airport security

Did you think taking off your belt, shoes, and sometimes dignity at airport security was the end of it? Think again. It turns out that due to a newish technology, airport security can basically see images of you naked.

Privacy advocates are attempting to stop the US Department of Homeland Security from using whole-body imaging, a technology that is being used now in 19 airports and which displays a blurry but distinctly naked image of a passenger's body with the face blurred out.

The machines "detect both metallic and nonmetallic threat items to keep passengers safe," according to a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration, and some say the machines speed up the otherwise annoying and time-consuming process of metal detectors or pat-downs. To find out what privacy advocates are up in arms about, and to watch a demo of whole body imaging in a video, read more

It turns out that you may not have to sacrifice style for convenience after all. After announcing that the TSA would approve certain laptop bags that you wouldn't have to take your computer out of in the airport security line, the first prototypes were underwhelming, and had me thinking I'd just continue to take my laptop out of its bag. But now it seems that's unnecessary, because the TSA has approved a few common laptop styles that you won't have to remove your laptop from!

They are: Butterfly style, trifold style, and sleeve style, and this policy went into effect on Saturday.

The TSA specifically says no to backpack and accordion styles, and of course, gives the stipulation that carrying these styles doesn't guarantee that you won't have to pull your laptop out of its bag. But still, baby steps.

Before I owned a digital camera I would take my 35mm film camera everywhere I went. One concern I always had was whether or not my film would be ruined going through airport security checkpoints. With traditional film cameras, there's a higher risk that film will be damaged by the X-Ray machines during security screening, even though this hasn't happened to me. Just to be on the safe side, have your camera checked separately by hand or ask the security staff if the X-Ray machines are safe for film - usually the posters in the area will indicate whether or not you need to remove film. As for digital cameras, your pictures should be completely safe.