Technology is growing to such a point that more and more places have handy gizmos which leave a person with very little to hide.
Some folks think an X-ray scanner just pulls up an image of your bones but the level of detail modern technology can create is impressive, and somewhat worrying.
Plenty of places have been introducing new scanners for years, and when one was introduced in a Washington County jail, it proved effective at counteracting people trying to smuggle illicit items inside.
While people would struggle with stuffing things into their pockets, as a simple search would turn them up, there are other places a person has to hide certain things from obvious sight.
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We are, of course, talking about insertion into certain orifices, but body scanner technology has developed to the point that even inside the human form is not safe from being spotted.
The aforementioned jail scanner spotted an 'amazing amount of drugs inside a person's body' as it found 1.7 grams of heroin inside the body, which would have been fatal had it been absorbed.
People attempting to smuggle drugs by ingesting them have died after the bags they swallowed split inside the body, exposing someone to a very lethal dose.
The jail scanner takes around five seconds and does not show anatomy, just the body's structure.
However, body scanners are rather controversial pieces of technology since they leave very little to the imagination and people walking through them have very little in the way of privacy.
In the past, such scanners have been accused of being 'virtual strip searches' as people accused the technology of being intrusive, and there have been changes to devices introduced in a reaction to concerns over them.
In many parts of the world, backlash to older scanners resulted in the Rapiscan scanners being removed and replaced with more modern security checkpoints which are still supposed to spot things security officials need to watch out for without being a massive invasion of privacy.
Given the intrusive nature of scanners, it's only natural that some people have developed a curiosity towards them.
Someone curious about what happens inside the devices decided to send their phone recording through one designed to examine airport luggage and shared the footage.
However, the actual visuals the camera could pick up weren't particularly interesting as most of the important things going on in there are not visible to the naked eye.
Fortunately for people using them, there's not much danger posed by the brief bombardment by X-rays as the health risks are very low.
Topics: Technology, Drugs
Joe Harker