New TSA security screening showing only generic outline coming to Reno

By Bill O’Driscoll, Reno Gazette-Journal

The Transportation Security Administration is preparing a new screening device at Reno-Tahoe International Airport that will show only a generic outline of a person and not passenger-specific images.

The Advanced Imaging Technology unit will be used at the airport’s second-floor north Concourse C checkpoint only while the airport undergoes a major renovation which by spring 2013 will merge the Concourse B and C security screening areas into one location on the ground floor.

Concourse C is the gateway to US Air, Alaska, American and United airlines. Concourse B, serving 65 percent of all airport passenger traffic, is the route to Delta and Southwest airlines gates.

In a news release today, TSA officials said the agency has installed more than 720 of the full-body scanners at more than 180 airports nationwide to screen passengers for metallic and non-metallic threats, including explosives, without physical contact.

An airport official said the new machinery will reflect more stick-figure outlines, replacing scanners that have been criticized on privacy grounds for showing individual body outlines.

“It makes people feel better about going through with no accurate depiction of their body,” said Brian Kulpin, spokesman for Reno-Tahoe International Airport.