Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is to introduce full body scans for all passengers traveling to the US within three weeks, home affairs minister Guusje ter Horst told a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.

The scans are being brought in at the insistence of the US authorities, following the attempt to blow up a plane flying from Schiphol to Detroit on December 25.
Some scanners are already in use but others have to be fitted with special software allowing the pictures to be analysed by computer because of privacy concerns, the minister said. Once the new software has been installed, security officials will be alerted if the computer detects something suspicious.
Until the software has been installed, everyone traveling to the US will be given a body search, Ter Horst said.
There has been growing criticism that advanced body scan equipment is not yet in use because of privacy objections from some EU countries. According to many security experts, including those at Schiphol, such a body scan could have detected the explosives concealed in the bomber’s underwear.
‘Our view is that body scans would have helped, but we do not have 100% certainty,’ Ter Horst told reporters.

Bomber
Ter Horst denied that security at Schiphol had failed. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who has been charged with trying to blow up the Northwest Airlines plane in the US, was on a list of people ‘to watch’ in relation to terrorism although he was not on the so-called ‘no fly’ list. He had a visa for the US.
And Erik Akerboom of the Dutch counter terrorism organisation NCTb told the news conference Abdulmutallab’s passport had been checked before he boarded the US-bound plane after spending some two hours in transit at Schiphol.
The fact that he paid for his ticket with cash and had no luggage is not considered ‘strange behaviour’ for travellers from Nigeria, he said.
Reports that Abdulmutallab had contact at Schiphol with a second man in a suit are an integral part of the ongoing investigation, Akerboom said. But there is no evidence the explosive was given to him at Schiphol and the security camera footage supposedly showing the encounter is being analysed, he said.
Amateurish
Ter Horst described the attempt to blow a hole in the side of the Northwest/Delta plane as ‘professionally prepared but amateurishly carried out’. Abdulmutallab used explosives which are difficult to make and must have come from a third party, she said. However, ‘to make it explode, you need to ignite it in a different way’, she said.
Nevertheless, ‘the world has escaped an incident which could have had very serious consequences’, she said.