You see, I am all for airport and airline security but, having to be quite literally ‘exposed’ because a metal detector bleeps I am most certainly not in favour of.
As I understand it, if someone walks through and they get a bleep then, rather than the traditional ‘pat down’ that we’ve got used to, they will expect them to get into this booth which effectively strip searches. See from the picture above, it doesn’t hide anything.
Am I so keen on foreign travel that I am prepared to feel violated? You know what, I really don’t think so no matter how well trained the operative is, we just know these pictures are going to be appearing on the interweb soon enough or on youtube. It only takes one person to sneak them out and, if they do, who is responsible? It is another of those unfortunate things which happens with someone being sent for ‘retraining’ or will there be some serious compensation?
I’d like to say, it’ll never happen but it already is at several airports around the world and, already in Manchester. It is proposed all major UK airports will have these.
Were it not the case that several times those scanners have bleeped at me when going through when I know I had no metal I wouldn’t be overly concerned. The most worrying was a few years back. I walked through and it bleeped. I was patted down, they found nothing as there was nothing to find. Then there was a fire alert and we had to get out the building making us ‘land side’ again. So, we went though security again. The only difference was that in the between period I had been to the toilet for a dump … no alarm! So, either the detector was faulty or I had some metal in my turd! If it was faulty then, with this plan I’d have had to got naked in front of a stranger surrounded by strangers … not on at all thank you very much!