Australia and EU to introduce full-body scanners at airports
FULL-BODY scanners will be introduced at Australia’s eight major gateway airports after receiving the green light from the federal government.
The decision comes after trials of the scanners in Melbourne and Sydney and has a target date of July 1 2012.
EU Adopts Rules To Use Full-Body Scanners At Airports
BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)—The European Commission Monday adopted rules that will allow airports in the European Union to use full-body scanners instead of metal detectors at their security checks, while also guaranteeing strict privacy standards for passengers.
The measures will “ensure that where this new technology is used it will be covered by EU-wide standards on detection capability as well as strict safeguards to protect health and fundamental rights,” Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said in a statement. “The new legislation legally allows member states and airports to replace current security systems with security scanners,” the commission said.
The use of this type of scanner—on which each country can decide—has seen some opposition in the EU, as the systems can detect plastic explosives that wouldn’t be found by a regular scanner, but can also give a full picture of a person’s body, possibly breaching their rights.
Because of this, the new rules, which will provide a common legal framework for the use of body scanners in the EU, state that passengers’ faces must be blurred and once the technology becomes widely available the scanners will only be able to show a matchstick picture. Images mustn’t be saved and the viewer will have to be in a separate room from the one where the scanning takes place.
Travelers will also have to be able to refuse to go through full body scanners and select another search method, the commission said, adding that no X-ray technology will be used for the scanners.
The industry welcomed the decision, saying it was an important move. “It’s a tremendous step forward…For the first time, you’re not adding layer on layer, you’re replacing equipment,” Magnus Ovilius, senior vice-president for government relations at Smiths Group PLC (SMIN.LN), a manufacturer of security scanners. Ovilius is also director of the European Organization for Security, a Brussels trade group.
Some EU countries, including the U.K., Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy, have been trialing the scanners, after an attempt two years ago to blow up a plane from Amsterdam to Detroit with plastic explosives hidden in an individual’s underwear, the commission said.
