UK goes for body screening

In a written parliamentary response the new UK Transport secretary, Justine Greening, said last week that passengers flying to and from the United Kingdom will not be able to opt out of having a body security scan.

Instead of a 'pat down' search, passengers will have to pass through a security scanner, a procedure which could be rolled out across the United Kingdom in the future, she said.

Proposals recently agreed by the European parliament include the right to request an opt-out from scanning.

"I do not believe that a pat down search is equivalent in security terms to a security scan," Greening said.

"The purpose of introducing security scanners in the first place was to protect the travelling public better against sophisticated terrorist threats: these threats still exist and the required level of security is not achieved by permitting passengers to choose a less effective alternative," she added.

Following an incident, Britain introduced trial scanners at Manchester, Gatwick and Heathrow airports.  Greening said the development of new scanner software meant images captured by scanning machines would not be copied, saved, transmitted or viewed by human operators in the future.  During the trial there were just 12 refusals out of more than one million scans. www.dft.gov.uk

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