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Body-Scanners in Courthouses Have Stored Thousands of Rather Personal Images

Discover the controversies surrounding full-body security scanners and privacy concerns raised by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

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It's official: a full-body security scanner can theoretically store your blurry nude picture. After a Freedom of Information Act request from the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, the U.S. Marshals Service released 100 of 35,314 stored images taken by a scanner at an Orlando, Florida, courthouse. Though airport security scanners use similar radio wave technology to get a hazy peek under your clothes, whether these scanners can store your image still seems unclear. Publications such as CNET question if these images mean a change in federal officials' statement that the scanners cannot store images:

For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that "scanned images cannot be stored or recorded." [CNET]

The Transportation Security Administration responds on their blog that they stick by that ...

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