I was recently boarding a flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur and was selected to go trough the airpot body scanner. I opt out for the metal detector and padding every time. Apparently in Australia once you have been chosen there is no option to opt out.
I have been to many airports in North America and I was alway given the option if I wanted to opt out. In Australia that is not possible. I asked for a supervisor who showed me a pamphlet in which was stated that once you have been selected you have to go trough with the scan or you have to wait for 24 hours. Of course that’s not a real choice since you will miss your flight. I was not prepared for this and do not know if this is an actual law or just an airport security rule. Please leave a comment if you are more familiar with current Australian laws. I do not like how my freedoms were trampled upon in this situation. My wife and son were waiting for me on the other side so I did not feel like arguing further and had to go trough the machine.
I am currently on a 6 months World Trip and will be on more than 30 different flights. If the point is security there are other ways to make sure I am not a thread and I feel like I should not be forced to do this. I am not even sure what is this scan supposed to find. The point I think is to force us to follow rules regardless of if they make sense or not and to slowly take our freedoms away. I just read an article that the US is removing the scanning machines from most major airports in an attempt to speed up security checks.
I really wish we as humanity are more untied and can have a real impact when we don’t like our freedoms being taken away. Here is what I mean. I call on all travellers to boycott Australia and don’t go there until the government reverses this decision. Of course if you have family or need to go there on business I would understand. Imagine Australian tourism and the airline companies taking a big hit because of this. I am sure the government will review their decision. Of course I am not naive and know that at this stage we act as individuals and most people don’t care and will not support me on this. However I see that the trend of taking our freedom is growing really fast and I am sure many people will experience similar issues in the future in all different aspects of their live.
I will be calling on freedom fighters like Adam Kokesh (thefreedomline.com), Jeff Berwick (dollarvigilante.com) and Luke Rudkowski (wearechange.org) to help me spread this message. I will even ask the celebrity like Kim Dotcom (kim.com) to help. If you read this post and want to help spread this message please post a link on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network.
P.S.: I wrote this post on the flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur. When we landed and went trough immigration in Malaysia our fingerprints were taken (mandatory if you want to enter the country). Then I also remembered I should mention when we landed in Australia from Hawaii our cabin had to be sprayed. Some stupid rule again which doesn’t make sense since they opened and sprayed the luggage above, but our backpacks were under the seats. They of course said that this was safe for people (yeah right). Then when we entered New Zealand a photo was taken at immigration. I am sure I will encounter a lot more in my travels. I did not do a lot of research on this, but no one tells you this things prior to boarding the plane. They only do it after the fact when there is nothing you can do.