Next Stop For Controversial Airport Scanners: Office Buildings?

Megan Garber | The Atlantic | February 11, 2013

Last month, the Transportation Security Administration ended its contract with the airport scanner maker Rapiscan, pledging to remove the company's controversial backscatter x-ray machines from the country's airports. 

This may have been good news for plane passengers concerned with the scanners' health effects, and good news as well for passengers who didn't relish the idea of cartoonish-but-nonetheless-naked images of themselves being generated in the name of safety. It was significantly less good news, however, for the TSA, which now finds itself in the awkward position of having hundreds of machines, but no airport to put them in. (The agency has removed 76 machines from airports so far, and has plans to remove the remaining 174 by June 1 of this year.)...

One potential solution: office buildings. Specifically, governmental office buildings. "We are working with other government agencies to find homes for them," TSA spokesman David Castelveter told Federal Times. "There is an interest clearly by DoD and the State Department to use them -- and other agencies as well."...