FriendlySkies

+1

I had a great time in CBR and SYD recently, though I see no point to give any more money to the Australian government if they don't allow an opt-out provision.

Himeno

Do you mean Andrew Leigh? When I sent him something, he just forwarded it to Albanese, then sent back a reply full of Albanese spam. I called him on it and never heard back.

stifle, FriendlySkies Contact Tourism Australia and tell them that (repeatedly). When visitors to Australia fall because of this, Tourism Australia needs the data to prove to the idiots of what I've been telling them since the bill was tabled in Feb.

Transcripts of yesterdays events.
debate
Lee Rhiannon (continued) http://tinyurl.com/cw9wd8v
David Fawcett http://tinyurl.com/brwcyxm
Nick Xenophon http://tinyurl.com/9tqoa43
Ian Macdonald http://tinyurl.com/98zgo9l
Kim Carr http://tinyurl.com/8uezq72

Debate on Amendments
http://tinyurl.com/8jmxh7x
http://tinyurl.com/8p3v97m
http://tinyurl.com/92ywcju
http://tinyurl.com/9xgnyj5
http://tinyurl.com/9cj83k2
http://tinyurl.com/8r9vfon
http://tinyurl.com/9fbuh6h
http://tinyurl.com/9s9wj35
http://tinyurl.com/93okprt
http://tinyurl.com/8go4mn8
http://tinyurl.com/8ee3cyl
http://tinyurl.com/8gny73f
http://tinyurl.com/8hhtaqu

Amendment vote (lists who votes which way): http://tinyurl.com/8pu2scx
Bill vote: http://tinyurl.com/8vtn5w9

I see one of my senators (Lundy, KA) supporting the bill unamended, despite my repeated warnings that doing so would cost her votes. The other ACT senator wasn't even in the building.

Himeno

I've just sent a letter to Quentin Bryce, the Governor-General.
This is a long shot at best, but short of going to the High Court, it is our last option.

thadocta

Absolutely NO chance on that side. In a constitutional monarchy, the monarch (or their representative) can only act on the advice of their ministers (except in certain circumstances, which involve invoking "reserve powers" - and this isn't one of them.)

That won't work either, the High Court only hears matters at first instance if they involve constitutional issues, or in disputes between states. I can't think of any constitutional issues here.

Dave

cbn42

Now that this is passed, how about the part about a foreign national refusing a scan? It says the "Department of Infrastructure and Transport will work closely with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to facilitate legitimate travel".

Any guesses as to what this means? Anyone want to volunteer to be a guinea pig?

My guess is that they will let you out without the scan and then prohibit you from coming back.

Unlike Britain, there is really no practical way to leave Australia besides by air.

RadioGirl

Which would be stupid, really, because if the passenger is the (1 in a billion) Actual Bad Guy hiding something from the scanner, a prohibition on returning to Australia is probably not going to bother him.

In practice, such a rule only punishes the innocent person who opts out for other reasons, but has no ill intent.

So, yeah, this is probably what they'll do.

Majuki

It still won't stop me from visiting Australia, and I imagine the MMW use will be more sporadic like in the UK versus primary for almost everybody in the US.

I went through security at SYD Friday morning, and it was all WTMD as far as I could see. They were doing random secondaries of people with ETD swabs. I had one done in May, but the gentleman was polite and just swabbed the back of my hands and shirt collar. There was no TSA style invasive patdown.

On Friday morning, I was going through as QF 107 was in final boarding. The QF representative and security staff went through the line and made sure nobody was going to miss the flight. In fact, the gentleman at the x-ray machine glanced at my boarding pass and saw "Los Angeles" and told me, "You better hurry so you don't miss your flight!". I told him that I was on the later flight, so I was not in a rush. Had that situation occurred in the US, the TSA would have done a retaliatory secondary just to be rude about it. This follows the rule that the probability of missing your flight due to TSOs being rude is inversely proportional to the amount of time you have before departure.

exbayern

May I ask what you plan to do? If it's too personal a question, feel free to say so. But you've been quite clear about how you feel about scanners in the UK and avoiding travel there even with the rather low risk. How will you handle scanners now in your home country? I'm genuinely curious.

Himeno

DIT has not stated how they would be deployed. They will likely be secondary, however "secondary" in Australia means "next person coming out of the primary screening". They have a quota to keep at the secondary stations (currently ETD and frisk searches) and they mark on a list for each screening.

They can't be rolled out yet. The bill is still listed as "passed both houses". The MMWs can't be put in place until the bill has been signed off by the Governor General and becomes an Act, followed by some adjustments to department paperwork and procedure documents. Secondary in Australia isn't "random". As mentioned above, it is next person off primary when secondary station is free. If the checkpoint is quite, you more then likely will get the secondary. If it is busy, it is easy to avoid simply by timing getting carry ons off the belt. I once got the secondary ETD out of CBR, then 80 minutes later with my connection to T1 in SYD got the secondary ETD there as well. They said "have you done one of these before?" "Yes. An hour ago." Followed by a secondary frisk search. Then an hour later got hit by the random bag check when heading to the US departing QF gates.

There never has been. The fear-mongering in Parliament about the TSA patdowns is part of why the idiots accepted the bill. They kept claiming that "people wouldn't like the invasive patdown which would be required for an opt out", despite the fact that no other country with scanners allowing opt outs has the hand down pants pat down of the TSA, or that even the TSA didn't have that pat down for over 9 months after they started using the scanners.

Majuki

This was my experience. In May I was the only person traversing the checkpoint at SYD when I was pulled aside. This last Friday the checkpoint was a little busier, but not terribly so. As I said, the secondary in Australia was still less invasive than the pre-November 2010 opt-out patdown. I didn't have to remove my shoes. There were no hands inside my waistband. I was allowed to carry my own items over to the secondary area and open the compartments for the security guard.

This is in contrast to the TSOs who've attempted to slam multiple items/bins together with the laptop always at the bottom. I get the impression that there are some who do this deliberately, and the rest of them are just careless. Any touching of your items runs the risk of at best a bag check and at worst a terminal dump. Any mentioning of a phrase like, "please be careful with that" will be summarily dismissed with "that's what you get for opting out".

Precheck has made things more humane again, but it's a gamble whether or not you'll get it. It's also something unavailable to the majority of air travelers in the US because they're not able to opt in via their airline and aren't eligible for a US-based trusted traveler program. The sad part is that Precheck in the US gets you what the standard security experience almost everywhere else in the world.

Himeno

They have to. They aren't allowed to touch or open your bags without your say so. You open it for them, they they ask if they can look inside.
According to the Australian screening SOP, the only screening process you agree to upon arriving at the checkpoint is the baggage xray and WTMD. Anything beyond that requires your verbal permission.
This bill changes that to add MMW to the same assumed pre acceptance as the WTMD.

Majuki

I am a little bit surprised by this stance, but it's sensible. The security guard kept asking if it was alright to do the hand swab, "pat down" (I use quotes because it was just the shirt collar and hands) and me opening my camera bag.

In the US you can't walk away from the screening process once it has started until it has been completed. Of course, the court ruling was long before the war on water, shoe carnival, scanners, invasive patdowns. Few have actually been charged for walking away without other factors. eg) "If you touch my junk..."

So will they still have to ask to pat you down if an anomaly occurs on the MMW? I'm trying to understand the full implications of the new legislation. It seems from what you said that it's voluntary unless it's specifically enumerated in the federal regulations (or Australia's equivalent).

Himeno

No idea. There has been no information released about the scanners other then where they plan to put them (international terminals) and the opt out issue. The entire consultation process (which TSA never did) was rendered entirely pointless when they decided to make it "no opt out" with no warning on the day the bill was tabled.
The only info there is has been taken out of statements from the transport minister and when questions are asked to clarify those statements, there is no response.

RadioGirl

I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, so I'm going to go through my thought process. (Anyone who wants to skip to the end, fine, but don't argue with my conclusions unless you've read my reasoning. )

My objections to the scanners as they've been implemented in the US, in more or less priority order, are:

1. Principle - Unreasonable search as defined by the 4th Amendment of the Constitution of the USA.
2. Personal - Health risk (for BKSX).
3. Personal - Privacy (for non-ATR machines).
4. Personal - Potential for theft from carry-ons while being scanned.
5. Principle - invasive for people with medical/personal items (insulin pumps, sanitary items, etc)
6. Principle - waste of money - ineffective at finding "bad" things but produce large number of false positives.
7. Personal - speed through the checkpoint.

For all of these reasons, in the US I would opt out every time; as it is, I can choose not to go to the USA at all - a sort of hyper-opt-out.

My choice to avoid the UK is based on items 2 through 7. As I've said before, my considerations are for my situation as someone with a metal implant that (sometimes) sets off the WTMD. Because of that, my research leads me to believe that I have a much higher-than-average chance of being chosen for the NoS, so I don't see it as "a rather low risk" for me, even though it may be a rather low risk for the average passenger. YMMV

Some UK airports had BKSX (and the UK gov't ignored the EU prohibition of BKSX) and they didn't have ATR. (There goes items 2 and 3.) I found UK checkpoints slow even before the scanners were in use, so the risk of theft (item 4) and of being further delayed by setting off the WTMD and then getting a body scan (item 7) were of concern. In the UK, I would be connecting and the incoming flight is often late, so getting delayed at the checkpoint is a major nuisance. (At LAX and LHR I always insisted on at least a 4-hour gap, and it often wasn't enough.)

5 and 6 don't affect me directly (I don't have medical appliances and I don't pay taxes in the UK) but they are matters of principle. But if the number of people "randomly" chosen is as small as you say, statistically 5 is not really an issue. And the d@mn things have already been bought, so my absence at UK airports is not going to get the money back.

As for item 1, although I believe that the rights outlined in the US Constitution and BoR are universal, the UK gov't apparently doesn't. Their country; their rules. I'm not going to push that one for non-US checkpoints.

Finally, I can choose to avoid the UK; I have other options to get to Europe, although it might mean a longer trip or a different airline (with the consequent loss of FF points! ) That's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

Now I turn to the Australian situation. Here, of course, if I choose not to go through a checkpoint at an international terminal, I'm choosing not to fly internationally at all. And a key part - the most enjoyable part - of my job requires international travel. So I'll take these points again.

Issues of principles:
- Item 1, "unreasonable search" is as for the UK above. I believe it violates fundamental US law, but it is not Australian law and I'm not going to argue the toss.

- Item 5. I feel for people with insulin pumps, ostomy bags, etc, and I hope this gets more attention as people start to use the scanners. However, an opt-out provision wouldn't really improve things for these passengers. Further, I would expect Australian checkpoint staff to deal with these issues professionally and sensitively - I would not expect them to announce to the whole airport that someone has an adult diaper, or poke at an ostomy bag until it bursts.

- Item 6. Yeah, I'm mad they're wasting my tax money on something that doesn't work. [insert obligatory joke about Parliament here.] As with 5, I expect that false positives will irritate passengers, and maybe that will affect (in a positive way) how the scanners are used. OTOH, if false positives are resolved by a sensible, limited pat down the way they currently do for WTMD, it won't be a big issue.

Before I proceed - The difference in checkpoint attitude is a big differentiator between the US (and partly, the UK) experience and the Australian experience. My perception, from this website and from comments all over the web, is that too many US screeners thrive on making people uncomfortable, retaliate against anyone who is hesitant or asks questions, and use their authority to push passengers around. I've met some pretty unfriendly security people at LHR and LGW. I have hope that Australian screeners will be sympathetic to people who have concerns about the scanners and will try to make things run smoothly. (Yes, I may be proven wrong.)

Those are the matters of principle, leaving only the...
Personal issues:

- Australia has announced that they only plan to use MMW. I would have felt better if this was officially in the legislation, but for now it seems that's the decision. That resolves, for me, item 2.

- They have further announced that they will use ATR. That, for me, mainly resolves item 3. (I don't buy into the theory that they're saving the images. I'm not going to argue with those who do.)

- Item 7, checkpoint speed. Pre-scanner, I once had to wait a whole 5 minutes at the international terminal checkpoint. (Mainly because the bottleneck is the departure customs checkpoint immediately prior.) It remains to be seen how many passengers will be chosen for the scanner and how this will affect the checkpoint wait times. But as I'm starting in Sydney, I have more control over my arrival time at the airport than I do if connecting through the UK.

So ultimately, item 4, theft of belongings while being scanned, is now my main concern. In Australia we don't have the numerous reports of checkpoint theft by screeners or passengers, partly because the lines move quickly and your belongings are rarely out of sight. If the checkpoints remain uncluttered, this may not be a big concern.

So what will I do?
I will continue to fly for my job as necessary.
I will continue to try to get through the WTMD without alarming.
I will continue to choose transit points or destinations that minimize the chance of body scanners.
I will continue to avoid transit points and destinations that use BSKX body scanners.
I will lock my handbag inside my carry-on before the checkpoint so that I have a minimum number of items at risk.
If I alarm the WTMD, or I'm chosen randomly for the scanner, I will take my time to ensure that my belongings are in sight or that the screeners are aware of my concern about theft. (I do this anyway when I get patted down.)
I will make checkpoint staff aware that I do not agree with the use of body scanners, but (sigh) I will go through the scanner if that is the only option to travel.
I will continue to monitor the situation and will change my mind if circumstances change.

Himeno

"I am unable to assume the position."