Bollywood star lays bare airport scanning fears

Shah Rukh Khan. Photo / AP

CANBERRA - Bollywood movie star Shah Rukh Khan appeared yesterday as the sum of all Australian airline passengers' fears.

Amid generic depictions of naked travellers and concerns from civil liberties and privacy advocates about new body scanners planned for the nation's airports, Khan appeared on news websites with a story to put anyone with a shred of modesty off flying.

The scanners will be part of a much wider network to closely examine passengers before they fly into the country, and as they arrive at border controls.

Khan gave an alarming description of his experience with the body scanners recently introduced at Britain's major airports, which show not only any non-metallic devices, objects and weapons on a person's body, but the most intimate regions as well.

Despite assurances that images would be destroyed immediately, Khan found female security officers lined up with uncensored copies of his scan.

"I was a little scared," he said. "I came out of the scanner and then I saw these girls and they had these printouts.

"So I looked at them [and] thought maybe it's a form you're supposed to sign. You could see everything inside, and then I've autographed them for them."

Australia has not yet announced the technology it will adopt when it starts installing body scanners for international travellers next year as part of a A$200 million ($243 million) boost to aviation security over the next four years.

But Transport Minister Anthony Albanese is already indicating the nation might opt for a less intrusive system, using a "stick figure" representation of travellers rather than the full exposure of the British scanners.

This uses a stylised outline to pinpoint the location of any illegal items hidden on a body.

He has promised consultation with the federal privacy watchdog, the Privacy Commissioner, and to act on public doubts.

"The Government understands the privacy concerns some travellers may have with body-scanning technologies and will implement appropriate privacy and facilitation measures to mitigate these concerns," he said.

Civil rights advocates have warned that increasingly tough measures - added to a raft of harsh counter-terrorism laws - are allowing authorities to look more closely and harder at Australians than ever before.

There have also been concerns at further delays in processing passengers with the introduction of body scanners - about six extra minutes, according to Albanese - and a doubling in random explosives detector screenings.

But Albanese and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made it clear they had no regrets for the latest tightening of aviation security.

"It is vital that we remain vigilant and take those steps that are necessary to protect Australian citizens and Australian interests," Rudd said.

The new measures, which also include more firearm and explosives detection dogs, additional policing and cutting-edge screening of passenger luggage and air cargo, followed the arrest of would-be al Qaeda airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was arrested after a failed bid to detonate explosives strapped to his leg as his aircraft approached the American city of Detroit on Christmas Day.

But many of the measures were already in the pipeline after an aviation white paper in December outlined the risks facing the nation.

The white paper said the greatest domestic security threat to Australia continued to come from groups linked with, or inspired by, international terrorist movements, whose knowledge of aviation and its vulnerabilities made the sector an attractive target.

Further dangers came from growth and developments in aviation, forcing changes in policy.

One key vulnerability was the security focus on large passenger jets, effectively obscuring the rise of smaller jets and larger turbo-propeller aircraft that service many of Australia's regional airports.

The new measures announced this week included a A$32 million plan to further roll out passenger screening at regional airports serviced by larger turbo-prop airliners.

Another priority is intelligence and international co-operation.

The nation's intelligence agencies already provide frequent threat assessments, and transport security inspectors regularly inspect international airports used as the last ports of call for Australia-bound flights, checking for vulnerabilities and helping to close security gaps in a programme that will eventually cover at almost 40 airports throughout Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific.

Under the new measures Canberra will spend A$18.2 million on the programme, and a further A$24.9 million on new technology that will help Customs to clear passengers more quickly - a transtasman scheme was announced last year by Rudd and Prime Minister John Key - and share data on travellers with intelligence, border management and law enforcement agencies.

This will include passengers' travel histories, helping to close the gap exposed by Abdulmutallab's attempt to destroy the United States airliner.

Associated with this will be the introduction of advanced data analysis and risk profiling to identify visa applicants who may pose threats to national security.