body scanners in European airports

On 2011-08-09 09:40:35 -0500, Ken Blake said:

On Mon, 8 Aug 2011 20:06:49 -0500, Dan Stephenson
wrote:

On 2011-08-08 19:23:58 -0500, Ken Blake said:

I can't speak about all of Europe, but I flew out of Athens a couple
of months ago. I didn't go through a body scanner.

I should phone back. Perhaps they thought I mean the metal detector.

Did you see body scanners there, and if so, could you tell how they
selected people to use them?


I don't remember seeing any body scanners, but that doesn't mean they
weren't there.

Thanks, I definitely want to call back. I am totally in love with
ancient history and love visiting the ancient ruiins. What a connect
with history!

--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-08-10 11:22:09 -0500, george said:

On Aug 8, 11:56*pm, Dan Stephenson wrote:
My plans were to visit Europe again in October, but it has come to my
attention that the use of those body scanners has become common since
the attempted bombing of that flight to Detroit last Christmas 2009. *
My last flight was prior to that.

So I called the Athens airport and spoke to their security people who
said that they had the scanners and their use was required, and
furthermore that this was to be found in the other airports in Europe.

This sounds incredible but it is plausible. *Can anyone confirm this at
your local big airport? *My googling only turned up EU regular that
"permitted" the scanners and a lot of talk of health issues. *But that
is all.

--
Dan Stephensonhttp://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

I've never seen any such scanners at Stuttgart Airport. I was scanned
3-4 years ago at Amsterdam on a flight from there to Stuttgart, and it
was mandatory (or at least that was what the security personnel said).

George

Thanks George, I'll scratch Amsterdam off my list. Unfortunately there
are no flight to the USA that reach Stuttgart. Just Frankfurt. I
wonder if Frankfurt airport has them. With that nutter shooting up the
place some time back, I would fear that would be the case.

--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-08-09 04:14:41 -0500, Frank Hucklenbroich said:

Am Mon, 8 Aug 2011 16:56:10 -0500 schrieb Dan Stephenson:

My plans were to visit Europe again in October, but it has come to my
attention that the use of those body scanners has become common since
the attempted bombing of that flight to Detroit last Christmas 2009.
My last flight was prior to that.

So I called the Athens airport and spoke to their security people who
said that they had the scanners and their use was required, and
furthermore that this was to be found in the other airports in Europe.

This sounds incredible but it is plausible. Can anyone confirm this at
your local big airport?

As for my local airport (Cologne), I haven't seen any of those scanners
yet, and my last flight from there was in April this year.

I did read reports recently, that these scanners don't work very good
anywya (e.g., they dont fing the things they should), so authorities will
probably not use them.

Thanks, Frank.

I spoke with the security person at my local airport (Dallas/Fort Worth
with directs to London/Heathrow, Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich I think), and
he said it's not everywhere, there is a pat-down option, and the
software will be changed at some point so the analysis is entirely
computer-driven and there is no human in the loop, and all the output
is, is a stick figure with a circle or something indicating something
to be checked out. That is a good step.


Regards,

Frank


--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-08-09 02:17:40 -0500, Tom P said:

On 08/08/2011 11:56 PM, Dan Stephenson wrote:
My plans were to visit Europe again in October, but it has come to my
attention that the use of those body scanners has become common since
the attempted bombing of that flight to Detroit last Christmas 2009. My
last flight was prior to that.

So I called the Athens airport and spoke to their security people who
said that they had the scanners and their use was required, and
furthermore that this was to be found in the other airports in Europe.

This sounds incredible but it is plausible. Can anyone confirm this at
your local big airport? My googling only turned up EU regular that
"permitted" the scanners and a lot of talk of health issues. But that is
all.



There was something in the news here the other day about the scanners
on trial at Hamburg airport proving to be useless - much too slow, and
with a 35% to 70% false alarm rate, depending on which press story you
believe - ah, just found some references:
http://www.whec.com/news/stories/s2225742.shtml?cat=566

or google bodyscanner+false+alarms

It appears that the German authorities have decided to discontinue
their use, at least of the make of scanner they tested, so hopefully
the taxpayers will get their money back for these expensive piles of
useless junk.

Now this would be good news, in that there is a direct flight from
Dallas/Fort Worth near where I live, to Frankfurt.

If I can confirm the situation in Athens, I might make a
DFW-Frankfurt-Athens travel. Hmm! Maybe I gave up hope too soon!

--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-08-09 02:14:28 -0500, Johannes Kleese said:

Dan Stephenson wrote:
So I called the Athens airport and spoke to their security people who
said that they had the scanners and their use was required, and
furthermore that this was to be found in the other airports in Europe.

A field test with voluntary checks of some 793000 passengers using
"naked scanners" in Hamburg, Germany, has just ended. The result,
though not officially reported yet, seems to be simply that the devices
are still expensive crap, at least those by L3.

The first software version showed the persons sort of naked, which is
not acceptable and was other than promised by L3. Next software version
showed only a symbol, but the alarms were anything but helpful. Too
much wardrobe, even long boots: Alarm. Passenger slightly moving: Alarm.
Two out of three scanned passengers had to be checked by hand, half of
those more than once (and nothing found, of course). L3 was not able to
deliver better software.

So, for the time being, no body scanners in Germany.

MAGNIFICENT!

--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On 2011-08-09 00:53:04 -0500, Graham Harrison said:

"Dan Stephenson" wrote in message
news:2011080816561034299-stephedanospam@maccom...
My plans were to visit Europe again in October, but it has come to my
attention that the use of those body scanners has become common since
the attempted bombing of that flight to Detroit last Christmas 2009.
My last flight was prior to that.

So I called the Athens airport and spoke to their security people who
said that they had the scanners and their use was required, and
furthermore that this was to be found in the other airports in Europe.

This sounds incredible but it is plausible. Can anyone confirm this at
your local big airport? My googling only turned up EU regular that
"permitted" the scanners and a lot of talk of health issues. But that
is all.

--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...d-flights.html

But

bear in mind that the Daily Mail loves to make a drama and a crisis out
of everything.

I heard about that, no pat-down option at Heathrow.

This is especially unfortunate as I love visiting Britain the most. I
was going to stay in London and spend lots of tourist dollars, for a
week prior to going to Greece to see ancient ruins. Not anymore. The
airport security people already question passengers with their little
trick questions, why don't they just get more clever about that?
--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

On Aug 11, 2:53*am, Dan Stephenson wrote:
On 2011-08-10 11:22:09 -0500, george said:





On Aug 8, 11:56*pm, Dan Stephenson wrote:
My plans were to visit Europe again in October, but it has come to my
attention that the use of those body scanners has become common since
the attempted bombing of that flight to Detroit last Christmas 2009. *
My last flight was prior to that.

So I called the Athens airport and spoke to their security people who
said that they had the scanners and their use was required, and
furthermore that this was to be found in the other airports in Europe.

This sounds incredible but it is plausible. *Can anyone confirm this at
your local big airport? *My googling only turned up EU regular that
"permitted" the scanners and a lot of talk of health issues. *But that
is all.

--
Dan Stephensonhttp://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

I've never seen any such scanners at Stuttgart Airport. *I was scanned
3-4 years ago at Amsterdam on a flight from there to Stuttgart, and it
was mandatory (or at least that was what the security personnel said).

George

Thanks George, I'll scratch Amsterdam off my list. *Unfortunately there
are no flight to the USA that reach Stuttgart. *Just Frankfurt. *I
wonder if Frankfurt airport has them. *With that nutter shooting up the
place some time back, I would fear that would be the case.

--
Dan Stephensonhttp://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

There certainly are direct flights from the US to Stuttgart, Delta
from Atlanta and Continental (United) from Newark.

I don't know whether Amsterdam now uses scanners on a regular basis.
That was a while ago and the flight from Amsterdam to the US then
didn't have scanners. I think that they were using them on a trial
basis for flights within Europe.

George

Dan Stephenson wrote:

My plans were to visit Europe again in October, but it has come to my
attention that the use of those body scanners has become common since
the attempted bombing of that flight to Detroit last Christmas 2009.
My last flight was prior to that.

So I called the Athens airport and spoke to their security people who
said that they had the scanners and their use was required, and
furthermore that this was to be found in the other airports in Europe.

This sounds incredible but it is plausible. Can anyone confirm this at
your local big airport? My googling only turned up EU regular that
"permitted" the scanners and a lot of talk of health issues. But that
is all.

This story confirms what I'd thought- I'd rather go through the body
scanner, particularly in a US airport.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ck/9563174.stm

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate
www.davidhorne.net (email address on website)
"[Do you think the world learned anything from the first
world war?] No. They never learn." -Harry Patch (1898-2009)

M@gd@ wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:02:39 +0100, in rec.travel.europe,
(David Horne, _the_ chancellor (*)) arranged some
electrons, so they looked like this:

... Dan Stephenson wrote:
...
... My plans were to visit Europe again in October, but it has come to my
... attention that the use of those body scanners has become common since
... the attempted bombing of that flight to Detroit last Christmas 2009.
... My last flight was prior to that.
...
... So I called the Athens airport and spoke to their security people who
... said that they had the scanners and their use was required, and
... furthermore that this was to be found in the other airports in Europe.
...
... This sounds incredible but it is plausible. Can anyone confirm this at
... your local big airport? My googling only turned up EU regular that
... "permitted" the scanners and a lot of talk of health issues. But that
... is all.
...
... This story confirms what I'd thought- I'd rather go through the body
... scanner, particularly in a US airport.
...
... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ck/9563174.stm

I'd rather stay home.

But if you want to travel, flying is often the most practical way of
doing so. Unless you can afford first or business class, you already
sacrifice quite a bit of dignity when you fly- and even the wider seats,
more room and better service don't negate the fact you could be spending
many hours in a relatively confined space.

Someone checking out my private parts via a really sketchy grainy video
image doesn't really phase me, and I'd prefer it to someone touching me
_any_ day of the week... Let's put it this way, it's one of the parts of
the flying process that would bother me the least.

--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate
www.davidhorne.net (email address on website)
"[Do you think the world learned anything from the first
world war?] No. They never learn." -Harry Patch (1898-2009)

Martin wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:39:25 +0200, "M@gd@" wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:02:39 +0100, in rec.travel.europe,
(David Horne, _the_ chancellor (*)) arranged some
electrons, so they looked like this:
[]
... This story confirms what I'd thought- I'd rather go through the body
... scanner, particularly in a US airport.
...
... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ck/9563174.stm

I'd rather stay home.


=====
It sounds much better in French, but then, everything does.

Security gropes much better in France.



--
(*) of the royal duchy of city south and deansgate
www.davidhorne.net (email address on website)
"[Do you think the world learned anything from the first
world war?] No. They never learn." -Harry Patch (1898-2009)