Your Choice: Body Scan or Pat Down

How much would you like your privacy violated by the TSA?

WASHINGTON — For the first time, some airline passengers will skip metal detectors and instead be screened by body scanning machines that look through clothing for hidden weapons, the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.

An experimental program that begins today at Tulsa International Airport will test whether the $170,000 body scanners could replace $10,000 metal detectors that have screened airline passengers since 1973. Airports in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, Albuquerque and Salt Lake City will join the test in the next two months, TSA spokesman Christopher White said.

The scanners aim to close a loophole by finding non-metallic weapons such as plastic and liquid explosives, which the TSA considers a major threat. The machines raise privacy concerns because their images reveal outlines of private body parts.

"We're getting closer and closer to a required strip-search to board an airplane," said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union.

I rarely agree with the ACLU, but I've got to agree with Steinhardt's objections on this one. Getting on an airplane is one of the few areas in American life where you are presumed guilty until you prove yourself innocent, and it's making flying an increasingly unappealing travel option. I fly only when there's no other way to get there in the time available.

The idea that they're going to expand this test to include Las Vegas will give the hotel industry in that town some additional heartburn. On a good day the security lines in Vegas are lengthy. I can't imagine what body scanners will do to that process.