Full-Body Scanners To Be Installed In British Airports

LONDON — Prime Minister Gordon Brown says full-body scanners will be introduced in Britain's airports in the wake of the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt of a U.S. airliner.

Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Sunday that all airport security would be increased in Britain, and all passengers even those only transiting through the country will have their hand luggage screened for traces of explosives.

The suspect in the failed Northwest Airlines bombing had changed planes in The Netherlands and gone through security but not through a full-body scanner.

Britain's main airport operator BAA says it has ordered full-body scanners and would introduce them as soon as possible. BAA operates Europe's busiest airport, Heathrow, as well as other British airports.

Heathrow and Manchester airports have had trials using the full-body scanners.

Comments

[mrjames1]

09:44 AM on 02/02/2010

Wow, they're already installing them, guess there were a few hundred of these ultra expensive scanners in inventory, just in case they were needed. sounds like the company took a HUGE risk in having so many unsol units. Not sure if lucky is the correct word, but imagine making tens of millions of dollars worth of a high tech item - with only a tiny market. hmmmm

oh, by the way, which high up govt official is heavily involved with the supplier and stands to gain millions ? i leave that to you, follow the money, its so simple, and sooo sad

[trestradapalma]

06:02 PM on 01/05/2010

Here is the facts concerning the quality of the scans. The pictures release by the government have been doctored. Here is how they look after I undoctored them to show what the government really has.

http://tomasestradapalma4today.blogspot.com/2010/01/origin-of-naked-airport-scan-image.html

If you see this woman please tell her she's naked on the Internet.

[RitaS]

10:17 PM on 01/03/2010

Mmm.... full body scans... I have absolutely no problem w/ them if it'll prevent what happened during that X-mas flight. From past news reports on this technology, it's my understanding, that, those viewing the scans are/will be of the same sex. Given this, what personal objection can there be?

I can only hope that the airlines/governments don't rely solely on this as the ultimate solution. Every country can learn from each others' security. We need to open our eyes to all possibilities & solutions. We CANNOT believe, the US, that we know ALL when problems such as this give us a hard slap to our face.

We are not alone, the US, in combating terrorism. It hasn't been in the last 10 yrs that terrorism has reared it's ugly head.... Terrorism & it's ugly head has been around for decades in various forms.

We all need to learn from the past, learn what works & stop the ridicules knee jerk reactions that cause more harm than good....

[babyboomerorig]

05:27 PM on 01/03/2010

I'd just bet that all the passengers on Christmas Day would have gone through a full body scan not to have to go through the terror they did just before landing in Detroit.

If someone wants to scan this old saggy body of mine, go right ahead....it's just a body.

[deluk]

05:25 PM on 01/03/2010

I don't believe that either the US or the UK qualify as a "police state". If the UK is such it surely qualifies as the worlds first police state with an unarmed police force, (The ability to use force to enforce the will of the state would seem to be a prerequisite)

[deluk]

05:32 PM on 01/03/2010

Duh, this was meant as a reply to Pooh Bear down the page.

[EuroMom]

05:54 AM on 01/04/2010

Ah, don't worry deluk. As Pooh himself tells us, he is a Bear of Very Little Brain and long words bother him.

[JFetch]

05:05 PM on 01/03/2010

If their goal is to make all religious and modest people stop flying, then it's a great plan. I predict boat travel to go up significantly.

[AtheistUS]

06:39 PM on 01/03/2010

Religious and "modest" people can sit closed in their homes if they wish.

[JFetch]

11:31 PM on 01/03/2010

They might do that. Meanwhile the air traffic business will go down the tubes.

[shadekeiko]

04:59 PM on 01/03/2010

It's not just the UK, guys. I just passed by one here at Denver International - thankfully I didn't have to go through it.

[CommonTator]

02:00 PM on 01/03/2010

If you fly once a month,

And terrorists blew up one plane A MONTH

Your odds of dying in such an attack are 1 in 55 MILLION!

Source: Center for Disease Control; Michael L. Rothschild, professor emeritus, University of Wisconsin.

Your odds of being struck by lightning at some point in your life, assuming an 80-year lifespan:

1 in 6250

Source: http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm

People...The terrorists are not the source of terror.

It is the reaction of your government that is the source of terror.

What did we hear after 9/11?

They hate us for our freedoms.

What freedom has Bin Laden ever taken from you?

Not one.

The freedoms we have lost have all been taken by the hands of those chosen to safeguard them.

Life is full of risk. If you can't handle that, then get in your bunker with your canned goods.

Your odds of death from slipping and falling in said bunker are still much higher than the odds of you dying in a terrorist attack.

If you're willing to let airport security see your naked body - face or not, clearly or not - to stave off a much, much much more abysmal chance of death than 1 in 55 million (as that figure assumes one terrorist-destroyed plane a month, and we've had probably fewer than a dozen in 8 years globally)

Then what are you going to do to keep the lightning at bay?”

[kathy001]

05:16 PM on 01/03/2010

Oh for goodness sakes, no one is going to be using body scans for titulation. I'm not worried nor am I ashamed. My naked body is pretty much the same as every other naked body in the world - nothing special on either the good or bad end of the scale. As for the lightening, I take precautions like staying indoors during storms.

Everyone takes appropriate precautions against threats, which is why we don't have a higher number of deaths or injuries from various threats like lightening strikes, auto crashes, falls in the bathtub, etc. etc. Preventing people from bringing explosives onto an airplane is simply an appropriate precaution.

[laaambchop]

05:23 PM on 01/03/2010

It's the radiation that is a health risk.

[CommonTator]

05:50 PM on 01/03/2010

Whether you personally, as one individual amongst hundreds of millions would mind strangers seeing a scan of your naked body is beside the point.

That's you. One person.

Many people wouldn't mind quartering troops in their homes.

Heck, plenty would consider it an honor.

However, being forced to house troops is one of the reasons we had a revolution in this country 200 odd years ago.

I'm sure some individuals didn't mind it back then, either.

Many did.

Everyone can agree that appropriate precautions should be taken.

Most people are too addled by fear to consider for a moment what precautions are actually appropriate, preferring to simply trust what they're told by the media.

If you fly once a month, and terrorists SUCCESSFULLY destroy one plane a month, your odds of dying in such an attack are OVER 8,000 TIMES LESS than the odds of you being struck by lightning at some point in your lifetime.

We have not had a successful attack on an aircraft in America in over 8 years.

An appropriate precaution is one that is scaled to match the risk of what you mean to prevent.

Asking people to electronically disrobe for strangers is completely out of balance with the level of risk borne by individuals from terrorist attacks against airplanes.

It is NOT an "appropriate" precaution.

[Javida]

05:52 PM on 01/03/2010

You overlooked one very important premise in your comparison of airplane bombings and lightning strikes: Airplane bombings have a far higher element of human prevention compared to lightning strikes. We can do intelligence to ID potential bombers and forbid plane access; search passengers and luggage and shut down airports if a threat is iminent. However, we cannot predict lightning strikes -- some appear even on clear, sunny days -- and prevention is, thus, limited as well. Therefore, we are more active in keeping ourselves safe where we have a better than 50-50 chance of doing so.

[CommonTator]

06:19 PM on 01/03/2010

Lightning strikes are merely one example of thousands.

I used lightning as an example because when something is incredibly improbable, it is common to compare it to the chance of getting struck by lightning.

Actually, the fact that airplane bombings have a far higher element of human prevention than lightning strikes is irrelevant to my point.

So let me make myself more clear than I have:

A terrorist taking down a plane once every month is an almost unfathomable nightmare scenario to most people, especially as they've failed to take down one single American plane in over 8 years.

And even IF this scenario were to come to pass, and you were to fly once a month, your odds of dying in such an attack are 1 in 55 million, or over 8,000 times less likely than your odds of getting struck by lightning at some point.

The odds of dying on a plane blown up by a terrorist as things actually are right now, and not in the aforementioned nightmare scenario, are probably closer to one in the HUNDREDS of millions, if not billions.

And that's IF you fly a lot!

Installing these body scanners at airports may be cutting down on the risk - but the risk is so infinitesimally small already that it in no way justifies compelling all would-be commuters to expose their naked bodies (unclear or not) to strangers, or to the risk some claim exists from the radiation.

[AtheistUS]

06:41 PM on 01/03/2010

Good answer!

[HeartyHar]

01:36 PM on 01/03/2010

Wake Up People!!! This is radiation---how amazing that no one seems even slightly fearful of the damage to our bodies that repeated X-rays will do. If you fly often, just think of the number of rads you will be exposed to in airports where the scanners aren't functioning properly by people who, unlike the radiologists ,don't know squat about how long or short a person should stay inside these chambers etc. Jeez, what a impending disaster!!!

[Pilate]

01:44 PM on 01/03/2010

If low dose radiation scares you, then you shouldn't fly at all. Cosmic ray exposure on a transcontinental flight, way up where there is almost no atmosphere to block it, gives you the rough equivalent of a couple of chest X-rays.

[AtheistUS]

02:38 PM on 01/03/2010

Full body scanners do not use X-rays. Read something before posting.

These rays are of much lower energy. They scatter back from skin and do not go deeper into a body. A radiation obtain equals to what you will get anyway in airplane at high altitude in just few minutes.

[Murat Aksu]

01:30 PM on 01/03/2010

What if the terrorist hide their gear up in their anus? Will they start fingering people in England?

[Fire Wizard]

06:58 PM on 01/03/2010

Yes, Gordon Brown has volunteered to do the fingering himself.

[AmberGaze]

02:27 AM on 01/06/2010

Haha!

[gfs5541]

01:23 PM on 01/03/2010

Come on ya'll : http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/1230/Number-of-full-body-scanners-at-US-airports-to-triple-in-2010

[MrGiggles]

01:17 PM on 01/03/2010

They should have installed these machines years ago. It will speed up airport security by reducing the need for the current security check charade and provide much more accurate detection of weapons and explosives.

[AtheistUS]

04:26 AM on 01/04/2010

"It will speed up airport security by reducing the need for the current security check charade..." - That's unlikely. Not with current technology. Full body scan is not so fast. I think it will be applied sometimes selectively, and sometimes (probably not often) to everybody.

[Pilate]

01:15 PM on 01/03/2010

Heck, this is no fun at all. I say we do it the way retired General McInerney proposes, "If you are an 18-28-year-old Muslim man then you should be strip searched."

[EuroMom]

04:55 PM on 01/03/2010

Oh -- and how do you plan to identify them?

[TWJ]

01:14 PM on 01/03/2010

I seem to recall an earlier article where the British banned use of these scanners because they show enough detail to violate the child pornography laws if used on anyone under the age of 18. (A number of Renaissance paintings of Madonna and Child hanging in British museums also are illegal under a strict interpretation of the law and I’m just waiting for someone to demand that they be destroyed!)

[Moxo]

01:09 PM on 01/03/2010

Think of the creative possibilities for body art!!

Metallic letters sown onto T-Shirts, could become pearls of widom, zen allusions, political statements. Qoutes from the the Bill of Rights, Constitution, Ben Franklin, et al, could be quiet educational to the viewer.

The possibilities from "Undershirt Art" (did i just coin a new phrase?) are endless - directional arrows could point to body parts the wearer is proud of (or away from the parts they are not so proud of). A clenched fist with a thubbs up could give the TSA viewer a much neededmorale boost... or not, if the thumb points the other way. Steel piercings could move away from the simple rings and bars into new concoctions of irony (pardon the pun)

Are "offensive words" still offensive if they are hidden from all but the scanner viewer?

I wonder if now metallic Henna drawings might become popular?

This latest governmen-sponsoredl intrusion into our lives in order to defend our rights to "Live Free" has all the pssibility to allow us to truly express ourselves to those intruding on our body.

Moxo.