A U.S. appeals court in Washington upheld the government's right to use full-body scanners to screen air travelers at the nation's airports but said the Transportation Security Administration should have sought public comment before deploying them.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia which reviews challenges to federal regulations, upheld the use of the scanners, the Los Angeles Times reported, known as Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT.L), were not an unconstitutional search and declined to halt their use despite TSA's failure to follow proper procedure.

The need for public security outweighs the privacy travelers give up, Justice Douglas Ginsburg said, accepting the scanners are more invasive than the older devices that detect metallic objects and not powders or other materials that could explode.

"Despite the safety measures taken by the TSA, it is clear that producing an image of the unclothed passenger … intrudes on his or her individual privacy in a way that a magnetometer does not," Ginsburg wrote.

"That balance [between privacy and security] clearly favors the government here," Ginsburg said.

Passengers have the choice of choosing a pat down search if they don't want to pass over the scanner.