Body scanners were introduced after an alleged attempt to blow up a plane

The use of airport body scanners in the UK may be unlawful, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has warned.

Scanners already in place at Heathrow and Manchester Airports may be breaking discrimination law as well as breaching passengers' rights to privacy, it said.

It has now written a letter to Transport Secretary Lord Adonis.

The government said security concerns meant scanners had been needed immediately, but it was carrying out an equalities impact assessment.

The scanners are being introduced in response to the alleged attempt to blow up an American plane on 25 December.

But the commission said it had "serious doubts" that the decision to roll them out in UK airports was legal.

It said one of its chief concerns was over how people would be selected for the scans.

'Vulnerable groups'

Its chairman, Trevor Phillips, said: "The right to life is the ultimate human right and we support the government's review of security policies.

Given the current security threat level, we believe it was essential to start introducing scanners immediately Department for Transport spokesperson

"State action like border checks, stop-and-search and full body scanning are undertaken for good reasons.

"But, without proper care, such policies can end up being applied in ways which do discriminate against vulnerable groups or harm good community relations."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne MP agreed.

He said: "The government seems intent on pressing ahead with the use of body scanners without addressing any of the privacy concerns and safeguard issues raised by the Liberal Democrats and others.

"The commission is right to suggest that security measures cannot simply be introduced without due respect for the rule of law."

Code of practice

The commission has previously said scanners could breach an individual's right to privacy under the Human Rights Act.

It has also previously written to the home secretary to ask that he set out in detail the justification for bringing in the scanners, and clarify what safeguards will be put in place.

They produce "naked" images of passengers, and the commission then said it was concerned especially for the privacy of certain groups such as disabled people, the elderly, children and the transgendered community.

The Department for Transport said it had published a staff code of practice for the scanners.

A spokesperson said passengers who were randomly selected for screening would not be chosen because of any personal characteristics.

"Given the current security threat level, we believe it was essential to start introducing scanners immediately.

"We are currently carrying out a full equalities impact assessment on the code of practice, which will be published shortly when we begin a public consultation on these issues."

 

first spotted via Lee Oliver

By Cory Doctorow at 10:28 PM February 9, 2010

Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan claims that when he went through Heathrow, security staff printed out the naked image of his body from the full-body scanners (scanners that the authorities have claimed won't ever be used to generate printouts) and circulated them among the staff:

'I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You've got to see them. It makes you embarrassed - if you're not well endowed.

'You walk into the machine and everything - the whole outline of your body - comes out.'

Khan said he did not know that the body-scans - installed in the wake of last year's abortive Christmas Day bombing of a transatlantic flight over Detroit - showed up every little detail of one's body.

'I was a little scared. Something happens [inside the scans], and I came out.

'Then I saw these girls - they had these printouts. I looked at them. I thought they were some forms you had to fill. I said 'give them to me' - and you could see everything inside. So I autographed them for them.'

Shah Rukh signs off sexy body-scan printouts at Heathrow (Thanks, Drew!)

(Image: S3010420, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from dodo_anji's photostream)

Osama bin Laden lends unwelcome support in fight against climate change

Drudge, Fox News and other right-wing media seize on al-Qaida leader's taped comments reportedly sent to al-Jazeera

• Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 16.23 GMT
• Article history

Osama Bin Laden  Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

Climate science is under assault, progress towards a treaty to end global warming is shuddering to a halt, and Barack Obama is struggling to press on with his clean energy agenda.

This was the last conversion to the environmental cause that anybody would have wanted.

In a new audiotape that surfaced today on the al-Jazeera network, Osama bin Laden has pronounced himself a believer in climate change and blames America and other industrialised economies for failing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the atmosphere.

"Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury — the phenomenon is an actual fact," the tape says according to al-Jazeera. "All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis."

The utterance immediately got star billing on the right-wing blog Drudge Report as well as a mention on Fox News - both repositories of opposition to action on global warming. And the Conservative RedState website asked, "What is the difference between Bin Laden and Al Gore?"

The tape whose authenticity has yet to be confirmed by intelligence agencies, is the second purported message from the al-Qaida leader in a week. In the latest recording, he calls out developed world economies for continuing to produce global warming pollution even after signing on to the Kyoto protocol. America stayed outside Kyoto, which Osama noted.

"George Bush junior, preceded by [the US] congress, dismissed the agreement to placate giant corporations. And they are themselves standing behind speculation, monopoly and soaring living costs."

"They are also behind 'globalisation and its tragic implications'. And whenever the perpetrators are found guilty, the heads of state rush to rescue them using public money."

The al-Qaida leaders also calls on the global economy to stop using the US dollar, and praises the political analysis of Noam Chomsky.

Osama's concern for the environment is not exactly new-found, but it is intermittent. In a 2002 letter to the American people, Bin Ladenwrote: "You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries."

His latest pronouncement comes at a time when the Obama administration might be compelled to retreat on its pledge to bring the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks to trial in a Manhattan courtroom, which has run into intense opposition.

The administration is also trying to find ways of moving ahead on its climate change and energy agenda despite paralysis in Congress.

Obama, in his state of the union address this week, promised to incorporate two cherished Republican energy options — expanding offshore drilling and building more nuclear plants — into his energy plan.

Meanwhile, the White House is doing what it can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — even if Congress fails to bring in climate change legislation.

The White House today announced that it had directed all federal government departments to reduce emissions by 28% over 2008 levels by 2020. That is a more ambitious target than America's official position in the global climate change negotiations — a reduction of 17% over 2005 levels by 2020.

The White House said the action would save 205 million barrels of oil and was the equivalent of taking 17 million cars off the road for one year.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is set to formally declare on Monday that it will take climate change into account in its long-term strategic thinking. The new focus on climate change comes as part of the quadrennial defence review, which is presented to Congress every four years.

Cory Doctorow

POSTED AT 6:11 AM January 22, 2010

Check out this German TV clip highlighting the failure of the new, privacy-violating full-nude scanners going in at an airport near you. As Bruce Schneier notes, "The scanner caught a subject's cell phone and Swiss Army knife -- and the microphone he was wearing -- but missed all the components to make a bomb that he hid on his body... Full-body scanners: they're not just a dumb idea, they don't actually work."

German TV on the Failure of Full-Body Scanners

Can't wait for this. Chris Morris is a genius.

Justice department to accuse FBI of invoking crises to obtain details of more than 2,000 calls, Washington Post reports

• Chris McGreal in Washington
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 January 2010 20.06 GMT
• Article history

The US justice department is preparing a report which concludes that the FBI repeatedly broke the law by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist to obtain more than 2,000 telephone call records over four years from 2002, including those of journalists on US newspapers, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post.

The bureau also issued authorisations for the seizure of records after the fact, in order to justify unwarranted seizures.

The Washington Post said the emails show how counter-terrorism ­officials inside FBI headquarters breached regulations designed to protect civil liberties.

The FBI's general counsel, Valerie Caproni, told the Washington Post that the agency violated privacy laws by inventing non-existent terrorist threats to justify collecting the phone records. "We should have stopped those requests from being made that way," she said.

Caproni said that FBI's issuing of authorisations after the fact was a "good-hearted but not well thought-out" move to give the phone companies legal cover for handing over the records.

After the 9/11 attacks, the USA patriot act greatly expanded the government's ability to monitor American citizens, including increased access to their phone calls with the approval of lower-level officials than previously allowed. But the authorisation had to be tied to an open terrorism investigation.

The Washington Post said two FBI officers had raised concerns. Special agent Bassem Youssef observed that the necessary authorisations were not being sought before phone records were seized and were sometimes only given later in response to complaints from phone companies. Another official, Patrice Kopistansky of the FBI's legal office, noticed a similar problem. She also raised concerns when she was unable to get investigators to provide her with an open terrorism case to justify issuing relevant authorisation.

The Washington Post reported that Kopistansky and Youssef discussed the worsening "backlog" of cases without the necessary authorisations, or where false claims were made about terrorism emergencies. "I also understand some of these are being done as emergencies when they aren't necessarily emergencies," Kopistansky wrote to Youssef in April 2005.

The FBI subsequently issued a blanket authorisation covering all past searches, although its legality was questioned.

The Washington Post said journalists on the newspaper and the New York Times were among those whose phone records were illegally searched. The FBI later apologised to editors of both papers.

Bottled honey shuts down California airport

A hazardous material crew and bomb squad were called to Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield when sharp eyed TSA spotted jars of honey in a passenger's luggage.

The agents are apparently sharp-nosed, as well. From the news article:

Two Transportation Security Administration officers were also treated and released from the hospital after being exposed to what were described as "fumes" from the bottles.

Honey panic

Is this what they call

WASHINGTON (AP) The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan last week was a Jordanian doctor recruited by Jordanian intelligence, a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a foreign government official confirmed Monday.

The bombing killed seven CIA employees_ four officers and three contracted security guards_ and a Jordanian intelligence officer, Ali bin Zaid, according to a second former U.S. intelligence official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.

The former senior intelligence official and the foreign official said the bomber was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year old doctor from Zarqa, Jordan. NBC News was the first to first report the bomber's identity and that he was a double-agent.

He was arrested more than a year ago by Jordanian intelligence and was thought to have been persuaded to support U.S. and Jordanian efforts against al-Qaida, according to the NBC report. He was invited to Camp Chapman, a tightly secured CIA forward base in Khost province on the fractious Afghan-Pakistan frontier, because he was offering urgent information to track down Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's right-hand man.

Hajj Yacoub, a self-proclaimed spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan, identified the bomber on Muslim militant Web sites as Hammam Khalil Mohammed, also known as Abu-Dujana al-Khurasani. There was no independent confirmation of Yacoub's statement.

Al-Balawi was not searched for bombs when he got onto Camp Chapman, according to both former officials and a current intelligence official.

He detonated the explosive shortly after his debriefing began, according to one of the former intelligence officials. In addition to the eight dead, there were at least six wounded, according to the CIA.

The former senior intelligence official said one of the big unanswered questions is why so many people were present for the debriefing – the interview of the source – when the explosive was detonated.

A half-dozen former CIA officers told The Associated Press that in most cases, only one or two agency officers would typically meet with a possible informant along with an interpreter. Such small meetings would normally be used to limit the danger and the possible exposure of the identities of both officers and informants.

An online jihadist magazine in September 2009 posted an interview with al-Balawi, according to SITE Monitoring Service, a terrorist watch group that reads and translates messages on extremist forums.

SITE said Monday that al-Balawi used his pseudonym – identified as Khorsani – in the postings, describing how he rose through the ranks of online jihadist forums. He said he went to Afghanistan to fight, and he exhorted others to do violence.

"No words are more eloquent than those proven by acts, so that if that Muslim survives, he will be one who proves his words with acts. If he dies in the Cause of Allah, he will grant his words glory that will be permanent marks on the path to guide to jihad, with permission from Allah," al-Balawi wrote, according to SITE's translation.

A Jordanian government official, who was not authorized to speak to the press, said the Jordanian government has no connection to the bomber. The official said the Jordanian government had not verified whether the bomber was Jordanian.

The Taliban's Yacoub said the Jordanian intelligence officer, bin Zaid, was helping the CIA recruit agents to spy on al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Bin Zaid allegedly recruited the suicide bomber.

Jordan's state news agency Petra identified bin Zaid as an army officer on a humanitarian mission in Afghanistan. It said he was killed Wednesday evening "as a martyr while performing the sacred duty of the Jordanian forces in Afghanistan." It did not provide other details.

The Jordanian military released a brief statement acknowledging bin Zaid had been killed in Afghanistan, but it did not mention he was working with Jordanian intelligence or cooperating with the CIA.

Bin Zaid's family declined to comment.

Bin Zaid is known to be a relative of Jordan's King Abdullah II. He held the title of sharif, or nobleman, which was bestowed upon him by the Jordanian monarch.

King Abdullah and other members of the royal family received Bin Zaid's body, which was repatriated Saturday in a private ceremony. His wake was held in the Royal Palace.

The death of bin Zaid underscored the close relationship between the Jordanian intelligence service and the CIA in the U.S. global war on terrorism.

Jordan is known to have acted as a proxy jailer for the CIA in 2004, when Jordanian intelligence officers interrogated several al-Qaida militants who were flew in on rendition flights from Guantanamo Bay.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch and several other watchdogs rebuked Jordan for what they described then as systematic torture of the detainees. Jordan denied the link to the CIA and the abuse allegations.

A key U.S. ally in the Mideast, Jordan also contributed valuable intelligence data to the United States, which helped track down the former al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in 2006. Al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in June that year.

Security was being tested at Bratislava Airport

Irish police have released a man held over an explosives find, after Slovakian authorities admitted planting them in his luggage.

The explosive was one of eight pieces of contraband placed with unsuspecting passengers at Bratislava Airport last weekend, broadcaster RTE reported.

The 49-year-old unwittingly brought the material into Dublin when he returned from his Christmas holidays.

He was arrested on Tuesday morning but has since been released without charge.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said he was very concerned that Irish police had not been alerted for three days.

Airport security detected seven of the illicit items, but the eighth - 90g of research development explosive - managed to escape detection.

Slovakian police alerted their Irish counterparts on Tuesday morning, and the man's flat near the city centre was cordoned off while bomb disposal experts removed the explosives for further examination.

The Irish Army said passengers had not been put in danger because the explosives were stable and not connected to any essential bomb parts.

The Slovakian minister for the interior had expressed his government's "profound regret" to Mr Ahern.

An Irish government spokesman said Mr Ahern has "ordered a full report into what has transpired".