Your Rights 1 – Mind the Scanners.

Dear mum

In a few days you are off on another adventure with my aunt around the world. Two middle-aged girls (stereo-typical terrorists) travelling around to meet up with old friends, see the sights and savour all the joys of the latest security procedures in airport departure lounges. As you are already aware from your numerous travels, you are far safer flying transatlantic than you are walking down the street because international terrorist attacks are thousands of times less common than lightning strikes. But this year, you will see, that Terror Fever has reached new lows. Some of the places you are visiting (all the places least prone to terrorist attacks) have decided to adopt ridiculously over-the-top security measures, while other places in the world, such as countries of the Middle-East, have seen through the falsehood that is the body scanner and rejected the lobbyists’ offers.

Leering from a darkened booth.

You’ll be starting off from Heathrow, London. You may well be selected for a scan in the Rapiscan Secure 1000 backscatter x-ray scanner, in which your naked body will be viewed by a security guard sitting in a room with a radio connection to the security guards in the Departure lounge entrance. They will be looking for explosives. Guns and knives will have already been eliminated from the search list as you will have already passed through the metal detector arch. Of course you do not look like a potential suicide terrorist, but as you already know, rational thought is beyond the little Hitlers of airport security. You will also be quized on other privacy-right violating questions, such as what your racial background is, what your political beliefs are and what your religion is. You see there is the paradox – the selection process for scanning is supposed to be completely random, but after being ‘randomly selected’ your profile is recorded and lifestyle documented. Why, if you do not match their mysterious profile, you are still required to be irradiated in the scanner is a mystery to me and all other sane people.

You will also be glad to hear that if you feel uncomfortable with the idea of a male security guard leering at your naked body on a screen in his own dark little private booth, you are generously granted the right to request a female security guard to ogle you instead. There are, however, no effective systems to monitor that this request is actually being granted, but hey, imagining that government departments like the DfT are doing their job will do you fine – sticking their heads in the ground when being attacked by lions apparently works for ostriches too!

You do, of course, have the right to refuse the scan, but you must understand that you will then be refused the right to fly. In fact, what will happen if you refuse is that you will be led away to private room where you will be held against your will for several hours and interrogated. Once the interrogation is over they will have established that you are not, of course, a suicide terrorist and that you do not have illegal objects hidden beneath your clothing. When the little-Hitlers have finished with you and established that you are not in any way shape or form a danger to national or air security, you still will not be allowed to fly. Why? There’s no logical reason other than you are being punished for questioning the word of authority.

So I fully understand why you or anyone else would accept being scanned. Flying is not the same as getting on a bus (which incidentally holds a far greater statistically-based risk of terrorist attacks). It demands a much greater investment, both economic and emotional. You could be going on holiday and spending between 5 – 15% of your annual earnings on a well deserved rest you have waited over 11 months for, or you could be off to visit loved ones who live far away, or travelling to an essential meeting for work, etc. All of these reasons to travel require an investment that has to be weighed up against your essential human rights being eroded chip by chip. Most would risk the scanner, its health risks and its human rights violations during a few seconds rather than lose all investment in that flight. More than 1/4 million have done so far through Heathrow. That does not make the violations any less offensive though.

The establishment chooses its own opposition

So, I wonder why Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, the most applauded civil liberties campaign group in the UK, decided it appropriate to be scanned at Heathrow on her way to Belfast. Here is a person who has received accolade after accolade for her “work” on human rights. On the topic of airport body scanners – what must be the greatest violation of human rights on British soil in recent history – Chakrabarti has said nothing. In fact, being paid what she is being paid and travelling on Liberty expenses, she had less obligation to pass through the scanner than most. All she had to do was say ‘no’ and then seek one of the many alternatives . But by accepting to be scanned she did the opposite of what she has been applauded for – she endorsed human rights abuses. She endorsed the scanners.

Under most constitutions of the world, compulsory strip-searches without demonstrable suspicion would be illegal, but the UK’s constitution is impossible to interpret with any objectivity, so essentially you have no rights.

Once you have managed to board your flight you can look forward to visiting all of those countries where the word ‘constitution’ still means something. Well, ‘something’ is better than nothing, right?

The United States is going to bring just as much fun to your holiday. You will have the pleasure of meeting with the ever so polite TSA agents. Now, they really, really want you try out their new gadgets. In fact you may find them a little pushy. To the point where they completely forget that in the USA you legally have the right to refuse the scan and still take your flight. If you do forego the scan, you’ll have to take the frisky ‘pat down’ instead. Some TSA agents will forget that you have an option at all. You’ll have to stand your ground though. They will try to push the idea of being strip-searched in a scanner as the most normal thing in the world and anyone who refuses must then be ‘abnormal’.

But don’t worry, you won’t be alone. Everyone gets the same treatment, even the pilots! I mean, you can imagine the threat that airline pilots pose. They might sneak in a weapon and hijack their own planes! The same plane they were flying originally!

Is any of this making sense?

What right?

So, it’s time we cut to the chase. What kind of rights are we discussing here? Well… right to privacy, dignity, protection from degrading treatment, right to practice the religion of your choice, protection from arbitrary detention, and those kind of things… Ms. Chakrabarti.

Our rights are our freedoms. Without rights we are slaves. We do not need a self-appointed governmental body to validate or grant us rights by signing a paper. Our rights and our understanding of them are what we have passed down, generation to generation, from pre-history. Our rights are a priori in anything we consider society. They are ours and not for qualifying, interpreting, rescinding or granting by anyone who considers themself empowered to do so. Nonetheless, if you wish to quote a few politically recognised rights that are violated by body scanner use, just pick some from the table below.

	UDHR	EUCHR	HRA
Degrading treatment	Art. 3	Art. 1, Art. 4
Arbitrary detention	Art. 9
Arbitrary interference with privacy	Art. 12	Art. 7, Art.8	Art. 8
Right to leave a country	Art. 13	Art. 45
Freedom of religion	Art. 18	Art. 10	Art. 9

UDHR – (UN) Universal Declaration on Human Rights

EUCHR – European Union Charter on Fundamental Human Rights

HRA – (UK) Human Rights Act 1998

Degrading treatment: Most constitutions and rights declarations put this close to the top of the list. In fact protecting human dignity was at the forefront of the creation of the EUCHR. Arbitrary detention: I included this since the two women who refused to undergo the scan at Manchester airport were held for questioning. Arbitrary interference with privacy: What could be more private than the image of the naked human body. Most people have few qualms with exposing themselves with clothes and few would worry about sharing images of themselves below the skin. But it is the skin below our clothes that culturally we have grown to consider our most intimate image. Right to leave a country: If a person is refused the right to fly from a UK airport for turning down the scan, then how could an Australian, for example, practically return home? Freedom of religion: Exercising modesty forms an integral part of many religions and cultures, not only Islam. By forcing a person to give up their modesty would have the same effect as forcing a Jew to eat bacon and undermine their right to practice the teachings of their religion.

Martin Schenin, the UN special rapporteur on the protection of human rights said that while countering extremism scanners were both an ineffective means of prevention and an excessive intrusion into individual privacy.

“The use of a full-body scanner which reveals graphic details of the human body, including the most private parts of it, very easily is a violation of human rights. It would be a violation of human rights in respect to everyone, but there are particular sensitivities in respect of women, certain religions, certain cultural backgrounds.”

Inadequacies in security staff training and vetting, as highlighted in the recent case of a Heathrow airport security guard who it is claimed “ogled” a fellow security officer after scanning her body without her consent, would inevitably give rise to breaches in Article 3 of the UK Human Rights Act. It was clearly a degrading act and affected the dignity of the woman scanned. How many passengers have been leered and jeered at through the scanners?

The Fiqh Council of North America issued a religious ruling in February 2010 that says that going through the scanners would violate Islamic rules on Modesty.

“It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women. Islam highly emphasises haya (modesty) and considers it part of faith. The Quran has commanded the believers, both men and women, to cover their private parts.”

Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the islamic Human Rights Commission in London, stated that the body scanner process at airports was “totally unacceptable and what is worse, doesn’t make any security sense.”

Agudath Israel, Orthodox Jewish umbrella group, called body scanner processes “offensive, demeaning and far short of acceptable norms of modesty” within Judaism and other faiths.

In February 2010, Pope Benedict XVIspoke out against scanners on the grounds that they failed to preserve the integrity of individuals.

In the UK and US children are not exempt from body scanning at airports. In London, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission wrote to the former Home Secretary Alan Johnson warning him that body scanners are likely to have a negative impact on privacy, especially for the disabled, elderly, children and transgender people.

Terri Dowty, of Action for Rights of Children, has said that the scanners could breach the Protection of Children Act 1978, under which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a pseudo-image of a child. Therefore if a complaint is made by a parent or guardian of a child who has been scanned, the UK government could face the charge of having committed a criminal offence in obliging children to pass through the scanning process and subsequently producing an indecent and naked image of that child.

In recent months doubts over what exactly adequate training and vetting of security screening staff would involve and of if it could in fact be achieved, were once again brought into question in the US with clear cases of breaches in the UDHR. In March, a Transport Security Agency (TSA) employee was reported to have been mocked after a fellow worker had viewed an image of his naked body through a scanner they were using at that airport. In February of this year US journalist Sandra Fish had to suffer a strip search following a body scan because the TSA agent that viewed her naked image could not distinguish between a breast prosthesis and an explosive. The same journalist tells of an acquaintance who suffered similar humiliation at the hands of the TSA due to his colostomy bag.

Over the last 10 years the Western world has seen a subtle, yet persistent chipping away of its essential rights. This erosion has been quiet enough and well managed enough to slip under the radar. It has been helped along by the look-the-other-way policies of the mainstream press, and the highly suspect inactivity of career campaigners, such as Shami Chakrabarti. Earlier this year the world’s governments chipped off a big chunk of our rights with one strike when they announced their massive roll-out of full-body scanners at airports. We barely batted an eyelid. Because of that, I can guarantee you that the next so-called security measure to be forced on us will be far more intrusive and dangerous.

Enjoy your trip. Don’t forget to send us a postcard.

Sam Edi

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…to be continued.

Airport X Ray Full Body Scanners – A risk worth taking?

The following illustration is based on Bureau of Transportation statistics data from October 1999 to September 2009 inclusive.

Total number of commercial flights: Ninety nine million, three hundred and twenty thousand, three hundred and nine.

Total number of successful terrorist attacks: 4.

That’s a 0.000004% chance that you’ll be a victim of airborne terrorism on your next flight. Bear in mind that these statistics take into account the events of September 11 2001 – Not an event that happens very often.

Based on the number of airborne hours that’s one attack per 27.2 million hours. Or one attack every 3,105 years.

The odds of becoming a victim of terrorism in the air is one in ten million, four hundred and eight thousand, nine hundred and forty seven.

Lets put that into perspective.

The odds of being struck by lightning: One in half a million.

“Never tell me the odds” Han Solo.

Your basic human rights are being systematically eroded. You and your children are being subjected to a dose of radiation that may damage your DNA. As a passenger/ taxpayer you will have to pay for the installation and maintenance of X Ray scanners. Based on the calculations above, we really need to ask our ourselves if the trade-off is worth it.

Power madness and paranoia – the UK Government and Body Scanners

UK 2010. Ex-Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and his New Labour government had outstayed their welcome by far. They were on their way out and if they didn’t know it, then they were even more delusional than I am about to accuse them.

Heathrow security worker gets a good scanning

Stop and Search under the Terrorism Act, arrest for photography in public places, the inclusion of vandalism as an act of terrorism under the Terrorism Act, empowering the police with detention without charge capabilities, non-violent organisations outlawed and labelled as terrorist, the right to gather in public rescinded, and of course, becoming the only country in the world arrogant enough to make full-body scanners at airports compulsory. Hardly British now, was it? Their actions appeared more like the infiltration of a foreign enemy intelligence agency than the fruit of home-grown politics.

I’ll leave you to speculate all you like about the rhyme and reason of their actions. I myself am going to give Brown and his boys the benefit of the doubt and suggest that they actually went insane with their three-terms of power, because looking at their record, and in particular their scanners plan, the alternative accusation might make you blush.

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No strip-searches please, we’re British

Brown actually made a speech promoting Britishness to the Fabian Society in 2006. However, there was something foreign about the scanners coming to the UK. Here was a country whose citizens were famous the world over for getting all prudish and coy over nudity. Now everyone was potentially up for a good scanning, even the vicar’s wife… because the vicar’s wife could just be a suicide bomber, right?

Were they mad? You don’t think so yet?

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Human Rights

Then there’s the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), to which of course the UK is signatory. I was curious to how the government would explain how the scanners plan wouldn’t violate key articles of the Declaration, such as

• Article 5, which protects from degrading treatment
• Article 11, which says that everyone should be presumed innocent until proven guilty
• Article 12, protecting privacy and honour
• Article 13, freedom of movement ( little difficult for Australians, for example, who refuse the scanner and are in turn are refused the right to board an aircraft at Heathrow or Manchester.)
• Article 18, which protects our right to practice religion (Muslims need to practice Haya (modesty). Orthodox Jews and Catholics also talk of modesty in their religious practice)

…so I put the question to the DfT. I was dumbfounded by their reply.

“As a UN Declaration, the UDHR is not legally binding.”

Now I knew that and was not enquiring about the legality of their scanners plan. What blew me away was their overly defensive attitude towards an internationally recognised standard which they not only were signed up to, but also frequently quoted whenever they needed an excuse to invade some poor second-world country. A rights declaration for others to adhere to, but not us, perhaps?

Human Rights Acting

What is, occasionally ‘legally binding’ is  The European Charter on Human Rights (ECHR) which has been incorporated into British law. Recognised by both British courts as well as the European Court of Human Rights, and includes such articles as:

• Article 3 – Protection from torture and degrading treatment
• Article 8 – Privacy (qualified right*)
• Article 9 – Conscience and Religion (qualified right*)

…and so on..

*Qualified right means that governments can adhere to the rules or not, depending on their mood that day. You or I do not have the right to bend the rules the same way, of course. Article 3 would need to be demonstrated in court as part of a law suit. Any takers? Not yet, I’m afraid (big thing taking on the UK government in a UK court).

According to the DfT, the risk to National Security totally justifies the rescinding of these rights. I’ll come back to the “threat” later on.

You still don’t think they went loco? Wait, there’s more.

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Health and safety lunacy

All Brits know that the culture of health and safety in the workplace has been taken to paranoid extremes (to the point where you need to do a three-day training course, wear a harness and a helmet just climb the stairs). And here they were introducing machines that were using ionising radiation in spite of never having been tested for operational risks. I was confused by this and wrote to both the DfT and the Health and Safety Executive with Freedom of Information requests.

All dosed up. Security officers receiving an unmonitored accumulated dose of radiation.

Question: What Radiation detection and protection will be given to airport security staff working in the vicinity?

DfT response: The Department requires airports to abide by the interim Code.

Interim Code says: The airport authority deploying the use of a body scanner must ensure that all appropriate local risk assessments have been conducted for the type of body scanners being deployed and that the equipment conforms to all relevant health and safety requirements.

That is to say that all responsibility has been left in the hands of private companies (airport operators).

Therefore, the answer to my question on radiation protection was: None whatsoever.

I put the same question to the Health and Safety Executive, who are responsible for enforcing health and safety legislation in public and work places. Now is when the buck begins to get seriously tossed around:

the main government department that is responsible for the safe introduction and use of full body scanners are the Department for Transport (DFT)

So, the HSE says the DfT is responsible and the DfT says “no, not us!”

Working alongside the Rapiscan Secure 1000 scanner at Heathrow and Manchester, security screeners are given no protection whatsoever, not even a dosimeter badge or a protective shield to stand behind. So, perhaps it’s not dangerous working alongside ionising radiation machines. Well, it’s no good asking the British government as they wouldn’t know:

Me: What specific tests have been carried out on the long-term effects of working with said scanning equipment?

DfT: “We do not hold information on specific tests on the long term effects of working with this equipment.” and on Millimetre Wave scanners “The government does not have a comparable assessment for millimetre wave scanners.”

In short, the UK government has implemented a compulsory process using potentially carcinogenic radiation without prior testing, without providing protection for workers, and without establishing responsibility.

Still not convinced that they lost the plot?

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The ‘THREAT’!

Al Qaeda fun park - boasts Monkey Bars, Swings and even a Slide!

It’s been hard to ignore over the last 9 years. It’s al Qaeda, it’s Osama Bin Laden, they live in a cave inside a mountain on the Afghan/Pakistan border, they are highly trained and desperate to blow up planes! And every so often a loon comes along with all the terrifying technical skill and ability of Mr Bean and we end up losing another bunch of rights. Take the inept Richard Reid, for example. The one who led to us having to remove our shoes at airports. I just take one look at his dimwit features and I know that this man has never sat beside Bin Laden in a big swivel chair, stroking a fluffy white cat on his lap in a mountain hideaway. But the press hammered home his image as though he were part of a detailed genius plot to kill us all. Well, he wasn’t. He was little more than a dimwit with no knowledge of how to use the substance he was carrying in his shoes who had been carried away with Terror Fever on the TV and a few too many James Bond films.

Richard Reid - Highly intelligent terrorist mastermind with shoes?

But all that al Qaeda stuff is for the drama queens at the BBC. The government isn’t really concerned by the existence of a mythical bunch of suicide bombers who like to play on climbing frames in the desert. No, for the UK government there are bigger fish to fry in the scanners. It’s a threat so deadly and so frightening that I bet you couldn’t even imagen it in your own worst nightmares! Forget Bin Laden, the next big security threat, the next potential suicide bomber, the next big purveyor of all things evil is… us!

That’s right, WE are those who the UK government fears most on flights today. Earlier this year, in a review of counter-terrorism measures at UK airports, the UK Government cited Philip Baum, Aviation Security Lobbyist, claiming

“While body scanners can add another layer of security, they are appreciably slower than traditional archway metal detectors. To process every passenger through the equipment would therefore lead to long queues and increase the time passengers spend in airport terminals. Mr Baum told us that this is a problem in itself since it creates a target for suicide bombers within airport terminals and also creates “a lot of unhappy passengers who are perpetrating acts of air rage on board aircraft and they could one day bring down an aircraft“.

Nothing left to declare.

Let me get this straight: Fed up of having to arrive 3 hours before his flight, having to suffer paying twice as much for his luggage because his modestly-sized suitcase was 50 grams over the permitted amount, after having to throw away his toenail scissors and bottle of Evian, after having to wait an hour in a security line and shuffle shoeless holding his falling beltless trousers through a metal detector that beeps at the tiny metal studs on his jeans, after being offered no help whatsoever to fold his children’s pushchair and juggle his young children and all their paraphernalia, after being forced to open the baby food and taste it at the same time as opening up his lap-top to prove it isn’t a bomb AND then have himself and his family strip-searched with radiation… Joe Tourist on his way to his modest hotel in an overcrowded Costa del Sol might (according to the UK government), just might go over the edge and decide to convert himself in suicide terrorist!

That is what the UK government was saying. That was the context of the study.

Balmy, I’m sure you’ll agree.

…

But is this insanity catching? Following the victory of the Coalition Duo, Nick Clegg claimed to want to reverse the Orwellian trend in British society by pledging to abolish the national identity card scheme, biometric passports and the Contact Point children’s database, ensure CCTV was “properly regulated” and place restrictions on DNA storage, but he made no mention of airport security measures. Will he see the ridiculousness of full-body scanning at airports, or will he and Cameron suffer the same fate as their predecessors and go loopy with power?

.

I’ll leave you just one more heart-warming thought: let’s just imagine for one moment that there exists a person in this world with the determination and know-how to put together an explosive and who tries to take it on board a flight with the intention of killing himself and scores of others. So he goes to the airport, checks in, goes straight to the security line where he has to wait among hundreds of other travellers to be scanned in a machine that contains a radioactive isotope (Rapiscan Secure 1000). Eventually he arrives to the head of the queue and the security screeners lead him into the scanner. During the scanning, the explosives are detected….

What happens next?

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The scanners programme is insane.

Sam Edi

Scrap the Scanners

Full-Body Scanners: Duff and Dangerous

In June 2010, Siim Kallas, the European Commissioner for Transport, finally presented his 2-month overdue and eagerly anticipated report on the use of security scanners at EU airports to the European parliament. It was dire! A vague, wishy-washy stuttering response which no EU minister would ever be able to use as a guide on the issue of scanners.

One paragraph in particular grabbed my attention:

“Overall tests carried out in laboratories and as part of operational trials at airports in several countries show a reliable security performance and in particular an enhanced detection probability for non-metallic items and liquids compared to walk-through metal detectors. Although questions were raised whether Security Scanners would have been able to prevent the Detroit incident of 25 December 2009, it is clear that given the technology at hand today, the Security Scanners would have maximised the probability to detect the threats and will provide us with a considerably enhanced prevention capability.”

“Reliable security performance” as part of “operational trials”? Really? Who have they caught?

“Whether scanners would have prevented the Detroit incident”? They didn’t, in spite of being installed at the airport the underwear bomber used.

“Considerably enhanced prevention capability”? That is yet to be seen.

Just how “reliable” are the scanners at detecting these so-called ‘threats’? To my knowledge there have never been any cases of the detection of explosive materials or other non-metallic weapons through the scanners. So how can they possibly know if the scanners are effective or not?

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The technology 1. Active Millimetre Wave Scanners

A popular choice in Europe, this scanner (image above) uses radiowaves somewhere between mobile phone and microwave frequencies to virtually strip-search its subject. Even though the technology is favoured by all but one of the scanner manufacturers, it is clear to see why it is not a market leader. Let’s be frank now, it’s crap! If you want to hide something under your clothes and you happen to be travelling from Amsterdam, Paris or Milan where Millimetre Wave scanners are in use, I think it’s safe to say that you need to hide the object in your sleeves and not taped to your stomach as in the image above and you’ll have no problem passing security.

Obviously a terrorist. Proud mother laughs as her 3-year-old is electronically strip-searched in a Millimetre Wave scanner.

Many seem to be under the impression (especially the UK government) that this technology is somewhat inoffensive and poses little risk to our health. However, there is growing concern that this type of scanner currently in use at Schiphol and Paris Charles de Gaulle, the so-called ‘Active Millimetre Wave’, can do some nasty things with your DNA. In fact, the US military has been playing with the technology in its laboratories for some time and they claim to have developed a weapon system called Active Denial System (ADS) which emits a beam of Millimetre Wave radiation which they say is “not dangerous and causes no physical harm”, but is extremely painful and causes the target to feel an intense burning pain, as if your skin is going to catch fire. How delightful!

Non cancer causing Passive Millimetre Wave scanning technology does exist, but produces images even worse that that of its active cousin.

I am not alone in my criticism of the technology. UK Conservative MP Ben Wallace, ex-employee of Millimetre Wave technology developers QinetiQ, claimed that the scanners “probably would not have detected the Christmas day bomber”. I think we can be more daring than that Mr Wallace. They didn’t detect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called Christmas Day bomber, AKA the underpants bomber. The bizarre journey of Mr Abdulmutallab, who it is claimed concealed a liquid explosive in his clothes on a trip from Lagos, Nigeria to Detroit, took him through Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) and was not detected at all by the Millimetre Wave scanners already in place there since 2007. It was the strange case of Abdulmutallab that sparked the latest push for scanners at all international airports.

So why use Millimetre Wave scanners that so clearly failed to stop the terrorist of the moment?

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The technology 2. Backscatter (x-ray) scanners

The king of the hill at the moment is the Rapiscan Secure 1000 backscatter radiation scanner. It beats the MMw competition on both cost and image quality. Every nook, cranny, wrinkle, appendix scar, colostomy bag, mastectomy prosthesis and mole will be seen through this scanner. At first, a rumour was spread throughout the press that the backscattered radiation could not penetrate skin. But as we can all see from this official Rapiscan produced image (below) the radiation is so powerful that even some of your bones may be exposed. Just look at the tibiae on this unsuspecting Heathrow security guard!

Backscatter image

Clearly, an ionising radiation scanner with that kind of penetration has to come with its own health risks. On the side of government and the manufacturer the risk is considered “negligble” when it is measured in Micro Sieverts and compared with an average dose of cosmic radiation received by passengers on a flight. However, since the announcement of the international mass roll-out of scanners, alarm bells have been ringing in the scientific community. One of the most interesting came from a group of four scientists at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF). They explain how electrons shot from a Backscatter type scanner should not be compared to cosmic radiation, as UK and US government agencies have.

Cosmic rays (gamma radiation) pass through the human body in quick bursts travelling in a straight line, entering one side and exiting the other. On a transatlantic flight the effect would be immeasurably small. However, our scientists at UCSF explain how the radiation from the Rapiscan machine works differently.  The scanning device shoots electrons at its subjects with just enough power to penetrate clothing and skin. The electrons progressively lose inertia on their journey and once they have lost the power to penetrate any further (i.e. they hit a bone), they bounce back. A percentage of electrons return to the reader on the scanner and an image is produced. It is entirely conceivable therefore that some of the energy does not have enough oomph to leave the body again. Radiation builds up below the surface of the skin and therefore the risk of cancer and other malformation greatly increases.

The theory is almost impossible to prove or disprove with 100% stone-cold science, as much as it is impossible for our governments to prove that the scanners are safe. Although government reassurances do tend to remind me of old Camels cigarettes advertisements with doctors endorsing tobacco. Perhaps we will have to wait as many decades as we did with tobacco to discover if backscattered radiation is all that deadly or not.

Like we trusted the Camels’ doctors we must trust the government. They know what they are doing.

But is the health risk worth it? The case for the defence of scanners usually claims that any health risk is worth it if it prevents another tragedy like 9/11. This presupposes that the scanners actually work and that there is a significant threat out there, of course.

The official story tells us that on the 11th of September, 2001, boxcutters were smuggled aboard 4 planes. Ever since the sensitivity of airport metal detectors has been increased to the point where we have to shuffle beltless through security points. A few months later an inept would-be terrorist smuggled a substance vaguely similar to an explosive in his shoes and we then had to remove our shoes before flying. Now beltless and shoeless, Abdulmutallab supposedly hid a similarly duff explosive in his trousers we were told that it would be necessary to reveal the contents of our underwear to security guards in order to fly.

Now that all human dignity has been brushed aside, will the Rapiscan Secure 1000 save our sorry souls from the terrorist bogeyman? … Not a chance!

Below is an image of UK artist John Wild. In 2006, while visiting a security trade fair in London, John was offered the chance to be scanned by the Rapiscan salespeople. He was then allowed to keep a copy of the image to use in an artwork he was preparing. Clearly, the radiation was not only powerful enough to penetrate the heavy suit he was wearing, but also his leather shoes and belt. In fact, there is no sign whatsoever of anything John was wearing other than the metal buttons on his trousers and the loose change in his pocket. If the Backscatter scanner is powerful enough to penetrate something with the physical density of leather and leave little or no trace, how then could it possibly detect a powder or liquid-based explosive, such as PETN?

Rapiscan imagery down to the bone.

The fact is, it can’t.

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Scanners Plan also Duff!

So, how can full-body scanners prevent acts of terrorism of planes? The idea is that if all the airports in all of the world had scanners, no flights anywhere would be affected by suicide terrorists. Well, I’m afraid we are off to a bad start. No middle-Eastern countries, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen or Dubai,  have signed up to the plan. Few African and Asian states and only Europe, North America and Australia seem to feel an urgent need to defend its air departures with radioactive imagery. So, the plan is a sham before we have even started.

But don’t take my word for it, let’s ask the experts:

Colin McSeveny, a spokesman for FBS manufacturer Smiths Detection Ltd. which makes Active Millimetre Wave body scanners said that “Politicians like Gordon Brown want to get a move on, but these technologies are still in trials. They are not ready yet.”

The current director of Interpol claimed earlier this year that the plan was “flawed”. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble argued that better intelligence and information sharing between countries was required, rather than wide-scale body scanning technology.

The US and Canadian Association of Airline Pilots (ALPA) have described the use of FBS at airport security points as an “inadequate response” which leaves current airport security procedures little more than a “patchwork of band-aids”.

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So, why implement scanners if they don’t work?

It’s hard to ignore the economic enormity of the security industry. 9/11 was an atrocious tragedy to most and a goldmine for others. There needs to be a constant threat looming over the public, a perpetual war, in order to maintain the influence of the security lobby. No crisis means no income for too many these days. And what politicians do best is throw money where the lobbyists say without studying what the problem is… or if one really exists. Could someone around here be crying wolf?

In the media we are constantly bombarded with the “T” word and how we need defending from the imminent danger of religious extremists who just love to commit suicide and kill a random crowd of white people for no apparent reason. And there is a long, long, long line of companies ready to run to our rescue… at a price of course. But what is this impending doom? Somewhere in the region of 2.5 billion people flew in 2009 and only one was dumb enough to put PETN in his pants without realising that you have to explode the substance with a detonator rather than set fire to it. You are thousands of times more likely to be struck by lightning than being directly affected by a transnational terrorist attack,  and yet the security industry continues to grow.

Full-body scanners are just another over priced and unnecessary addition to a nonsensical  patchwork of security measures and a further subtraction of our essential rights. Eventually, I imagine, they will all end up in a landfill site alongside puffer machines and other contraptions that cost a fortune and failed to deliver. By that time many of the exhibitors at TerrorExpo will have made a mint and we will have already been used as Guinea Pigs in a long line of even more intrusive and harmful technology. By then I wonder if anyone will remember what “human rights” means.

Sam Edi

Scrap the Scanners

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/security/aviation/airport/securityscanners/bodyscanner/

Petition for the permanent cessation of Full-Body Scanning at UK airports.

We the undersigned hereby petition the government to stop all Full-Body Scanning procedures at UK airports. The programme is a clear violation of human rights, is ineffective, and threatens the health and safety of air travellers and airport staff.

Human Rights Violations
The compulsory full-body scanning process reveals air passengers as if seen naked and therefore violates Article 8 of the Human Rights Act of 1998 (HRA), the right to privacy (1). The process is also a blatant affront to Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2) and Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights (3) . As the UN special rapporteur on human rights was quoted, the use of full-body scanners, “would be a violation of human rights in respect to everyone, but there are particular sensitivities in respect of women, certain religious, certain cultural backgrounds.” (4)

Wholly inadequate training and vetting is leading to violations in Article 3 of the Human Rights Act, which protects citizens from degrading treatment (5), as in a case at Heathrow airport earlier this year in which a security screener was accused of ‘ogling’ a fellow worker through the device. (6)

Article 9 of the HRA, Freedom of Belief, is compromised by the FBS process (7). Massoud Shadjareh, of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, stated body scanning at airports was “totally unacceptable and outrageous. And worse, it really doesn’t make any security sense.” (8) In February of this year two British women were refused the right to board their flight after objecting to being scanned on religious and health grounds (9). Pope Benedict XVI (10) and Agudath Israel, an Orthodox Jewish group have also spoken out against the scanners.(11)

The scanning programme also violates the Protection of Children Act 1978, under which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a pseudo-image of a child. (12)

Ineffective Technology
ConservativeMPBen Wallace, advisor to AIT manufacturer QinetiQ, said the scanners were unlikely to detect explosives such as PETN (13). The director of Interpol described the technology as flawed (14) and a spokesperson for UK FBS manufacturer Smiths Detection stated that the technology was not ready to be used as a primary screening technique yet (15).

Health and Safety
Eminent scientists from the University of California explain how Backscatter radiation (Rapiscan 1000) cannot be compared to cosmic radiation as in the Health Protection Agency’s risk assessment (16). Unlike cosmic radiation, backscatter scanners are “largely depositing energy into the skin and immediately adjacent tissue” increasing the risk of cancer and other malformations (17). Nor has any consideration been given to security screeners working with the vicinity of the scanners (18).
The alternative FBS technology, the so called Millimetre Wave, is also claimed to be a health risk as it can damage double-stranded DNA (19).
Furthermore, the fact that backscatter FBS in use at UK airports contain radioactive materials and cause further accumulations at security points could provide terrorist with additional targets.

The new government has pledged to reverse the Orwellian trend in British society. The Deputy Prime Minister said in his remarks on 19th May that the new coalition would end the culture of spying on its citizens. Rt Hon Nick Clegg stated, “It is outrageous that ordinary citizens should be treated as if they have something to hide.” We strongly agree and urge you to suspend the Full-Body Scanning programme in the UK.

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Ref:

1. Article 8 Human Rights Act 1998, Right to respect for private and family life
2. Article 12. UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
3. Article 7 European Charter on Fundamental Human Rights (EHRC).  Full-body scanner use is also in clear violation of Articles 1 of the EHRC (Human dignity), and 10 (Right to freedom of Religion) as it impedes the following of the teachings of certain religions
   
4. Martin Scheinin, UN Special Rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism
5. Article 3 HRA Prohibition of torture
6. “Heathrow worker ogled colleague on scanner”, By Rosamond Hutt, PA, The Independent, 24 March 2010
7. Article 9 HRA Freedom of thought, conscience and religion
8. Massoud Shadjareh of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in London, quoted as saying that the FBS “don’t make any security sense.”
9. “Muslim woman barred from flight after refusing body scan” – Telegraph, 3 Mar 2010
10. The Pope, while addressing a congregation of airport workers at the Vatican, was reported as saying that with “every action, it is above all essential to protect and value the human person in their integrity. Respecting these principles can seem particularly complex and difficult in the present context [heightened airport security]”. While FBS were not directly mentioned,there was a consensus among those present that the Pope was referring to the effect on human rights that the FBS have.
11. In a letter to the US Senate in June 2009, Agudath Israel, which represents traditional American Orthodox communities, voiced their opposition to FBS. Leaders in both Conservative and Orthodox communities are debating how scanners with the ability to see through clothing intersect with Jewish laws of tzniut, or modesty, which are observed differently among denominations but generally require Jews to cover their bodies.
12. Protection of Children Act 1978 CHAPTER 37 An Act to prevent the exploitation of children by making indecent photographs of them; and to penalise the distribution, showing and advertisement of such indecent photographs.
13. BBC :Airport body scanners ‘unlikely’ to foil al-Qaeda – MP “Mr Wallace said the scanners would probably not have detected the failed Detroit plane plot of Christmas Day. He said the same of the 2006 airliner liquid bomb plot and of explosives used in the 2005 bombings of three Tube trains and a bus in London.”
14. Interpol head, Ronald K. Noble criticises FBS use at Davos 2010.
15. Colin McSeveny, of Smiths Detection, UK, states that the scanner technology is not yet ready to be used.
16. Health protection Agency FBS risk assessment for the DfT. Compares Backscatter radiation of Rapiscan 100 in use at Manchester and Heathrow airports with cosmic (gamma) radiation.
17. Letter of Concern from group of eminent scientists from the University of California addressed to Dr John Holdren, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.
18. FOI 6176 DfT reply to Adam Woodward 9thth March 2010 “What specific tests have been carried out on the long-term effects of working with said equipment?” DfT response: “We do not hold specific information on the effects of working with this equipment
19. (Millimetre Wave Scanners) DNA Breathing Dynamics in the Presence of a Terahertz Field Millimetre wave radiation “unzips” double-stranded DNA