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Body scanners - panacea or more trouble?
Published: 07 January, 2010, 00:46
Edited: 10 January, 2010, 06:17
With increased air travel safety measures in the US coming into force, the wider use of body scanners is very likely. Their implementation is controversial because of their intrusive nature.
Amerika is the model of efficiency! New strip search machines are designed,built, installed and have personnel trained in 10 days! All they had to do was have this guy go through passport control. Why is the media not demanding video footage showing this panty bomber going through the "established" security procedures?
It makes me angry that the USA authorities had ignored warnings about this guy. When they fail to use information already given to them, why should they claim even more intrusive powers? Instead of this silly political correctness, they should concentrate on the riskier people - yes racial and ethnic profiling. A white 85 year old grandmother is not a potential terrorist and should not be subjected to humiliating searches. Nor should respectable businessmen.
First of all, what lucid, rational individual is going to step foot into a body scanner fully knowing he or she has a gun or other weapon strapped to his or her thigh or elsewhere? Seriously. Think about it. It aint gonna happen folks and if you are an individual who thinks it's gonna happen, then you are not a lucid, rational individual and you in turn are the type of individual who might attempt to do such a stupid thing.
This body scanner - at best - will weed out undesirable flat-chested women and under-endowed men [and oldsters with sagging butts I might add] from flying while the entitled voluptuous women and well-endowed men [and youngsters with tight butts I might add] will proudly and with great relish spend as much time as they can in the scanners as they show off to the rest of us why they are what they are and the rest of us are not. Voluptuous and well-endowed "TERRORISTS" will, with great admiration, just walk on through. No problem.
PLUS it injects money into the economy for body scan manufacturers and associated personnel and completely breaks down personal barriers setting up the public to allow for some possible future neo-gestapo agency to do whatever it is the powers that be might feel like doing down the road. Also, regarding the possibility of a gestapo tactics scenario, being "less than" might just pay off -in the end- after all. THINK people!
The bomber was carrying explosives in his underwear, not in one of his body cavities, so it is plausible that external modes of detection are effective against certain attempts. This isn't to say money and politics aren't inappropriately influencing the purchasing system, they are. But not all attackers are so sophisticated as to use body cavities. Pat downs however are likely a more cost-effective alternative to scanners.