So a Bollywood superstar walks through airport security in London…

Alas, it’s not the start of a joke. Shah Rukh Khan recently passed through London Heathrow Airport, where he was subjected to a full-body scan. He subsequently accused security officials at London Heathrow Airport of printing the revealing images of his scan.

Mr Khan highlighted the weaknesses of the new technology in regards to privacy when he told BBC talk show host Jonathan Ross that he autographed printed scans of his body for female security officers.
[...]
“I was a little scared. I came out (of the scanner) and then I saw these girls and they had these printouts,” Khan said.

“So I looked at them, I thought maybe it’s a form you’re supposed to (sign) … and you could see everything inside.

“And then I’ve autographed them for them.”

But days later, he was in hot water. BAA, which manages the airport, pushed back, hard. The charges were “completely factually incorrect” and “simply could not be true.” The machines don’t even have a printer attached.

Okay… It’s impossible to know why Khan would be making these particular accusations, but if he’s an aiport security news junkie — and really, who isn’t? — he might have caught this recent account of scanner security safeguards in the NY Times:

The Transportation Security Administration has promised not to store or transmit nude images of airline passengers made by whole-body scanners, but when it asked manufacturers to submit bids for such machines, it required that the scanners have exactly those capabilities, according to agency documents obtained in a lawsuit.
[...]
Two T.S.A. officials, speaking on the condition that they not be identified by name, said that the scanners are delivered with the ability to store and transmit images, but that these capabilities are disabled by the agency before the machines are installed at an airport and that officers at the airport cannot re-enable them. The operator, who is forbidden to take a camera into the remote room, must clear one image before the next passenger image can be seen, they said.

Granted, that’s the US, and the incident occurred in the UK. But if US-issued units have store & transmit capability, then it’s not a stretch to assume that UK units might be similarly equipped.

I would argue that the whole affair is a function of the questionable privacy — and poor PR — behind the rollout. There’s been plentiful reason for cynicism, and public officials, past and present, haven’t earned our trust on this issue. The TSA has released low-resolution sample images on the internet, but has not shown the traveling public just how precisely their agents will be able to view your junk. (If they were to post sample images at the checkpoint, I’d love to see how many people would opt for a patdown in lieu of an electronic strip search.)

And while we’re at it, let’s throw in the fact that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a frequent on-screen cheerleader for scanners in the wake of the Christmas Day underpants bomber, is now a paid consultant for a manufacturer of scanners.

So it’s easy to be cynical. Even paranoid. And while Khan may have been off his rocker when he told the BBC that he autographed printouts, I can plausibly construct a thought process that might have led him to a belief that he had actually done so.