DMC-FX100
ƒ/2.8
6 mm
1/10
200

At the Chiang Mai airport, we walked through this modern alternative to X-ray machines (which are notoriously inaccurate and detect only metal weapons).

I chuckled when I noticed it was a Safeview Scanner, and turned to my friend:
Hey Sam, some dude has just seen your wife naked.

For this is a millimeter-wave Holographic Body Scanner.

At these frequencies, it sees right through clothes and hair… and walls for that matter… it was developed at the PNNL gov’t labs for that “x-ray vision” capability. You can even see if a chap’s boxers are pinching a bit tight by the skin indentations, among other unpleasantries.

I last saw one of these during development, and I stood in the first prototype (we were investors in the startup that has since been acquired). I’ll post the raw sensor feed and half of the reconstructed image below…

14 responses to “Peep Show”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    I was slouching in a business suit and was not bald. The resolution has improved since then…
    UWB Holographic Reconstruction What's That? (10)

    I originally posted the single-channel sensor feed as a flickr puzzle.

    Reply
  2. The Rocketeer Avatar
    The Rocketeer

    It looks like something Superman would be comfortable changing his clothes in…

    Reply
  3. Todd Huffman Avatar
    Todd Huffman

    Where’s the rest of the reconstructed image!?

    How do you feel about a transparent society now?

    Reply
  4. biotron Avatar
    biotron

    *slackens boxers*
    *immediately commences routine to execute 500 chin-ups daily*
    *remembers Pilates instructor’s chilling words of advice and warning*
    *books ticket to Thailand for winter 2025*

    Reply
  5. biotron Avatar
    biotron

    update : *…opting to travel by boat*

    aviation and religion : "ill bedfellows", if ever i saw them…

    Reply
  6. TomiTapio Avatar
    TomiTapio

    Interesting.

    Reply
  7. OriginalGunner Avatar
    OriginalGunner

    Thats OK, the vision recognition company I worked for was making software that would recognize the weapons and blur the unmentionables. I get all excited when I see a overly pixelated picture now.

    Reply
  8. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    @xGunner: good point. That was the plan…. And then they could sell a software upgrade to remove the blur filter… 😉

    @biotron: Oh, that’s scary – a true test of God as co-pilot.

    It reminds me of a blog discussion we had on AI autopilots… Oh, and by the way, removing humans from the cockpit would have the added benefit of obsoleting airport security lines altogether (TSA brainstorm on that).

    @Todd: Discretion led me to crop that photo…. Unfortunately, the bottom half of the image has the clearly visible ceramic and plastic weapons I had tucked away.

    Reply
  9. biotron Avatar
    biotron

    heh heh – nice links :

    Ze’ : "[…] it is impossible to validate a human. One never knows when a human pilot may suffer a heart attack or a mental break down, go on strike, drink on the job, or fall under the influence of some perverse apocalyptic ideology" – thar she blows!

    i’m also reminded of the old David Gunson after-dinner speech where he claims that :

    "The chance of two aeroplanes being in the same place, at the same height, at the same time is so mathematically remote as to be ‘not worth considering’. All you do with air-traffic control is to force them down very narrow corridors, thereby increasing the risk of collision, and thereby justifying the job of a controller to keep them apart."

    i have to say, in light of the recent "controlled crash" of that BA 777 at Heathrow, and the amazing skill of the co-pilot, i’m happy to have a secular, anthropic human at the helm of my private jet for the foreseeable future 🙂

    Reply
  10. swanky tax Avatar
    swanky tax

    Hi, I’m an admin for a group called Security theater, and we’d love to have your photo added to the group.

    Reply
  11. bmaryshev Avatar
    bmaryshev

    noticed today these are all over the AMS

    Reply
  12. ntbw Avatar
    ntbw

    I am actually writing my own post (again) about this machine with the recent news in the US. I am a flight attendant and like them because I have a knee replacement.

    One thing that I wrote is:
    Can the one trained person sitting in another room who is the only one who can see the screen and does not even know who you are see a little more than you may be comfortable with for the whole 30 seconds the scan takes?

    It’s not a big deal. Who really cares if someone can see visions of your "unmentionables". They don’t know who you are, what you look like for real or where you are traveling. How is it any different than getting wanded and patted down?

    Great post. More people need to know about these machines since they are coming like it or not and they can improve safety when flying. I would hope that the imagery would be so improved that you could see something abnormal in anyone’s underwear!

    Thanks for the time you took to include this!
    willflyforfoodblog.com

    Reply
  13. Gone-Walkabout Avatar
    Gone-Walkabout

    I’ve been through these 2x, in the hopes that the shorter line meant it was quicker….not so. They’re doing it wrong, IMO, if you have to be padded down after going through these.

    Reply
  14. Matthew-Bennett Avatar
    Matthew-Bennett

    Hi Jurvetson, I found your photo via a Flickr search and mixed it with another for a blog post about UK airport security. Thanks!

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebigchorizo/4237676982/]

    Reply

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