EU lawmakers have joined US civil liberty campaigners in criticizing a new scanner technology that allows airport security staff to see through passengers’ clothes, calling it a virtual strip search that should only be used as a last resort.
“Many travelers will consider these scanners an enormous intrusion” on their personal privacy, Philip Bradbourn, a British Conservative member of the EU assembly, said on Tuesday.
The new system, which the EU plans to authorize at the bloc’s airports, allows guards to see an outline of passengers’ bodies beneath their clothes, making it easier to detect any concealed objects.
It is already being introduced in several US airports and has been tested in other countries around the world, including EU nations such as Britain and the Netherlands. However, EU officials said it could face a ban if the 27-nation bloc does not include it in a new regulation listing acceptable airport security equipment.
Bradbourn said the technology should not be used routinely on passengers, but could be introduced when suspicions are raised.
“There may be some benefit in having body scanners in our airports, but they should be a last resort and a substitution for a strip search, not a random sample of innocent holiday-makers,” he said.
The plans have provoked concern from across the political spectrum, and many EU lawmakers issued statements ahead of Tuesday night’s debate about the matter in the European Parliament.
“The body, or nude, scanners create a three-dimensional picture which shows the passenger without clothes, including their genitals,” German Social Democrat Wolfgang Kreissl-Doerfler said.
The European Commission, says the legislation under consideration would respect safety and privacy rules, adding that passengers who objected could be offered an alternative form of security check.
Members of the European Parliament are demanding the right to vote on the scanners, which could be included in the list of authorized security equipment as a technical measure that would not require the assembly’s approval.
If the full body scanners are included in the list, each of the 27 EU nations would be free to decide if they wanted to use them.
The American Civil Liberties Union has long campaigned against use of the scanners for routine checking at US airports, saying they should only be used in place of an intrusive search when there is probable cause.
INCURSION: After 13 PLA aircraft flew into Taiwan’s ADIZ, the US Department of State said that China should rather ‘engage in meaningful dialogue’ with Taiwan US President Joe Biden’s administration on Saturday urged China to stop placing military pressure on Taiwan, while calling on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to engage in peaceful dialogue. The statement by the US Department of State was issued after 13 Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Saturday, the highest number observed in a single day this year, the Ministry of National Defense said. The air force scrambled fighter jets to monitor the Chinese aircraft, issuing radio warnings and mobilizing air defense assets until the planes left the ADIZ. The US “notes
‘INCREASED VIGILANCE’: A source of infection has not yet been found for the latest two cases in a hospital cluster, which should serve as a warning, Chen Shih-chung said A total of 2,991 people associated with a COVID-19 cluster infection at Taoyuan General Hospital have been put under home isolation, after an emergency expanded isolation order was issued on Sunday evening, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. Fifteen people have so far tested positive in the cluster infection. The first case in the cluster (case No. 838) was reported on Jan. 12 — a doctor who treated an infected patient who had returned from the US. Contact tracing for the first 13 cases found connections to case No. 838, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who
FAMILY UNIT: The CECC warned that the eldest sister of the latest case, who also has COVID-19, visited Taoyuan’s Chungping evening market on Tuesday and Wednesday The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported a domestic case of COVID-19, associated with a recent cluster infection at Taoyuan General Hospital, and two imported cases. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that the latest case (No. 885) is a woman in her 50s, who is the third daughter of case No. 881, a man in his 90s. The woman is the main caregiver of her elderly father, who had been hospitalized earlier this month and was treated by a nurse (case No. 852) from Monday to Thursday last week, he said, adding that
DUBIOUS HONOR? A man in his 90s, who tested positive yesterday and is part of the Taoyuan hospital cluster, is the oldest person in Taiwan to have contracted COVID-19 Taiwan yesterday recorded six new imported cases of COVID-19 and two new domestic cases, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said, adding that the local infections are linked to the cluster at Taoyuan General Hospital, which now totals 12 cases. One of the domestic cases is a man in his 90s, who was treated earlier this month at Taoyuan General Hospital and tested negative for COVID-19 on Monday last week, four days before he was discharged, the center said in a statement. After one of the nurses on the ward was confirmed on Saturday last week to have contracted COVID-19, the
RSS