German Ministers have voiced outrage at European Union plans to adopt controversial full-body scanners, joining a chorus of criticism of the so-called "strip scanners" which aim to deter highjackers.
Berlin is not amused. Plans by the European Union to introduce full-body scanners at airports are going a step too far, government ministers said on Friday.
"Naturally any device that produces such images won't be used in Germany," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said on the sidelines of a meetings of European Union Interior ministers in Brussels. The Christian Democrat stressed that national security shouldn't be made to look "farcical" to the general public. "I won't let the German police be thought of as peeping toms -- which they are not," he said.
A spokeswoman for Schäuble's office had already emphasized the government's position during an earlier press conference. "I can tell you with complete clarity that we are not going to cooperate in this mischief," she said. The body scanners are already being tested in some US airports, as well as London's Heathrow and Amsterdam's Schiphol. But German politicians of all stripes backed up the government's position on Friday. "This demand is below the belt, in the truest sense," Ulla Jelpke of the Left Party said. "An airport is not a nude beach."
Rainer Wendt, who heads one of Germany's police unions, condemned what he called an "officially-ordered striptease." Robert Zollitsch, Chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, told the Augsburger Allgemeinen daily that "human dignity" was compromised by the machines.
The controversy kicked off last month with a European Commission proposal to add body scanners to a list of security measures that can be used at airports across the 27-country bloc.
This week there has been a pan-European outcry over plans to test the devices. There has been vehement debate on where to draw the line between defending privacy and security. On Thursday, EU lawmakers criticized the scanners, saying they amount to a virtual strip search and should only be used as a last resort. The lawmakers asked the bloc's executive European Commission to carry out an economic, medical and human rights assessment of the impact of using the full-body scanners. But the system's advocates argue it is more reliable than the current procedure of checking traveller's bodies using hand-held metal detectors. By using radio waves the body scanners can also detect ceramic knives and plastic explosives concealed under passengers' clothing.
Interior Minister Schäuble -- normally a hawk on security issues -- estimated that most European countries would join his rejection of the EU plan. He backed more investigations into alternative methods of searching passengers, especially into devices which work without touching passengers and "do not produce those images."
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