Passengers Can’t Refuse Full Body Scanners At Certain Airports
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
As if flying through London Heathrow wasn’t painful enough: now the airport’s authorities are saying that airline passengers “will have no right” when it comes to refusing a full-body scan at security.
The option of having a full-body pat-down search instead, offered to passengers at US airports, will not be available despite warnings from the government’s Equality and Human Rights Commission that the scanners, which reveal naked bodies, breach privacy rules under the Human Rights Act.
The transport minister Paul Clark told MPs a random selection of passengers would go through the new scanners at UK airports. The machines’ introduction would be followed later this year by extra “trace” scanners, which can detect liquid explosives. A draft code of practice covering privacy and health issues is being discussed in Whitehall.
via Airline passengers have ‘no right’ to refuse naked body scanners | UK news | guardian.co.uk.
Personally, if it means they’ll catch future bombers, I’m fine with going through a full body scanner. It can’t save or print the images, and as the article continues on to say, the person leading you through the scanner isn’t the same person seeing your unclothed self.
So far, it looks like only a handful of scanners are going to be installed througot the airport, and not everyone is going to have to go through them. Security agents will be spotting and checking people based on “behavioural profiling.” This, again, isn’t fool-proof obviously. Security guards can’t pay attention to everyone, and would-be terrorists are sure to know which clues will give them away these days.
They might as well just give everyone a full-body scan so we can all get on the plane feeling as safe as possible.
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More than 15 years ago, I flew through Heathrow on my way back to New York, as a courier. Like many passengers, pre 9/11, I was called to a podium where I was interviewed as some length one-on-one. It was polite but non-negotiable.
I don’t care much anymore what is done to keep flying safe. Do it. We live in a global economy, with millions of jobs — not just vacations — dependent on people getting around safely.