PJ Vogt

Matt Lauer is interviewing a TSA spokesperson.

How does it work?

There's actually a lot going on here.

The TSA is trying to calmly sell Americans on some invasive new technology.

Matt Lauer is acting both as a stand-in, asking the public's obvious skeptical questions, but also trying to help the government with this project of making it all seem not so scary.

They even have out there in the broad summer daylight two citizens who are going to walk through the machine for the first time.

It's like they're volunteering for a magic trick.

It's funny watching this 17 years later, because on the one hand, we now walk through these machines all the time.

On the other, the version of the machines we walk through has been modified in a crucial way.

In 2008, a human TSA agent would have reviewed the black and white nude images generated by the body scanner.

That's what the TSA was asking us to be comfortable with.

But Americans never got comfortable.

Instead, public outcry drove Congress to intervene.

And in 2012, Congress passed a law demanding the TSA change how these devices work.

In 2013, the TSA complies.

They don't delete the machine, but they do delete the human being in a room looking at images of passengers.

That person is replaced by an algorithm, which is how we get to where we are today.

Today, the millimeter wave machine collects an image of your body, but the only thing a TSA agent ever sees is that gingerbread man cartoon outline where anomalous areas have been flagged with boxes.

We've gotten back some of our privacy.

In exchange, occasionally, we get mysterious computer errors.