Slashdot Mirror
Backscatter X-Rays Coming to Airports
TSMABob writes "Wired News reports that a recent, but expensive, technology of backscatter may grace airport security in the future. Nice Bombs Ya Got There is an article that explains how this technology is far superior to the metal detectors of today, pointing out that 'Richard Reid, convicted of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner with explosives in his shoes, walked through metal detectors at Orly Airport in Paris several times before boarding the plane.'
Read More about backscatter x-rays and their ability to pick up non-metallic objects."
KDE
A big room somewhere in Europe with lots of chrome and glass and a great big whiteboard in the front with lots of tiny, neat writing on it. There are about 50 desks, each with headphones and pristine workstations, also with a lot of chrome and glass. The faint sound of classical music permeates the room, accompanying the clicky-click of 50 programmers typing or quietly talking in one of the appropriately assigned meeting areas. (Which of course consist of elegant contemporary white pine coffee tables surrounded by contemporary white pine and fine leather meeting chairs.) Coffee, tea, mineral water and fruit juices are available in the break area.
At the end of the day, *everyone* checks in their code and the project leader does a "make" just to make sure it all compiles cleanly, but it's mostly only done from tradition anymore since it always compiles cleanly and works flawlessly. When all milestones have been met, and everything has been QA'd, (usually within a day or two of the roadmap that was written up 18 months previous) a new KDE release is packaged up and released to the mirror sites with the appropriate 24-hour delay for distribution before being announced.
KDE developers are generally between the ages of 16 and 25, like art made of lines and squares and the colors white and black. When/if they finally stop taking government subsidies and get around to getting "real jobs," most of their salary will be taken in taxes so the socialist government can subsidize the care and feeding of the next generation of KDE developers, just like it did for them. A high percentage of KDE developers, during their mandatory 5 years of government military service, crack from their years of cultural dullness and flee Europe to become terrorists for the sheer joy to be found in killing random strangers for no discernible reason.
GNOME
An abandoned warehouse in San Francisco, kitted up as for a rave, electronica playing at 15db louder than "my ears are bleeding and I'm developing an aneurism" volumes and the windows all painted over black so that the strobe and spotlights and lasers can be seen better. Computers, mainly made of whatever stuff has been exchanged for crack or scavenged from dumpsters behind dot-bombs, are scattered around on whatever furniture is available, which also consists of whatever stuff has been exchanged for crack or scavenged from dumpsters behind dot-bombs. There's no break area, but you may be able to bum a beer (or more likely something harder) off of one of the developers hanging around, and they will probably be too jacked up on X, coke, acid, heroin, ether or all of the above to notice that you've taken anything.
Development strategies are generally determined by whatever light show happens to be going on at the moment, when one of the developers will leap up and scream "I WANT IT TO LOOK JUST LIKE THAT" and then straight-arm his laptop against the wall in an hallucinogenic frenzy before vomiting copiously, passing out and falling face-down in the middle of the dance floor. There's no whiteboard, so developers diagram things out in the puddles of spilt beer, urine and vomit on the floor.
At the end of the day - whenever that is since an equal number of programmers will be passed out at any given time - or really whenever someone happens to think of it (which is rarely), someone might type "make" on some machine somewhere, with mixed results. Generally nothing happens, so he/she shrugs his/her shoulders and wanders off to look for someone who might have more pink/black-striped pills. Once in a great while, generally in the unpleasant time between the come-down from the last thing they took and before whatever it was they took just now comes on fully, someone will tar up a bunch of random files and post it on a website someplace it as the next GNOME release, usually with a reference to some kind of monkey.
GNOME developers rarely live past 25 and prefer "alternative" art - generally stuff made of feces that's "too edgy" for most people to "understand" or "like." Core GNOME developers are heavy Ketamine users. The bodies of GNOME developers can often be found in dumpsters or floating face-down in any sufficiently large body of water.
I R00z j00!!!!!
How many people are willing to bet that there will be x-ray photos released some how on the internet, or even that a website will try to make a profit off it? heheheh
You know, maybe this will get me through the airport a little quicker. But then again, maybe it'll just add up on the delays. How so, you wonder? Consider the current climate in airport security. Not only will the person itself be under much scrutiny in the event of, say, a PDA left in a breast pocket (could be hard to discern from a block of C-4), but I'm sure the person will be delayed even further by background checks and such.
This technology doesn't seem it will replace traditional X-ray, as I'm sure people will still (as gross as it sounds) be smuggling drugs and evil nanotech warriors in plastic baggies in their...rectums? (que AC goatse man reply)
I certainly hope I don't end up getting skin cancer or something, but then again, I'm paranoid, right?
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
Except Richard Reid had the explosives in his shoes .
Are these scatter rays going to show shoes as well? The photo they have shown misses the feet!
This seems very, very close to the security system they had in Total Recall!
How long before the police decide to use the mobile version of this technology to start looking inside people's homes and cars?
:)
:)
Already where I come from (Wales, UK) the local police use helecopters with an infrared camera to fly over houses, searching for high heat output, the reason being it 'aids and assists in catching people growing cannabis in lofts and attics'.
What is the next step with this technology? It offends me that a government official can soon be able to drive up outside my house, and literally look inside it, to see how many people are in my house, what kinds of material possesions I have, etc etc.
Saying that, however, I do not think this is going to catch on in airports, especially in the USA
Face it, more than 70% of American middle aged women are going to walk though, just to have the official ask her 'Please could you lift up your sagging stomach fat, so we can see if you have a huge bomb hidden under the rolls of fat'.
I just wish I was there to see the reactions
______
Jaylen
... then we'll know for sure now if those breasts are real or fake!
Four weeks, Twenty papers, that's two dollars
This is the end of the line when it comes to privacy violations. This is where I stand up and say, I'm not getting on a fscking plane if someone's going to be sitting in a booth at the security checkpoint looking at me naked. If that's not a terrible invasion of privacy, THEN NOTHING IS.
What is privacy anyway? Does anyone remember? Anyone?
From the example pictures it seems that this still won't be able to detect items that have been put in some of the body's natural "hiding places." I really doubt someone that is willing to die to blow up an airliner full of passengers is going to have any scruples about doing something like that.
On the other hand, it's also possible to do that when you're just being checked out with metal detectors.
There are two reasons why the public will reject this:
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
Wonder how parents are going to feel when their little children are viewed virtually naked by TSA employees...there will be abuse of this technology for sure.
Why? Because x-rays have been proven to be dangerous to living matter at high levels.
No, this way they don't waste time having you walk through the metal detector multiple times as you remove objects from your person. Plus they can check and make sure nothing is being smuggled in with your objects that could be considered banned (explosives, shivs, handmade guns, etc)
Rant On
Personally I think people need to get over the whole "they will see you naked bit" whoopdedoo, I have a penis so does 49%+/-1% of the population.
Sure it is an invasion of privacy but if you want to get somewhere fast, concessions should be made.
Rant Off
You know... I have heard this sort of line time and again, and frankly I'm quite sick of it (I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking the person in the story who made the comment)...
Not all radiation is the same!
I'm tired of hearing "Oh you are exposed to more radiation on a trip from L.A. to New York than from getting an X-Ray"... Oh REALLY... Tell you what, let's put a piece of aircraft aluminum in front of your film and see if you can expose through it... What? You can't? What if you set it really high? X-Rays don't penetrate aluminum very well? I see...
I know this isn't exactly what was said here, but... X-ray radiation is used because it is the right energy level to be blocked in different amounts by different body tissues. When we say "blocked" what we mean is "the energy of the X-ray is absorbed by your tissues". X-rays will ionize chemicals in your cells, and that can cause cancer. When a high energy photon smashes into your bodily tissue and is stopped, that's when the potential for bad things happens.
Most of the ionizing radiation coming from sunshine doesn't make it to the ground. Most of what makes it to us from sunshine is the longer wavelength stuff, like infrared, visible light and UV which don't have don't have much ionization potential (well, the UV has some, as is well documented) and the very short wavelength stuff that would most likely pass right through you since 50 miles of atmosphere hadn't stopped it already. The radiation you receive on a flight from L.A. to New York had a short enough wavelength to penetrate the aircraft's aluminum skin, chances are pretty good it will pass through you without stopping.
I do not think this thing is safe... and what really irritates me is it will be YEARS before a cancer caused by it shows up, so it will be impossible to hold them accountable.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
What if they were used to stop people from blowing up planes and killing people?
A single person not being killed because one of these machines caught someone before they had the chance to get on a plane makes it all worthwhile in my books.
Besides, I seriously doubt there would be any way to record/save the images created on the machines so it's not like a screener would be grabbing them and posting them on the net or anything.
A screener could be looking at thousands, or tens of thousands of people a day - I think the "oh! nudies!" aspect of the job would grow old real fast. I mean, how much do people pay any attention to pr0nmail that shows up in the email box? You just automatically hit delete and move on.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
The real danger is large chemical bombs hidden in containers. It doesn't take much of a bomb to send a container ship to the bottom of the sea. Repeat a couple of dozen times and the world economy collapses. Well, at least the Asian economy.
Yeah, it's like so many people are blowing up planes today. Four groups in what, ten years?
A single person not being killed because one of these machines caught someone before they had the chance to get on a plane makes it all worthwhile in my books.
I'm sorry, but this is lunacy. By this argument, we'd immediately ban the automobile. Think of how many people die because of them today. If we'd save just ONE life by banning them... and hot dogs (people do choke to death on them, you know. If we save just one life...
Besides, I seriously doubt there would be any way to record/save the images created on the machines so it's not like a screener would be grabbing them and posting them on the net or anything.
Huh? That's right, computers never have any means of saving images. Just how do you think they are going to train the people to run these, keep a stock of different kinds of bombs on hand, or keep a stock set of saved pictures of people carrying said bombs?
And how will they review a suspicious image -- make the person stand in the picture booth until they decide? Nice, clue him in that he's being scrutinized so he sets the bomb off in the middle of the line.
A screener could be looking at thousands, or tens of thousands of people a day -
Oh, of course, invasion of privacy is ok as long as it happens to lots of people.
Here's what you should be thinking about. That fellow mentioned in the summary, the ShoeBomber? He wasn't just passing through security at Orly, he was actually IN POLICE CUSTODY WEARING HIS SHOE BOMBS the day before he got on the plane. They let him go. Fancy hardware simply cannot replace common sense, but then, we're talking about people who idolize Jerry Lewis.
they have the authority to strip search you on nothing more than a hunch - so how different is this really?
It's this very attitude of resignation and complacency that feeds the authority machine that breeds more intrusiveness into our lives. We've been sold on the idea that to submit to egregious violations of our person, we are somehow more "patriotic" than someone who has very real issues with this type of technology.
The fact that some bad apples will press the boundaries of decency is the price one pays to live in a free society. We, however, are slowly morphing into an authoritarian society. The bright side? Fewer places for bad apples to hide. The down side? Instead of the people in control of the government, the government will be in control of the people.
Which do you prefer?
There are all sorts of causes of deaths in automobiles. If you truly want to prevent deaths (i.e., "if we'd save just ONE life...") then you ban them altogether. That would save lots of lives. And ban hot dogs. And just about everything else. No swimming, no diving, no boating, no autos, no flying, no walking, no showers. The list is endless.
Don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind in the slightest if that was a legal requirement for anyone driving, anywhere.
I'd like to know a few things, first. Things like, what happens after you blow into the breathalizer? I assume your plan includes an undefeatable interlock so the ignition won't start if the level is above X. Who picks what level X is? What happens when you drive from one state to another, and X is lower in the second state than in the first, and you're above the new limit? Does the car shut itself off at the state line?
What happens when there is an emergency, and you are either .01 above the level or the device is broken, and lives are at stake?
What happens when the drunk has his sober pal blow into the device for him? Or he pays a homeless person $5 to blow for him. Or he takes a balloon and uses the air from that?
Perhaps you are not familiar with a plan that was going to make it a requirement for trucks to have governors installed so they could not go faster than 55 MPH. People die when speeding trucks go out of control, you know. That sounds like a great plan, right? Well, someone pointed out that sometimes it is a good thing that a truck can go faster than 55, like when it needs to get out of the way of some other truck or car. And then someone else pointed out the difficulty of enforcing this law, since it is trivial to tinker with any such governor. So it isn't a law.
Likewise, I don't particularly care if someone sees me naked,
Here's the ubiquitous "I don't need MY civil liberties, so I'll support taking them away from others" argument. If you don't mind people seeing you naked, that's nice for you. It says nothing about whether other people have a right not to be seen that way. I don't swim, dive, boat, or take showers. It's ok with me if all of those activities are banned in the search for fewer deaths. Ok? Did I pick your favorite hobby, yet?
Nobody is saying you can't fly, just that you'll be subject to a little more security before getting on the plane.
Unfortunately, that is a erronious statement. A "sense" of security is different than real security. Having a goverment droid search my carry-on looking for nasty things like nail clippers, just to find a vending machine near the gate that sells nail clippers and disposable razors, proved that to me.
Just for the sake of arguement, I'm curious what your solution would be,
Solution to what? Invasive, meaningless activities that don't improve security? Why, stop them, of course. Adjust the metal detectors so they don't trigger on the metal in a zipper. Don't waste time wanding people's feet when the floor has so much rebar in it that the buzzer always goes off anyway. Stuff that I'd think was common sense.
Perhaps you're suggesting they just put everyone on planes without any screening at all,
I guess if you can't understand why "security at any price" is an unreasonable position, you'll pretend that the only other option is "no security at all" and think you've won the argument.