Fran­cis Joseph

The failed at­tempt by a Niger­ian na­tion­al to blow up a North-West Air­lines flight en route to the Unit­ed States on Christ­mas Day, has sent T&T se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials scur­ry­ing to ob­tain the lat­est in se­cu­ri­ty equip­ment–full-body scan­ners. Al­though no one want­ed to go on record yes­ter­day to ad­mit an in­ter­est in the scan­ners, Mervyn Crichlow, com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist at the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, said: "Se­cu­ri­ty is up­per­most in the minds of all of us at the air­port, and, of course, it is some­thing that we would need to sit down and dis­cuss." When told that the US al­ready had the scan­ners and Eng­land was about to in­tro­duce them at six in­ter­na­tion­al air­ports, Crichlow said it was some­thing the board of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty would need to dis­cuss be­fore tak­ing a de­ci­sion. The T&T Guardian un­der­stands that a full-body scan­ner would cost TT$1mil­lion, plus an­oth­er sum to in­stall it at Pi­ar­co and Crown Point Air­ports.

Both air­ports use walk-through scan­ners, which cost $30,000 each. The lo­cal agents for these body scan­ners are Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Co Ltd, and the sup­pli­ers are L-3 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Cor­po­ra­tion of the Unit­ed States. The T&T Guardian learnt that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials had al­ready be­gun to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing these scan­ners in­stalled at both air­ports and at the var­i­ous ports of en­try. With the Christ­mas Day at­tack, and with most of­fi­cials away for the hol­i­day pe­ri­od, yes­ter­day was re­al­ly the first day that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel were able to raise the mat­ter. Pi­ar­co Air­port us­es five walk-through scan­ners (four for in­ter­na­tion­al de­par­tures and the oth­er at the To­ba­go ter­mi­nal). There is al­so one walk-in scan­ner at Crown Point Air­port, To­ba­go. De­spite the use of the walk-through scan­ners, Air­port Au­thor­i­ty per­son­nel still have to con­duct search­es with the hand-held scan­ners, and even quick body search­es.

The lines are some­times long, as se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, us­ing the tele­vi­sion mon­i­tor, care­ful­ly check car­ry-on lug­gage. The Christ­mas Day at­tack by the Niger­ian has caused in­creased se­cu­ri­ty at the lo­cal air­ports, with checks at the check-in coun­ters, the walk-through scan­ners, and be­fore pas­sen­gers ac­tu­al­ly board the planes. Lo­cal of­fi­cials al­so feel these ma­chines would be of great as­sis­tance in the fight against drug traf­fick­ing. They sus­pect that a num­ber of mules get away be­cause the drugs are hid­den in se­cret places in car­ry-on lug­gage and on the pas­sen­gers. Many drug mules pass through, hav­ing swal­lowed co­caine or hero­in. Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials, full-body scan­ners would al­low se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to de­tect the mules who have swal­lowed the drugs. Nine­teen air­ports in the US, in­clud­ing New York, use the full-body scan­ners. But the Trans­porta­tion Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion (TSA) wants all 570 air­ports in the US to use these scan­ners. British Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown said yes­ter­day these scan­ners would soon be in use at the air­ports in the UK.

What the scan­ners do

The ma­chines are de­signed to "strip- search" pas­sen­gers by us­ing low-lev­el X-rays, which pro­duce an im­age of their bod­ies, re­veal­ing whether they are se­cret­ly car­ry­ing weapons, ex­plo­sives or il­le­gal drugs. But the scan­ners may not be safe for cer­tain peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly chil­dren and women in the ear­ly stages of preg­nan­cy. Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials be­lieve the ma­chines could have de­tect­ed the ex­plo­sives hid­den on Niger­ian Umar Farouk Ab­dul­mu­tal­lab in his failed at­tempt to blow up a Nort-West Air­lines flight car­ry­ing 289 peo­ple on Christ­mas Day. The con­tro­ver­sial tech­nol­o­gy al­lows se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to see what is hid­den be­neath cloth­ing with­out a phys­i­cal pat­down or strip-search.

How­ev­er, the out­line of the body dis­played on a com­put­er screen can be too re­veal­ing for pri­va­cy ad­vo­cates, who see the pro­ce­dure as an elec­tron­ic strip-search.