The deployment of full body scanners at airports, which permit the outline of a person’s naked body to be viewed, is yet another counter-terrorism measure where perspectives in the US and EU differ. In Europe, the debate is just heating up, with the European Commission due to present a report, in April, on how effective body scanners are and what impact they have on citizens’ health and privacy. The pressure to adopt a common EU position has increased since a Nigerian man with links to Islamist radicals managed to conceal explosives in his underwear while boarding a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, on 25 December 2009. Both EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding and Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas have voiced reservations about body scanners on data privacy grounds.

By contrast, in the US there is little debate on the matter. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has since January organised a raft of meetings with airline representatives and foreign governments to try persuade them that body scanning is a good idea. The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is responsible for deploying the scanners, has been equally proactive in promoting them ⁽¹⁾ The TSA insists the technology is “safe for all passengers” as various US government agencies and scientific institutes have determined it does not pose a risk to human health. As for data privacy, TSA says there is no problem either as the image “cannot be stored, transmitted or printed, and is deleted immediately once viewed”. It is also optional, with passengers allowed to have a physical pat-down by a security guard instead.

US public opinion is not averse to body scanning. A CNNpoll in January 2010 found that 79% supported their use, only 18% thought they posed a health risk and 82% preferred a body scan to having to undergo a physical pat-down. There are 43 scanners deployed at US airports and Napolitano plans deploying a further 450 in 2010. A rare dissenting voice has been data privacy advocacy group EPIC, which sent a letter, in February, urging deployment to be suspended until the health and data privacy implications were assessed.

This is an area where the US absolutely needs the cooperation of the EU because the threat of a terrorist attack on the US, as the underwear bomber showed, is perhaps greatest from international flights and transatlantic flights in particular. For now, Washington has been able to broach the issue bilaterally with individual EU countries, although Napolitano did discuss it with all EU27 at the 21 January EU Justice and Home Affairs Council in Toledo, Spain. A transatlantic dispute along the lines of the SWIFT agreement spat is not beyond the bounds of possibility, however, later down the line, should the EU adopt legislation on body scanning that imposes restrictions on their deployment.