Washington: US lawmakers have favoured a compulsory full body scan of the passengers of all US-bound international flights so as to avoid any kind of security breach.
“I would say right now we do need full-body scan, especially when you have countries like Nigeria, which have inadequate security, and you have passengers transiting in Amsterdam and coming here,” US Congressman Peter King told CBS news in an interview.
“There is a brief violation of privacy with the full-body scan, but on the other hand we can save thousands of lives,” said King, a US Republican Congressman, who is a Ranking Member of the House Committee of Homeland Security.
Senator Joe Lieberman, Chairman of Senate Committee on Homeland Security, strongly favoured full-body scan.
“Three hundred people could have been killed and untold more on the ground in Michigan if this plane had crashed,” Lieberman said referring to the explosive used by the Nigerian al-Qaeda suspect in his attempt to blow up a US passenger plane on Christmas day.
“There have been privacy concerns expressed about the use of these whole body imaging devices, but I think those privacy concerns, have to fall in the face of the ability of these machines to detect material like this, explosive on this individual,” he told Fox News in an interview.
Both US Senate and US House committees on Homeland Security are planning to hold Congressional hearing on the Christmas Day bombing episode when the Congress comes back from Christmas recess next month.
“The full-body examining device is with us and it should have been used. There could be a simple pat-down and this fellow could have been detected. We've got to sharpen up our procedures all around to figure out,” Senator Arlen Specter said.
Meanwhile several security personnel also supported the introduction of compulsory full-body scan so as to avoid an incident like this.
“If you don't use a body scan, you don't know what the person has under his clothing,” Douglas Laid, former security director for North West Airlines told the McClatchy Tribune News in an interview.
Laird said he has been advocating that airports switch from X-rays and metal detectors to full-body scans - a move that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more, but one he says would help prevent terrorism attempts.
The X-ray machine at present costs less than $50,000, however, the full-body scan equipment could cost more than $1 million.
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