Full body scanners are recipe for abuse

We didn’t have to wait long, did we?

This blogger is no fan of the Murdoch press. Anything that appears in The Sun, The Times or any other of the Murdoch family titles must be read with great scepticism. Here is, however, one story that was brought to my attention via an email provider, which, if true, returns us to the issues this (and many other blogs) have raised about the so-called ‘full body scanners’ in Manchester, Heathrow and other British airports:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2904943/Airport-security-guard-John-Laker-ogled-woman-colleague-in-body-scanner.html

If true, this story would appear to provide evidence with respect to an issue that airport operators, and the New Labour government, have tried sweep under the carpet (or is it our clothes): that full body scanners generate graphic images that are ripe for abuse. As many of us feared, there are bound to be operators, male or female, who salivate, unseen, as they look at detailed pictures of our nakedness. Some are apparently willing to go further and to make comments. What else are they willing to do?

Just to be clear: nakedness, per se, is not the issue. All of us reached this increasingly neoliberal world without clothes. What is at issue is that, as we left our mothers’ wombs,  we were not ‘full body scanned’ by someone drooling in the name of the so-called ‘war on terror’.

If one operator can take advantage of a colleague with this technology, then we have to assume that s/he could, would do the same with people s/he doesn’t know. Rather more disturbingly, a more astute operator would take advantage of the system in a way that wouldn’t get her/himself caught in the act.

The implications are clear: there are more and more incentives for us not to fly in or out of Britain’s airports. Good for the planet, and for those who live around Britain’s crazily congested airports. Bad for those bureaucrats and airline owners who think that passengers will take anything that’s thrown at them. Before long we will have Israeli levels of security in our airports—with all of the issues that have recently come up vis-à-vis that securistate.

See also Manchester Airport: Take your clothes off so that we don’t have to touch you.

Manchester Airport: Take off your clothes so we don’t have to touch you

Originally posted 15 October 2009; updated 2, 4 January, and 17 February 2010 (scroll down for update)

See also the more recent Confirmed: Full Body Scanner Recipe for Abuse

A remarkable experiment in public nudity—and the invasion of one’s most private space—is happening at Manchester Airport, in northern England. The experiment is being carried out by Manchester City Airports Group Plc (‘MAG’), a holding company owned by the ten metropolitan borough councils of Greater Manchester.

The experiment involves inviting you to go through an x-ray machine—called a ‘full body scanner’—that will, in effect, take your clothes off, ostensibly to spare you the embarrassment of being ‘patted down’ when you go through airport security. An officer that you can’t see, sitting in an office at one remove from the booth where you will be stripped, will then be able to see all of you.

The mainstream media are being very careful not to show the detail in which your breasts, penis or vulva will be visible, but have no doubt: you will effectively be stripped naked by the full body scanner, and you are being asked to believe that the images will be anonymous, and not subject to any kind of manipulation, publication, or exploitation (as if we hadn’t heard that before; have a look at what Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office had to say about the illegal sale of private data–including CCTV camera images–in the 2006 report What Price Privacy? The Unlawful Trade in Personal Information)

The quid pro quo—the ‘exchange’—is based on the following formula: you willingly take your clothes off—or rather, the machine takes them off for you—and we (the airport security guards, but more generally, the Manchester City Airports Group Plc) won’t touch you.

Sound perverse? It is, and EcoLogics will have a lot more to say about it, soon. In the meantime, vote with your feet, or rather, your itinerary: avoid Manchester Airport.

Update 2 January 2010

Following the near-miss with the Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, it is clear that both politicians, and many members of the travelling public will quite literally be queuing up to demand the new full body scanners. It may well be that the machines are the only allegedly non-intrusive way to detect would-be bombers. The question is increasingly why anyone would want to subject themselves to ritual humiliation, and potentially, all kinds of behind-the-scenes abuse.

Update 4 January 2010

It looks like Heathrow is also introducing the full body scanners, and that the UK government is going to make their installation mandatory in all airports. This blogger wonders: what would happen if passengers insisted on stripping themselves in public, instead of having their nudity recorded and potentially sold or otherwise abused by unscrupulous officials? What would happen if there were huge queues of naked people in airports? Would the authorities be happy with that? The entire logic of the system really depends on people acquiescing to the lies behind the technology (that’s it’s completely ‘private’ etc. etc.). If enough people refused to travel, the airline industry would refuse to allow further intrusions in our privacy.