100s of deaths linked to TSA ‘virtual strip searches’

Whistleblower News Daily reports on CEI's lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration's body scanner rule. 

But now there’s a lawsuit raising another claim: The machines are responsible for hundreds of deaths per year.

The lawsuit was filed in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Rutherford Institute against the Department of Transportation and the TSA.

When the TSA began installing the machines in 2007, the government failed to follow the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirement that it propose and adopt standards. Consequently, formal complaints and challenges to the TSA program were delayed.

“TSA characterized AIT as reducing the need for pat-downs, and stated that privacy concerns regarding body scanners’ production of naked body images had been eliminated through new software that produced only a ‘generic outline’ of a passenger’s body,” the new lawsuit explains.

“And it noted the argument of some individuals and organizations that, given the greater risks of driving compared to flying, this could raise a safety issue – ‘some estimated as many as 500 additional deaths per year,'” the new complaint says.

The lawsuit demands that the rule be returned to the agency for further review.

Read the full article at Whistleblower News Daily.