back to article Germany laughs at EU's full-body scanners plan

Germany has dismissed proposals to use "virtual strip searches", describing the scheme as nonsense. Members of the European Parliament got all het up last week and asked the Commission to look at the implications of millimetre wave scanners which can, under certain circumstances, produce what is effectively a naked image of …

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  1. Blackadder
    Thumb Down

    meanwhile...

    travelers keep eating with sharp metal knifes and forks at the airport restaurants, purchase flammable alcohol in the tax free shop... and anyone wearing a pilots uniform can pass the airport metal detector in special staff ails... right...

  2. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects
    Black Helicopters

    Something not to be sniffed @

    Aren't the USAnians guilty of sexist discrimination against ovulating women? I vaguely remember reading about enforced strip searches by the gleeful that seemed to target fertile women.

    Forcing them against their will, doggy style so to speak.

    It comes as no surprise to me that the present British regime is neck deep in czjd like this. I'd vote Boris if I could. I've had enough of these tories at any rate.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    That's ok

    The TSA will use them and be happy to share images with their off-shore purvy brethren.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Paid to look at naked people all day?

    I'd take that job, as long as they found a way to only allow women through the scanner I'm watching.

  5. Brian
    Boffin

    "scanners were especially unpopular with young women"

    But not vice-versa, I assume :o)

  6. Hollerith
    Unhappy

    sadly, it won't all be young women, will it?

    You'll have the elderly chap with the colostomy bag he's self-conscious about, and the other guy ashamed of his teeny todger, and the woman with the artificial leg, or the teenager with a mal-formed arm he hides in long sleeves...

    We consider the stripping of people against their will to be, at its mildest, distasteful. One way to render people into 'under-beings' is to make them be naked when you, the ones in power, are clothed. It worked at Abu Ghraib and it works at Gitmo and in other places where custodial duties include humiliation.

    So now we, the traveling public, get to enjoy surveillance by mostly powerless men who will enjoy our humiliation and lack of control over intimate images of us. And somehow the threat of terrorism is greater than the dignity and privacy of a free people.

  7. Mark

    re: Paid to look at naked people all day?

    Pfft. You either have no imagination or too much.

    Most women aren't really worth looking at naked. More men aren't, but the difference is not all that big.

    And, since you're not going to be able to slap the salami at the station (it would be a bit of a givaway) you'd have to just remember the best ones for "total recall" later. And the incidence of heifers and unsuitable blokes will

    a) keep the boner under control

    b) "prove" you aren't just in the job for perving, honest

    Hell, if the blokes fit, you can admire the looks without getting sexually aroused.

    PS I wonder how they are going to manage children who have to pass through. Will they have to employ children too?

  8. Master Baker
    Stop

    Disturbing

    So if I walked through one of those things they'd be able to see my nob?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Start a campaign!

    "Of course, this attitude is slightly at odds with the German interior ministry's usual attitude to technology and surveillance. This is the government dept which is trying to get the Eu to endorse its plans to remotely access the PCs of anyone it suspects of pretty much anything."

    Open up a bank account and start soliciting donations. Send everyone working for the department a copy of The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) and see if they're still willing to put their names to liberal surveillance laws....

  10. Duncan Hare

    Young Ladies don't like it?

    What a surprise. Who could have guessed.

  11. FreeTard
    Stop

    Doomed to failure

    Coz all they will notice are the girls tits, and not see anybody's hidden weapons / drugs.

    As a man, I can tell you girls out there we never tire of looking at girls bodies.

    Never, ever, ever.

    My wife is well hot (I'm happy), and when going through security in Barcelona this summer, one of the lads dropped what he was doing to move across to the queue my wife was in - to "help her through". If they will do this, do you really believe they won't have a good look at her baps?

    This was not the only time it happened either!

  12. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    @Brian

    Somehow the prospect of an imaging scanner going: "Cor! Look at the millimetrics on *her*!" strikes me as somewhat unlikely.

  13. Anton Ivanov
    Paris Hilton

    re: meanwhile...

    Last time I travelled through Heathrow (T5), I got abused, harassed by an overzealous minority member in a headscarf and made drink ready-made baby formula after I asked her if it is OK to take it through. After that the goons at the X-ray happily let me through with 2 more packs of ready-made formula (nice bricks of liquid 250ml each). At the same time, junior (who is 6 year old) sneaked a 20cm disney cartoon clock (with an external two bell ringer - perfect for shorting electrodes) sitting on top of a set of plasticine and wrapped in headphones in his bag through the same X-ray (he is not allowed to pack his toys again for the duration).

    Enough said. It is a total f*** sham and its sole reason is to make us feel scared, not to achieve anything as far as security.

  14. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Innocent unless proven guilty

    "MEPs said the privacy implications and cost benefit of the scanners should be investigated before the machines get the go-ahead."

    When the investigation shows the machines are intrusive, expensive and useless, they can get the go ahead because there has been an investigation. Next election, can I vote for "None of the above" please.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Isn't it 10 years in prison?

    For making naked pictures of children? That IS after all what they would be doing if a child were to pass through such a machine.

    And I'm sorry but I simply do not believe that images would never be recorded or stored.

  16. fred
    Stop

    download haven

    Are there any vacencies? I love to perv at women and men and children from the legal safety behind the full body sexual scanner.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Where do people get the idea that it's illegal to make naked pictures of children?

    This is a famous one:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Th%E1%BB%8B_Kim_Ph%C3%BAc

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    The German sense of humour ...

    ... contrary to popular belief, our Teutonic cousins *do* have a sense of humour. The Porsche Cayenne is living proof of this.

  19. blue

    Dehumanisation 101

    It's called humiliating and degrading treatment. Keeps us uppity "free" men and women in our place.

  20. Dave
    Black Helicopters

    Having seen the sights

    Of German tourists on a nudist beach playing volleyball, I can believe that the Germans don't wish to see it going through the airport

  21. Igor Mozolevsky
    Joke

    RE: Isn't it 10 years in prison?

    "or making naked pictures of children?"

    Duh! It's for your own security, don't you get it??? No laws apply!

    Coming next... cavity search for everyone, just to make sure you're not hiding something where the sun doesn't shine!

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Jup

    I, as any German in their right mind, would say these scanners conflict with our very Basic Law, article one, as they violate the dignity of man, period.

    There's a lot of shit going on in this country at present but I was delighted to see Mr. Schäuble actually remembering this.

  23. This post has been deleted by its author

  24. Chris G

    Degradation and indignity

    How we, the people who vote for the politicians and pay for the minions that carry out their distasteful work, feel about such things is unimportant in the face of "The War Against Terrorism" it is our duty as good little citizens to do as we're told.

    Read T.J. Bass's series of books `Godwhale´ that's what our governments want us to be Nebbishes ( a yiddish word meaning more or less timid) with rose water blood and no volition of our own.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    @Master Baker

    "they'd be able to see my nob?"

    Erm, only if you had it on you!!

    @mark - but the difference is not all that big. Mate, you need to get out more!

    @FreeTard - you're lucky they were only looking and not "patting her down".

    @Bazza - I don't think I would use some of those shapes as the idiots would shoot first

    and ask questions later.

    As for the picture from VietNam....a very sad reminder of the horror of "war"; in any interation.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    GET DOWN!!

    I saw something like this the other night, what a great film Total Recall is!!!

  27. Mark

    re: @Master Baker

    @AC: you need to stop thinking of the human body as only being for sex. The fraction of women who are worth looking at is a small minority. Even if the number of men worth looking at were nil, that's only a small minority difference. Not much at all. And, unlike you apparently, I can look at a woman and enjoy the view without thinking "I'd have that for a dollar..!".

    Grow up and realise that it isn't all about sex.

  28. Mark

    re: Where do people get the idea that it's illegal to make naked pictures of children?

    Because Anne Diamond was famously accused of kiddie porn when she had a picture of her child in the bath. Naked, since few people bathe fully clothed.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Schipol Airport

    They already have something that I assume to be this in Schipol airport in Amsterdam. You have to go into a booth, hold your arms above your head while something spins around you. You then step out, the guard then stops you for an indeterminate period of time until I suppose he gets some sort of go ahead signal from his pervy companion. No explanation of what is going off, or how it's expected to work given.

    Actually I almost feel sorry for the guy looking at the images, I know I wouldn't want to look at me naked if I wasn't well me. On second thoughts a little suffering is supposed to be good for the soul.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Surely...

    Men would be watching images of men and women watching images of women. I can see why young women find it unpopular if some pervy security guard is looking her up and down...

    I can also see why any teenage girls/women would find it uncomfortable.

    When you get pat searched its often a man who does the men and woman who searches women (and children).

    Should be stopped!

  31. Mark

    re: Surely...

    And what about Gay men and Lesbian women? What about young children?

    Then again, as far as el gov is concerned, anything to do with bits of the human body are sexual and nothing else.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Heathrow Barminess

    Last year I was a victim of the trial at Heathrow...

    The interesting thing is that I am an amputee, so I *always* set of the detector. The security people doing the trial said that I'd be fast-tracked by getting scanned & I was hoping to avoid the usual embarrassment of a search, but, it turns out, I still had to go through the standard detector (albeit I jumped the queue) and set of the detector.

    So, despite the scan clearly showing the prosthesis, I still got the usual all-over treatment as well.

    Highly irritating and absolutely NO benefit at all!

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    I for one...

    eagerly await the radiation-induced cancer claims as a result of this scanning. Anyone know where I can get a cheap law degree (Lord Meddlesome need not respond. I won't stoop *that* low!)

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