Netherlands plans to introduce full-body scanners at airports

Amsterdam - The Netherlands plans to require full-body scanners as soon as possible for US-bound passengers traveling from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, reports said Wednesday. Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin told US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano via telephone that the Netherlands planned to implement the use of the scanners in the aftermath of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day.

Dutch politicians from the ruling Christian Democrat and Labor parties said they would support his proposal, as did the largest opposition party, the Liberal VVD.

On Monday, an airport spokesman said while it was not definite that a scanner would have detected the explosives allegedly hidden in the clothing of 23-year-old Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, it would have been likely.

Abdulmuttalab passed through Schiphol on his flight from Nigeria to the United States.

In addition to requiring the scanners for US-bound flights, the government in The Hague wants to see them introduced throughout the European Union.

The planned obligatory use of the scanners for all passengers at Schiphol Airport was halted in 2008 by the European Parliament, which said the machines would compromise personal privacy.

Schiphol Airport is currently testing 15 of the scanners, a type of X-Ray machine allowing security staff to look through people's clothes, seeing them naked.

Liberal lawmaker Fred Teeven said that it was first necessary to review specific practices of how the scanners would be used. Questions about who should be authorized to watch the images, and for how long the images should be stored, remained to be examined, he said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301479,netherlands-plans-to-introduce-full-body-scanners-at-airports.html.