New trials show naked body scanners have up to 40% error rate

Wednesday, November 02, 2011 by: Christina Luisa
Tags: naked body scanners, errors, health news

(NaturalNews) Recently trials of the naked full-body scanning machines in Australia have revealed that the highly invasive technology has a huge error rate of up to 40%, but Australian government officials plan to set up the scanners in airports regardless.

These radiation-launching machines, also known as Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT), have once again been proven completely incompetent and absurd even though Australian Transport Minister Anthony Albanese described the scanners as the "most advanced passenger screening technology available in the world."

The Australian Office of Transport Security announced this week that out of 23,500 scans carried out at Melbourne and Sydney airports throughout the months of August and September, around 20 to 40% of the alarms set off were done so in error. What's even more ridiculous is the lack of certainty as to what exactly caused the machines to raise false alarms in the first place.

In other words, not only are these dangerous and ineffective naked scanners beaming serious amounts of radiation into passengers, they're needlessly setting off alarms for unknown reasons-- and STILL the Australian government plans to continue installing them. This isn't comforting considering NaturalNews learned earlier this year that the energy emitted by these machines may damage human DNA (https://www.naturalnews.com/027913_full-body_...).

Sound the alarm -- this sweaty passenger is clearly a terrorist!

Prison Planet reported in August that it was suspected that passenger sweat is one of the main causes of the error, although this possibility has not been confirmed (http://www.prisonplanet.com/airport-body-sca...). During a $6 million trial of the scanners, the alarms were set off repeatedly at an Australian airport by passengers with sweaty armpits. In fact, one of the machines unnecessarily set off an alarm three different times on the second person to walk through it at a Sydney airport.

TSA plans to keep the scanners coming despite their now-proven inefficiency

Despite the massive glitch rate that has become apparent through the scanner trials, Office of Transport Security executive director Paul Retter told a recent Senate estimates committee hearing that the technology was improving "on a weekly and monthly basis." And while security experts have repeatedly warned that the scanners cannot even detect explosives successfully, Retter still insisted the inefficient and dangerous technology provides "the best chance in the world today to detect explosives, including home-made explosives."

He also claimed that while the government has not yet decided whether to entirely adopt the technology, he plans to recommend the scanners be installed at eight international airports. This "rollout" of scanners will likely begin in the early part of 2012.

The German government says, 'No futile radiation for us'

Before the Australian trials, the German government decided to abandon plans to use the full-body scanners. This occurred after police described the radiation-heavy machines as "useless" following a 10-month trial.

According to a German federal police report (http://www.prisonplanet.com/german-authoriti...), 35 percent of the 730,000 passengers checked by the deficient scanners set off the alarm multiple times although they had nothing prohibited on their person whatsoever. In fact, the same report noted that an alarm was raised without reason in roughly seven out of every ten cases, adding that the scanners did not deal well with people wearing layers of clothing or boots and zip fasteners. Even the posture of passengers passing through seemed to affect the probability of a false alarm!

The German report concluded that the machines are far too sensitive to movement, and they operate too slowly to be of any practical use.

Potentially dangerous AND ineffective? The TSA could care less

These findings clearly reveal that these defective full-body scanners do not yield reliable results and are more than undependable -- they are useless. They fire radiation into passengers and raise false alarms over absolutely nothing. They require people to pass through them multiple times and therefore repeatedly shower them with radiation WITHOUT CAUSE.

Yet the Department of Homeland Security in the US continues to roll out hundreds more of the scanning machines into airports across the country, all the while falsely claiming the machines have passed rigorous safety and efficiency tests. Their statements about the scanners, in fact, have been reported by Prison Planet to be "highly questionable at best" (http://www.prisonplanet.com/big-sis-caught-l...).

These very same scanners -- which now have been PROVEN ineffective -- have never been proven safe for human use, and even the TSA couldn't tell us whether or not the long-term effects of their radiation could cause everything from cancer to infertility. In fact, the president of the Allied Pilots Association (APA) even issued a letter urging all pilots to opt out of the full-body scanning (https://www.naturalnews.com/030339_pilots_nak...). Yet the scanners are still carelessly being rolled out in airports all over the US.

Read more about the potential detrimental effects of these machines here: https://www.naturalnews.com/027913_full-body_...

Read more about TSA's lies here: https://www.naturalnews.com/027914_TSA_full-b...

Sources for this article include:

https://www.naturalnews.com/027914_TSA_full-b...

https://www.naturalnews.com/027913_full-body_...

https://www.naturalnews.com/030339_pilots_nak...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/new-trials-show-...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/airport-body-sca...