Netherlands and Nigeria to Use Full Body Scanners

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Christine Sarkis is an SATW-award-winning journalist and executive editor at SmarterTravel. Her stories have also appeared on USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. Her advice has been featured in dozens of print and online publications including The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and People magazine. She has also shared travel tips on television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Marketplace, and Here & Now. Her work has been published in the anthologies Spain from a Backpack and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. She is currently working on a travel memoir.

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Both the Netherlands and Nigeria have announced plans to implement full body scanners, the type that would have picked up the explosives hidden under the clothes of attempted terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. According to the Associated Press, Dutch airports are to begin using the advanced scanners immediately on flights heading to the U.S. The Washington Post reports that Nigeria will implement the use of full body scanners early next year.

So is this the beginning of a worldwide airport security sea change? Will 2010 bring a movement away from old scanning technology and physical pat downs and toward the new body scanners? And how will concerns over physical privacy play out now that the focus is on implementing these body scanners quickly?

The high cost of the scanners make sweeping changes unlikely in the short term, but full body scanners are already in place at some airports in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere. Have you been through one of the full body scanners? What was your experience?

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