“Love those gigantic tits” remark lands airport scanner operator in hot water

by Scott Carmichael on

Well, that didn’t take long did it? A mere month after London Heathrow introduced full body scanners, the first harassment case is already being investigated by the authorities.

When 29 year old Jo Margetson accidentally walked through the scanner, an airport security guard thought it would be hilarious to mention how he “loved those gigantic tits”. This was of course the situation everyone feared – I’m just surprised it took this long to happen.

The security guard has been issued a warning for sexual harassment, which will no doubt be the first of many to be issued to people that have access to the scanner images.

Miss Margetson is furious about the incident – ‘I can’t bear to think about the body scanner thing,’ she said. ‘I’m totally traumatised by it.”. She spoke to the police after the incident, and they in turn reported the case to BAA, the airport operator.

In the United States, the full body imagers are monitored by staff in a remote location, and we have been assured that images will never be shared – even though the purchase requests made by the government requested scanners that have storage and sending capabilities. In other words – it is only a matter of time till US airports are faced with similar cases.

The problem with this equipment is not the technology – which has been proven to work just fine – humans are the real issue, and knowing that some of the operators manning the checkpoints are going to be on the lookout for “big tits” won’t help the public’s attitude towards them one bit.

(Photo: Getty Images)

The Netherlands to start full body scans of all US bound passengers

by Scott Carmichael on

The Dutch government held a press conference this morning announcing their plans to beef up security at Amsterdam Schiphol airport.

Within three weeks, fifteen bodyscan machines will be in place (sources say the machines are the Rapiscan Secure 1000 scanners), and a 100% screening of all US bound passengers may help prevent a repeat of the Northwest Airlines incident.

See – THIS is how you tackle security. Something happens, and within 3 weeks, you implement the technology required to prevent it from happening again. I’m not a big fan of the bodyscanners, but given how the terrorists are operating, I don’t see any other solution, short of asking people to fly naked.

Government officials made it clear that only one person will be able to view the scanner screen at a time, and that images can not be stored. The initial implementation requires border protection police staff to view the screens, but the next version will be fully automated, and a computer will determine whether any items are on your body that require closer scrutiny.

Of course, the Dutch privacy groups are very much against the scanners. My biggest concern is that images of naked children leak out, and make their way into the hands of pedophile groups. If governments are indeed going to start an accelerated roll out of these scanners, they’d better be 100% sure they protect our privacy – if they screw this up (and chances are, they will), the backlash will be fierce.