Modern aviation security requirements are reduced to an absurdity. First, travelers had to take off their shoes and sweaters, then give away water and toothpaste, then the airlines started demanding home addresses and credit card numbers, and yet we are facing a perspective of total control of the passengers’ thoughts and intentions. What European airports are implementing now is just screening of tourists in the nude. No, the holidaymakers dreaming of getting to Spain beaches or the Champs-Elysees will not have to undress to pants in front of the security service; all the unnecessary clothes will be taken off the travelers by a special scanner on which screen the airport staff will be able to see all intimate details of a tourist’s body through his or her clothes. It will be so detailed that it would be as easy as ABC to solve the dispute as for ‘whose one is longer’.
The supermodern security scanners which would leave no room to imagination are to appear at European airports within the next two years – till the end of April 2010. Brussels insists on implementation of the new technology; however, UK and other countries are perplexed by the necessity of such a detailed and too confidential screening.
What is the most striking about the fact is that passengers will most certainly silently take yet another wacky novelty created by the myths of international terrorism. There will be three options left after introduction of these cameras: whether stop fighting or pretend to be an air exhibitionist. The third option is to gather a team of passengers who would go to the Afghan cave and, finding no one there, tell the world that Osama bin Laden is no more dangerous than Mickey Mouse is, for they both exist only in fairy-tales.
Paolo Costa, Head of the EP Committee on Transport, is also concerned with storage and destruction of image databases and human health safety of the new technology. Moreover, European human right activists are worried that the new security regulations will be implemented without large-scale public hearings, i.e. all passengers will just be presented with a fait accompli: if they had bought an airline ticket, they will have to appear before the security service au naturel.
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