TSA Body Scan Quick, Modest, Easy

Going through security at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, passengers have the choice of a pat-down or a walk through a full body scanner, and Jon Hilkevitch is going “with the touch-less scan every time.” He took a spin through a checkpoint equipped with the newly installed machines, and “my impression was that the process is free of embarrassment,” he writes for the Chicago Tribune.

The procedure is quick, Hilkevitch writes—a mere 5 seconds or so. And it’s as modest as possible: The TSA officer who directs you through the scanner never sees the image, which is the job of another screener sequestered from passengers who communicates using a radio. And the images, which Hilkevitch compares to a “chalk etching,” are immediately deleted. Sadly, you still have to remove your shoes. (More full body scanner stories.)