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Two airports to get new scanners

A woman raises her arms in a new full body scanner on the first day of a test at Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, Monday. (Associated Press)
Eileen Sullivan Associated Press
A woman raises her arms in a new full body scanner on the first day of a test at Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, Monday. (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON – The first of 150 full-body scanners planned for U.S. airports will be installed in Boston next week, officials said Tuesday.

The plan is to install three machines at Logan International Airport, according to a Homeland Security official. In the next two weeks, officials plan to install another machine at Chicago’s O’Hare International.

The rest of the 150 machines that were purchased with $25 million from President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus plan are expected to be installed in airports by the end of June, another Homeland Security official, spokeswoman Amy Kudwa, said.

The use of the scanners in airports is key to the Obama administration’s plans to improve airport security because of their ability to show objects hidden on the body. Body scanners have been available for years, but their deployment has been slowed by objections from privacy advocates.

After a Nigerian man allegedly attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner last Christmas, Obama called for purchasing hundreds more of the machines on top of 150 already announced last year.