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[lordmork]

The Canadian Government has purchased strip-search airport scanners and hopes to have them in some major airports as early as next week.I loathe these things. Like most other airport security measures, I don't think they'll actually make anyone safer, and in addition to punishing all airline travelers with another hoop to jump through, these have

Comments

[ravenkat]

I don't think it's really that big a deal. You can't really identify someone from them and I would find it much less invasive than being patted down.

[lordmork]

Yeah but you never fly anywhere. And it's not so much the specifics as the fact that its an erosion of privacy. If the airport authority is allowed to take blurry, poor-quality nudes of anyone, eventually someone will want machines that take higher quality, or that show the face, or to keep the photos.

[ravenkat]

I would still prefer that to ever being pat down *shudders*

[lordmork]

I don't particularly enjoy that either, but at least when that happens there's no potential of a record of it.

[rimspace]

There's at least one of them in Manchester Airport now, too. I'm waiting for someone to take the airport to the European Court of Human Rights, as I'm pretty sure that level of invasion of privacy contravenes several parts of the EU Bill of Human rights.

It's not like the fucking things will do anything anyway - if they don't know who is likely to cause problems before they even get to the airport (you know, through good old fashioned detective work and intelligence), they're going to get through unless they are pathologically stupid.

[lordmork]

Interestingly, the first challenges to them seem to be related to child porn! I can only hope similar challenges hit them here in Canada.

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/wireStory?id=9483838

[shadesfox]

Actually, what gets interesting is that some parts of airport security makes people provably less safe. I'm thinking security lines, long security lines with lots of people packed into a small area...

Moving on. This is more of a "Cover your ass" policy, where everyone wants to be able to say they helped 'improve' security. Lately they are going to cite the whole Detroit bomber, even though that incident really proves that certain portions of airport security works pretty well.

[southernmyst]

Yes, this is complete and utter bullshit. And I really, really don't get how it's "less invasive" than anything short of a body cavity search. Strip-searching every passenger (and yet, not the crew, I guarantee you) should not be required to board the plane - it's a HUGE invasion of privacy! All it's going to do is let the security guards get their rocks off, for fuck's sake

[silveradept]

Hopefully, when Harper re-convenes the government, there will be enough of a stack of angry letters there that the government will reconsider their purchases. Of course, that will probably be far too late to uninstall them.