Have never seen the devices in DE and CH, thank god IL doesn't use them either for all I can tell.
I would reject to fly in that case. No question. The whole security around planes is already stupid as it is now, no need to get more intimate with the security staff.
As a matter of fact I haven't seen a lot of back scatter scanners in European airports.
Actually only one, in Amsterdam and that was not operational.
My observations may be biased, of course. But I'm pretty certain that I haven't seen any in ZRH, VIE, DUS and PRG and LCY. And even Amsterdam security (which is a huge operation) didn't have one last time I passed it in March.
EDIT : To clarify, the only one I've seen in AMS was in the Summer of 2010. March 2011 I didn't see any
It's a matter of public record in the UK. Look at the web site of any major airport that uses the scanners.
I saw some writing by a guy who (claimed to have) refused the scan a while back, who was (he claimed) told by airport staff that because so few people refuse the scan, his details would automatically be sent to some government department (read: watch list). No idea how accurate his account was, but he certainly seemed quite upset about it, and it does have the ring of truth about it. After all, as many people have observed, "don't fly" is not a practical answer for a lot of circumstances, and in the UK at least, if you want to fly and you're selected, you're getting the virtual strip search and radiation dosage. There ought to be a law that anyone who thinks a 99.whatever% "acceptance" rate under those circumstances implies that almost everyone is happy with the scanners should be locked inside an active scanner with a few textbooks until they get the point one way or another...
On my AMS to SFO flight around two months ago the scanners were operational.
The funny thing is that in the US they have this complicated process "to protect the passengers pricacy" where the person viewing the pictures is located in a special room. The personal directly dealing with the passengers never sees the pictures but just receives an Ack or Nak for each passenger.
In Amsterdam the displays are located directly on the scanners for everyone to see. The makes the whole thing much faster and I think Europeans do not really care about this as much as Americans.
Where you forced through the scanner or did they offer you a choice?
As for UK airports. They seem to have a rather inflexible approach as DO AS WE SAY, OR ELSE! Haven't seen them in London City Airport, though.
I could also imagine that Amsterdam only channels US travelers through the scanners. In Zurich airport the US airlines essentially have half a terminal building reserved for their flight operations during the morning hours. I haven't seen scanners there, but flying mostly within the Schengen area I wouldn't necessarily know.
"A hospital consultant at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary in the UK was barred from boarding his flight at Manchester Airport earlier in the summer after he refused to use the scanner, claiming he could be exposed to X-rays."
I requested a pat-down two days ago coming in through Detroit while transferring and they said "sure!" and were pleasant about it. I was expecting a battle. Also, it's not that invasive a process. I think we hear horror stories about it but I think more people should opt for it.
This is not to say that the whole process isn't stupid and broken. Certainly I was separated from my belongings on the belt which I didn't like.
How invasive the pat-down is depends entirely on how invasive the administering agent wants it to be. Some agents are actually rational logical humans who have already figured out that the screenee is not a terrorist, and pat lightly and send them on their way. Some agents are in the job for the power trip and will roughly squeeze every body part they can reach. And of course there's a spectrum between the extremes. It's impossible to know ahead of time what agents you will run into, and unsuitable to generalize from one or a few personal experiences to TSA agents as a whole. It's a crapshoot.
And of course the system is designed to be impervious to feedback. We can count on one hand, possibly one fist, the number of agents who have been disciplined for aggressive behavior. The only chance is to somehow raise enough of a stink to catch media attention. Any complaints officially made to the agency summarily disappear down the TSA memory hole.
