The Law of Unintended Consequences … Do New Full Body Scanners in Airports Break Child Porn Laws?

It’s the “law of unintended consequences” and when an idea is not properly and completely thought out to it’s full conclusion. This is what happens when there is a knee-jerk reaction to an event and not all the ramifications of one’s actions are considered.

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Do the new full body scanners in airports break child pornography laws? Of course laws will be different for every country; however, the UK Guardian seems to think to in Great Britain. When scanning, how are the rights of children protected vs. the protection of passengers?

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.

Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to “virtual strip-searching” and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.

Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.

So will individuals under the age of 18 be exempt from full body scanning due to child pornography laws or did al-Qaeda just find another loophole to exploit in killing infidels?

Not only is there an issue of protecting the naked and nude images of children but what about those of celebrities as well. Or anyone for that matter. In the age of the internet, who is to say how any of these airport scanning images of individuals might just pop up on the internet. Hardly an outlandish thought.

They also face demands from civil liberties groups for safeguards to ensure that images from the £80,000 scanners, including those of celebrities, do not end up on the internet. The Department for Transport confirmed that the “child porn” problem was among the “legal and operational issues” now under discussion in Whitehall after Gordon Brown’s announcement on Sunday that he wanted to see their “gradual” introduction at British airports.

One thing is for certain, terrorists will exploit every law that civilized society has in their quest to murder the Great Satan.