BY installing the now infamous “body scanners” at Heathrow and Manchester airports, the British government may have put a much-longed-for, much-looked-forward-to trip to the UK out of bounds for me – and I would hazard – hundreds of others like me. Like other men and women with a modicum of modesty, one doesn't exactly relish the prospect of being viewed in the buff by a bunch of strangers, if one can help it. How much of a deterrent the two £80,000 Rapiscan devices installed at Heathrow and Manchester airports prove to terrorists remains to be seen. What is clear is that they have already been thumbed down by ordinary travelers as an unnecessary and particularly intrusive breach of privacy. On March 3, two Muslim women who were booked to fly from Manchester to Islamabad refused to be scanned, citing medical and religious reasons. Consequently, “in accordance with the Government directive on scanners, they were not permitted to fly.” According to civil liberties campaigners in the UK, the incident could form the basis of a legal case to challenge the use of body scanners that are currently being mulled over by airport authorities across the world. Following the Detroit “underwear bomber” scare, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in India recommended the immediate deployment of body scanners in New Delhi; Schiphol airport at Amsterdam began using the device immediately after the incident, and the installation of the first of 150 full-body scanners planned for US airports has begun in Boston last week. Proponents of the scanners often ask: What do ordinary passengers have to fear from the scanners? I say: Plenty. First, there is the obvious violation of modesty and personal space by forcing an edict that goes against the religious beliefs of many. The Fatwa (religious edict) issued by the Fiqh Council of North America – stating that scanners violate Islamic law and Muslims should request a pat-down by a security person of the same gender instead – is just one of the many voices opposing the scanners. Agudath Israel, an Orthodox Jewish umbrella group, has petitioned the US Congress that scanners should only be used on passengers who fail metal detectors. The group considers full-body imaging “offensive, demeaning, and far short of acceptable norms of modesty” within Judaism and other faiths. Even Pope Benedict XVI has commented on the issue, albeit obliquely, telling Italian airport workers on Feb. 20 that “the primacy of the person and attention to his needs” must always be respected. Second, in an effort to lull passengers into a false sense of security, UK Transport Secretary Lord Adonis had claimed that the images from the scanners are “immediately destroyed” after passengers pass through the X-ray backscatter devices. However, these claims have been proven fraudulent – in the worst possible way – after naked images of Indian film star Shahrukh Khan were printed out and circulated by the supposedly “well-trained” and “professional” airport staff at Heathrow in London last month. On BBC's Jonathan Ross show, Khan talked about discovering female staff at Heathrow with printouts. “I looked at them. I thought they were some forms you had to fill. I said, ‘Give them to me' – and you could see everything inside. So I autographed them for them,” stated Khan. Yahoo News carried the story under the headline “Shah Rukh signs off sexy body-scan printouts at Heathrow”, but the actor would have set a better precedent (and made the world a safer place) if he had taken the matter to court under the UK data protection law, instead of shrugging off the incident with misplaced savoir-faire. Famous people are not the only people whose images are susceptible to abuse, the images produced by the scanners break child pornography laws in the UK. By making it mandatory for travelers to submit to the naked body scanners when asked, British authorities have overturned previous rules that prevented minors (under the age of 18) from passing through the devices. The much-touted “increased privacy” afforded by the body scanners because they were ostensibly “only accessible to a single staff member who had no personal contact with the passenger taking the scan, and that the identity of the person undergoing the scan would be kept private” is a veritable urban myth and complete fallacy – as proved by the Shah Rukh Khan case. The truth is that the body scanners are the equivalent of a virtual strip search – an unwarranted and completely illegal one at that – since courts worldwide have ruled that “strip searches are only legal when performed on a person who has already been found guilty of a crime, or on arrestees pending trial where a reasonable suspicion has to exist that they are carrying a weapon.” As a report posted on the human rights website prisonplanet.com says, “Subjecting masses of people to blanket strip searches in airports reverses the very notion of innocent until proven guilty. Barring people from flying and essentially treating them like terrorists for refusing to be humiliated by the virtual strip search is a clear breach of the basic human right of freedom of movement.” Third, although governments have been underplaying the radiation risk posed by the backscatter x-ray systems, the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety concluded in their report that governments must provide suitable justification for the use of the scanners and that “a more accurate assessment of the health risks is needed.” According to the report, pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, and governments should consider “other techniques to achieve the same end without the use of ionizing radiation.” The Committee cited the IAEA's 1996 Basic Safety Standards agreement, drafted over three decades, that protects people from radiation. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. The question is: How does invasion of privacy, potential for abuse and unknown health hazards posed by the scanners equate “increased privacy?” Who feels safer flying in such an atmosphere of mutual mistrust and antipathy? Please tell me it isn't Big Brother!
