scanerThe Netherlands has announced it will bring out full body scanners in an attempt to stop any more explosives getting onto aircraft.As an aftermath of the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing, the Netherlands government has insisted the scanners be used on all flights heading to the United States.
Dutch Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst has told a news conference that privacy concerns will no longer be an issue, with the Obama administration now agreeing that all possible measures should be used on flights to the U.S.
In referring to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to Detroit from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Friday carrying undetected explosives, Ter Horst said: "It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster."
While Amsterdam's Schiphol airport has body scanners in storage, neither the European Union nor the US had approved the routine use of the scanners at European airports.
A key European legislator urged the European Union to begin rapidly installing the new equipment across the 27-nation bloc.
Body scanners peer underneath clothing and are regarded as an electronic strip search by civil liberties groups, some suggesting that to pass children through the scanners would violate international pornography laws.
