Why is Alistair Darling wasting our money on "see through your clothes" scanners at Paddington station ?

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Alistair Darling, the Transport Minister has been on the morning TV news loudly proclaiming that his forthcoming trial of dubious high tech "see through your clothes" scanners on the Heathrow Express line at Paddington Station, would of course be impractical to deploy on the Railways or on the Tube.

This is such a statement of the "bleeding obvious" that it is incomprehensible why he is wasting our tax money on this trial at all.

The equipment is hugely expensive and is far, far too slow to prevent massive queues from forming. Queues mean stress and frustration for the travelling public. They are also in themselves prime targets for a terrorist attack, as has been shown in Iraq and in Israel., where suicide bombers have attacked the queues caused by security checkpoints.

It is also massively intrusive , revealing as it does a synthetic image of you (or of your children) naked beneath your clothing, which is technically no different from illegal child porn images. Depending on the technology, there are also questions over the health and safety aspects, especially as there is a huge difference between the number of times people fly from airports and the number of times they use a railway or Tube station in a year.

If such scanners are deployed but are not used for mass scanning, but only on a selective basis, then what are the criteria for being forceed , coerced, pressured or persuaded into them ?

In real life will this not simply mean racial or religous or ethnic peofiling and discrimination ?

There are already far too many frightening and useless stops and searches of innocent commuters in London, with not a single real terrorist suspect having been caught by such stops and searches. The example of David Mery is a frightening one, but he is not the only innocent person to be affected, here is another example.

Why has it taken so long for the media to report this story, when it was announced on November 2nd ?

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Given that even Alistair Darling recognises the futility of "airport style" body scanners, metal detectors and "see through your clothes" scanners being deployed at Railway or London Underground Tube stations, one has to wonder why he is still going ah... Read More

2 Comments

Astonishingly, the Conservatives are actually welcoming this pointless and intrusive Big Government subsidised trial - why can't the suppliers conduct adequate test using their own staff or on paid experimental subjects ?

http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=126269

Are they innumerate ?

Why should the Public be exposed to the small but non-zero health risks of this X-Ray technology, for which there have been no long term health studies ?

Are they innumerate ?
Of course they are!

I doubt if even 60 MPs have a degree in maths/science/engineering!

I suggest a mandatory requirement for all candidates standing for Commons should be an A-level in Physics!

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