Airport body scanners could 'breach human rights'

[AnGrz_Z_K_Jailer]

Airport body scanners, which show the naked form of anyone who passes through them, could breach human rights, according to the UK's equality watchdog.

Published: 12:08PM GMT 17 Jan 2010

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has written to the Home Secretary over concerns about the proposed introduction of body scanners at airports.

It fears they could breach an individual's right to privacy as laid out in the Human Rights Act.

As such it is calling on the Government to set out in detail its justification for bringing in the new security measure.

Earlier this month, Gordon Brown announced that air travellers would see the ''gradual'' introduction of body scanners at airports around Britain.

It followed the failed attempt to blow up a plane over the US on Christmas Day.

Supporters claim the move will enhance airport security.

But those opposed to the machines argue that they provide a too intimate image of passengers.

The EHRC has said that the proposals are likely to have a negative impact on privacy, especially in concern to certain groups such as disabled people, the elderly, children and the transgendered community.

The commission has asked Alan Johnson to clarify what safeguards will be put in place to protect passengers.

It also wants to see the evidence for the profiling of travellers in the context of selecting people to be scanned.

Equal rights campaigners have aired concern that the process will lead to discrimination against people on the grounds of race, ethnicity of religion.

John Wadham, group director legal at the EHRC, said: ''The commission fully accepts the Government's responsibility to protect the safety and security of air travellers.

''The right to life is the ultimate human right and we support the Government reviewing security in the light of recent alleged terrorist activity.

''However, the Government needs to ensure that measures to protect this right also take into account the need to be proportionate in its counter-terrorism proposals and ensure that they are justified by evidence and effectiveness.''

Privacy campaigners welcomed the EHRC's move.

Dylan Sharpe, campaign director of Big Brother Watch, said: "The EHRC is completely right to question the use of full-body scanners in airports.

"They are another intrusion into our privacy in the name of protection, yet we know that they are not fail-safe and could see airport authorities becoming reliant on a deeply flawed method of detection."

Matthew Knowles, spokesman for ADS, the UK's aerospace, defence and security trade organisation, said: "The safety of air travel must be taken very seriously by everyone but it is right that the issue is widely debated.

Source : Airport body scanners could 'breach human rights' - Telegraph

 

[Vassnti]

I have a right to fly with out some nut case with a bomb in his underwear blowing up the plane.

If you dont want to go through a scanner, simple dont fly.

 

[RPK]

From The Times

January 16, 2010
Meet Michael Hicks - the boy who has been a terror suspect since he was 2

James Bone in New York



Is little Mikey really a terrorist? That is the question America is asking after it emerged that the eight-year-old Cub Scout from New Jersey is frisked every time he flies because his name is on a US terror watchlist.

Michael “Mikey” Hicks, whose father is a US Navy veteran and mother a photojournalist who has flown with the US vice-president, has been the target of extra security measures at airports since he was 2. “Why would a kid be a terrorist?” he asks.

Michael is not on the US Government’s “no-fly” list of 2,500 people considered too dangerous to be allowed into the air. However, his name appears to be among, or to closely match, one of the 13,500 on the “selectee” list who are singled out for extra airport security.

His parents first learnt of his status when they could not get him a seat for a flight to Florida because, as an airline official explained, he was “on the list”. He was patted down for the first time aged 2 as he passed through Newark airport in New Jersey.
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Michael has been asked to see the supervisor whenever he checks in for a flight. On a recent family trip to the Bahamas he was frisked on the way out and searched even more aggressively on the return flight.

Michael is the apparent victim of America’s increasingly heavy-handed system of airline security. The attempted “underwear bombing” of a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day led US officials to add even more names to the country’s terror watchlists.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is charged with trying to explode a bomb, was identified as a possible problem when his father in Nigeria alerted the US Embassy that he had expressed extreme views before disappearing.

The US Government added Mr Abdulmutallab to the 550,000-name Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database. But his name was not added to the “no-fly” list or the “selectee” list, so he was able to get on a US-bound plane without attracting extra attention. Hundreds of people have been added to these lists since the breakdown was identified.

The United States, though, is deeply reluctant to start profiling passengers by singling out Muslims. Instead the Obama Administration has taken an intermediate step by ordering full-body pat-downs for all US-bound passengers from Nigeria and 13 other countries where the US suspects that terrorists operate.

On its website, the Transportation Security Administration, which is responsible for airport security, insists that no eight-year-old boy is on the “no-fly” list.

“Airlines can and should automatically deselect any eight-year-olds out there that appear to be on a watchlist,” it says. “Whether you’re 8 or 80 the most common occurrence is name confusion and individuals are told they are on the no-fly list when, in fact, they are not.”

Michael’s mother, Najlah Feanny Hicks, has enlisted the help of her congressman to get the listing removed.

“You could have seen that he was 2; that he was 3, 4 or 5. Now it’s scary because he’s 8. What happens when he is 16?” she asked on the television channel CBS2.

Meet Michael Hicks – the boy who has been a terror suspect since he was 2 - Times Online

 

[RPK]

Video Library - wcco.com





some reactions from U.S. citizens

 

[Hulk]

The security officials are so dumb, I never new that, can't they just use age + name as well.