Buying and selling body scanners…

We began the year talking about body scanners. Terrorism was in our minds but the scanners,in many of the gatherings, were far more fun to talk about. Then we began thinking and realized that, if the US was able to influence governments around the world to buy and install them, most of us would have to go through one of those machines and the fun in many cases stopped. Then it was all sort of talk about what could and could not happen to us after our bodies were scanned: how safe they were for our health -yes quite a few people worry about that-, what about our privacy, who would see the pictures and on and on. The last rumor is that, worried about pornography, children under 18 would not have to go through the scanner. But hold on, someone said, what about those youngsters recruited to be suicide bombers? Well, the sure thing is that the body scanners are going to be topic of conversation for a long time and many stories going to be written about them. Such as the latest one that let us know that the European Parliament is putting six unused body scanners for sale. Apparently the scanners were bought after the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington but never used as in October 2008 lawmakers had opposed the use of full body scanners in the EU! Now, as several countries are buying scanners for use in their airports, the machines which were laying in a basement were remembered and the EU legislature is trying to sell them, something that will not be a difficult thing to do as just Amsterdam’s airport Schiphol has announced that it will buy 60 new scanners to boost security.