The current state of these scanners may only titillate people who are (as Charlie Brooker puts it) into "ghost porn".
But remember how luggage scanning has progressed over the years from basic X-Rays to isolatable layers where individual objects can clearly be picked out, to the latest innovation touch feedback where an examiner can get the sensation of feeling inside the closed bag and virtually touch and handle the individual objects inside.
During my nightmare Christmas trip to nowhere via Edinburgh airport I was struck by how the airport experience has become similar to the processing (at the risk of being Godwinned) seen in Nazi death camps.
By way of a recap :
Bingowings said:
I've just had a hell of a time.
My flight down to spend Christmas with my folks has been canceled and the airport and the flight company handled it terribly.
Gatwick was closed at 3pm but they didn't warn anyone got everyone into the airport, through a huge queue to check in, through security and waiting in the lounge before announcing a cancellation that the goon from Costa Coffee already knew about because he was taking the Mick out of us all by shouting taunts at us.
We were then sent down to pick up our luggage (which took two hours) and they changed carousels without telling anyone (lucky for us someone noticed their bags on the the other carousel and alerted everyone.
Then we had to wait for 2 more hours in another queue only to have some woman come up with a piece of paper telling us that we can sort out a refund online.
Had to get a taxi back to Falkirk which cost £55 (the whole day cost about £100) and i'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get a train or flight at short notice (especially the weather keeps up).
So possibly Christmas is mostly cancelled in Chateau Bingowings.
Every muscle in my body aches from standing in lines with a rucksack full of smalls on my back...
...Just checked the price of a last minute train £209 quid (return I guess) but times that by two and it becomes impossible.
What makes it worse is that if they knew we were canceled when they sent us through security they traumatised some wee girl by getting her mother to hurriedly get her woken up, out of her buggy, strip her coat, scarf and shoes off, mangling the head of her teddy bear in front of her face and frisking and scanning her mother with her screaming all the time.
It was one of those toys with a plush body and a soft plastic head so they didn't pull the head off but the woman at security grabbed it off her and pushed her fingers into it's eyes and squeezed it's head in.
The girl must have been about 2 years old and clearly at the toy as 'little friend' stage. It was obviously a favorite toy that she didn't want to let go of so snatching it off her and doing that in front of her must of been terrifying.
Why they couldn't have turned it into game I don't know.
I would have told the girl that the scanner machine was a little train ride or something like that and took her mind off it that way (surely the scanner would have picked up anything inside).
They frisk random people after going through the detector (usually about 1 in 5).
One woman had to take thigh length boots off (nothing kinky they were gum boot style wellies because of the snow but she had a time trying to get them off).
I ended up being frisked myself. The last time I flew I had lost a lot of weight due to ill health and they made me take my belt off so I had to keep my trousers up with my hand going through (as a boy I used to travel in my kilt which would be impossible now).
Having a stranger snatch her hand while some mysterious machine ran all over her mum must have been confusing too.
It was horrible and under the circumstances completely pointless seeing as Gatwick was closed at three and most of the other London area airports and Luton were closed before then. They must have known none of us were actually flying anywhere.
I don't think David Lynch could create a more distressing scene and all for nothing.
The poor thing didn't have a clue what was going on.
Canceling a flight never nice but often necessary but why do they ask for our phone numbers if they aren't going to warn us of cancellations and why go through the stupid excesses (and I do think it's daft that they wont let you take a fountain pen in hand luggage but BA give you a glass bottle on the plane) of the security check if they know the flight isn't going to happen?
The long lines, the reduction of personality down to a barcode and number, the intrusion into property and dignity, the passive compliance. I know of people who have been asked to switch on their laptops and had encrypted business documents poked over in breach of data protection law.
I'm not saying that some procedure isn't necessary, airplanes have the potential to become devastating weapons but so can motor vehicles and trains even unguarded reservoirs and dining areas. I posted some time ago about the chaos caused by Ursula and Sabina Eriksson on the M6, all they had was their bodies (and tragically later a knife) to use as weapons and they were even trying to create terror.
Safety is never going to absolute but such procedures should be proportional to the risk (which is still slight otherwise you would be hearing more of different forms of attack other than using airplanes where these measures don't apply).
Political climates change, sometimes alarmingly, Hitler went from a marginalised joke to national dictator and international menace in a very short space of time.
Something introduced in all innocence can be turned against a population after a sudden regime change.
The potential for harm caused by the abuse of the mechanisms of state greatly outweighs the risks posed by a handful of brainwashed wannabe martyrs.
