According to Reuters and Yahoo News, BAA have just announced that they are going to introduce full body scanners at Heathrow, which should be good news.
The justification is that there was a failed bomb attempt on Christmas Day on an outboard US airplane.
However they also say that the new scanners would probably not have spotted or prevented the latest bomb threat anyway.
So, because a perfectly good security system was successful in stopping an "allegedly" genuine bomb threat, they are going up update said system with a new, more expensive and more invasive system that would be no better at stopping bomb attempts than the old one!
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The BBC show Click also documented a shops displaying all the latest high-tech, small, powerful, and harder to detect personal surveillance and key-logging devices.
However when they questioned Julia Wing, the stores salesperson, about the legitimacy and invasiveness of their devices, she defended their lines with words to the effect of 'it all depends on how the devices are being used. They were originally designed for parents to prevent unruly children and for businessmen to protect against industrial sabotage by their cleaning staff. But of course, such devices can be mis-used'.
When pushed on whether licences or restrictions should be places upon such devices she rallied back with the golden oldie defence of "the innocent have nothing to worry about and it is only the people that are up to no good, who should be scared".
The fact that it is the very criminals who will be using these devices to perfect their crimes seems to escape her.
For me also the whole "it is only criminals who should be scared" arguement totally sidesteps the fact that such devices can and frequently do strip a person of their modesty, dignity and rights of privacy, but I guess it is only celebrities who can fight the system and demand their right to privacy, to sell it to the highest bidder or both.
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Both the above just further nudge us in the direction of a big brother overseen distopia, one that I would happily leave behind for hotter climates, were it not for the majority of my family and friends being back here in good old blighty.
I would be more happy with the whole thing IF I was also allowed to have a direct say on what constitutes a crime and what the punishment should be for each crime. However, with the sentencing totally out of whack for the crime and with new laws seemingly passed every week to create more criminals, I fear that soon every man, woman and child will be guilty of having committed at least one crime, whether they did so intentionally or not.
And the fact that being a kind, honest and law abiding person does less and less to protect my rights and civil liberties with every passing day, I see no reason why I should toe the line or help create and pay for a system that will inevitably one day find me guilty of something and punish me accordingly.
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