The Transportation Security Administration will pull 174 full-body scanners from airports in the coming year, but not because of safety reasons or privacy invasion.
The scanner manufacturer couldn’t meet a congressional mandate to make the machines produce less detailed images of passengers.
“We are not pulling them out because they haven’t been effective, and we are not pulling them out for safety reasons,” John Sanders, the TSA’s assistant administrator for security capabilities, said. “We’re pulling them out because there’s a congressional mandate.”
According to POLITICO, Congress had given manufacturer OSI Systems Inc. a deadline of 2012 — later extended to May 31, 2013 — to have all their Rapiscan “backscatter” machines produce more generic images. But the company could not meet that deadline and the TSA chose to cancel the contract instead, forcing OSI to absorb the $2.7 million cost of the contract cancellation.
“It became clear to TSA they would be unable to meet our timeline,” Karen Shelton Waters, TSA’s assistant administrator for acquisitions, told Bloomberg. “As a result of that, we terminated the contract for the convenience of the government.”
Instead of the Rapiscan backscatter machines, the TSA will now rely on millimeter-wave machines produced by L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. The agency will also use backscatter scanners from American Science & Engineering Inc. and millimeter-wave machines made by Smiths Group Plc. All will have privacy software.
The Rapiscan machines are also used at the Pentagon, by U.S. forces in Iraq and Kuwait and at prisons.
