Martin Scheinin on Body Scanners and Profiling

DETECTER Partner Martin Scheinin has a piece in the Guardian. He argues against the idea that the aim of preventing acts of terrorism always trumps privacy or other fundamental rights and that any restrictions of such rights ought to be specifically provided for in clear law ensuring their effectiveness, necessity and proportionality. A few select quotes:

...The current generation of body scanners entail an unnecessary and therefore disproportionate intrusion into privacy, by showing a graphic image of a naked human person to one or more observers. It would be technologically easy to avoid this, by securing that no images are ever stored, and by using an algorithm to replace on the observer's screen the image of a real person with a standard animation figure but places any suspicious items on that image...

What is worse, body scanners are ineffective. They are unlikely to detect 80 grams of PETN explosives hidden in the underware of a person. And once it is known that body scanners are in use, they are easy to avoid by hiding this type of explosives in a body cavity or in a commercial item in one's hand luggage...

There are better ways than body scanners and group-related profiling to improve security at airports and elsewhere. The technology already exists for detecting from distance most explosive substances, including PETN. Together with professional observation of behavioral patterns this provides a prospect of respecting privacy while at the same time doing a better job in preventing acts of terrorism. It seems to be the unwarranted obsession to know more about the perceived bad person that has slowed down work to detect explosives....

The article also features a link to his latest report written in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism, highlighting the erosion of the right to privacy in the fight against terrorism.