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Full-Body Scans Rolled Out At All Australian International Airports
suraj.sun writes in with a story about the spread of full body scanners. It reads in part:"Passengers at airports across Australia will be forced to undergo full-body scans or be banned from flying under new laws to be introduced into Federal Parliament this week. In a radical $28 million security overhaul, the scanners will be installed at all international airports from July and follows trials at Sydney and Melbourne in August and September last year. The Government is touting the technology as the most advanced available, with the equipment able to detect metallic and non-metallic items beneath clothing. It's also keen to allay concerns raised on travel online forums that passengers would appear nude on security screens as they had when similar scanners were introduced at U.S. airports. The technology will show passengers on a screen as stick figures of neither sex."
Sorry, Australia. You just became unvisitable.
Well, here's 22 hours in a flying tube, that I can take off my list, now...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
> "What problem does Australia have that this is solving?"
Liberty.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
What problem does Australia have that this is solving?
It solve only one problem : the lack of contract to some firm that did a good lobbying job.
Seriously. Who don't more people ask this? Check out the Wikipedia article Terrorism in Australia and notice not only the shortness of the article, but also the distinct lack of aviation attacks. It will only take one death from cancer caused by these body scanners and they will have caused more aviation deaths in Australia than terrorists.
As I posted further up in the comments, this is due to requirements laid down by the US for all flights to the US or that go via US airspace - Australia are just making it easy for themselves and setting it as a standard for all flights.
As an aside, Im not sure why Australia are getting all the attention - I flew back from Uganda on Friday and hit Schipol just as the snows started. In Schipol they have full body scanners at all gates, and also between the Schengen zone countries and non-Schengen zone countries terminals - as my flight was cancelled, I ended up going through about 20 of them in a 24 hour period, several times asking for a patdown instead (when they were having problems with the scanner) and being refused.
There's a difference.
The radiation you get from airplane travel is full-body and full-spectrum, consisting of X-Rays, Gamma rays, radio waves, and everything in between.
The radiation you get from the terahertz scanners deposits all of its energy into your skin, in a small band of frequencies. That makes it potentially more likely to cause skin cancer than the broadband, full body radiation you get from air travel.
Look, either of these sources is insignificant compared to the energy you get from spending a minute out in the sunlight. But the type of energy and where it is deposited matters, and the terahertz scanners have not been proven safe. Making them mandatory is short-sighted and stupid...and inevitable, given the way governments work.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Concerns of the levels of radiation being safe or unsafe doesn't matter to me. What matters is the fact that numerous experts have proven the scanners to be completely ineffective at stopping threats and that is what people should care about.
Why expose yourself to the radiation in the first place? I refuse these machines every time I travel domestically and if they are required by some other country I'm not going to go there just wish everyone else did the same.