February 10, 2010 3:01PM 

# I Told You So? 

By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) 

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The story that images of a film star produced by whole-body imaging were [copied and circulated among airport personnel in London](http://www.prisonplanet.com/exposed-naked-body-scanner-images-of-film-star-printed-circulated.html) are a little too good to be true for critics of the technology. It may yet be proven a joke or hoax, and airport [officials are denying](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1249929/Shah-Rukh-Khans-body-scanner-image-printed-says-Heathrow-Airport.html) that it happened, saying that it “simply could not be true.”

But if Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan was exposed by the technology, it validates more quickly than I expected the concern that controls on body scanning images would ultimately fail.

Here’s how I wrote about the fate of domestic U.S. proscriptions on copying images from whole-body imaging machines [in an earlier post](https://www.cato.org/2009/04/24/limiting-the-tsas-use-of-strip-search-machines/):

> Rules, of course, were made to be broken, and it’s only a matter of time — federal law or not — before TSA agents without proper supervision find a way to capture images contrary to policy. (Agent in secure area guides Hollywood starlet to strip search machine, sends SMS message to image reviewer, who takes camera-phone snap. TMZ devotes a week to the story, and the ensuing investigation reveals that this has been happening at airports throughout the country to hundreds of women travelers.)

I have my doubts that this incident actually happened as reported, but it is not impossible, and over time misuse of the technology is likely. That’s a cost of whole-body imaging that should be balanced against its security benefits.

##### Related Tags 

[Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy) 

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