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Pope decries introduction of airport body scanners

Scan devilAlex has written extensively on the cost, legality, functionality and inherent invasion of privacy that are part and parcel of body scanners and gleefully we can today report that the Pope has spoken out against the use of the unscrupulous devices.

Addressing an audience with aerospace industry employees, Pope Benedict's appeal 'to protect and value the human person' has been widely interpreted as a reference to the fast expanding intrusive technology. His comments come as a timely incursion with the radiant potential to accentuate the importance of protecting our basic civil liberties. Big Brother Watch hopes that the speech will increase public awareness of, and opposition to, these wholly unethical machines. After all, it's nice to have God on our side…

A plethora of arguments can be used against body scanners but few are more apt than a statement made later in his address:

the primary asset to be safeguarded and treasured is the person, in his or her integrity

Amen.

By James Stannard

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Body Scanners
  • Shy Hermit

    First, my cards on the table: I am not a follower of any religion. However, God (whatever that word signifies) is entirely real to me. This is a matter of personal experience, and the source of my most deeply held opinions.
    On the topic, I think the Pope has it absolutely right. The Pope surely knows better than most that, historically, oppressing a person’s religious conviction is frequently the tipping point at which complacency turns into stubborn opposition.
    I imagine that our current government knows nothing much of spiritual matters and might struggle to see the connection between faith and body scanners. But from the point of view of faith, belief is not a matter of belonging to a club for the like-minded or a hobby interest or something prosaic and part-time like that, but is rather a way of “being” in the world, a way of being which informs every action and every thought. Government intrusion and coercion in increasingly personal aspects of our lives puts this way of “being” under threat, because it seeks to impose a materialist way of being that holds everything but quantity irrelevant.
    The Pope did finally apologise for the Spanish Inquisition, so it would be indelicate to bring that up again. Oh, I did, too late.
    Even those who find religious and spiritual opinion risible or who judge it only on the hateful things that have unhappily been done in its name, may be glad at this time to find friends in any quarter to oppose the march of “mechanised totalitarianism”.
    All things must pass. But of course they’ll pass quicker if you give them a little push.