Feds Say Airport Body Scanners are ‘Minimally Intrusive'

From Wired's Threat Level blog:

The government said late Thursday the full-body imaging scanners being deployed to airports nationwide are “reasonable,” “minimally intrusive,” and their “interference with individual liberty is limited.”

The Justice Department’s remarks (.pdf) were the first publicly explaining the scanners to the courts. The legal filing was responding to a leading privacy group’s lawsuit urging the courts to suspend their use for, among other things, Fourth Amendment privacy breaches.

The Justice Department, on behalf of the Transportation Security Agency, conceded to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machines are not foolproof. But their privacy threats, however slim, are designed to protect against terrorists concealing “non-metallic items,” the government said.