Netherlands Announces New Airport Body Scanners

Schiphol airport demonstrated yesterday its newly-improved full body scanner after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day, allegedly with explosive powder and a syringe of chemicals hidden in his underwear.

He’s charged with attempting to blow up the plane, Northwest Flight 253, just outside of Detroit. The airport will make the new microwave detectors compulsory pending approval from European authorities.

The European parliament last year voted against using body scanners at airports with one leading Member of Parliament describing them as „strip search body scanners,“ because the computer image of the passengers made them look virtually naked.

No airport in the European Union with a scanner can force a passenger to walk through it and they remain voluntary. The European lawmakers are concerned the scanners invaded people’s privacy and are indecent, almost pornographic.

Several airports world-wide already have scanners of which there are three different types: the millimeter wave, the backscatter and the t-ray.

Schiphol Group chief operating officer Ad Rutten says the new computer is better as it’s not operated by a human being, is more discreet, and projects an image to the computer that’s more representative of the body.

[Ad Rutten, Schiphol Group]:
„We don’t need a controller anymore who looks at the pictures, who analyses the pictures. The computer can analyze the picture. So, by taking out the human interface, we think that the parliament in the next round will approve the body scanners.“

Schiphol Group says the airport could implement the new scanners within one year. However, Rutten warns that no system is foolproof, even if it was an improvement on current technology.

The U.S. government has also stepped up security measures. Several airlines say they had been ordered by the United States to implement the new policy.

Passengers are limited to one personal carry-on bag on many international flights destined for the U.S., and asked to check other bags and packages.
On U.S.-bound international flights, passengers had to go through a second round of security checks at the gate, including manual bag searches and a pat down body search.

(NTDTV)