The TSA has announced it will be going through travelers' books and magazines in a new security screening measures - but critics are skeptical it will be used as a tool to target people carrying books of other faiths or languages.

The Transportation Security Administration began screening for paper products at airport checkpoints in Missouri last month.

But now the agency has unveiled even more invasive procedures at the airport in Sacramento, California, which requires passengers to remove all reading material and food from their carry-on luggage to place in a separate bin for screeners to fan through to see if anything is hidden inside the pages.

Officials insist that agents will not pay attention to the content of the books and reading material.

The TSA has announced it will be going through travelers' books and magazines in a new security screening measures (stock image)

But many people on Twitter have been skeptical of the promise and have questioned how an agent would react to a passenger carrying the Koran or an Arabic language book.

Others have shared their own experiences of being taken for 'extra screening' after agents noticed their unusual reading material.

The American Civil Liberties Union have criticized the new protocol, saying that no one should have to reveal what they are reading.

Academics also raised concerns and shared stories of students and professors stopped over their reading material, such as the Arabic language student detained over their Arabic flash cards, or the University of Pennsylvania professor whose flight was delayed after a passenger saw him writing out mathematical equations and believed they could be a terrorist code.

'It's always been a series of insults,' Julie Sze, a University of California, Davis, professor, told InsideHigherEd after she experienced the test procedure at Sacramento. 'Books, magazines, food, those are like my three treasured things. It feels personal on a whole different level.'

The Transportation Security Administration began screening for paper products at airport checkpoints in Missouri last month (stock image of the TSA in St Louis, Missouri)

One Twitter user, a criminal defense lawyer, warned that the new book policy 'will lead to some strife.'

'It reminds me of an incident I had with TSA around a decade ago', he wrote, describing how he had been flying to Oakland to defend a man charged with unlawful possession of a machine gun when his hearing notes binder was taken out and fell open to the page with a diagram of the machine gun.

'I'm thinking, 'this has long day written all over it,' he wrote.

The lawyer said that after an awkward silence, a supervisor was called and he had to explain he was a a criminal defense attorney which he said 'does not exactly soothe.'

After being 'thoroughly searched' and having his driving license copied, he was finally allowed to leave.

'Encouraging the TSA to have ANY duty to look at books and papers will go badly. Very badly,' he added.

Barry Scott Will‏ also claimed that the FBI investigated TSR Games - who produce games such as Dungeons and Dragons - because 'somebody dropped 'Top Secret' game material detailing an assassination in Beirut.'

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said Sunday he is considering rolling out the new searches nationwide.

Many people on Twitter have been skeptical of the promise and shared experiences of themselves or others being taken for 'extra screening' after agents noticed their unusual reading material

Officials say that tightly packed paper items, like book and magazines, can sometimes resemble explosives through the X-ray machine. The new screening process will order travelers to separate the books from their luggage, and allow agents to rifle through them to see if anything is hidden within.

The TSA may also roll out the ban on laptops and electronic tablets, which currently only applies to inbound international flights to the US from certain countries, to all international flights in and out of the United States.

Other new security measures being tested include screening some carry-on bags with 3-D scanning technology.

The TSA said that it is testing computed-tomography, or CT, scanning at one checkpoint at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

The technology is already used for screening checked luggage, but the cost and larger size of the CT scanners has held back their use for carry-on bags. CT scanners create a 3-D image that can be rotated to give screeners a better look. Suspicious bags can be pulled aside and opened by screeners.

American Airlines, which is participating in the test, said the technology could let passengers leave laptops, liquids and aerosols in their carry-on bags, speeding up the trip through the airport.

The test comes as U.S. officials scramble to deal with potential new threats, including reports that terrorists are developing bombs that can be disguised as laptop batteries. That fear led the government to ban laptop and tablet computers from the cabins of airliners headed to the U.S. from some Middle Eastern and African nations.

The ban on laptops in the cabin is based on the belief that a bomb in the cargo hold would need to be bigger than one in the cabin, and capable of remote detonation. Plus, checked luggage already goes through computed-tomography screening while carry-on bags don't.

New TSA technology also allows a traveler's fingerprints to serve as a boarding pass and an identity document, in the place of a passport

CT scanners use better technology that screens bags faster and reduces the number of bags that must be searched by hand, said Jeffrey Price, an aviation security professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. But they are more expensive.

'I think TSA thought if they can just upgrade the X-rays that they had already, they would be fine,' Price said. 'What they are finding now is that's not the case, because the bad guys continue to evolve and adapt. The reason we're looking at the whole laptop ban is because the X-ray equipment throughout the world can't necessarily find the existing threat.'

TSA will use smaller CT scanners than the machines used to peer inside checked baggage, but they should produce the same level of security, said the agency's acting administrator, Huban Gowadia.

Another security measure is new checkpoint screening technology that could mean the end of the boarding pass in airports in Atlanta and Denver.

The technology allows a traveler's fingerprints to serve as a boarding pass and an identity document, in the place of a passport.

It works by matching a traveler's fingerprints to those that have previously been provided to the TSA by travelers who have enrolled in the TSA Pre program - an expedited security screening program.