Personal scanner in airports: abuse or safety?
Thursday, March 5th, 2009
@ Ti.mo
We could say that safety in airports is more and more demanding. We are all aware technology moves forward quickly and safety cannot stay in the background. All of that brings us to a drawback situation caused by people or organizations looking for harm.
But city dwellers end to pay for this safety and the process of boarding became a difficult and humiliating experience.
The 11th of September 2001 dredged up a psychotic truth about airports. This highlighted safety weaknesses of a country that runs the biggest amount of movements in its airports.
The scanner that strips
Within other extends, such as forbidding liquids and aerosols, intensification demands to enter in the country, the body scanner enables to see directly under clothes, exposing people to X-rays.
While we travel a lot, it is restrictive and worrying. There is not only privacy violation, as they need to see people stripped, but it can be noxious for our health as well.
Moreover, waiting lines will be even longer as one person at a time can be seen, and as the entire process lasts some minutes.
Even if some other countries, such as Germany, refused it radically, Schiphol’s airport (Holland), and some airports in U.S, have already adopted this new system.
By publik16
Other law projects in airports
On the other side, G8’s countries and E.U, could establish a new aerial anti-piracy law that would permit to seize electronic equipments (laptops, MP3…) for copyright reasons.
In summary, they undermine travelers instead of searching solutions more efficient, but at a higher cost.
Is it possible to reach a point where they will have the right to confiscate our MP3 if they find a downloaded song while we are passing the control? Another privacy violation!
What is the safety limit?
It is quite difficult for a mother, traveling with a baby, taking only 100ml of liquid, or that someone using a spray gives it to the security guard. Nowadays, chemical explosives with less than 100ml of liquid can cause huge damages, but our technology doesn’t able us to analyze instantaneously what passengers are caring; the only solution is, then, to seize.
Even if most travelers would pay a certain price for this safety, preventive laws could stop abuses. If airports don’t have enough frameworks or enough technologies to offer an efficient safety without affecting passengers rights, the solution would be investment.
Which drives us to the point: Are we facing normal safety or abuse of power? Going on board is a pleasure, or it became something stressful?