Dutch to use full body scanners for U.S. flights

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Netherlands announced Wednesday it will immediately begin using full body scanners for flights heading to the United States, saying that could have stopped the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing.

The U.S. had not wanted these scanners to be used previously because of privacy concerns but now the Obama administration has agreed that "all possible measures will be used on flights to the U.S.," Dutch Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst told a news conference.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to Detroit from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Friday carrying undetected explosives, law enforcement authorities said, adding that 23-year-old Nigerian tried but failed to blow up the plane carrying 289 people.

"It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster," Ter Horst said, calling the situation a "professional" al-Qaida terror attack.

Amsterdam's Schiphol has 15 body scanners, each costing more than $200,000. But until now neither the European Union nor the U.S. have approved the routine use of the scanners at European airports.

A key European legislator urged the European Union to begin rapidly installing the new equipment across the 27-nation bloc, but no other European nations immediately followed the Dutch move.

Body scanners that peer underneath clothing have been available for years, but privacy advocates say they are a "virtual strip search" because they display an image of the body onto a computer screen.

Ian Dowty, a lawyer with Action on Rights of the Child, said allowing minors to pass through the scanners violates child pornography laws.

"It shows genitalia," he told The Associated Press. "As far as English law is concerned ... it's unlawful if it's indecent."

For that reason, British authorities have exempted under-18s from body scan trials at places including Paddington Station in London as well as Heathrow and Manchester airports.

New software, however, eliminates that problem by projecting a stylized image rather than an actual picture onto a computer screen, highlighting the area of the body where objects are concealed in pockets or under the clothing.

Ter Horst said the scanners likely would have alerted security guards to the materials concealed in Abdulmutallab's underwear and prevented him from boarding the Northwest flight.