Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free website today, Lib Dem shadow home secretary Chris Huhne argues that, if they are effective and available, body scanners at airports should have been rolled out by the government years ago. Here’s an excerpt:
No one wants to have full body scanners in airports. No one wants to be electronically strip-searched at the start of their holidays. It is an invasion of privacy we would all rather avoid. But the foiled bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound plane over Christmas demonstrates that terrorists still have an unhealthy addiction to air travel, and we have to move with the developing threat. Terrorists do not stand still, and neither can we. The government’s assessment is that there would have been a 60 percent chance of identifying the explosive on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had he been scanned. …
They can be an effective tool, but we should properly consider the implications for privacy rather than react on instinct. The government has promised a code of conduct, and assures us (and particularly children’s groups) that images cannot be stored. Moreover, the operator of the scanner will not be able to see the person being scanned.
These are all reassuring points, but it might be sensible to make provision for people who refuse to be scanned. Surely there should be some alternative in place for those people – such as a rigorous pat down. Safeguards must also be put in place to prevent staff members from copying or putting on the internet pictures of children, celebrities or those with strange body shapes. These assurances should be enshrined in a statutory code, rather than a mere code of conduct. If these safeguards are met, body scanners are surely better than allowing would-be bombers to slip through security.
You can read Chris’s article in full here.
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11 Comments
grumble grumble grumble…
I can’t quite believe the Lib Dems are supporting this move. It is the worst kind of knee-jerk reaction to a failed terrorist plot that occurred on an aeroplane travelling from one foreign country to another. I suppose Huhne has form though, what with the Wilders affair.
This is the sort of thing that makes us look like part of the consensus, rather than what we should be: a party representing liberalism.
Tom, this isn’t something I like, but what would you suggest to stop people taking dangerous things on planes?
I agree. It should hardly surprise us if people can’t connect the dots between this sort of thing and the Freedom Bill.
David – I would suggest competent intelligence services. Abdulmutallab’s own parents warned the authorities of his possible radicalisation and he was on a watchlist. This was, as Obama himself has described it, a ‘systemic failure’. Let us also remember that this whole incident proves nothing about security at British airports, given that the flight in question was from Amsterdam to Detroit.
An MP who previously worked for one of the companies that produces these scanners has already said that it is unlikely the device Abdulmutallab was wearing would have been picked up by the machine, which pours a certain amount of cold water on the government figures Huhne is (bizarrely) relying on.
Of course I recognise that there is a terrorist threat. There always has been, and there always will be. Making everyone strip naked (and that is what these machines do) before leaving the country isn’t the way to deal with that threat.
I am sorry that Chris is taking us down this slippery slope (illiberal and probably impractical) on body scanners. Another small victory for Mr Bin Laden.
Tony Greaves
If we don’t stand still (and neither do the terrorists), what good will these bloody scanners do?
In fact, come to think of it: if terrorists don’t stand still, then surely we should all stand still; that way it’ll be obvious who’s a terrorist, and we won’t even need the scanners. (Well, it worked in The Great Escape.)
Yet more illiberal guff from Huhne. Sack him and appoint Bruce Schneier as our spokesperson on this sort of thing – Schneier is both an expert and far more liberal than Huhne!
Statistically you were more likely to be killed by American forces than terrorists in the last 9 years.
“Statistically you were more likely to be killed by American forces than terrorists in the last 9 years.”
Not on the London Underground, you weren’t.
I forget which party Chris Huhne is for….
can’t belive it. Just more expensive toys for the paid-thugs and goons, ignoring that it is only intelligence that will solve this, and cultural change. Like a dog chasing its tail – we will never succeed chasing after terrorists like this. There will always be a way through