Ted when the whiny scientist gets cryogenically frozen in a tube.  Basically, any TV show where a person goes into a tube-shaped machine and the person comes out horribly malformed could have used this scanner as a prop.  Alternatively, I can say, I’ve never seen anything good happen when someone gets out of one of those machines.

While popular culture might have skewed my perception of the technology there was another even stronger stimulus at play, peer pressure.  When one lady finally agreed to go in the machine there was an audible gasp from the other people waiting in the line.  One woman screamed “No! Don’t do it!” as the lady started walking towards the scanner.

So not only is there an intimidating large machine, you also have all the other passengers judging you as you enter the machine.  Understandably, the area you stand in to be scanned is a completely transparent circular room, I wouldn’t want to be in a room that small if it wasn’t clear for any amount of time, elevators are bad enough.  But the machine was not in a private or shielded location inside the airport.  So while someone in another room is looking at your naked form, everyone in the security area is looking at you knowing that someone is looking at you naked, which is much more intimidating.

While pat downs are an option, I doubt I’ll be getting into the machine.  I need to fly for some things so if this becomes a mandatory part of an already unpleasant experience, I’m sure I’ll go along with it.  I do wish the media had done a better job of portraying what I’d see in the airport, because the reports I saw and the sites I read did nothing to prepare me for the true experience and the gut reaction of avoidance I saw mirrored in the faces around me.