Once you have been trained to accept this DNA changing Body Scanner routine during Air Travel it makes it easier to implement it under some terrorism law on the streets.

Rotterdam police are trying to develop a portable scanner which will allow them to see through people’s clothing and look for concealed weapons.

The force has been given a €500,000 government grant to develop the mobile weapons detector, which would use similar technology to the scanners being introduced at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, the paper says.

The aim is to develop a prototype ready for production within three years.

The paper bases its claim on a confidential document which suggests the scanner could first be used as an alternative to random body searches in high risk areas. The mobile detector would enable the search to be carried out more quickly and would only be used on people suspected of carrying concealed weapons, police spokesman Paul De Kruijf told the paper.

The document, a copy of which has been obtained by NRC Handelsblad, proposes that the mobile scanner be initially introduced mainly as an alternative to random body searches that are now conducted on a regular basis I high-risk areas. “Apart from the fact that many innocent citizens have to undergo body searches (infringement of privacy), thorough body searches take at least two minutes per person,” states the document. The mobile weapons detector is thus good news both on privacy grounds and in saving time, the police argue.

Police want to scan unwitting citizens

“We would only have to search people of whom we can say, with reasonable surety, that they have something hidden under their clothing,” says De Kruijf.

According to the proposal, the device must be portable and “privacy proof”, meaning the body’s contours would not be visible, thus preventing its users from seeing people’s naked bodies. The security scanners at the airport produces images in which people look like dolls, and objects on the bodies or in pockets show up in bright yellow.

Later in the proposal, the police reveal plans to use the weapons detector in areas where they do not carry out body searches. “There is great urgency,” it reads. “The threat on the streets remains high. Preventative body-search alone is too limited a measure.”

Scenarios are mentioned in which citizens are, knowingly or not, scanned from distances ranging from under three metres to over ten metres. According to the police, the weapon detectors can be applied in car searches, at large-scale events such as football matches, and at the entrances and exits of public transport and shopping centers. In the last two categories, “the crowd will quickly and unknowingly be scanned for hidden weapons”.

Combinations are also proposed with camera surveillance and other sensors “such as ‘sniffers’”. Here, “visual surveillance would be supplemented with scent detection”. An “air sample” from a suspected person would be analysed for traces of explosives, ammunitions, drugs and so forth. Application to terrorist threat situations is also mentioned, and use within transportation services used by large numbers of people.

Big brother can see through you

But do we want it? Police officers on the street covertly looking through our clothing? “We will first investigate whether we can get a prototype developed,” says de Kruijf of the Rotterdam Rijnmond police. “If that succeeds, we will approach the politicians.”

Corien Prins is less enthusiastic. “Deplorable,” she says of the initiative. She is professor of privacy law at the University of Tilburg and a member of the Scientific Council for Government Policy. “I will behave differently if I know I may be under observation. If this secret form of surveillance becomes reality, our society will be in a dramatic state of affairs.”

Apart from privacy considerations, she points to the constitutional right to bodily integrity. “I hear much too little on this in discussions, including on the scanners at the airport. This technology infringes on our right to bodily integrity from a distance, and discussion of this basic right acquires a whole other dimension. People don’t have to accept just like that that they can be touched or x-rayed from a distance by a machine.”

NRC