Airport to install some less controversial body scanners
But security scanners will use a different technology of machines that raised controversial questions of confidentiality by posting pictures of bodies of the passengers robbed.
"People complain that type did not come to Anchorage," said Lorie Dankers, a spokeswoman for the TSA.
The new system uses a screen that displays a gray silhouette of a generic human. The screen is attached to the scanner so that passengers, and TSA security personnel can see what is revealed after their walk through.
Passengers stand inside the scan machines with their arms raised. If the passenger is cleared by the scan, the screen flashes green with the word "OK." But if the passenger is carrying anything, be it a wallet or a gun, the item will show up as a yellow dot displayed on the silhouette of a human that appears on the screen.
"It's a millimeter wave technology. They bounce electromagnetic waves off the individual, so if there's something on the person it shows up as an anomaly," Dankers said.
The security agent first asks the passenger to remove the item.
"The officer would then do a targeted pat-down of that area to make sure there was nothing additional, no more contraband, and they'd be cleared to proceed," Dankers said.
Dankers said the Anchorage scanners will be deployed in the "coming weeks" but she could not be more specific than to say it will be before the end of the year. The same type of body scanners will be coming to the Fairbanks airport not long after Anchorage and then to the Juneau and Ketchikan airports in turn within the next three months or so.
The new type of scanners are being deployed following uproar over the previous system used in the Lower 48, in which images of passengers' bodies are displayed in a room where a TSA agent monitors them for contraband.
Anchorage Intl Airport - News
Full body scanners will be installed at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport by the end of the year, with other Alaska airports to soon follow, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
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Transportation security officer Elba Aquirre stands in the new security scanner at the Natrona County International Airport during a demonstration. Similar scanners are headed to Alaska. AP Photo/Casper Star-Tribune, Dan Cepeda FAIRBANKS,
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