MELBOURNE: Australian authorities are on track to put in place a 'strip search' body scanners that will reveal passengers private parts, as a direct response to an alleged terrorist plot in 2006 to detonate liquid explosives on-board airliners.
The new 'strip search' full body scanners are in the process of being put to test at Melbourne, but to spare their blushes, the faces of passengers will be blurred.
"It will show the private parts of people, but what we've decided is that we're not going to blur those out, because it severely limits the detection capabilities," Cheryl Johnson, general manager of the Office of Transport Security, was quoted as saying by the Mail online.
It has sparked an alarm among critics, who describe the X-ray backscatter body scanner as a "virtual strip search."
The planed trial, which is to test how the new scanners would affect the flow of passengers through the security point, will be voluntary. The trial runs until the end of the November, and the results will be analysed before the technology is rolled out for real, possibly at domestic and international terminals, the report said.
However, the authorities have planed a number of measures to tackle concerns about privacy.
"The images are not saved, you literally walk through, the screener hits a button to say clear and the image goes," Johnson stressed.
She said the scanners, which had tested well in laboratory conditions, were a direct response to an allegedterrorist plot in 2006 to detonate liquid explosives on-board airliners.
