After a six-month test, Italy’s government will drop the use of full-body scanners for security checks in airports, judging them slow and ineffective, Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported Thursday.
The scanners in the airports of Rome, Venice and the southern city of Palermo are no longer in use, and Milan’s airport is likely to stop using the machines in the near future.
“We didn’t get good results from body scanners during testing, it takes a long time to examine a person, more than with a manual inspection,” said Vito Riggio, the president of Italy’s aviation authority.
Officials also believe measures taken to address privacy concerns over the use of the scanners have dampened the machines’ effectiveness at locating arms and explosives, Corriere della Sera reported.
At least some people have common sense unlike the TSA. This is a waste of the taxpayers money.
Found by John Martinez
Finally some common-sense!
Unless they are going to make Italy into an example of why they should keep the naked body scanner… or is that the crackpot speaking?
Well, that’s my holidays sorted for the next few years. Italy here we come!!
Of course, the UK were going to put the scanners in their Embassies. But the same test was carried out and it was deemed TOO expensive and totally ineffective. So they stuck with bomb sniffing equipment and so forth.
OK,
for those that dont get it..
There are only 3-4 MAIN things to sense for.
Hydrogen
Nitrogen
Peroxide
And I think 1 more.
A good sensor that detects COMMON, explosives should be able to discover 99% of combination’s of explosives.
With standard searches, and a sniffer system…IT should be quick and cheap.
Hey, if House hates full body scans, well, that’s good enough for me!
…what? No insinuations about how the Italian border control prefer a hands-on experience rather just looking at pictures?
dvorak.org — you disappoint me!
Hooray for the Eyetalians. I hope someone finds the TSA’s response to this. Has there been a single arrest secondary to a body scanner? We’re spending billions on all this heightened security with essentially no results. I think sniffers are the way to go – robotic or canine. And screw the PC crowd: profile, profile, profile.
By the way how come these illustrations usually show a lovely young lady being scanned. You know most are gonna look like these beauts.
http://bit.ly/dmNhrO
aww, come’on now…we all knew the Italians would never allow these in their country.
All those reptiles working for The Vatican would raise too many questions when asked to step through the scanner.
-s
A cup?
Have any of you heard that El Al security guy who makes the rounds in the media every-so-often?
The guy makes a lot of sense to me. His basic message is that security is looking for people, not objects.
But before you accuse me of being a hypocrite since I’m against racial or religious profiling — this is different as I understand him.
One of the examples he gives is of a _white_ woman who unwittingly had a bomb in her luggage (packed by someone else). Racial profiling would have missed her.
Are there any direct flights from Rome to the US?
If so, and if the US announced it would block flights from any country that did not use the body scanners, I’d bet the scanners would be re-installed overnight.
It doesn’t matter if they are effective — there are scanner companies that have stuff to sell!
The ONLY way the US will stop using full body scanners is the first time a major terrorist attack is pulled off after having been scanned beforehand.
The US loves its pound of cure and not an ounce of prevention.
Cursor_
The one thing that irritates me about the body scanners is that they only go skin deep – if someone was wearing a carefully constructed ‘fat suit’ they could walk on the plane with almost anything underneath and the scanner wouldn’t do a damn thing – I know at DIA they only run people through the body scanner, not the metal detector. If the body scanner does not look for metal, then truly anything could be walked through the checkpoints.
When has wasting taxpayers money EVER BEEN A CRITERIA FOR GOVERNMENT DECISION OR ACTION ?
The mobsters didn’t like it so they ordered their sheep to take them down. Period.
It’s all theater anyway, to make the scared sheeple (aka republicans) feel more secure. So we will keep on doing this and more, no matter how ineffective it may be.
As is, I can name three different ways to get through security while on the no fly list. They are all well known, but are they willing to close the loopholes… no… because they know it is all theater anyway, and it ‘looks plenty good’ for the sheeple as-is.
All that effort IS a deterrent, but as far as catching someone determined to blow himself up, in the last 9 years they have NEVER caught anyone in that TSA line, yet three have gone on to transport explosives and fail to detonate, stopped by passenger intervention AFTER the detonation failure.
#7 – Maricopa.
Actually being assigned the ‘look at naked people’ job in TSA is the equivalent of hell. Next time you are at the airport, look in the security line…. do you really want to see ANY of those people naked? It would be a good diet aid, because you would either loose your appetite or your lunch very quickly staring at that screen.
Why the Asian looking woman instead of an Italian looking woman? Sure, she’s gorgeous but their are some pretty fine looking Italian women too.
I’ve been to Italy several times and the “girl watching” is great. Of the big cities I’ve been to, Milan seems the best. One young woman in Milan told me that if she has to chose between food are fashion, she chooses fashion… and she didn’t seem anorexic or anything. It just was her priorities.
BTW, the “guy watching” is equally great, if that’s your bag.
# 18 Greg Allen said,”Why the Asian looking woman instead of an Italian looking woman?”
Since I’ve been living in Asia for the last 10 or so years, I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of Asian features, particularly SE Asians. Once upon a time, I married a beautiful Italian lady with olive skin and marinara in her veins.
I suppose if I ever married an Asian, it would ruin their beauty for me, too.
I think I saw a guy laughing at the screen a few times while it was running. San Diego sure does have lots of beautiful women….girls for you pedo’s here.