New Airport Scanners May Break British Child Porn Laws

The Guardian:

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.

Read the whole story: The Guardian

Comments

[Rupesh Pawani]

08:16 AM on 01/25/2010

Dowty told the Guardian she raised concerns with the Metropolitan police five years ago over plans to use similar scanners in an anti-knife campaign, and when the Department for Transport began a similar trial in 2006 on the Heathrow Express rail service from Paddington station. "They do not have the legal power to use full body scanners in this way," said Dowty, adding there was an exemption in the 1978 law to cover the "prevention and detection of crime" but the purpose had to be more specific than the "trawling exercise" now being considered.
==>http://www.techsoft.org

[liquidzen11]

09:25 PM on 01/16/2010

Once again fear is used to further the agenda of the greedy ba. 3tardr s.

[Relic61]

10:23 AM on 01/06/2010

Sorry, but I am no way putting my kids through one of these things. I foresee zero travel in my future unless it's by rail or car.

[infidel2]

07:11 AM on 01/06/2010

If children are exempted fro body scans they will immediately become prime targets for use by terrorists.

It's time to put up & shut up if we want to be safe while flying. Personally, I'd rather be "exposed" than "expired".

[infidel2]

06:02 AM on 01/06/2010

If children become exempt from scanning procedures they will become immediately targeted for use by terrorists.

It's time to put up & shut up if you want to improve your chances of surviving an airplane flight.

[markpkessinger]

10:23 PM on 01/05/2010

Okay, so a guy tries to blow up his underpants, and we're now supposed to spend massive amounts of money and endure outrageous personal invasions based on the rather questionable argument that these machines will actually accomplish something. Fine.

Now, leaving aside the fact that regardless of the technology we employ, a determined terrorist will simply adopt another method that skirts that technology, what happens when, say, a terrorist bombs a sporting event, or a movie theatre, or a concert hall, or a supermarket or department store with a similar method? Are we then going to introduce these virtual strip search machines into every one of those venues?

The insane mass hysteria over this incident is just that: insane. And it accomplishes not a single thing except to play directly into the terrorists' hands. When did we become a nation of such cowards that we can no longer accept that to live in the world is to face risk, and that while we can take reasonable steps to moderate some risks, we cannot eliminate every risk.

Look, if someone or some group is determined enough, they will find a way to use terror. And if we allow ourselves this kind of collective panic every time something happens, it won't be long before we've ceded ALL of our civil liberties. At that point, the terrorists will have won.

[S1m0n]

10:22 PM on 01/05/2010

There's no way to achieve total technological security against an enemy that is willing to die to carry out an attack.

If the underwear-bomb doesn't work, the next suicide bomber with have an, um, suppository bomb, or will ingest the bomb ingredients. If stage magicians can learn to swallow and regurgitate objects, so can terrorists.

And then when these hiding spots are eliminated, the next wave will be suicide bombers with breast implant bombs, or exolosives implanted in their abdomen and accessed via a fake (or real and modified, for that matter) colostomy stoma. Remember, to be effective, scanning systems have to succeed every time, but terrorists don't even have to succeed at all to be effective at terrorising us, if we're so interested in being scared.

[Paula Ann]

09:04 PM on 01/05/2010

well, drugs have been smuggled by stuffing baggies full under the skin of the mules then stiching the wounds closed (some not very sucessfully). a/q seems to have doctors "on staff"; will scans be able to detect such subcutaneous foreign bodies?

[Upside]

08:11 PM on 01/05/2010

"I need a bigger penor"

oops, did I say that out loud?

[Shafiq Pandor]

04:37 PM on 01/05/2010

In this case I think the scanners are justified but I'd urge everyone to remember what Ben Franklin had to say:

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security

[ellawensmom]

03:27 PM on 01/05/2010

Extreme invasion of privacy.

[1dogs2]

02:30 PM on 01/05/2010

Exempt kids under 18? Great idea. It would guaranty that that children would be used to carry the materials.

[ellawensmom]

03:27 PM on 01/05/2010

That was my first thought when I read this.

[roger3815]

01:27 PM on 01/05/2010

How stupid can this get?

[RightWingMarine]

01:23 PM on 01/05/2010

I find the concerns over child porn to be unwarrented in this case. The law states that it is illegal to produce an indecent image or pseudoimage of a child. I believe it is reasonable to define this as an image that is solely designed to appeal to the pruient interests. The images generated by the scanner could hardly be described as such.

[Amock]

06:16 PM on 01/05/2010

Unless the person viewing the scans is caught with pants down around his ankles!

[Cheapthrills]

01:03 PM on 01/05/2010

And, what will they think of next when these "scanners" don't catch someone?

[lightningbolt]

02:18 PM on 01/05/2010

Full cavity search?