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Canada: Air passengers to undergo 'virtual strip search'

by Barry Artiste | June 22, 2008 at 07:07 am | 798 views | 8 comments | 15 recommendations

Opinion
Barry Artiste, Now Public Contributor

So much for those mail order $4.99 X-Ray glasses, a new technology is in town for air travellers passing through this little burg Kelowna far in the British Columbia interior.
I never knew Kelowna, population just over a 100,000, whose claim to fame is tourism pretty much. Who knew Kelowna could be a possible HotBed for International Terrorism?
Be afraid, be very afraid, cavity searches may be next.

I watched a movie starring Larry the Cable Guy called Witless Protection whereby Sheriff Larry at 300 pounds upon entering an airport security booth, gets stripped searched with a body cavity search to boot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZeishEBTf8

Perhaps we can all take a cue from Larry and do what he did, that would be one way to stop this insanity in it's tracks.

Now to be fair, there was a al Qaeda connection in BC in the interior in which a wealthy Saudi business was accused of terrorist ties, for more info, my story on this below from last year. http://www.nowpublic.com/press/british-columbias-al-qaeda-connection

Nothing like full bowels to foil a latex gloved overzealous Security professional.

Security officials at Kelowna airport will soon be undressing passengers with their electronic eye.

Starting next week, passengers travelling though the Kelowna International Airport will be asked if they're willing to be scanned by technology that allows an officer the "see" through their clothing in search of weapons or explosives.

It's a breakthrough that airport and security officials say will make air travel safer and security lines shorter. However, one civil rights group is calling the technology "an abomination" and a "virtual strip search."

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jordan

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 07:18 on June 22nd, 2008

That's just creepy, and pretty much useless. There never was really a flaw in weapon detection, just in the human factor. Give them x-rays, and soon they'll be missing stuff on the body x-ray screen as they do on the hand-luggage screen... I used to fly at least once a month, and my messenger bag had a swiss army knife in it, which I had forgotten about... I finally got caught with it in March, after making something like 19 domestic flights.

azer

at 13:00 on June 22nd, 2008

Hear, Hear! And then some!

I wish I could find some of those old Spy vs. Spy cartoons - they apply just as much today as they did in the 60's and 70's.

Barry Artiste

at 07:20 on June 22nd, 2008

Thanks for the visit and personal experience Jordan, but if not for anything, you really have to rent Witless Protection just to witness idiocy in security and paranoia