Body Scanners – a safety measure or a political stunt?

So Australia is to spend 200 million dollars (according to The International News) on body scan machines “to make our airports safer from terrorists”. Yeah right!

When are our leaders going to learn that you can’t stop terrorism – you can only deter it!

And according to Joshua Cooper Ramo in his book “The Age of the Unthinkable” most world leaders have yet to learn that we will not solve the terrorism problem with current thinking.

And Michael Boyd, president of aviation consulting company Boyd Group International, seems to concur in an article in Bloomberg Business Week -“we’re… reacting to a terrorist threat, not anticipating one”.

And what of the privacy concerns? If the machines have technology that blocks out “private bits” to cater for privacy concerns than what is to prevent terrorists using this loophole?

We are told that these images cannot reveal the naked body in its entirety, just bland computer images of them. Yet that appears not to be the case!

The UK Government has hit a snag as the introduction of these machines breaches existing laws relating to child pornography.

The Honourable Anthony Albanese MP tells us that this is just part of the Australian Governments’ better security initiatives.

In a recent article on the same topic, Kit Eaton, who writes for the web-based Fast Company, there is much to be feared from these machines.

The one group of people who will most benefit from these machines are the manufacturers.