Rapiscan accused of faking privacy tests for airport scanners

An influential member of Congress has suggested that Rapiscan, the company behind some of the full-body scanners used at American airports, faked tests of its machines' ability to protect passenger privacy. In a letter quoted by Bloomberg, Rep Mike Rogers (R-AL) charged that Rapiscan "may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test."

The TSA uses two different types of full-body scanners in the nation's airports: backscatter machines and millimeter-wave machines. The former are manufactured by Rapiscan, and the TSA has spent $40 million on those machines to date.

Rogers chairs the House Transportation Security Subcommittee, and he held hearings Thursday to scrutinize the use of the machines.

Bloomberg says Rapiscan "has been trying, without success, to write software that would display a generic image" when a passenger is scanned by its machines. The TSA has been forced to put 91 of the machines, worth $14 million, in storage until Rapiscan gets its privacy software working properly.

Ironically, that move has improved the efficiency of TSA operations. According to USA Today, Rapiscan machines were taken out of service in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Charlotte, and Orlando. As a result, TSA representative John Sanders told Rogers's committee, the same number of lines can now process an additional 180,000 more passengers per day.

One reason traditional metal detectors are more efficient than body scanners is that privacy concerns forced the TSA to display the machines' output in a separate room. The agent in the separate room communicates with her colleague by radio if a passenger requires more scrutiny.

Rogers says he learned of the manipulation of the privacy tests from an anonymous source, but Rapiscan denies the charges. Sanders said the TSA didn't have any evidence to support the charges.

“At this point we don’t know what has occurred,” he told the committee. “We are in contact with the vendor. We are working with them to get to the bottom of it.”

The TSA is also under fire from the privacy group EPIC, which has sued to force the TSA to go through a traditional rulemaking process to justify the use of the full-body scanners.