Nanny's much heralded body scanners, being introduced in UK airports, do not appear to be as useful as she claims.
A German television program has demonstrated that, whilst they can detect breast implants, they can fail to detect bomb-making components.
As with many things that Nanny does, the headline is important not the detail.
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Ah Ken....There you are....I worried that you may have had a visit from Nanny at 04-00hrs......All we need to remember regarding any project of Nanny's is this; There is a right way to do something, then there is Nanny's way....
ReplyDeleteMaybe they should develop bombs that are disguised as breast implants?
ReplyDeleteThere is a market after all.
More people have died in the Stafford scandal than have in any terrorist attacks on the mainland.
For a fee, would they show women the images since annual mammograms and untrasound can be very expensive? This might also be true for others who need to check for lumps.
ReplyDeletep.s. only joking (I am not into bribery) - I am in a cynical mood. For medical purposes image interpretation is apparently a skilled art as well as a science (not for novices) - I assume that applies to security analysis of images as well.
from anonymous @8:14pm
ReplyDeleteKen and Ken's readers:
I apologise if I offended anyone when I added my cynical post today. I am praying that if I did hurt anyone, God will heal and bless you and more than make up for my foot-in-mouth disease.
I am deeply concerned about the violation of privacy involved in this issue, especially as someone who has lumps (and at times was unable to afford timely appropriate tests to see if they were malignant or not - hence the derivation of, but no excuse for, the off-colour joke) and have genuinely wondered whether any other people being scanned with similar issues will be traumatised by the scanners or whether some scanner personnel themselves will become burdened or traumatised by what they will see/ suspect/ learn about the health of those being scanned. I am also concerned about violations of human dignity involved including the thought that stranger(s) viewing the images will in effect have seen me naked, and worse still, may be voyeuristic or even (though a low probability) dangerous perverts, and also that the scanner personnel will know more about the status of my lumps than I do. The fact that scanner personnel will learn info about specific health issues also increases the risk of "bad apples" abusing images for id theft should names/faces/flight numbers be in any way linked or linkable to the images, which if captured, can probably be transmitted or copied (I am not an expert but I read somewhere that settings were turned off to preclude that - but if settings can be turned off, they can probably be turned on by a clever enough bad apple, including possibly remotely - as can be done with cellphones sadly). On the issue of the scanner personnel seeing in effect nude images of travellers - this will sometimes traumatise some travellers or even retraumatise some travelers who have been violated in other ways (by reminding them for example of rapes in some cases) and adversely affect their health and well-being. The scanning may also increase any stalking or sexual or porn addictions of any scanner personnel. It will also further normalise unnecessary abonormal invasion of privacy of people and the lack of concern for and protection of human dignity ie it is not normal for people to be put in a position where in effect a stranger, whom they cannot hold to account (unlike a doctor whose name they know and who is seeing parts of them only when necessary and for the benefit of the patient), and whose trustworthiness they cannot attempt to guage, is seeing their nude body, without their choice, and without informed consent, and where there is no guarantee that this will prevent any criminal acts by those with access to the image. In fact it appears to me that these scanners may well increase unethical and criminal acts against passengers, male or female, and traumatise or anger or distress a good many travellers. Finally, if they do not store the image, and something bad gets through the process and there is a sadly a successful criminal terrorist act, how will they be able to investigate whether a bad apple was manning the scanner search process including the one viewing the scanner images or whether the scanner machine was defective or insufficiently accurate or mis-calibrated or using a decoy scannee etc.?
p.s. Ken and Tonk
I too am glad that Ken has not had a visit from Nanny at 04-00 hrs.
I hope these scanners are publicly exposed for the farce that they are before they become ubiquitous.
ReplyDeleteAs it is, I see them appearing on buses and trains within the next 5 years.
For those that are afraid or simply dislike this intrusive and unnecessary technology, be prepared for worse to come yet...
"Maybe they should develop bombs that are disguised as breast implants?"
ReplyDeleteThey already have! This was being talked about a couple of weeks back. It just requires a syringe of accelerant to be injected.
Anon; 9-59
ReplyDeleteNo apology necessary.....You raise some interesting points....I shall give the issues you raise some thought.
I'm sure I read the other day that these scanners will only detect items within 1mm of the skins surface. This is why they are useless for items hidden "internally". So I'm not sure if they would detect lumps, or even implants - cosmetic or explosive.
ReplyDeleteAs to storing images - regardless of whether the actual equipment does this or not, mobile phones are universally equipped with cameras, and there was a case a week or so back when an Indian film star found himself being asked to autograph images of himself moments after going through a scanner. This claim was aired on Jonathon Ross's TV show. It's been suggested this was nothing more than a publicity stunt, but who knows?