Body type: This latest body-scanner version presents a generic outline of a human, similar to a crime scene outline

MANCHESTER - The state's largest airport may soon have full-body scanners installed, just in time for the upcoming holiday season, but on Friday a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would not confirm or deny their potential arrival.

Televised news reports state that the TSA had announced last week that Manchester-Boston Regional Airport would have at least one full-body scanner in place prior to Thanksgiving and the rest of the busy holiday travel season. But a TSA spokesperson said on Friday that because none of the 500 additional scanners expected to be distributed across the country in the coming weeks have actually been purchased, she couldn't confirm any type of a deployment schedule.

"TSA plans to purchase and begin deploying 500 additional imaging technology machines this year," said TSA spokesperson Sarah Horowitz, with the organization's Office of Strategic Communications and Public Affairs. "Once we purchase the units, we'll finalize a deployment schedule and make specific airport announcements. Once a unit is installed, it could be operational as early as the next day."

Once installed, TSA agents typically must complete 20 hours of classroom training and eight hours of on-the-job training before operating the scanners, according to Horowitz.

A statement by a senior airport management official on Friday would seem to suggest that he and other staff members are expecting to receive at least one scanner - costing between $130,000 and $170,000 - in the near future. Assistant Airport Director Tom Malafronte wrote in an email to the New Hampshire Union Leader that "Specific questions regarding the next generation equipment slated for MHT," the airport code for Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, must be directed to the TSA.

He also said that the management team at MHT expects passengers moving through security checkpoints in the coming weeks and months will not be slowed by scanner installation.

"Although the airport hasn't received final plans for implementation of the equipment from TSA, we do not anticipate any changes to the existing security checkpoint layouts," wrote Malafronte.

If Manchester does get body scanners, they would be one of the next-generation versions debuted in late July in Tampa, not the ones that displayed what amounted to naked images of passengers as they passed through, visible only to TSA agents. This new version presents a generic outline of a human, similar to a crime scene outline, rather than an image of an individual.

"TSA recently began installing new software on millimeter wave advanced imaging technology designed to enhance passenger privacy by eliminating passenger-specific images, and instead auto-detecting potential threat items and indicating their location on a generic outline of a person," said Horowitz. "By eliminating the image of an actual passenger and replacing it with a generic outline of a person, passengers are able to view the same outline that the TSA officer sees. TSA plans to install the new software on every millimeter wave imaging technology unit currently in place in the coming months. The image cannot be stored, transmitted or printed, and is deleted immediately after a passenger is cleared. A privacy filter is applied to blur all images."

"It's a step in the right direction, if they are not storing the images," said state Rep. George Lambert, R-Litchfield, who last spring sponsored House Bill 628, which would have made "the touching or viewing with a technological device of a person's breasts or genitals by a government security agent without probable cause a sexual assault" in the state of New Hampshire. A subcommittee will meet next Tuesday to review four reworked versions of that bill, which supporters feel may garner more support among House members.

Some supporters of HB628 are still refusing to fly altogether, if it means dealing with a body scanner.

"We are going to Houston in December as a family, and we're driving," said Rep. Andrew Mancuse, R-Derry, a co-sponsor of HB628. "I won't subject my daughter to that."

"Advanced imaging technology is optional for all passengers," said Horowitz. "Passengers who opt out of imaging technology screening will receive alternative screening, to include a physical pat down."