A private sector company would NOT have to use the scanners. There are a few airports who don't use TSA. I believe one on in San Francisco has never used TSA at all.
Nope, SF airport was frisking and massaging all (100%) passengers last week (Monday) when my 65-year old mother passed through... they don't have the scanners (I don't know if they're still otw or if this is the result of them opting to use a private company, under TSA supervision and mandates, that doesn't have to use scanners but now has to frisk all passengers). It was security personel, doing pretty agressive frisks, under the supervision of a TSA employee and a professional third-party legal observer. On the first flight she took up there, LAX was a similar deal except some terminals in LAX have the scanners (I observed the busier international terminals had them... I guess flights departing this country out over the pacific ocean, filled with more foreign citizens than US, are more of a security threat than the domestic flights heading inland or up the coast filled mostly with US citizens.....
) and other terminals don't, resulting in the terminal my mother's flight was departing from being one of the terminals without a scanner and mandating all passengers get "the frisk" by TSA employees, again under the supervision of a professional third-party legal observer (as if the ordeal wasn't any more obviously rediculous and over-intrusive, they're paying some pretty pennies for these legal observers at each checkpoint around the nation).
