Last weekend, I had to fly from Phoenix AZ to San Jose CA and since I had bought a one way ticket, I got the notorious “SSSS” on my boarding pass which allowed me the opportunity to use the Millimeter Wave Scanner (or Virtual Strip Search). “SSSS” means Secondary Security Screening Selection/Selectee, which is printed on the boarding pass if you have a one-way reservation made in 24 hours (like me), passengers who pay cash for the ticket, or others (might even me random).
The procedure –
- At the Security checkpoint, I was asked to wait for a TSA agent to escort me to the Selectee area.
- I went through the metal detector and my bags through the X-ray
- Once I went through, the agent on the other side asked me if I would like to go to the “Millimeter Wave Scanner” or the “Body Scanner”, for which I said yes.
- The agent guided me to the scanner which was had space in the middle. He asked me walk in between the walls of the scanner and stand with my feet in the designated blocks with my hands behind my head. (Behind the machine was an enclosed room where I guess the TSA agent looking at the scanned images is seated).
- There was a display on the machine which blinked “Scanning”.
- Once the scanning was done, he asked me to turn around and with the same posture and the machine scanned again.
- All the while he was talked to someone (the agent who was probably looking at the scans) with his radio.
- Then he asked me to walk out and wait, while he was describing (on his radio) about my clothes.
- Once done, he told me that it was done and I could go pick up my bags (which were still going through the ETD machines).
A lot of people did prefer the manual patting to the scanner, which is understandable. On my personal experience, I think the manual search is faster than the scanner!
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I remeber when I was about 11 or 12 years old and one of my friends had said you could buy X-Ray glasses that could see through womens clothing. It sounded unbelievable because I knew what X rays were (science geek), but the potential benefits made it worthy of more investigation. Its not something an 11 year old boy back in the 70’s could easily stop wondering about.
I wonder what 11 year old boys talk about now ? I wonder how many want to get jobs as body scanners at the airport.