back to article Child porn threat to airport's 'virtual strip search' scanners

Manchester Airport has rejected claims its new body scanners will fall foul of child pornography laws, claiming that because they use X-rays "they do not make an image". The machines use low doses of radiation to deliver a 3D black and white scan of volunteer passengers' bodies to a human operator sat in front of a screen. The …

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  1. Stevie

    Hah!

    So there is a market for tinfoil-lined underwear after all!

    Put me down for the baco-foil codpiece and matching pasties! No-one gets to see the Stevie-nips or "Mr Squishy"!

    I wonder if I can sell my back for baco-foil advertising slogan purposes?

    I want a sticky-back baco-foil "alien embryo" decal to freak out the invasive airport security guard.

  2. Andrew_F

    I wondered were you were on this story

    Than I saw you were covering an angle others hadn't mentioned.

    I'd give you a thumbs up if it wouldn't look worrying in context of the article.

  3. Natty
    FAIL

    ID cards

    But surely if a terrorist has his/her national ID card on them we will know before the scanner if they are packing a piece up the butt?

    Having filled out a few gov security forms myself. I know you have a question "Are you or have you even been a terrorist"

    Simple.

    Gotta love this country.. I will again one day.. I'm sure..

    Natty

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Why is Manchester...

    ... such a rubbish place that it needs ID Cards for airport workers and X-ray scanners?

  5. Geoff Mackenzie
    FAIL

    Yeah, because ...

    ... the reason people would object to widespread strip-searching at airports is the inconvenience of having to get undressed, then dressed again.

    That seems to be the assumption behind this technology anyway.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thin End

    Once this accepted in airports, it will appear elsewhere.

    Police stations, courts, tube stations.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Never mind the kids what about the followers of the 'Religion of Peace'?

    If I recall correctly Manchester and environs has rather a lot of adherents to a certain religion let's call it the ROP.

    Now a lot of these followers of the ROP, well they get pretty freaked out if you see a womans hair.

    These scanners are proabbly going to reveal a lot more than hair in more than one place.

    Just how freaked out do you think they will get if a gasp ..a man maybe even a non follower of the ROP see's their wife's bits in graphic detail?

    I foresee this will be quietly dropped lest the shrill demands for exemption or compensation get lost amid the riots and explosions caused by the more Milly Tant followers of the ROP.

    Remember the worldwide riots etc over a rather wafty cartoon?

    Just wait until the news reached the middle ages...er middle east.

  8. Chris Williams (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: Not XRays, they are millimeter wave scanners

    Incorrect. System is x-ray based.

    See here: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/313581/Airport+tests+full-body+X-ray+system.htm

    - Chris

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Odds..

    Surely it comes down to which you'd prefer to bet on, that the person who looks at the "Image" for a few seconds gets a kick out of it or that one of your fellow passengers is going to blow themselves up mid flight.... In both cases odds are that you're ok but there's always the chance...

    Personally I hate flying anyway...

  10. Alfonso Vespucci

    One man's "erotic"...

    ... Is another man's Olympic logo. It should also be noted that people have been successfully prosecuted for being in posession of child images taken from newspapers and similar sources. Not indecent in themselves, but surely only a nonce would have such a collection (do you see where this is going). And if anyone wants to test out the theory that images of naked children are not automatically "indecent", why not carry a photo of your naked kid in the scanner pose in your wallet. Better still, if you're a bit of an artist, why not a sketch? Then when the nice policeman asks you to identify yourself (do you see where this is going?).

  11. RW

    @ David Hicks et al

    And to think that only forty years ago, a naked child symbolized freedom and innocence!

    It's time to start saying, loud and clear, that the nudity-phobes simply have dirty minds. They should all be sent away for psychological treatment of their serious sexual maladjustments. (Jacqui Smith, you'll be one of the first.)

    But what about the pedophiles? the fearmongers will whine. I have it on good authority (that of a prison guard who deals with pedos and other creeps) that if the pedos can't get pictures of naked kids, they're quite happy to use pictures of kids in clothing for their focussing exercises. Collages of little girls clipped out of Walmart fliers will do very nicely.

    It's not the porn that make the pedophile; it's the pedophile that turns otherwise innocent images into porn. And that, perhaps, is the greatest sin of all.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    brooke shields?

    already seen it...

  13. Frostbite
    WTF?

    FFS!

    The world has gone mad...........again.

  14. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    @Nigel 11

    "What do they do in the medical books that paediatricians study? Are they also all breaking this law?"

    Nah, in the cost-effective 21st century UK, we import all our medics from the third world, so they were all trained in another legal jurisdiction.

  15. Random Noise

    I seem to recall..

    ..a while back hearing about this technology.

    At the time GE or whoever it is that manufactures the kit insisted that it would have a privacy filter which automatically 'pixellated' the genital area. Does anyone else remember hearing this?

  16. Paul Corbett 2
    Megaphone

    Erm

    How about applying some computer power to filter the image, show just a outline of the body and areas of unusual density, surely a program could be devised that can say a normal arm has this profile, that persons arm appears to have something strapped to it ? - Flag alarm condition ?

    Ooooh unusual container detected under armpit, flag, i mean if the terrorist wants to make a container to hold his/her binary explosive that has the same density on the scanner as his body then he's going to succeed even if a human is checking the image, and especially a human who's looked at several thousand images in his shift.

    So outline of small child, no red flagged areas, go on child be at peace

    Outline of small child with suspicious density band round waist strapped there by loving terrorist parents - flag and detain - simplez

  17. Luther Blissett

    Tech solutions to the perv problem

    As the operators of the equipment will not have the expertise to identify in every case what suspicious object a person is carrying, suspects will need to be dequeued for further investigation. That decision could be made by the machine. Contrast enhancement of the images, with pixel counting would be trivial to implement. More sophisticated algorithms could determine pixel counts and shapes of objects in the area of specific parts of the body.

    Alternatively, operators of the equipment could be chemically castrated for the safety of children.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    to be honest

    To be honest this is far more interesting because it once again proves how ridiculous our Child Pornography laws are, just like that poor sap that got done for taking photos to turn into fairies at the parents request.

    and guess what the law and all the other bs laws (ecrb and recent vetting and soon to be law drawn/animated porn laws and extreme laws) because well f--- me Paedophiles can be fat jolly looking woman who everyone thinks is completely safe to leave their children with.

    I'm loving the whole reality shock of the nursery thing btw, people are finally realising that shit, paedophiles aren't weird looking guys that keep to themselves. Being a weird looking guy that keeps to himself this new spate has been a breath of fresh air. Not that I expect it to change anything any.

  19. James 55
    Thumb Up

    @Fillippo "Irresistible force vs. immovable object"

    " Wow! The OMGPEDOSAREEVERYWHERE crowd finally comes to clash with the OMGTERRORISTSAREEVERYWHERE crowd. Both have proven able to legislate absurd restrictions of freedom for no actual benefit, based on irrational fear alone. One can only wish they'd kill each other over this issue."

    Haha, classic. Sad that it's true though.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Non-Images You Can Look At On A Screen?

    "Manchester Airport has rejected claims its new body scanners will fall foul of child pornography laws, claiming that because they use X-rays "they do not make an image"."

    So there should be no problem displaying the non-image on a big screen, in public, for all to see, yeah?

    Oh, but no. Suddenly it's obvious that:-

    1. It's an image.

    2. It's intrusive with respect to privacy.

    3. It may well be indecent in some sense (not pornographic, but indecency isn't limited to only that which is pornographic).

    I think it might be helpful to ask ourselves various questions about aspects of this scanning scheme in other situations.

    For example, if someone was to wear, in public, clothing that was similarly revealing, would it count as indecent exposure? How does this scanning scheme compare with, say, security CCTV or leisure centre staff in swimming pool changing rooms? What are the relevant similarities and differences?

    Perhaps those who claim that the images aren't images, and nonsense like that, should put their money where their mouths are:-

    1. Go through the scanners themselves.

    2. Have the images turned into posters, with details of who they're non-images of included.

    3. Put the posters on display in the airport, to demonstrate that the people responsible are more than happy to eat their own dog food.

    And while they're at it, they can ask some Muslims, men and women, to participate, to show it's not in anyway discriminatory - oh, wait...

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    I'm finding it hard to stop laughing

    Still giggling about the Paedo warriors vs the Terror brigade.

    LMFAO I don't honestly care which wins - one of them is going to get a bloody nose and they both deserve it...

  22. Kevin 9

    Thouht Police

    The Thought Police are on the prowl.... illegal pseudo images. Why exactly are we criminalizing thought?

    Any law on the books should be protecting somebody. Who exactly is harmed if I DRAW an image of a child?

  23. Richard 12 Silver badge

    @ All the "X-rays/Not X-Rays" discussion.

    When they were trialling either this system or something similar at Heathrow, the operators had *absolutely no clue* how it worked when asked. I therefore refused to go through it. The next time, they were no better.

    Thus it's not surprising that various parts of the media and public are not sure if it's millimetre-wave (with totally unknown effects) or X-Rays (that are known to be bad).

    Terahertz radiation has only been possible to generate, let alone studied for about 10 years, so nobody has any clue what the medium-term, let alone long-term effects might be.

    The Sieverts ratings are also total rubbish, because Sieverts are fundamentally estimates based on a range of fudge-factors, each different depending on the radiation type and intensity. Nobody actually knows what the effects of regular low-dose X-Rays are, because no studies have ever been done.

    Thus the only values that can be stated with any degree of accuracy are the absolute power and energy emitted at the subject. You can't even give the energy absorbed!

  24. LAGMonkey
    Joke

    Wont somebody think of the children..?!

    To Quote a "Cyanide and Happyness" comic...

    MMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

    "erh.... you can stop thinking of them now."

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Nice

    All I can say is that it's nice to have the "think of the children" types behind a good cause for once. Airport security has gone far more than enough.

  26. This post has been deleted by its author

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Will somebody think of the scanners???

    I just don't understand the installation of these things at Manchester Airport. You can opt to go through the standard physical search if you prefer and presumably if you went through the scanner and something was seen that required further examination you would be physically searched anyhow... So why bother having them there anyway? Speed things up maybe? Well thats great but purposefully generating and exposing anybody to ionising radiation (of whatever dose) is not something that should be done lightly.

    Go to hospital and get a radiograph of your little finger: You'll need a valid referral from an authorised clinician who has to provide sufficient clinical details in order for the practitioner and/or operator to be able to justify the exposure. The examination must be optimised through use of careful positioning, collimation and exposure factors and a full record of the estimated dose-area product, kVp and mAs should be taken... At the end of all this you end up with effective dose not incomparable to that given by these body scanners (by all accounts - although I am yet to see any peer reviewed studies into the things). These requirements are enshrined in law (Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations 2000).

    But if its just a case of trying to check in quicker then yeah why not, go for it - no need to worry about any of that stuff.

  28. John Murgatroyd

    well...

    The system can also record the images....

    And precisely how are they expected to stop people carrying things concealed in body cavities ?

    Last time I looked, terahertz scanners did not penetrate the body....

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Next time look before you moan

    I agree it's a bit of an invasion of privacy but i'm assuming no one has actually seen the pictures, if not have look because you can't really see anything. The images are tamer than anything you could see with google and safe search, also if you don't want to go through it you can just say no and have a wand waved over you instead. Much ado about nothing.

    @ but the police will use it, ever been strip searched by the police? You have to drop your draws and part your cheeks to prove nothing is hidden there, the scanner is far less invasive.

  30. Mortal
    Thumb Up

    @RW

    Well said!!!

  31. mark l 2 Silver badge
    FAIL

    Action on Rights for Children dont know squat

    Its obvious that Action on Rights for Children don't know squat about the UK laws on indecent images of children.

    The lowest level on the copine toplogy: catagory 1 (None erotic/none sexualised picture) are not considered to be indecent by the sentencing advistory panel

    Therefore the images on the scanners screen do not fall foul of the Indecent image laws. Well unless they were making a sexy pose when they went through. lol

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Nudity does not equal Obscenity

    So CCTV in girl's showers in schools will be OK on the £30/month 'watch CCTV and win prizes' site - ss long as they don't pose provocatively?

  33. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Nothing to worry about

    I worked in Heathrow T4 for nearly 3 years, and for that whole time we had these machines.

    It was put in there in 2004, and removed again last year.

    As has been said, the radiation dose is insignificant.

    On the subject of child porn though, we were not allowed to scan anyone under 16, and anyone we did scan had to give their permission. Also, to protect anonymity, the person viewing the image would not see the passenger, and the person operating the scanner would not see the images.

    The image is never stored either, as soon as the next scan starts, the previous is gone.

    For that reason, I think they are pointless, I can't see the use in having an optional security scan. Those who refused were given a normal frisk at the archway metal detector.

  34. Remedial Gash
    WTF?

    Hasn't everyone here missed the point?

    It's not a case of 'Ooh paedo wow', but merely the difference between the laws that we as citizens are prosecuted under, and that which 'authority' is able to escape.

    Take a picture of your infant in the bath, and a Jessops' guy reports it - you are now a suspected paedo; but if plod at an airport (potentially) leers at a kid in his or her birthday suit - it's a perfectly legal application of security legislation.

    The disparity between recent (mis)use of the obscenity laws, and what is proposed here is the real problem.

    Gash

    x

  35. J 32
    Alien

    Total recall...

    has one of these. Just the outlines of people in blue, and guns in red with alarm sound.

  36. Dave Bell
    Grenade

    The Manchester risk

    Most of the passenger trains on the local line are through trains that terminate at Manchester Airport.

    I checked with my father, who was in ARP/Civil-Defence, and if any terrorist prematures in transit, we're at a safe distance.

    He wouldn't want to be on the train.

  37. Mark .

    Double standards

    So if I as a consenting adult take photos with my partner in private, of a kind the Government disapproves, it's illegal ("extreme" porn laws), but it's okay for complete strangers to look at me naked in order for me to be allowed to fly.

    And if someone draws a doodle of someone appearing under 18, in an image that is sexual (including a fully clothed 17 year old drawn in the background of a scene where two adults are having sex), that will soon be illegal, but it's okay for people to sit and watch images of actual naked children all day long, of any age.

    Right.

    "Adults can give informed consent, at least that is the legal position. People should be given the information that these scanners can see under your clothes, it should then be up to you."

    And if you refuse?

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    You ALL have it wrong.....

    Think about it....

    Manchester..... scanning for weapons as you come through airport security. .....

    It's obvious why - that way you or your kids can be identified as NOT being 'tooled up', and thus airport staff can suitably equip you as you leave the terminal!

    Jeeze - have you BEEN to Manchester recently. Its like a demilitarized zone.

  39. Stu J
    Grenade

    @ChrisW

    "Over the last, just for the sake of argument, twenty years how many passengers have boarded a plane at Manchester airport and [hijacked it or] posed a threat with anything they have carried on board?"

    I managed to inadvertently take my corkscrew/knife out of Manchester in my hand luggage. They found it at Tenerife airport on the return flight......

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's a facsimilie of an image. Not a real image

    This wouldn't have stopped thousands of rampaging Rangers fans wrecking Manchester. Oddly enough that was about "images" too. Or a lack thereof

  41. ScepticMan
    Coat

    Isn't this a flaw in the security system?

    So you sew the bomb into the child's jacket.

    Risk management gone wrong. It's all about solutions to non-existent problems.

  42. Maty
    Pint

    In 200 years time ...

    ...people are going to read about this sort of crap and weep.

    We used to think of the Spanish Inquisition as deranged. Today's society has managed to screw itself up almost as thoroughly.

    Beer, because after this article I need one.

  43. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Its gone too far

    Its all gone too far, what next, everyone gets a cavity search?

    There comes a time when we do more harm to ourselves than the terrorists can ever manage, this is when the terrorists can say they have won!

    This machine is not dignified or respectful of us as humans, I would rather not fly than be dehumanised in that way.

    I will just get my foil lined coat and hat and be off

  44. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    @RW

    RW is right. To a true paedo, apparent age is the only thing that matters. Not skin, not pose, not even gender.

  45. Someone
    Boffin

    Compton Scattering

    Maybe the spokesman for Manchester Airport got a bit confused. The product blurb for the Rapiscan Secure 1000 says, “The system produces high resolution images…”

    The Protection of Children Act refers to photographs and pseudo-photographs, with a pseudo-photograph being defined in terms of an image. Is there an external legal definition of an image; don’t we rely on the dictionary definition and common sense? I could understand the argument that the X-ray scanners do not produce a photograph. Compton scattering is a specific physical phenomenon and is different to the way photographs are produced.

    This would be where ARCH’s pseudo-photograph argument would kick in. If it’s not a photograph, but looks like a photograph, then by definition it’s a pseudo-photograph. The spokesman could have been arguing that they’re not photographs and don’t look like photographs. Unfortunately, the images look like photographic negatives.

    An Anonymous Coward wrote, “even Level One requires ‘obscene posing’. Now I don’t imagine a child will be doing that in the scanner.” The CPS page whose URL you’ve given points out that this relates only to sentencing guidelines. It is not necessary for a conviction.

  46. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    title

    There is a simple solution to this problem: pass a law requiring children to wear lead underwear.

    That should protect innocent airport X-ray machine operators from being tricked into photographing the children's genitals.

    It will also prevent people bringing up this argument when this important technology sees wider deployment in train stations, supermarkets and museums.

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    think of the fun to be had!

    You have to have fun with this.

    I think I will get some lead based paint, an old shirt and write "f**k of c**t" on it. Then I will wear it under a jumper as I go through the scan.

    It should show up beautifully on the image.

    I wonder how they will treat it. Since it is hidden to "public view" it should not be an offence.

    What other slogans can I now put on there?

  48. Mr Larrington
    WTF?

    Bunch of arse

    Two questions:

    1. Will it catch an arse-bomber?

    2. How many of the people complaining about this have ever photocopied their arse during the Christmas party?

  49. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    FAIL

    @ HansG

    Yes, how dare the media actually report on a story that is some public interest.

    Moron.

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