Ever wonder what those new airport scanners see when you hold your hands over your head?
After my visit to the Raytheon spooks yesterday, I remembered that I have my residual self image, the kind you don’t get to see anywhere in security (but the people working behind the white wall do, and they radio instructions to the TSA person at the scanner exit, like “you’re OK to go” or perhaps a quick pat down of a specific region).
For these scans, I was slouching in a business suit and was not bald; it sees through clothes and hair, as if you were freshly shaven.
In the reconstructed image on the left, I had ceramic knives tucked in my sock and belt and some other weapon in my right pocket as part of the test. This was from the first prototype build. The resolution has improved since then, and they claim to be using obfuscation software for the private parts.
You can even see if a chap’s boxers are pinching a bit tight by the skin indentations, among other unpleasantries.
The technology was developed at the PNNL gov’t labs for that “x-ray vision” capability (so snipers could see through walls).
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