Do you really expect your typical underpaid, undereducated, and overworked TSA employee to properly calibrate, maintain, or use a backscatter machines?
Even in hospitals, which have much stricter standards of safety and training have had accidents[1] where patients have been administered overdoses of radiation (some to lethal effect).
Just give the TSA another 10 or 20 years.. I would not be at all surprised to hear of major lawsuits from travelers who've been seriously injured by these machines, due to TSA incompetence in purchasing junky machines, maintaining/calibrating them poorly, or not training their employees to use them properly.
Even in hospitals, which have much stricter standards of safety and training have had accidents[1] where patients have been administered overdoses of radiation (some to lethal effect).
Just give the TSA another 10 or 20 years.. I would not be at all surprised to hear of major lawsuits from travelers who've been seriously injured by these machines, due to TSA incompetence in purchasing junky machines, maintaining/calibrating them poorly, or not training their employees to use them properly.
[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/health/29radiation.html?_r...