Go ahead given to full-body scanners
January 4, 2010
In a bid to try and tackle what he called a new terrorist threat Gordon Brown has announced that new full-body scanners will be put into operation at U.K. airports. The scanners have caused controversy not only because they can produce naked images of those being scanned but also because the £100,000 devices may not actually help as much as the government has said they will. Conservative MP Ben Wallace who used to work on developing the new scanners said that if they had been used on Umar Abdulmutallab before he had boarded Flight 253 to Detroit on Christmas Day it is unlikely that they would have picked up on the explosives he was allegedly carrying in his underpants.
Mr. Wallace said that the full-body scanners would be able to pick up on old style bomb vests but were not good at seeing substances such as liquids, low density plastics or powders. He went on to point out that Gordon Brown was sending the wrong message by rolling out the scanners if he was claiming that they would make people safer from modern bombers. He championed the idea of better profiling as a way to spot terrorists.
Gordon Brown has said that he doesn’t think the new scanners will be one hundred percent affective against terrorists but pointed out that older machines simply weren’t picking up on the new types of bombs. As well as the full-body scanners Mr. Brown said that new technology that can trace the residue from explosive devices and better baggage X-Ray machines was also to be rolled out.
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