South Korean rights commission opposes naked machines
It seems like people in South Korea might have a little more sense left than people in the US when it comes to forcing people to be strip searched in order to fly. That country’s transportation ministry wants to install full-body scanners, which create images of people’s naked bodies under their clothes, in airports, but the National Human Rights Commission is opposed to this:
“The machines may violate privacy as they can generate images of the entire body including any prosthetic devices, the commission said. It also challenged the ministry’s contention that the body scanners would be a reliable and effective way of detecting bombs and preventing terrorism. ‘It is hard to understand the necessity of the device that definitely violates the privacy of passengers,’ the watchdog said in a statement.”
In other strip search machine news, it appears that in addition to taking away everyone’s freedom, privacy, and dignity and blatantly violating the Fourth Amendment, full-body scanners might also give you cancer:
“Experts say radiation from the scanners has been underestimated and could be particularly risky for children. They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body – that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.”
Can’t the whole world just abolish these things? Please?