Leaking airport body scans could mean a year in jail

There is good news for airline passengers who worry that embarrassing photos taken by airport scanners may leak out and show up on the Internet: two US senators are proposing to make it a crime to disseminate such images, punishable by up to a year in prison.

Democratic Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Charles E. Schumer of New York have proposed an amendment to an aviation spending bill that would prohibit anyone with access to the scanned body images from photographing or disseminating those images. As proposed, violators could face fines of up to $US100,000 and a prison term.

"We need to do everything we can to protect the privacy rights of the air travelers," Schumer said in a statement.

The Transportation Security Administration has installed more than 500 scanners at 78 airports in an effort to check for hidden weapons and contraband. The scanners use low levels of radiation to create what look like nude images of the screened passengers. TSA officials say the machines cannot store such images.

The amendment also would make it a crime to use a personal camera to photograph the images created by the scanner.

MCT