TSA Blog

To be clear: these images came from the US Marshals Service scanning people entering a courthouse in Florida, not from the TSA. The TSA maintains that their machines are unable to store images: http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/08/tsa-response-to-feds-admit-storing.html

These images were not leaked or snuck out by an employee or anything, they were acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request.

I think the TSA's scanners are an unjustifiable invasion of privacy, but I think that people should make their arguments with the facts. This article is shamelessly caching in on people's outrage without really adding much to the discussion.

The US Marshals' statement on the subject: http://www.usmarshals.gov/news/chron/2010/080510a.htm

if they stopped an actual weapon they would certainly do a full press release about it

It's so common they don't even bother doing a press release anymore. Sometimes they write about interesting finds on their blog:

"Over 1,200 firearms were discovered at TSA checkpoints across the nation in 2011. Many guns are found loaded with rounds in the chamber. Most passengers simply state they forgot they had a gun in their bag."

"Small chunks of C4 explosives were found in passenger’s checked luggage in Yuma (YUM). Believe it or not, he was brining it home to show his family."

http://blog.tsa.gov/2012/01/tsa-top-10-good-catches-of-2011.html

Not convinced this really makes travel safer, but they do find a lot of stuff...

To add to this reply... http://blog.tsa.gov/2011/06/tsa-cancer-cluster-myth-buster.html

Q: Why aren’t your officers permitted to wear dosimeters?

A: There is a really good reason for this. The emissions from our X-ray technology are well below the requirements that would require their routine usage. To help reassure passengers and employees that the technology is safe, however, health physicists with the U.S. Army have been conducting area dosimeter surveys at multiple airports nationwide.

Sounds like nonsense to me... at the least, I'd like to see the resulting data from those surveys posted online and kept up to date so the public can see it.

But couldn't it be argued that the use of body-scanners functions as a form of strong deterrent for potential plots?

No, because there have been attempts that the scanners have not caught, and were thwarted not by the TSA, nor any government agency, but by other passengers. Know thy history, I'm not even accounting for the white-hat tests that the TSA has soundly failed.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/8/tsa-fails-undercover-inspector-sneaks-mock-bomb-ne/

http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/12/70-detection-failure-rate-being.html

http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-scanners-repeatedly-fail-to-detect-handguns-in-testing.html

I found it interesting to read the comments on the blog post where the TSA announced they would stop confiscating pocketknives (effective April 25): http://blog.tsa.gov/2013/03/small-pocket-knives-more-support-than.html

Instead of celebrating this as a victory for common sense, many commenters argued against the change, claiming it would make flights less safe (or at least feel less safe). I think these people are representative of a significant fraction of the population who think the TSA's work is both necessary and effective, and would oppose limiting it any further.

It's effectively zero, so yes. Taking the gun statistic in their blog [0]. Let's say they prevented a total of 5,000 noteworthy things ( that includes their gun statistic). I think that's a reasonable estimate given their figures.

0.000007656967% of the time they did something. In reality it's half of that. In reality of actual danger being present it's even lower than half of that. I'm talking near 7.6e^-8 in rarity.

The odds of being stuck by lightning is higher than the TSA ensuring anyone's safety.

[0] http://blog.tsa.gov/2015/01/tsa-2014-year-in-review.html