Senator Collins: U.S. airport full-body scanners inferior to those deployed in Amsterdam
Maine’s junior U.S. senator says the full-body scanners DHS is deploying in the wake of the Christmas Day airline bomb threat are not the best devices available
Maine U.S. Senator Susan Collins says the United States is on the wrong track when it comes to beefing up airport security. The United States was spurred to deploy full-body scanners after the failed attempt to bomb a Northwest jetliner in December. The devices are meant to thwart any other bomb-in-a-brief attack.
Senator Collins says the United States is choosing the wrong technology. After meeting with Dutch officials on a new full-body scanner in use at the Amsterdam airport where the Christmas Day bomber embarked on the flight, Collins says the technology far superior to the systems being deployed in the United States.
“No radiation is involved — it uses radio waves,” she told Capitol News Service. “Second, it avoids the privacy issues that have arisen with the style of full-body scanners that the Department of Homeland Security is deploying in this country.”
Collins says Dutch officials told her they are pretty sure their scanners would have spotted the bomb a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, smuggled onto the jetliner Christmas Day. To top it off, Collins says, the radio-wave scanner is built by a Massachusetts company.
