"No Scan, No Fly" At Heathrow and Manchester 821
An anonymous reader writes "It is now compulsory for people selected for a full body scan to take part, or they will not be allowed to fly from Heathrow or Manchester airports. There is no optional pat down. Also, a rule which meant that people under 18 were not allowed to participate in the body scanner trial has been overturned by the government. There is no mention of blurring out the genitals, however reports a few years back said X-ray backscatter devices aren't effective unless the genitals of people going through them are visible."
not that bad (Score:3, Interesting)
If the pictures in the linked articles are true (which is not certain), I find the scan a lot less intrusive than a pat down. I'd rather have someone see a vague picture of my junk than grab it and my ass, while breathing in my face. I can't imagine anyone finding these pictures sexy, or even identify me from them.
My concern is more about the effectiveness of these scans. Is it more theater, or do they really detect something that a metal detector wouldn't ? The example pictures are showing a gun, which doesn't seem that good to me.
Re:Really? (Score:0, Interesting)
Stupid.. I mean what would these pathetic parents rather have, a quick scan of their kids, or be flying with terrorists?
If they don't like it, don't take your kids on holiday. It really is simple as that.
System integration (Score:1, Interesting)
I do not know of Heathrow, but at least in some airports the computer that has your photo sits next to the one that just got the data of your machine-readable passport. Hopefully these data are not merged anytime soon. How could I know ?
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:2, Interesting)
It's just a penis, there's no shame about this.
I just expect the viewer to be under active scrutinty, including an electro-encephalogram proving they're not aroused at all: let's make the police afraid of their own weapons instead of whinning about the antiterrorism: we know they won't stop it.
So, look good naked and scan every scanner operator's brain waves.
Re:Speaking as a morbidly obese male (Score:1, Interesting)
After the scanners are installed, the next terrorist will hopefully put the C4 up his ass, then there will be lots of job openings for proctologists at airports.
What about (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
But then, I remember a time when such pictures would hardly draw any comment, and could commonly be seen in family photo albums. That was before we were somehow conditioned to believe that we were dealing with a lot more than just the handful of sick deviants that is actually out there, and before we got used to explode in a combination of outrage, embarrasment and disgust whenever we are confronted with such images, however innocent and regardless of context.
Re:Speaking as a morbidly obese male (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Pleasuring themselves
2) Oogling the pictures
3) Asleap
4) Taking pictures of the screen
5) Making inappropriate jokes about anatomy.
Any of the above should be grounds for immediate termination. 1, 2, 4, and 5 should be grounds for immediate jail time and a permanent entry in the sex offender registry.
Ways around it: (Score:4, Interesting)
a) Put the C4 in your intestines.
b) Wear a latex belly full of explosives/guns.
c) Be fat and hide stuff in the folds of skin
What we really need to do before signing off on anything is give a machine to Mythbusters for a couple of weeks, see what they can come up with.
Re:Really? (Score:1, Interesting)
Surely you don't think x-rays of children in hospitals should be banned? Or pictures of naked kids for medical purposes in files of pediatricians?
I think where you went wrong in your argument is when you equated trained and licensed medical doctors to the savvy motivated airport security personnel...
So soon after being shown not to work? (Score:3, Interesting)
German Body Scanner Demo [youtube.com]
Even though it is in German, most of it is easy to follow. Just watch.
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:2, Interesting)
So they spend millions preventing a rare event, yet allow sale of tobacco that kills millions a year.
No wonder aliens wont invade, they are just waiting in orbit till we nuke each other, then they will restore the planet and keep it.
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:4, Interesting)
[Trains...] Unfortunately the UK is an island so going to most places is more difficult (but Paris and Brussels remain quite reachable).
Brussels-London is just under two hours, Paris-London is just over two hours. Unfortunately, if you're coming from Germany it's probably cheaper to fly, but perhaps that will change once DB start running services through the Channel Tunnel later this year and introduce some competition. I'd like to see some sleeper trains extended to London, and some direct services to Germany (e.g. Koeln).
I'm travelling from London to Leipzig in May. Last year I left home at 3:30 to get to the airport to fly with a budget airline to Berlin, then took the train to Leipzig. I was so tired I fell asleep before take-off and woke up on landing. I arrived in Leipzig at about 13:30. This costs about £80 if booked now.
This year, I'm considering taking the train. I can leave work early in the afternoon, take the train to Paris, then take a train to somewhere in Germany (there's a couple of possibilities) and a sleeper train to Leipzig, arriving at about 7am. This costs about £130.
The final option is to fly with Lufthansa from London City (8:05) to Leipzig (12:30), with a connection at Munich, for £150.
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Speaking as a morbidly obese male (Score:1, Interesting)
Heheh, I wonder if that would really work?
It worked in Texas, in prison.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/20301265/detail.html [click2houston.com]
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:3, Interesting)
These scanners are woefully in-effective and any decent bomber could walk through them and not have his bomb detected. See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/24/body_scanner_fail/ [theregister.co.uk]
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're flush enough, City airport is awesome for flying around Europe. It's primarily designed for business travellers, and is notable being the only airport I've seen where you can get from the station platform to your plane seat in seven minutes. Last time my girlfriends and I flew to Berlin, I insisted we fly via City on a Lufthansa business and stumped up her ticket fare myself; in the end it only cost us about 30% more in ticket prices (half of which we got back by not having to buy the stupidly expensive trains tickets that run to the airports). The gf had never flown from City before, was astonished at the lack of queues, the *polite and friendly* security staff; we fly out of there at every opportunity now.
It's been a year since I last flew out of there so I dunno if the thermite-panted idiot has changed things much there, but City has always been a cut above hellpits like Heathrow. It doesn't have much in the way of long distance because the approach path limits the types of planes that can take off from there but I'd heartily recommend it to any traveller wanting less stress on their way out of London.
What about a good old punitive expedition? (Score:1, Interesting)
I suspect that the gloves have to come off sooner or later, and if we value our rights (instead of getting scanned, or having the arse reamed everytime we fly), rather sooner.
I envisage the following procedure:
a) Terrorists commit their act, killing x 'unbelievers' in a western country with conventional weapons.
b) All western countries collaborate to find where the attack came from (Jemen, Afghanistan etc) using secret services.
c) The west sets a ten-day ultimatum for the population to unconditionally hand over the terrorists.
d) If this does not happen, the west hits that country with a carpet bombing, remniscent of WW2, causing maximum civilian losses without regards to any conventions the terrorists haven't signed neither.
This will solve the problem with terrorists based in a muslim country. Against domestic muslim terrorists, other measures like mass expulsions of muslims must take place, even if these muslims have the passport of that respective country. Most muslims I know are first muslims, and then citizens of their respective country, else they turn into ex-muslims very soon anyway.
I personally do not think that one can negotiate with islamic terrorists, or rather, that the only negotiation point is the caliber you use to shoot them and their supporters. With muslim countries - once they know the consequences, they will not support such acts.
The aim is to make a terrorist attack so costly that nobody will support it or even think about it.
If a bunch of islamic terrorists actually manage to get hold of and use a nuke, chemical or biological weapons, make sure that country where the terrorists originated from gets turned into a wasteland through usage of nuclear weapons. No pity.
Re:Thats it (Score:3, Interesting)
You are assuming that the people who want all this power are the elected members of government.
There is a massive machine full of unelected bureaucrats in the UK. These people advise ministers heavily in terms of policy decisions and are usually the people who are tasked with carrying out those decisions once they've been made.
I really would consider it at least 50% likely that the insanity isn't the politicians, it's the civil servants.
need new carrier: no security checks! (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess this is a great market opportunity - we need to establish a new airline, that does _not_ do any of the silly security checks. advantages would include:
- shorter check in time: about 15 mintes tops, vs. 60 minutes
- always on time, as there are no long queues to wait
- nice, friendly service - no invasion of privacy ever
- cheaper, as the retarted 'security' personell don't have to be paid for
there would be a calculated risk: every 10 years, a plane would be lost to some human activity. this is a lower level of risk than the 'usual' plane crash due to failure - which makes it still the safest way to travel
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Secondly, no I absolutely will not be a test case. Firstly, images of cartoon characters having sex are puerile and daft to me, not sexually alluring. If I want that kind of humour, I'll check out some lolcats. This makes me someone who is not the target of this law, so prosecuting me for contravening it is at best moot and achieves nothing.
Secondly, I'm already involved in issues of child protection in a professional manner. My interest here is to see sane laws which will actually protect children put in place, and idiotic laws repealed. This law is idiotic, for the reason you've implied above: Images of cartoon characters are not images of real people (the allusion to such from your final statement) and as such nobody is harmed by their (cartoon images) creation. However, the guy in Australia has a proven sexual interest in minors. He has already been convicted of such. The press coverage is to illustrate that the law protects children; A loose correlation in this case, but then again that's all the media need to trumpet it from the mountain tops. Note that I didn't say that I agree with the law in my original post, just recounted the facts from the story. I also didn't say that I agreed with the conviction based upon possession of images of non-persons. The difficulty is that there is a correlation between the evidence of both cases: Both involve depictions of a sexual nature which have been deemed illegal by the AUS government. Right now, they did the right thing convicting him. If they want to change that, they can vote on it and get it repealed.
tl;dr: No, thanks.
Metallic Underwear (Score:3, Interesting)
I see a possibility of couple solutions maybe more. On Amazon if you search for "Intimo Men's Liquid Metallic Boxers" I won't put a link as who knows what's in mine (Browser ID, etc.). These or something similar must do something to screw with the backscatter making it useless. Wasn't there military underwear with silver/copper threads or something that kills bacteria?
I travel once every five years or so I won't be able to try these any time soon. But I'm going to search around for something like these have them handy and try them when I do. I won't know if they work until I get scanned and then pulled over after for questioning. If/when I do I'll let the world know the results so everybody else can do the same thing. I believe there must be a simple way with a products like these to give the bird to the government and demand our privacy.
With all the metal it may be tough to get through security but if the wand starts screaming a pat down should solve it. If they're after my junk I don't want some guy in another room - I have the right to look them in the eye and see their look of envy.
-[d]-
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree to an extent. Terrorism really isn't the huge issue that the government and media make it out to be. It's an outright scandal that we have allowed it to become the dominant issue in international diplomacy.
But for all the wars that have been justified because of terrorist attacks, I would happily accept stricter security if it meant preventing attacks and convincing the public that the threat is low.
If one attack were to succeed it would give the ruling governments another blank check on foreign policy.
As long as we're invading and occupying countries in a "war on terror" and we have warmongers amongst us throwing out threats like it's 1914, I expect everyone who wants to fly to do the utmost to prove that they're not a threat.
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:3, Interesting)
Making explosives is just not hard for a dedicated person with basic reading comprehension and math skills.
Yeah, that's what I told myself too. :(
- Chris "Lefty" Burke
The only solution (Score:2, Interesting)
The only way to stand to terrorism is to be not terrorized.
You are not terrorized when you are killed, or 2000 of your countrimen are killed. You are terrorized when the killing scares you for life, when you become jittery, when you are afraid of your brown skin neighbors, when you allow your government to strip search you.
As Roosevelt said: the only fear should be the fear itself (or something to that matter).
Stop fearing, and the terrorism will stop. Admit that 9/11 and 7/7 was a blowback for your own actions, take it like men. I respect more the decision to go to war against us, Muslims, than all the humiliation you subject yourself out the fear of death. You will die anyway, 100% probability, as every living being on the planet, if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow, next year, next decade, next century. Life for the sole purpose of living does not cost much, ask the death row inmates. life is meaningful only if you can maintain your essential core that makes you an individual.
Somehow all those notions I am talking about became archaic in the Western countries...
Well, here, I have said it, mark me a troll now.
I'd pay extra to avoid this. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was going to moderate some very good posts, but it occurred to me ...
I would gladly drive extra or pay extra to fly the Unsafe Skies. I bet that if some airlines and a specific airport in a major metropolitan area were to adopt a "We won't scan/frisk/xray/etc you" policy, customers would jump on it. Imagine this scenario:
- You don't have to take off your shoes.
- We don't want to see you naked.
- Aside from some bomb sniffing dogs and some Israeli-style attention, we don't check for much on planes.
- You can bring knives on the airplane. So can everyone else, though.
- Please no guns.
- We only fly to other airports with similar "relaxed" security, or else you need to go through normal security when you get where you're going.
I guess x-raying might be necessary, or perhaps a chemical sniffer (?) for bomb-stuff... but the general idea would be that we are Okay with armed passengers, as anyone that tries something with a box cutter will have a herd of angry passengers to deal with.
I wonder how financially viable that would be. Would it get more demand than the strip-search airports?
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:3, Interesting)
And what are the reasons young Muslims turn to terrorist groups? Because they feel alienated and harassed by the rest of the world (who treat them like terrorists for no reason at all) and are looking for somewhere to find friends and feel like they belong. They don't even want to kill anybody until they have been brainwashed (and frequently drugged) by their new "friends".
When are we going to realize that draconian security measures, racial profiling, and dropping bombs on civilians are part of the PROBLEM instead of the SOLUTION?
Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score:3, Interesting)
I simply don't buy it. I don't care if this "feels" less invasive. Its still my privacy going away, for what I see as no benefit to anyone, not even myself as a flyer.
I've been thinking, why not focus on making planes harder to crash instead? Just think, if the underpants "bomber" had not managed to smuggle aboard that could have so easily crashed the plane, and instead had set off something that had no real chance of causing key damage. Then, feeling good about flight safety, we wouldn't have need for these enhanced body scanners.
I'm being a little sarcastic there, but in all seriousness, what how vulnerable are these planes, with the pilots now locked in the cockpit? If the only real threat is in the area of punching a hole in the cabin and causing violent decompression, there must be real limits to how much explosive force can be brought on a plane through traditional security measures. How does that compare against the real limits to how much a plane's cabin can be reinforced? Obviously "armoured" planes would use much more fuel, but maybe people would pay more to avoid the intrusion?