Chris Gerhard cited this article in The Register:

[www.theregister.co.uk]

A Register reader passes us an eye-witness account of progress with the see through clothes scanner currently being tested at Heathrow Terminal 4. As one might expect from a country that deploys stuff without considering health implications, the testing is splendidly incoherent, and unlikely to produce anything in the way of valid data.

Queuing for the metal detector our informant spotted a machine with a Secure 1000 nameplate, and this rang a bell: “I noticed women being pulled out of line and being asked to go through it. Obviously you couldn’t see them walk through it, but once through they were then escorted straight to the front of the line for the metal detector.

…

Wife: what is it?
Staff: it’s a low-dose x-ray machine
Wife: what does it do?
Staff: it’s a security check
Wife: is it mandatory?
Staff: [not actually answering the question] if you don’t go through it, when you set off the metal detector you’d be subject to a pat down.
Wife: that’s fine, I don’t mind a pat down
Staff: but it’s only a low-dose x-ray machine
Wife: I’m a woman of child-bearing age, I’d rather not go through it
Staff: it’s no more dangerous than having an x-ray at the dentist
Wife: and I decline those
Staff: well, you use a cell phone don’t you?
Wife: yes, but they’re radio waves affecting my brain, not x-ray’s affecting my reproductive organs.”

I am due to go through LHR in a few weeks, and I shall decline to go through it if they try.

This could be interesting; an earlier article in El Reg makes the following point:

You’ll note that the picture in the second link shows Susan Hallowell baring her all in the name of security, and displaying her concealed hardware. But rewind – why is she packing? The only metal detectors currently deployed at airports that aren’t going to find a rod that size are surely ones that aren’t switched on. And if that’s a jacket pocket she’s been carrying it in, then the airports we’re familiar with these days would have that jacket going through the hand baggage scanner. As indeed would they have the QinetiQ guy’s handily-placed newspaper.

In short it is one of those things I detest most, a case of selling a security point-solution to ignorant people who don’t know any better, on the basis of a Unique Value Proposition that sounds good but does little or nothing to address the actual problem.

It just makes them look like they are achieving something, because, well, they’re doing something new, and consuming their budget. Surely it must be of some additional benefit?

Like the representatives of the Anti-Money-Laundering industry whom I have met, some of whom really, really want the UK Government to introduce Citizen ID cards, and for all whose statements to the contrary I still suspect want the cards chiefly so that they can shift the burden of money-laundering blame back to the Government.

“What do you mean he’s laundering money for the Mafia? He presented valid ID, and wasn’t on your denied-parties list! It’s not our problem, Guvnor…”