Scanners – useful mainly for causing delays

Can you imagine what Heathrow is going to be like while they try and find space for dozens of airport body scanners?

You can barely swing a cat in the place without hitting a stack of duty free chocolates or whisky, and now we’re all going to be squeezed through scanners which wouldn’t have caught this guy anyway.

Still, at least it’s sending out the right message to terorists, ie:

1. we’re playing catch up

2. we don’t know what we’re doing

3. we’re mainly interested in showing we are doing something without caring too much what that thing is (gesture politics)

4. we’re prepared to curtail the civil liberties of everyone even though it is an identifiable subset of everyone we should be watching out for (it’s not racism, it’s profiling).

5. there will be layer on layer of inconsistent security to inconvenience us, while those who are obviously a threat, whose own parents think they are a threat, who are already on lists of those to watch and who nevertheless are allowed to fly on a one-way ticket bought with cash to the States from Yemen somehow avoid it all.

So 20 seconds per passenger, on a full A380 (say roughly 450 passengers), equals 9000 seconds or 2.5 hours. And that’s without the rest of the security / passport controls. Good luck BAA…

Yes, so we can add:

6. time processing everyone

7. they probably wouldn’t catch someone trying the same thing again.

8. they almost certainly wouldn’t catch someone trying something new.

and talking of (7.), can we agree that the term “underpant bomb” is unsatisfactory?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/yemen/6906189/Detroit-terror-attack-first-images-of-underpant-bomb.html

Surely the plural is correct?

I very much doubt the 20 seconds!!!

The existing security you would be lucky for one passenger through every 1-3minutes with how they operate at LHR!
I was asked to go through the body scanners twice when they were being trialed, & it was at least 5 minutes.

I still think profiling of passengers & an equivilant security certification (based on patterns of travel, FF status as being known to airports or Airlines, Immigration history, ticket sourcing -cash vs cards, single vs return tickets etc) is the way to go.
If you make the trip regularly on a route with an Airline, as many BT readers do, you should be given a reliable higher known security status.

It is not viable to put everyone through body scanners for every flight out of the UK, or other countries. Clearly there will be less resourced countries who will not have them, & still many Airlines will fly passengers into the EU Airports, where this level of security cannot be matched.

This is precisely what happened in the recent incident.

UK Government:
Could LHR also perhaps check passports as you travel out of LHR?
I have not had mine checked for 2 yrs out of T4, even travelling every 2 weeks!!! Really NO point having immigration systems, if you don’t know who has left…it’s simply common sense???
Schipol have passport checks at every gate prior to boarding, separate from security, as well as entry to the airport & the Airline itself.

I have a feeling the UK Immigration Department deploys a ramdom passport inspection for the departing passengers as I have my passport checked in different terminals but most often no such inspections required. The authority prefers to be unpredictable!

Talking about security inconsistance, I had to remove my shoes/belt in T5 but not in T3. The rules are not necessary the same in all terminals.

It used be Immigration inspection on leaving the UK until several years ago and the UK government decided to emulate the USA Immigration practice of only checking entry into the country!

But I don’t think ramdom checking of travel documents poses a serious security issue here.

Governments should concentrate on looking at more effecient ways of intercepting would-be terrorists trying to smuggle WMD at airports without imposing unduly stress to the travellers.

I went through one of these scanners in the states last year when they were testing them. While I have no issue with then (as if i choose to fly i have to comply with the security requirements). But from my experience it does take nearly 5 mins from start to finish for each passenger so i can see nothing but delays.