Sydney Airport trials full-body scanners

A trial of full-body scanners that produce an outline of the body and detect non-metal items under clothing will start at Sydney Airport's international terminal from Tuesday, Australian Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Monday. The full-body scanners will not portray a naked image of passengers, Albanese assured the public. "We know from experience, when we have offered people the option of seeing a new technology more people want to use it than can possibly go through it," he told reporters at the airport in Sydney. "We expect there will be a great deal of interest and that people will volunteer to go through the scanners during these trial periods," Albanese said before trialing the scanner himself. Unlike controversial airport scanners used in the United States, the scanners will only show a generic outline. "Any male outline shown on the scanner's screen looks like any other male outline and any female outline looks like any other female outline," Albanese said. He also assured passengers that the scanners are perfectly safe and a person would have to go through a scanner 10,000 times to be exposed to the same amount of radio frequency energy as during an average mobile phone call. The trial, which will run about three weeks, is voluntary while any passenger not wishing to participate will be processed normally. Albanese said scans would "absolutely" become compulsory if trials were successful. The scanners will be trialed at Melbourne Airport in September.