Full-body scanners ‘useless,’ air security expert says

[Benny2guns]

Boasting he could easily slip through one of Canada’s new full-body scanners with enough explosives to blow up a jumbo jet, a leading Israeli airport security expert says the federal government has wasted millions of dollars to install “useless” imaging machines at airports across the country.

“I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada on Thursday.

“That’s why we haven’t put them in our airport.”

Sela, former chief security officer at the Israel Airport Authority and a 30-year veteran in airport security and defence technology, helped design the security apparatus at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. He spoke to MPs on the House of Commons transport committee via video conference from Kfar Vradim, Israel.

Read entire article
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Full+bo...story.html

[Benny2guns]

The Israeli approach to airport security is highly intelligent. They focus on the real dangers by doing sophisticated profiling of the travelers. Then they concentrate their finite resources where they will be most effective. It is an approach that works, and it wastes far less time than what travelers at European and North American airports have to put up with these days.

Here in the west, we view profiling of people as being racist and discriminatory, so our airport security personnel waste a lot of time treating everyone the same, and confiscating nail files, pen knives and shampoo bottles from ordinary travelers, which does nothing for flight safety.

These new body scan machines may well be another expensive waste of time and money, just as he says.

Yes I would say they are a waste of my money. We just have so many terrorists in Canada bringing bombs and things onto plains and into buildings these days. Right...it does not happen here. We don't need these things to begin with. It's a total sham and a training exercise in control for the sheep. Getting us acclimated for what is to come. Those full body scanners are very very dangerous to human health and need to be outlawed as soon as possible. They are like stepping into a microwave oven and are known to cause dammage at the genetic level.

[billy]

i think we need airport security but in a way that vf descibed.

more sniffer dogs explosives. more educated profiling. a chemical nose at baggage check-injust. and scanners that have been proven to work.

[Benny2guns]

If the need for scanners is that great I would like to see them atleast be proven safe for use on humans.

[billy]

on etiad airlines

you don't have to take a knife on board.
they give out metal knives and forks with their meals lmao

[Benny2guns]

Civil rights groups seek suspension of airport full body scanners


Jonathan Cohen
Jurist
April 24, 2010

A group of more than 30 privacy and civil liberty groups on Wednesday asked [petition, PDF; press release] the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [official website] to suspend the full body scanner [TSA backgrounder] program being implemented by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) [official website]. The petition states that use of the full body scanner program is an invasion of privacy [JURIST news archive] and that:

deployment of Full Body Scanners in US airports, as currently proposed, violates the U.S. Constitution, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”), the Privacy Act of 1974 (“Privacy Act”), and the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”). As described below, the FBS program effectively subjects all air travelers to unconstitutionally intrusive searches that are disproportionate and for which the TSA lacks any suspicion of wrongdoing.

According to the petitioners, the scanners are a step toward doing away with individualized suspicion and are particularly offensive to devout individuals. As such, the scans are opposed by religious groups [RNS report]. The petition also alleges that the scanners themselves have two major flaws: they cannot detect powdered explosives [Independent report], and the operating systems are vulnerable to attack [WP report].

In February, the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) [official website] announced that full body scanners in use at two UK airports may be illegal [JURIST report]. The body scanners were introduced in part as a response to the failed US bombing attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab [Telegraph profile; JURIST news archive] on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. The attempted attack prompted Obama to announce tighter security measures, which civil rights groups opposed [JURIST reports] as a pretext to racial profiling.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/20...ion-of.php