New body scanner trials to begin at Heathrow next month
26.01.10
Body scanner trials are due to start at Heathrow airport early next month, and will involve a machine that has spotted the type of concealed device used in the Detroit airline bombing attempt, the Telegraph reports. BAA is preparing to install a scanner in each of its four terminals.
The trials will use two different technologies that see through passengers' clothing. One trial will involve ‘backscatter’ technology, which exposes travellers to low-level x-rays. This is already being used at Manchester Airport andsecurity staff at Manchester recently mocked up a device and replicated the underwear bomb that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab smuggled on to Northwest Airlines flight 253. The newspaper reports that the machine singled out elements of the fake weapon.
The new Heathrow trials are expected to begin in the first week of February. However, a backscatter scanner already in place at Terminal 4 could start operating as soon as this week, if early Government approval is given. The machine's operating software needs to be updated, but this would take less than 24 hours.
The second type of machine to be tested uses a ‘millimetre wave’ system, which bounces radio waves off the human body to form a 3D image of the passenger. Both types of technology have raised privacy concerns, owing to the graphic nature of the passenger images, with civil liberties campaigners condemning the process as ‘virtual strip-searching’.
The trials are expected to involve at least three manufacturers, whose machines cost around £100,000 each. Rapiscan, the manufacturer of the backscatter machine, has been involved in trials at Heathrow Airport before. BAA carried out a long trial but had decided not to proceed with the body scanners, preferring to investigate a different type of scanner that detects traces of suspicious chemicals, including explosives, on passengers before the latest attempted terrorist attack and Government push on the body scanners.
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