Italy to test body scanners for US-bound passengers

ROME, March 4, 2010 (AFP) - Some travellers flying from Rome to the United States will from Friday be asked to pass through a body scanner as the device is tested at Fiumicino airport.

"This could help us do without a double inspection," the head of Italy's civil aviation authority ENAC, Vito Riggio, told a news conference on Thursday.


Airport security will begin testing scanners at Fiumicino to assess their effectiveness and determine whether they speed up security procedures, airport and government officials said.

Terminal Five, which handles flights to the United States and Israel, will try the body scanner for between four and six weeks on random passengers heading for the United States.

After passing through a regular metal detector, some passengers will be asked to walk into the scanner cabin, which is three metres (10 feet) tall and two metres wide.

They will be asked to stand with raised hands for about six seconds while the machine locates objects on their body through low-frequency electromagnetic waves.

The machine is already used at New York's John F. Kennedy airport and Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Riggio said, adding that airports in Milan and in Venice would soon begin testing it.

Each scanner costs about 150,000 euros (200,000 dollars) and is made by New York-based surveillance and intelligence company L3 Communications.

During the trial, passengers will be allowed to opt out, but will instead undergo a standard physical pat-down.

The body scanner does not require travellers to take off their shoes, and officials say it will decrease the frequency and invasiveness of frisking.

The British Equality and Human Rights Commission said scanners introduced on February 1 at Manchester airport and London's Heathrow could violate the right to privacy under European law because the device can see through passengers' clothes.

To defuse concerns, the Fiumicino scanners do not show or store images of passengers, instead locating potentially dangerous objects on a stylised human figure on a screen.

"The machine does not reproduce a person's image on a monitor, but traces objects on a stylised body," said Nicola Quaranta, ENAC's director general.

At Fiumicino, passengers were divided over how effective the machine would be.

"It's convenient, it seems to streamline the operation. It's rapid," said Cosimo Marrone, a retired teacher travelling to Valencia, Spain, who has seen a demonstration of the body scanner on television.

Anna Lucia Burlozza, 76, disagreed, saying: "I'm against all of these restrictions. I don't think they make our life easier, and nor do they make it safer."

The United States has stepped up the installation of body scanners at airports since an attempted Christmas Day attack on a jet bound for Detroit from Amsterdam. It wants the European Union to follow suit in monitoring passengers crossing the Atlantic.

In Rome, Marrone said he was not concerned about his personal privacy. "No, that doesn't worry me: I go to nudist beaches!"


by Davide Berretta
© 2010 AFP