Dutch want bodyscanners checks on European flights

Amsterdam - The Dutch want to introduce so-called full- body scanners on all intra-European flights, Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin said Thursday following talks with European Union (EU) colleagues in Toledo, Spain. The Dutch Justice minister also wants EU-countries to transfer passenger data before takeoff, comparable with the data the US requires from all incoming passengers under the so-called Passenger Name Record (PNR) system.

"I want to increase civil aviation security," Hirsch Ballin said in comments monitored in Amsterdam.

He added that extra security measures were needed after the failed Christmas Day bomb attack on a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam.

In the aftermath of that attempted bombing, the Dutch were the first EU country to announce the introduction of full-body scanners for all US-bound passengers.

Schiphol Airport had already been testing 15 of the scanners for several months. The scanners are a type of X-Ray machine allowing security staff to look through people's clothes, seeing them naked.

Arguing the machines would compromise personal privacy, the European Parliament halted the previously planned obligatory use of the scanners for all passengers at Schiphol Airport in 2008.

The Dutch have since adjusted the body scanners' software so that it screens the images for suspicious objects without ground control personnel looking at the images.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/305058,dutch-want-bodyscanners-checks-on-european-flights.html.