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PRIVACY AND LIES: Feds admit storing checkpoint body scan images. For the last few years, federa?

By Glenn Reynolds

PRIVACY AND LIES: Feds admit storing checkpoint body scan images.

For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they’re viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

Whenever the government collects information, it lies about what it will do with it. This is a near-universal law.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Mason writes: “Look on the bright side. Glenn. At least they don’t want to control all of our medical records! What?”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on August 04, 2010 (boomark / email).