Italy To Abandon Airport Body Scanner Project

AFP - After a six-month test, Italy's government will drop the use of full-body scanners for security checks in airports, judging them slow and ineffective, Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported Thursday.

The scanners in the airports of Rome, Venice and the southern city of Palermo are no longer in use, and Milan's airport is likely to stop using the machines in the near future.

"We didn't get good results from body scanners during testing, it takes a long time to examine a person, more than with a manual inspection," said Vito Riggio, the president of Italy's aviation authority.

Officials also believe measures taken to address privacy concerns over the use of the scanners have dampened the machines' effectiveness at locating arms and explosives, Corriere della Sera reported.

A final decision on the use of the machines will be taken by a government commission.

Passengers checked with body scanners are asked to pass through a regular metal detector and then walk into the scanner cabin, which is 10 feet (three meters) tall and six feet wide.

They are asked to stand with raised hands while the machine locates objects on their body through low-frequency electromagnetic waves.

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