EU in disarray over body-scanner rules

Security experts to meet officials today amid concerns about passengers’ privacy.

The European Commission is to revive an earlier attempt to introduce EU-wide rules on the use of body scanners at airports. Aviation security experts from member states are to discuss the matter with Commission officials in Brussels today (7 January).

The move has been prompted by an attempted terrorist attack on 25 December by a would-be bomber who boarded a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The Netherlands and the United Kingdom have since announced that they will install body scanners. Within three weeks, all US-bound passengers will be required to pass through scanners at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, which already has 15 of the machines.

The Commission attempted to get EU-wide rules agreed in 2008 to replace the current patchwork of national regulations. But it abandoned its attempt in October of that year, after MEPs said that the technology violated the privacy of passengers – body scanners produce an image of a traveller’s naked body – and that possible health hazards had not been sufficiently studied. Several member states, including Germany, also objected.

“After the thwarted attack in Detroit we have a completely new situation,” Klaus-Heiner Lehne, a centre-right German MEP (EPP) who heads the Parliament’s committee on legal affairs, told a German newspaper on Tuesday (5 January), suggesting that EU rules could be in place by early summer.

On Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, boarded a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit at Schiphol airport and allegedly attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear as the plane approached its destination. The attempt failed but prompted a widespread review of intelligence and security measures.

Member states are entitled to apply aviation security measures that go beyond EU rules, provided that they meet all applicable regulations, for example on data protection, but they must inform the Commission of any additional measures taken. In principle body scanners can, unlike metal detectors, reveal detonators and explosives of the type used on the Amsterdam-Detroit flight, though security experts disagree about whether they would have been effective in this case.

Passenger choice

Schiphol is one of several EU airports already testing body scanners, giving passengers the choice between a pat-down search or a body scan. The airport will purchase an additional 60 machines, each of which cost up to €140,000. But security officials believe that only their mandatory use is effective, although they warn that they will not reveal objects – such as explosives – hidden inside a person’s body.

Fact File

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT SCANNERs

Just as the European Commission is re-assessing whether it should introduce rules on the use of body scanners, the European Parliament is preparing to auction off six machines that it acquired in 2005 but never put to use. A public invitation to bid for the scanners, which cost €120,955 each, will be published in the EU’s official journal next week (15 January), with bids accepted until 8 February. MEPs had asked last April, as part of their scrutiny of the EU’s 2007 budget, that the secretariat-general of the Parliament look into the possibility of selling the scanners. They also asked to be involved in any similar purchase decisions in the future. Parliament services said at the time that the scanners had been bought in preparation for possible emergency situations and that their routine use had never been contemplated.

The US Transportation Security Administration operates 40 scanners at 19 airports and announced in October that it had ordered 150 additional machines. In the US, airport security is financed from the federal budget, whereas in Europe, it is normally the airports that have to pay.