Airport Security Checkpoint Of The Future Won't Have Strip Searches Or Pat Downs (VIDEO)

What if you could get through the airport without taking off your shoes, unpacking your bag or submitting to a pat down down by security officials?

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has just unveiled its "Checkpoint of the Future," a set of three 20-foot-long futuristic security tunnels that passengers walk through as the walls scan their bags, shoes and person.

"It's something that's long overdue,'' John Pistole of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) told the Wall Street Journal. "We're not at the checkpoint of the future yet but we're working toward that. I think eventually we will see something similar."

The TSA is also working towards a pilot program that might let certain frequent flyers with good records to pass through checkpoints with less hassle. The IATA model will also separate out passengers based on a government risk assessment, with an eye scan to match passengers to their passports.

While lower risk flyers might be able to finish up in a few minutes, a higher risk passenger may receive a full-body scan as the tunnels search their person for illegal materials.

Though the security program is still just a prototype, the hope of getting through airport security in less than an hour of stress-filled undressing will certainly have many cheering.

WATCH:

Comments

[libluv235]

08:11 PM on 06/19/2011

Sent via TSA website as well:

I traveled last minute to see my mother who was having total replacement surgery. I made two flights in a 24 hour period. Both times I was asked to go through the virtual strip search scanner. Each time I opted for a pat
down. The second time I somehow set off the alarm and then had my carry on opened and inspected. I later had to go into a back room and be groped once again by a supervisor. This time the alarm did not go off.
I asked to see if my newly applied deodorant was the culprit. The request was denied. Bush and friends took us down this ridiculous path . I would like to say that airport travel has become distasteful and a violation of personal and civil rights. I am ashamed of what this now backwards country has become. No one should be forced to choose between being subjected to unknown amounts of radiation or physical griping by strangers. Enough is enough. The founders would be mortified. We have lost the fight by allowing such infringement upon our civil liberties.

[Edison Saldano]

04:51 AM on 06/09/2011

I remember when i didn't have to take my shoes off a few years ago !

[Heather Fowler]

06:42 PM on 06/08/2011

How did they get the nudie scanners and groping programs in airports in like, five minutes, but this is "only in the prototype stage?"

[ellwood145]

08:05 AM on 06/08/2011

I want to get back to the times when you could sit at the gate with your friends and family to see them off and welcome them when they get off of the flight not wait at the baggage claim. Airports need to get back to family friendly atmospheres not the cold paranoid feeling when you go inthe terminal.I would like to share a drink or have dinner while visiting before they depart.

[noway lv]

05:10 PM on 06/08/2011

I 2nd that! I sure do miss those old days :-)

[Edison Saldano]

04:49 AM on 06/09/2011

Lol

[aveindustries]

07:20 AM on 06/08/2011

The Total Recall Tunnels?

Come on, just let Americans carry guns on planes and we will never have to worry about any terrorists ever again.

Vote Ron Paul 2012

[SwingingFromCenter]

02:46 AM on 06/08/2011

Imagine an airport where I won't have to take off my shoes, remove my computer, be virtually str.ip searched or mo.lested?

It's not hard to imagine - 11 years ago, that's how things were.  It's quite simple to bring that back - just get rid of the absurd policies we have now.

[AmericanURNOT]

01:55 AM on 06/08/2011

Awe schucks no Strip Searches or Pat Downs....nothing says "good morning" like a good TSA groping while at the airport.

[j won]

01:01 AM on 06/08/2011

i just thought..this will be very useful and will prevent unethical pat downs, sometimes being judged by race, character, or by suspicious persona. it will prevent things like this from happening. if you haven't seen it, nows the time..you may start to sway towards this type of technology.

http://www.shortform.com/xjdub908x/my/police-state-2011-6-year-old-girl-groped

[j won]

12:54 AM on 06/08/2011

why does this type of technology seem carcinogenic in some ways? i only say that because of the cellphone crisis going on.

[AmigaMan]

11:51 PM on 06/07/2011

Yeah, and you get f***ing irradiated as you walk through.

[Benjamin Barclay Amsden]

12:27 AM on 06/08/2011

But not as irradiated as you get by simply being in a plane, high up in the atmosphere. Radiation's biological effect is measured in microsieverts; a chest x-ray will deal you about 20 and flying about 200.
Of course a CT scan dishes out around 3000, but I doubt they will be bringing that kind of technology to bear.
Annually you get exposed to about 2400 (mainly from your food and what filters down through the atmosphere) and would fall ill from a 1 sievert dose (1 million microsieverts), though that stat is for sudden exposure, not prolonged/accumulatory.

I'm no expert and this info is third hand, but I'm of the opnion that people worry about this kind of radiation far too much.

[noway lv]

05:11 PM on 06/08/2011

Very true. News coverage had a lot do with spreading irrational fear over the new scanners. Sure it's invasive . . . but not deadly.

[TheSecularist]

11:48 PM on 06/07/2011

Yeah..., but will the scan be safe?

[menschmaschine5]

11:32 PM on 06/07/2011

Oh, so more like the way airports used to be before everyone was scared stiff by the very slight chance of terrorism? I've only taken two trips by plane since 9/11, and they've both proven to me that Osama Bin Laden won the "war on terror" long ago by making Americans willing to put up with that crap. Particularly the flight I took in March. It should never take a whole hour to get through the basic layer of airport security, yet it somehow did in Newark.

It's good to see that airport security will stop being such a hassle, even if it continues to be a huge violation of privacy.

[jsarets]

10:30 PM on 06/07/2011

Yet still, it's going to be vigilant and brave passengers and flight attendants which inevitably foil the majority of hijacking attempts, not airport security checkpoints. Wouldn't it be cheaper to put a U.S. Marshal on every flight or perhaps provide special counter-terrorism training for flight attendants?

[Suntio]

12:20 AM on 06/08/2011

And if someone has a bomb in their luggage or body?

[aveindustries]

07:28 AM on 06/08/2011

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it"

-Thomas Jefferson