Alan Travis reports:
The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.
Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to “virtual strip-searching” and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.
Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.
Read more in The Guardian.
Meanwhile, over in Germany:
Germany’s data protection commissioner, Peter Schaar, has warned officials not to rush the implementation of controversial full-body scanners at airport security stations following a failed terrorist attack last month, daily Frankfurter Rundschau reported on Tuesday.
“So far I have not seen a machine that protects personal rights,” Schaar told the paper, adding that the machines must be able to tell the difference between foreign objects and medical prosthetics or implants.
“The improvement that the naked images are no longer visible on the monitors is not enough on its own,” he said.
Read more in The Local (De).