I have seen the AIT machines. However, depending on where you are in the country, the machines are used differently.
In Sea-tac for example, they try to pick out people more likely to be at risk and put them through the scanners. This would be correct except that they should be putting such people through metal detectors too. Defence in depth....
In LAX, I have seen separate lines for standard metal detectors vs AIT machines. This is just stupid and justifies so many jokes about LAZ security....
In Nashville TN, I haven't been there, but I understand from TSA employees that everyone goes through the bodyscanners.
I don't think it is just a question of public acceptance. Really you have different courts looking at how the 4th Amendment applies to metal detectors in airports, and although they all agree that metal detector requirements are Constitutional, they arrive at this for different reasons.
The 9th and 3rd circuits have adopted a balancing test (the most important case there in the third circuit was authored by none other than Samuel Alito btw), and this does not necessarily allow the TSA to get from the idea that metal detectors are per se Constitutional to the idea that bodyscanners are.
The 11th and 5th Circuits however, have adopted a view that when you travel you consent to be searched as a condition to that travel, and unlike other consensual searches, consent cannot be withdrawn. This is a very broad ruling and it makes it hard to argue that anything the TSA might do in the course of a search infringes the 4th Amendment rights of the traveller. In other words, in these circuits, airports are 4th Amendment-free zones.
So this varies quite a bit by region and even by airport culture. That doesn't make the use of the scanners any better on the whole, or change the fact that they should be reserved for individuals where there is a reasonable suspicion and that they should be used in tandem with metal detectors.
In Sea-tac for example, they try to pick out people more likely to be at risk and put them through the scanners. This would be correct except that they should be putting such people through metal detectors too. Defence in depth....
In LAX, I have seen separate lines for standard metal detectors vs AIT machines. This is just stupid and justifies so many jokes about LAZ security....
In Nashville TN, I haven't been there, but I understand from TSA employees that everyone goes through the bodyscanners.
I don't think it is just a question of public acceptance. Really you have different courts looking at how the 4th Amendment applies to metal detectors in airports, and although they all agree that metal detector requirements are Constitutional, they arrive at this for different reasons.
The 9th and 3rd circuits have adopted a balancing test (the most important case there in the third circuit was authored by none other than Samuel Alito btw), and this does not necessarily allow the TSA to get from the idea that metal detectors are per se Constitutional to the idea that bodyscanners are.
The 11th and 5th Circuits however, have adopted a view that when you travel you consent to be searched as a condition to that travel, and unlike other consensual searches, consent cannot be withdrawn. This is a very broad ruling and it makes it hard to argue that anything the TSA might do in the course of a search infringes the 4th Amendment rights of the traveller. In other words, in these circuits, airports are 4th Amendment-free zones.
So this varies quite a bit by region and even by airport culture. That doesn't make the use of the scanners any better on the whole, or change the fact that they should be reserved for individuals where there is a reasonable suspicion and that they should be used in tandem with metal detectors.