New DHS budget includes more money for airport scanners

As lawmakers are trimming the budgets of many programs and agencies in an effort to reduce the deficit, funding for airport scanners has increased.

Overall discretionary funding for DHS has grown 0.7 percent to $43.2 billion, and includes more funding for full-body scanners.

The Obama administration’s budget request allocates $77 million for the purchase of 275 additional full-body scanners. Each scanner costs $280,000 and the additional order will bring the total number of scanners deployed at U.S. airports to 1,275.

In response to the controversy caused by the use of these scanners last year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has introduced new software that projects a non-gender specific image.

Passengers, civil rights groups, and privacy advocates objected to the revealing nature of the images produced by body scanners, as some felt that they too clearly showed a passenger’s naked body.

The “enhanced pat-down” alternative offered to those refusing the body scanners was found to be even more intrusive.

TSA is hoping that the new software will ease these concerns, as it will only show a vague silhouette of a passenger. If an individual is carrying any dangerous items, a red box will appear on the screen, and if the passenger is not carrying anything, the screen will flash a green okay.

The DHS budget request also includes increased funding for Behavioral Detection Officers at airports, who are trained to detect abnormal behavior in passengers before they arrive at checkpoints.

The program will receive $237 million to expand the program at large U.S. airports and extend it to some smaller airports.

The expansion of the program comes despite a report released by the Government Accountability office last year that called into question the efficacy of the program’s operational premise.

It concluded, “A scientific consensus does not exist on whether behavior detection principles can be reliably used for counterterrorism purposes.”