The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced that it will begin using body scanners in place of metal detectors for airport screening.  Effective immediately, airport security screeners in Tulsa, Oklahoma will begin using these new machines on a test basis.  Within a few months, the airport security screeners at San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, Albuquerque and Salt Lake City will join the test and also use body scanners.

 The new scanners require passengers to stand in the machine and raise their arms.  The scanners use micro short-wave radio signals to penetrate clothing and reveal both metalic and non-metallic objects.  The process takes about 30 seconds.

Privacy advocates fear that the images are too revealing of personal body parts.  The TSA claims that the machines block out passenger faces and reveal only indistinct images of body parts. Anyone that objects to use of these new scanner will be permitted to refuse, but they must then pass through a metal detector and undergo a manual pat down.

The future has arrived!  Technological strip searches are becoming part of daily life.