Child Porn Laws Impede Airport Searches

Jan. 5, 2010— -- The British government today outlined its plans for security crackdowns at airports but said it will need to examine the legalities of the new security regulations, as well as scramble to implement them in the wake of the Christmas Day bomb plot.

The disruption caused by Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab's failed attempt to destroy a Northwest Airlines plane with a bomb hidden in his underwear has highlighted the gaps in air travel security, and has led the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to begin an overhaul of airport safety regulations.

In an address today to the British Parliament, the U.K. Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, said the new security directives at British airports would be made effective within three weeks.

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He said all British airports must now possess explosion trace detection equipment, and that the British Airports Authority was already in the process of training its staff to catch any signs of suspicious or unusual behavior in passengers that would require closer inspection.

"We will be considering all the issues involved, mindful of civil liberties concerns, aware that identity-based profiling has its limitations," Johnson said, "but conscious of our overriding obligations to protect people's life and liberty."

Much has been made of the issue of profiling minors under the age of eighteen and safeguarding any images captured of them. Britain's child pornography laws currently prevent young people from being searched by body scanners. A scan could be a violation of laws that protect children from having indecent images taken of them.

"The government has a problem and so do the airports as the laws governing child protection are very tightly drawn," said Terri Dowty, Director of Action on Rights for Children. "The way the law stands at the moment, it is an offense for anyone to make an indecent image of a child and the legal advice is that any image that shows a child's genitals is highly likely to be indecent.

"We can't have people misapply this law for their own convenience," she said. "They would face prosecution, it's a fundamental principle. If it is inconvenient we have to go back to parliament."

Airport screeners who operate the high-tech scanners are being specially trained, and their vetting for the job includes a check of the British sex offenders' register.