SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - The controversial full body scanners at the airport will soon be going away. The TSA announced that all the machines will soon be removed from airports including Lindbergh Field.
More than three years after being installed at dozens of airports around the country, including Lindbergh Field, those controversial and revealing full body scanners will soon be a thing of the past.
The scanners use a low dose of radiation to generate detailed nearly naked-like images of travelers, which touched off a firestorm of controversy among privacy advocates and outraged airline customers.
In 2010, an Oceanside man became an Internet sensation after refusing the screening on privacy grounds and being forced to undergo a physical pat-down by a TSA agent instead.
The TSA's decision to now pull nearly 200 machines currently in use at 30 airports nationwide comes after the company that produces them failed to meet a deadline to develop new software that would protect passenger's privacy.
Although for many frequent fliers, the problem isn't what you can see with these scanners but instead what you can't, such as radiation and its potential long-term health effects including cancer.
Many, however, were unfazed about the full body technology to begin with.
Instead of these full body x-ray scanners, many airports will use another type of scanner made by another company that does not use radiation or generate revealing images.
According to the TSA, those allow quicker scans meaning faster security checkpoint lines. The full body x-ray scanners are scheduled to be removed from all U.S. airports by this June.