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If it's true that this sort of technology is being used in a very unstructured way (people not going through booths or screening areas) then I think it will be incredibly unsuccessful at catching terrorists.

Routinely exposing people to X rays on a daily basis would clearly be idiocy, as any medical person would tell you. It's far more likely that the systems used will be of the passive type, which do not pose any health risks.

However, even if the technology works perfectly safely I would really question the usefullness of such a system. Screening a small number of people on a random basis is highly unlikely to stop potential suicide bombers, and we rapidly get into a couple of murky areas. Firstly, if the screening is selective how do you choose who to screen? Do you pick out people who look asian, and if so what will that do for race relations? Secondly many people routinely carry metal objects such as laptops, ipods, phones, toolbags, jewelry, belts and so on. Are they really going to get people to take off or take out that stuff every single day that they go to work?

I predict that this sort of screening will be a waste of taxpayers money and people's time, and will catch few or no terrorists. It's just the politicians trying to look as if they're doing something to combat terrorism.

@ Sir Arthur - agreed

Remember that US manufacturers of "security" equipment, provided that they have got themselves on the US Government Homeland Security approved list, are exempt from civil liability lawsuits for causing false alarms, or if their technology fails to work properly i.e. fails to detect weapons or explosives etc.

Presumably this immunity also extends to any "collateral damage" health effects on the public.

See the so called SAFETY Act (Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act) of 2002, part of the misnamed PATRIOT Act.

https://www.safetyact.gov

Therefore any manufacturers' claims that the equipment actually works or is safe have to be independently tested, but this does not appear to be within the scope of this forthcoming trial at Paddington station.

Carrying a laptop computer, MP3 player, mobile phone etc. on theTube. is already enough to get you arrested, DNA sampled, fingerprinted, photographed etc. and have your home searched, and computer and other equipment sezed - as happened to the innocent David Mery:

http://gizmonaut.net/bits/suspect.html

Perhaps it is all a wasteful and expensive public relations exercise, just, like the installation of metal detectors at the bottom of an escalatorat the Hammersmith Bus and Tube station complex, for a couple of days:

http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2004/12/hammersmith_bus_station_metal.html

It's interesting that Heathrow Express is the target application (an expensive business suit service with only three stops). Are they going to apply it to the parallel Heathrow Connect service from Paddington to Heathrow? If so, they'll have to install their stuff at the five extra stations not served by HEx, which are all also served by trains heading to other destinations from the same platforms. If they don't equip these stations then the whole thing has a vast hole in it and any putative terrorist can simply get on at Ealing and travel completely safely to the heart of Heathrow with whatever he's carrying. As usual, the intention is that you don't spot this trifling flaw and instead revel in the 'magic ray detects suicide bombers' headlines faithfully spat out by any number of news sources. Oh, hello, by the way. Long time reader, first time poster, etc.

@ Tom - hello !

Remember that the Heathrow Express was alleged to be one of the targets of the ineptly handled "no ricin plot", which seems to have been used by the Labour Government to partly justify everything from the war on Saddam Hussein's regime, to the latest Terrorism Bill 2005.

Does imaginary ricin show up on the X-ray scanner? There's a skiffle number in there if anyone's interested.

[Heathrow Connect wasn't around in 2002 or whenever the ricin idiocy was supposed to happen]. As for the case itself, I've never seen anyone in poker bluff for so long on no cards whatsoever.

The BBC website has a few details:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4435502.stm

Apparently

"A four-week trial, which begins on the Heathrow Express platforms at Paddington station in London in the New Year, will be for passengers picked at random. If the screening is eventually implemented, police intelligence could also play a part in selection.

The trial is voluntary, so if people agree to be screened they will either walk through a scanner or be "frisked" by a hand-held device.

If they try to avoid the "voluntary" scanners, will they be deemed to be "acting suspiciously" and be stopped and searched by hand under the Terrorism Act or other Police powers, exactly as happened with the "metal detector" trial at Hammersmith ?

Will the "random" selection be like at Heathrow Terminal 4, where it appeared that mostly non-white people were being "randomly" selected ?

http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2005/02/racial_profiling_at_heathrow_a.html

Millimetre-wave technology, which can detect dense objects concealed under clothes, has never been used on the railway before.

Other equipment being tested includes hand-held trace machines for explosives and X-ray machines to examine bags. Sniffer dogs will also be used to detect explosives.

Different locations involved in the pilot will have different methods, or a different combination of them, and some will not have the walk-through scanners at all.

A Department of Transport spokesman said people with fears the millimetre-wave machines could "see" their bodies and compromise their privacy had nothing to fear. And he was hopeful a check would not take up much time.

"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" ? Sounds familiar.

The Department for Transport will have to prove, not just claim, that they are not storing "naked" images, even temporarily, or else they or the operators of the equipment will have committed a Child Porn offence the instant that a child is scanned.

He said potential costs depended on what equipment would be picked after a post-trial evaluation."

Are there going to be notices placed by the scanners to inform the public that they are about to enter a scanner zone.

What are the long term health risk to pregnant woman let alone the rest of us who ride the trains daily.

What you described -- sneakily imaging under people's clothing as they walk by -- was tried for the first time today by the israelis at their hagana street railway station. And they were very rude to anyone who noticed and complained!

@ sara_sarah - were the "see through your/your children's clothes" scanners of the portal "one person at a time" variety like at Heathrow Airport, or of the more general "let's image everyone walking past within range" variety which Qinetiq and others have demonstrated ?

DO WE HAVE A CHOICE

March 22, 2008

Dear Friends,

I have created a new poll “Health Concern from Backscatter Screening at Airports for Kids under 11”, a very hot and controversial topic.

It seems that "Backscatter X Rays" are going to take over the "Security Gates". There are definite concerns with even the security-gate issue. The devil's argument is that the magnetic field the kids are exposed to is very small, not more than magnetic field of earth. Now, look at this. Magnetic field of earth is one part in a hundred-thousand tesla, but it is uniform, and our body has adapted to it. Now, passing through gates (current does not go without wires, so you won't have current in your body, but magnetic field travels in vacuum), you experience the field there. The magnetic field in your brain is of the order of one part in 10 000 000 000 000 tesla (13 zeros), and I don't like kids getting through gates under any circumstances.

Also, consider the emotional scar from the following situation.

Alarm at the security gate beeps for reasons unknown to parent or child. Airport authorities label the child as a potential traveling bomb, and forcibly strip the child naked, sometimes in public, the child, totally unprepared for the situation, not realizing what is happening to him or her.

Now, consider backscatter X rays, which penetrates clothes and gets images. What would it cause to human skin upon reflection? How much dose would be built up for a frequent traveler? What would be their effect on kids, when they get married? Would girls experience breast cancer, blood cancer or ovarian cancer at a later age? We do not know the answers as get. The question is to let kids experience this because of "security". here, we have to compromise between security, modesty and privacy. I am proposing an optimized solution in this poll, and would like to get your frank views and comments. Poll address is:

http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/330827

Also, there is a new launch of “Clothing and health policy for kids under 11 in school”. The address is:

http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/330702

Please fill that out too. Many thanks. A new version of "Thoroughness of Physical Examination” shall be available soon.

Regards,

Sylvie Frossard
sylvie_frossard@yahoo.fr