You can't leave your hat on

John Wild as seen through backscatter x-ray.

Strip searches of air travellers are all the rage in the US and UK today, with metal detectors now having become just so pre-9/11 and pre-King’s Cross 2005.  This week’s find of two ink cartridge-bombs on planes bound for Chicago and the UK have increased momentum for more regulation of airports and airlines.

Air travellers are now being subjected to Advanced Imaging Technologies (AIT), also known as Whole Body Imaging (WBI) to make air travel, airports and the world, safer.  Systems used to scan naive air travellers are either backscatter X-ray or millimeter wave devices.  ‘Naive’, because you have the right to refuse being strip-searched.  The scanning technologies were not designed to leave you looking like a Men’s Health or FHM model either.  The picture will look a little something like the one John Wild took of himself (right), only your picture will be in higher resolution.

I won’t go through the details of health risks, privacy risks and property risks related to such treatment of air travellers right now.  The guys at dontscan.us have done a pretty good job of this already.  This article in particular is worth a read for those interested.

At least as South Africans, we can rest assured that we won’t be looked at in our full naked ghostly glory by the ACSA team at OR Tambo for domestic (or any) flights just yet.  However, freedoms don’t last very long and you can rest assured it won’t be long before full body scanners make their entrace at ACSA airports.

All of this tyrannical stupidity has led us at HA to have another one of those mornings filled with hair-pullingly frustrated rants on freedom and the unintended consequences of policies such as making security at airports unnaturally tight.

Now that security has been tightened to such an extent to prevent possible ‘threats’ from boarding a commercial aircraft, passengers feel safe, knowing they’ve passed a rigorous security checkpoint.  The plane must be one of the safer places in the world right now, goes the thinking.  But your average Boeing 747 has a seating capacity of around 500 people.  Your typical airport terminal can house multiples more at any one time.  What is more, several aircrafts will park at one terminal at any particular time.  With no security checks scanning entry to terminal buildings, the terminal has become prime disruption territory.

All that governments have achieved by tightening aircraft security is to shift the threat from the aircraft to the terminal.  Next, security checkpoints would need to be added at the entrance to the terminal, followed by checkpoints in the parking lot, and then checkpoints on the roads.

Now isn’t that a scary thought for next time you enter an airport terminal?

FREEMAN COMMENT:
This last point cannot be overstated.  Plane access security quickly becomes terminal access security quickly becomes parking lot access security quickly becomes precinct access security quickly becomes town access security quickly becomes county access security, and before you know it you’ve arrived at the total security-police state as micro security expands ever-upward and converges with the ever expanding Federal security agency.  The slippery starts slope to total state control is well under way in America and many other parts of the Western world, which in effect means we are moving ever-closer to systemic failure and collapse.  It’s happening.

UPDATE Nov 4: Glasgow Airport was cleared yesterday “after a suspicious package was found in the departures security area.”

Make the security circle beeeega!