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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."
Yeah yeah, I know its going to be repeated at least 300 times in this story... but I just can't help myself.
/.'ing.
X-RAY VISION IS FINALLY A REALITY!!!
That is all, you may now go back to your regularly scheduled
"Engineers do the work of man, Physicists do the work of God"
There's another new article on this in the 'Globe and Mail'. It's a bit more indepth, and features a really, er, 'nice' picture of a seemingly shaven lady testing out the machine.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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!"
more info
Anyone else notice her lack of nipples? Were they censored away? Or did the SCO and Amazon.com jointly patent X-Ray pr0n®?
Totally Life!
ALL replies
How difficult would it be to make a portable version of this? Imagine, if you will, a portable version that could be discreetly carried around (maybe even in a van or something). I bet suicide bombings would soon become a thing of the past.
Aside from the rather titilating views that these folks will be getting I am wondering about the health risks that constant bombardment of X-rays to frequent flyers. What about kids, infants and pregnant women?
Man, perhaps purchasing that new Cessna Skylane is getting more attractive.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
More pictures.
More detail as to how the machine works.
Sorry, but there wasn't enough info on either of the links...
Does this mean that they will be using X-rays on us everytime we pass through a security checkpoint?
Already I question how safe all that stuff is, especially standing in front of the opening of the X-ray machine while I put my carry-ons on the conveyor belt.
Although the technology is really cool, is this something I want to subject myself to, especially if I am a business traveller?
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!
if they just put the monitor in a curtained-off booth, that'd be enough privacy for me. hell, i have less privacy when i try on pants at the store. like i care if they can see my junk.
they have the authority to strip search you on nothing more than a hunch - so how different is this really?
i do remember reading an article talking about this some time back and they were thinking of using a computer generated genderless wireframe and then transfer any hits from the backscatter onto that image, instead of showing the viewer the actual person in the scanner.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I dunno... I understand the "need" for something like this, and how it would be a very effective preventative measure, but shit... Aside from that fact that it's one HELL of an invasion of privacy, the whole prinicple of being treated "guilty until proven innocent" really gets me. I don't dig on this idea at ALL.
The odor-detecting technology is getting pretty good too.
I've been waiting for the day to come when I can just walk around naked in public...this machine, with it's ability to render the covering of clothing worthless, is a step in the right direction!
Here's a link to a company, AS-E, who manufactures some of the most respected Backscatter equipment.
For a sample of some slightly frightening pictures check out these images:
http://www.as-e.com/technology/image_1.html
If somebody has time, it might be good to provide a mirror for these images.
Twwwoooo weeks... twoooooooo weeeeeeks!
Nice Bombs You Got There...
Be a shame if sumpin' were to happen to 'em...
Oh, wait...
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
... imagine Natalie Portman behind a Beowulf cluster of these things!
The real person. Her problem is that she feels fat.
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
Since the Xrays bounce OFF of the skin and do not go through it, it shouldn't be a hazard. Also, you are only bombarded for a second or two. Even for frequent flyers, a couple of seconds a week should not hurt anybody.
Truly an amazing technology. How long before contraband starts getting tucked in various bodily folds and crevices, and overweight travelers have to get pulled aside for special inspection?
When fat people are naked in the airport, the terrorists will have won.
Yet another option would be to make the screeners sit naked while at work, thus making embarrassment mutual.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
... then we'll know for sure now if those breasts are real or fake!
Four weeks, Twenty papers, that's two dollars
Now instead of using my imagination to mentally undress a girl, I can just get a backscatter xray! I just hope that I can operate the machine with just one hand, because the other hand will be tied up ;) hehe j/k and what not
Girls Gone Wild - Airport style.
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?
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
It would be nice if such machines detected the explosives by their electro-magnetic frequency signature or the like instead of human-based image recognition.
Another approach would be to use automated image recognition. The machine would hilite only suspicious spots, which the guards then inspect further. That way they don't have to see your whole body.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Celebrity X-rays start making thier way out to the tabloids?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I think I'm having a Total Recall.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Isn't he the stretchy guy from the Fantastic Four?
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
So as long as you're not exposed for, oh, ten minutes at a time, you'll probably be fine.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You *KNOW* it's only a matter of time before Larry Flynt or the latest celebrity pr0n site manages to get someone hired at LAX. Have someone taping the scanner line in RL, have the backscatter on a second feed, and this is all you need for verification that the backscatter pr0n is legit. Most of the more dubious websites will probably bypass the rl feed and try to pass the images off as celebs.
I'm not sure about the 3dPoseur look of the images and they don't do anything for me, but I think it'd be interesting to see what kind of person applies for this job.. Voyeurs?
The name backscatter is completely wrong.. It sounds like a Peter North film andways...
Another thing - Ever seen Spinal Tap? The airport security gate/cucumber scene comes to mind here....
B
FYI: Wired says that the amount of radiation
From Scientific American:
"A close second [in the stupid-security contest] was submitted by a guy whose story starts as he is about to board a plane in San Francisco. "The polite inspector informed me that he had to check my shoes for explosives. I dutifully removed them and handed them to him. He picked them up one by one and slammed them down on the floor with full force. Apparently, as they hadn't exploded, they were not dangerous, and he handed them back to me." Perhaps it's best to look on the bright side and simply applaud any public display of the scientific method."
Table-ized A.I.
Says the scanner will give you a dose less than 2% of normal dosage picked up from background radiation.
There are two reasons why the public will reject this:
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
Popular Science had an article on this months ago. Then they recently had a followup where a newer version of the system actually somehow eliminated the person's body from the picture; all you (the operator) could see were the guns, etc., superimposed on a generic body.
Here's the followup:
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,12--RJ
My fear is that this type of technology will make the underpaid, overworked, and barely skilled security workers even more complacent.
With backscatter technology, rays deflected off dense materials such as metal or plastic produce a darker image than those deflected off skin. The radiation dosage is about the same as sunshine, Hallowell said.
Everybody has a purpose in life, maybe mine is to lurk in slashdot.
Maybe it wouldn't have stopped 9/11 because the guidelines of the time really didn't think to cover small blades such as the box cutters. However, plastic explosives, plastic weapons? It might just be me, but I have no problem people seeing a digital "nude" of me as long as their professional. From what I could see in the picture on Wired, this technology is revealing, yes, but not to the extent that it can be considered really that "graphic."
Yes, you're right...maybe this wouldn't have stopped 9/11....but with the new, stricter guidelines and this new technology, maybe we won't have to watch thousands of more people die.
Just my $0.02.
Last weekend I took a trip to see my new neice. I brought along a few presents. At the last minute, the airline cancelled the flight and put me on a different flight, on a different airline. Fine.
Only problem is, since I changed flights at the last minute, even though it wasn't my decision, I got the extra-special anal-probe screening, which included, of course, opening all the presents that had JUST PASSED THROUGH AN X-RAY MACHINE. I swore there and then that I was done. If I can't drive there in my car in 8 hours, I don't need to go there. This just cements the deal. This is YOUR GOVERNMENT performing unreasonable random searches on you and interfering with free travel now, friends.
The AS&E BodySearch unit is huge. It's about 12 feet high, and costs about $1 million. The technology needs a redesign for production. Another generation or two, and it might be widely used. The X-ray exposure is surprisingly low, although well above background, of course.
In a few years, we might see them in nightclubs.
I can see all sorts of messages one can put on their body with reflective paint for all those scanner operators to see.
Only x posts and slashdotted! Must be running their site on product "A".
...
Imagine a beowolf cluster of item "B", on a "C".
Just wait till the RIAA hears about this! and/or Just wait till the MPAA sees this! and/or Just wait till the **AA hears and/or sees this!
Something SCO would do....Or Sue! Sue! call SCO
BSD is dying, only a few million users left!
Oh and MS knows security like they know open competition.
I used Mozilla once!
1. Action "D"
2. ???
3. Result "E"
MS sucks. or MSFT sucks. or Microsoft sucks. or Micro$oft sucks or Micro$loth sucks.
Linux has a far superior kitch factor.
I'm going to patent patenting. I'm going to patent the wheel, air, fire, water, item "F". Quick hide it from bezos.
I'm going to sue for violating my first post (patent|copyright).
Check my l33t signature!
Accomplishing goal L: Cost "G". Accomplishing goal M: Cost "H", for everything else there is item "I".
Something, something, something, private part [giggle like the school child you are], something, something, something.
something, other, something, Natalie Portman, something
Boochicka wowwow, something, hot grits and person "J", who may or not be Natalie Portman
Some guys widespread anus [goatse.cx]
In Soviet Russia, Item "J" does "K" to YOU!
Apple R0xx0rs!
Apple Sucks!
Kde!
Gnome!
Amigas aren't dead!
Polling:
[options a-g]
h. [unable to participate] you insensitive clod!
i. [cowboy neal poll option]
all your "L" are belong to "M"
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Up until now, x-rays have only been used on luggage and to scan your personal belongings which you put into the tray before you walk through the metal detector. Why? Because x-rays have been proven to be dangerous to living matter at high levels.
Of course, this doesn't stop them being used in an extremely diluted form, as in regular x-rays at the dentist or the hospital, but you cannot send x-rays more than a metre at these low levels because of spectral bandwidth diminishment issues (730 nanometers of bandwidth over more than a couple of feet diminishes beyond 100db/A - a useless level).
So, how can this scanner work? It uses a slightly varied version of the 'x-ray spec', known as "X-Ray2 (squared)". This is a new improved version of x-rays which have had the fatal bit removed. But, this is such new technology that we can't really be SURE of what's going on.
I recommend caution.
mogorific carpentry experiments
This is the wrong battle.
The danger to planes is going to be shoulder launched missiles from near airports. (Few planes are going to be highjacked now without a HELL of a fight, no matter what weapons the bad guys have, and explosives...well, who knows if they'll be identifiable even with a great view)
And the danger to the nation is in PORTS people...those thousands of semi-anonymous crates coming in ever day, with almost no inspection what so ever. That's how a little baby nuke would get into this nation, and Bush and Ridge are doing very little about it. (There was some good coverage of some technological helps to this problem in)
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
For every technological approach to anti-terrorism and security, the determined will always find a means around it.
Treating the symptoms of terrorism and not the cause will only erode the rights of the innocent and hasten a police state like nothing we've seen before.
Hmmm. Maybe there is a market for boner detectors. If we have to undergo scrutiny, then so do the guards.
"(beep beep) Well, it looks like ol' Bob is going to be suspended again. I bet his wife tossed his porn again so that he can't empty out before work. Sad."
Table-ized A.I.
You just ruined 25 jokes in one post.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
A: Each full body scan of the SECURE 1000 produces approximately 3 microREMs of emission. This is equivalent to the exposure every person receives each five minutes from naturally occurring background environmental radioactivity.
Yeah, except that you get that dose in a few seconds instead of five minutes.
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Deep Thoughts...by Jack Handey
At first I thought, if I were Superman, a perfect secret identity would be "Clark Kent, Dentist," because you could save money on tooth X-rays. But then I thought, if a patient said, "How's my back tooth?" and you just looked at it with your X-ray vision and said, "Oh it's okay," then the patient would probably say, "Aren't you going to take an X-ray, stupid?" and you'd say, "Aw screw you, get outta here," and then he probably wouldn't even pay his bill.
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
...when there's a handheld version for sale.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
So does bring new meaning to Airport Extreme? Will I now have to worry that every time I walk past a Mac user, I'm about to appear on some Internet site in my birthday suit?
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
In the terminator series- soon to be expanded to its fourth installment- time travel only works on naked bodies. I am amused to think that we may have to esort to this for ultimate security.
Even so, when you read about smuggling in prisons and elsewhere, there's alot you can hide inside a body.
Ever go on a blind date and wonder if your partner didn't seem to be the person they say?
Have you ever tried to pick up a girl and only when you hit second base, you realized "Hey!?! You're a guy!!!!"
Ladies, ever pick that kind of butch guy with the squeaky voice, get him home only to find he ain't "packing the package"?
Or perhaps, you were surprised to realize "Bobbi" actually meant "Bobby" or "Vicky" was short for "Victor".
Well, ladies and gentlemen, worry no more! Our deluxe gender scanner can reveal those crossdressers in a matter of seconds.
Never be shocked again!
Group of feminists: "Thats degrading to women!".
FRA: STFU GTFO
Its not xrays, but you might want to check out...
Terahertz Imaging:Another Way to See Through Walls
Terahertz Imagery Progresses
Teravision
Star Tiger
Stop modding this moron up...The exact same post get's made to every x-ray story, and it's completely paranoid rambling that is...
Duplicate topics, duplicate karma. That's life.
Table-ized A.I.
Is where all baggage is checked, and passengers, flight attendants, and pilots must fly entirely in the buff. Call it "bare skin" airlines. The only remaining problem would be that of beligerent naked kung-fu masters on board.
My rights don't need management.
JLO Screengrabs.
The CTO is named Randal Null? "Mr. Null, i presume." Naturally this man must name his son Devon...
have women screeners to screen women and men screeners to sreen men in separtate lanes.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
So every time I store my inflight snack in nature's pocket and the guards find out about it, I'll still get the gloves....great...Juuuuuuust great....
Now we can give terrorists cancer and they should be dead before they have a chance to take over any airplanes (assuming you give the cancer beam a little more power than the default).
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
First some guy looking at 13 year old girls toilet paper filled bra's.
Second, what about women who have had breast cancer and carefully conceal it by having a "strap-on" boob?
I still think the Total Recall version would be best, you just see bones and guns/bombs.
As a pre-op transsexual woman, use of such devices will guarantee that I'm not going to fly. Those transsexuals that fly now and are obviously trans are frequently subjected to strip searches, verbal harassment, and other abuse. I haven't had to deal with it because it's hard to tell with me - unless you have the ability to see certain parts of me naked.
Well, now the screeners can see everything. Meaning I'll have to worry about someone seeing something unexpected about me, and use that as an excuse to harass me.
This surely seems like an unfair violation of my privacy. After all, why should what's between my legs be their business?
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.
You'd think they could have used a better spokesperson for that shot.
She looks a lot better in the regular-light photo (other link).
She looks like transsexual Uncle Fester after Jenny Craig.
You know, transvestites are gonna really hate this thing.
Table-ized A.I.
Hmmm. Are they really using a x-ray sensitive ccd? Do they use a pin-hole for focusing, or are there good lenses for these (apparently low-energy) x-rays. If they have to use a pin-hole, then it seems like they would have a relatively long exposure time (since I would think only a small percentage of the xrays are going to get bounced off the target, and fewer still are going to get through your pin-hole). So then I wonder what the exposure time is. Do you have to stand perfectly still while the exposure happens? And I also wonder what kinds of materials you could use for lenses, if they are indeed using lenses to focus. What I'm really wondering is how hard would it be to make a home-brew machine like this, assuming the ccd's and lenses are available.
[scientific-musing]
The hullabaloo over this and similar devices is that they render the person under inspection apparently naked. This is an understandable objection. It seems, to my naive viewpoint, it would not be so difficult to computationally manipulate the image to remove the body, and leave everything else. After all, airport security (TSA in the US) is supposed to only care about things that are not the body. I've seen MRI scans which have been manipulated to, eg, peel the skull away from the brain, so I cannot imagine that it would be difficult to remove the pseudo-naked body from the data before they are displayed.
[/scientific-musing]
[privacy-rant]
I hate the idea of these and similar technologies which allow semi-secret observation of the populace without court order. Forget the tinfoil hat, you'll have to wrap your entire body in foil now!
[/privacy-rant]
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Link to IMDB
They should add fisheye distortion and very bright unnatural false colors to the image so that it is not as recognizable as a human figure. Such distortion would not make it difficult to spot odd items but it would pretty much make everyone look fat and ugly. That way the occasional hot chick does not look much better than a 300 pounder.
I'm pulling this out of my ass, ...
and now we have the photos to prove it!
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
...before bootleg videos of people being scanned make it onto the Internet.
And then another few months before bootleg videos of scanned-naked children are seized in a child porn sting.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I'm always amazed watching the security people
chat while not looking at the monitors as my
baggage goes through.
Super-Duper machines don't do it all alone...
you guys only modded it redundant because you wanted to tell those jokes yourself and he beat you to it!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Another option would be to restrict the screener to a booth so no passing peepers can see the image, said Randal Null, the agency's chief technology officer.
So what they're saying is that there will be private booths for airport security to monitor passengers who walk through this machine that look completely naked? I can see how this would lead to abuse of the system.
"Uhhh sorry mam we need you to stand right there for a few minutes our machine seems to be broken, yeah that's it, broken"
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Maybe I should have said,
"Fundamentalist Infested Martyrs", with visions of whatever subjective paradise have been injected into their heads driving them onwards to victory for the cause of their handlers.
You're spot on with the observation though, it's an arms race. And to make matters worse, there's astrolite variants that make the typical stuff look like koolaid which are relatively non-toxic until deployment. For the young man or woman with their sights set on paradise (ahahahahah, stupid humans), or the fundamentalist looking for a good kill ratio, backscatter isn't a factor. However, for the sheeple, it's wholesale humiliation and another reason to let the airlines rot until the government flips the switch on the "tighten the bonds on the commoners so they feel safer" methodology of freedom and relaxes again.
If it's so dangerous to fly now, maybe it's time to invest in infrastructure and establish a real high-speed rail system, and not something built on a gravel berm that's insufficient for 40mph freight trains either. For an industrial nation, we have a crap rail system. Don't believe me? Get up from your computer and go take a look at it. It sucks.
Like the benefits we reap from a slower government, maybe slowing down people and using the medium (rail) to limit the amount of devestation possible is a much better way to go. Face it, the chances that you're going to turn on the news to hear than an Amtrak passenger train derailed and took out a skyscraper are really small, buy still probably better than winning a state (shaft the sheeple) lottery.
Damn...I've been infected with the "sheeple" meme...AAARRGH! GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT!!!
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Huh... wonder what's on my mind today...
Insert witty
You're not a terroristic crimiminal, are you?
And summer is here. Oh, good.
This has the prospect of exhibitionists going to the airportfor the sake of being able to flash the guards without having to wear the classic trenchcoat. Imagine some otherwise normally clothed exhibitionist just innocently walking through security several times, simply for the sake of doing this.
This has the prospect of having people working the scan booths watching these people walk through several times.
Finally, if they do that electronic fig leaf thing, would somebody be able to hide something in the genital areas and have it be undetected?
This sig no verb.
"Does this X-ray make my ass look fat?"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
if they put a webcam and charged money. Heck, someday it may be free to fly as long as you spend 10 minutes in the booth.
Security Guard: "Wow, that Commander Taco really DOES carry a roll of quarters in his front pocket!"
Another option would be to restrict the screener to a booth so no passing peepers can see the image, said Randal Null, the agency's chief technology officer. However, putting the screener in the privacy of a fully enclosed booth entails the risk of having him sit around masturbating all day instead of watching for guns and bombs.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
so how different is this really?
Having the authority to go to the trouble of a strip search on a hunch, versus making it effortless to scan everyone, without the need for so much as a hunch...
nope, i don't see the difference either
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Anyway, somebody's decked out in one of these. And they walk through.
Beyond the accessories, could they tell the difference? Would they see the ersatz tails the performers (or in this case, costumers) wear with the costumes?
More importantly, would they really care?
For that matter, would you be able to avoid the security checkpoint, simply because of the fact that there are no pockets in a unitard in which to hide anything?
This sig no verb.
Alright, I know this is a whole can of worms that shouldn't be opened and that it's unsubstantiated and all that crap, but (I'm assuming you're white) at least you don't get "randomly" selected for humiliation every (this is not embellishment) time. I have a passport, a soc. sec. card, and a drivers license and still they eyeball me like I've just jumped a barbed wire fence from mexico. I generally avoid crossing checkpoints if I can help it. It makes me feel like I'm not wanted here, and it makes me not want to be here. Don't get me wrong, I think that our system of government is the best there is, when it's not broken by popular apathy. But I can see how someone who has no loyalty to it (hasn't grown up with it) could get really really pissed off by the kind of shit that goes on.
there most likely are cameras in the changing rooms where you shop. they get to see you in your natural glory. granted you keep your underwear on, but look again at the picture. it just looks like the broad is wearing spandex. no nipples, no hair, strong color tint. this is much less intrusive that what we already accept.
if the airports were officially privately held - we wouldn't be having this discussion.
but since there's a bizarre local government / major airline collusion occurring in the airline industry - we have this dilemma.
as with the changing room cameras in stores - you can simply opt out of this scrutiny. don't shop there. similarly - you have the option not to fly, or to fly out of a smaller airport that can't afford such expensive screening devices and subjects you to a pat-down and a wanding. Flight is a privilege in our country not a right.
in my opinion - we've been putting up with this level of invasion of our privacy for much smaller problems. i dont see how a blue-tinted hairless, low resolution, ken-doll-style reproduction of your image is worth getting all bent out of shape over.
yeah, it's a shame that the world has come to this, but until they can find a way to project our skeletal images onto a walk-by screen (ala Total Recall) without cooking us in short order with the current technology, i'm prepared to deal with the interim solution.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Are you kidding? You want them to schedule times for searches for criminal activities that don't "conflict with your schedule"?
Searching interferes. Your list of things that starts with "push, confiscate, pick my locks, " and ends with "be a dick" points that out pretty well. This kind of surveillance leads pretty directly to harassment. If the police perceive you as a lawbreaker (which is likely if they're watching your house), then finding reasons to arrest or fine you are easy enough when they have access to every action you make.
Did you sign your wife's check to deposit it so rent won't bounce? That's fraud. Got in a fight and threw something? Could be spousal abuse. Talked about driving home in a hurry? Oops, that's reckless endangerment. Got mad and said the president should keel over and die? Ah-ha! The highest of thoughtcrime. Nevermind the privacy invasion of your more intimate moments. If having that violated, having comitted no crime, please let me know your address, I could use the extra money a webcam could bring in.
At the end of the day, the best recommendation is: Don't give up your rights.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
"It does basically make you look fat and naked, but you see all this stuff..."
Actually, the fat is what makes you look fat.
the system in total recall was better.. it showed your bones and any metal objects that you had on you.. not the skin.
C:\earth\humans\del *.m0ronz
So it seems to me that the main thing that makes people modest, eg. not stripping naked and running around campus, is the fact that people will know it was you and you have to talk to them afterwards. The same is probably true of this machine, ie. people assume that the operator would see you before and after you walk through, and you might feel embarassed about beeing seen that way.
But just suppose for a second, that the operator of the x-ray vision machine is in a totally isolated room, and sees only the image of the person walking through the machine with no face shown, and doesn't get to see the person before or after. Wouldn't this eliminate the privacy problem? After all, if no one knows who you were individually walking through the machine, how are you to feel violated?
I personally would be ok with that kind of setup. Would you?
"It does basically make you look fat and naked, ..."
Uh, no director. It just makes you look naked.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
a massive increase in xray security position applications from people who post frequently to alt. fetish.upskirt
I remember hearing some airlines setting up special lanes for VIPs, a.k.a. rich people, to pass through the security checkpoints faster. So as these backscatter checkpoints start showing up in airports, will the rich and famous wiggle their way out of having to walk through these things? Is it fair?
On one hand, I'd have to say that well off people rarely blowup the planes that they are riding on. On the other hand, money can buy a lot of things. Can you really trust someone because they have paid for VIP privileges?
I for one don't think it should an option to buy your way out of a security scan that "everyone" is required to go through.
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
According to your explanation, gamma radiation would be quite safe to be exposed to. Afterall, it can pass through lead and concrete, so of course it can pass through you leaving you unharmed. Yeah right...
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks
When you go to the hospital and the doctor asks you to undress, would you refuse?
How about your children/wife? Would you rather have them not have a checkup? What if they seem sick?
No guarantee that a doctor is not a pedofile. No guarantee that he is not going to fantasize about whatever images he retains in memory.
On the other hand, looking at 5000 translucent quite imperfect human bodies a day may be quite desensetizing. I'd rather worry for the mental comfort of screeners than for the passengers.
A job I definitely don't want.
Of course this is coming from a guy born in Europe, where topless sunbathing doesn't cause mass hysteria.
A hairless, eyeless, black and white image of a body? Even a good one? Unless you get turned on by naked department store mannequins I fail to see how this can be used for sexual purposes. Although, there's still plenty to be embarrassed about.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Worrying about bananas seems a little excessive to me .. you do realize your body is chock full of radioactive Carbon-14, right?
DNA just wants to be free...
What difference does it really make though? Are you afraid they're going to call over the intercom that passenger #whatever has this or that wrong with their body? Come on.. This isn't stripping in front of a crowd of sorority girls or something okay? Get over yourself.. You're not so hot these people are going to remember you, you're not too ugly (assumed), and they see thousands and thousands of people.. The people who work at my local grocery store have a hard enough time remembering me.. You aren't gonna get judged anymore with your clothes off than you are with them on.....
Those see-through pictures of people look an awful
lot like they are infra-red, picking up heat coming out of the body. I had two links last year from rapiscan and osi-systems that showed these things to have many signs of being infra-red. The images have been taken down. No way that enough X-Rays bounce back to take a picture like that. What kind of lens do they use to produce that image? Looks like pure PR hype to me.
Did you look at the picture attached to the story? It's hardly what I would call titillating. Sure the image is naked, but it's also hairless, eyeless, and apparently sexless. (The scanner seems to lack enough resolution to show nipples or female genitalia.) It's not even in color.
You could get the same effect with a B&W photo of a clothes mannequin. And if that's what floats your boat, you'd be better served working at a department store rather than the airport.
It can see through the laptop as well. The plastic explosive, being an organic material, will reflect strongly and be visible on the screen.
I'd hate to be the poor schlep sitting behind the viewer for this contraption. With every passenger I'd be afraid that them walking through the machine would end up playing out like a Tool video!
I can hear the opening riff for Sober now...
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
now the world, which generally was unaware of what was revealed in an x-ray, knows that very little shows up. Only a matter of time now before everyone starts to smuggle plastic glocks on planes.
will I be going to airports, No!
Okay, I was mostly responding to the "I'm not doing anything wrong, search all you like" sentiment. However, the whole "flying is optional, so the government can restrict it as much as they'd like" argument (which I'm generalizing your statements to) is an interesting, and as you point out, a more on-topic, one.
Flying, like driving, is pretty far from being a right, and there are certainly cases where people should be restricted from doing both. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that its a completely optional service. Neither is driving, for that matter. Try living in rural Montana without a car and having anything resembling a modern lifestyle.
Still, the government shouldn't be allowed to come into just any activity, even if its optional, and demand that you relinquish great swaths of your rights in order to perform it. To take it to ridiculous extremes, you don't *have* to buy groceries, you're "free" to grow them yourself, but that sure impinges on your lifestyle (and 'pursuit of happiness', maybe?) And with flying, you're effectively saying that if you pursue a certain set of jobs, you must give up these rights while flying.
We tolerate it to some degree with flying already because of safety concerns. One point many people make is that most of these rights violations (illegal search and siezure) don't actually get you an increased level of safety.
To be clear, there's a difference between a privately hired person scanning your stuff (which I think is fine, btw) and the government entity generating a giant database of your traveling habits.
I guess your latest post did only mention x-ray devices. If that's all the further this stuff went, I'd probably agree that it's fine.
To be completely on-topic, I don't have a fundamental problem with this device, provided its used in some way that doesn't show me naked. That's not so much a 'rights' issue as it is a "I don't want to be naked to anybody" issue.
Well, this is all just rambling without a direct point, I think I'll end it here.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
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?
...because that would cause too high a turnover in screeners. ("Oh, great, Frank's losing it again...{hurrrrrrrlllllllllll}"
These scanners show an image of your shape, not you skin, not you fine booty, not your tatoos, and definitely not you. Just b/c the images are the same shape as the person scanned does not link the two. This tech produces more of, say.. a checksum of your exterior, not an image of your posterior. The only reason someone even has to look is b/c image recognition is so terrible.
So, for the modest, would you prefer a strip search? Once these devices become standard, all of the smaller airports will have to match up, and that means gettin' naked.
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
Okay, if you make lots of money on this cut me in. ;)
www.hotbackscatter.com
You know images of celebrities and hot chicks will be on the web no less then 3 days after they start using this.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
An article in the Washington Post talks about a possible electronic "fig leaf" over sensitive areas. Well, now terrorists know exactly where to put their weapons.
My mother and I saw this when it was announced on CNN about 2-3 days ago and my first thought was "yes!!! another method of freadom of speach"
now I can take tape, strap it to my chest in the patern so that when they X-Ray me, it will look like I have "F*ck Ashcroft" writen on my chest...
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
Except Richard Reid had the explosives in his shoes
Richard Reid + Richard Gere = Goatse
Table-ized A.I.
[Airport screener] "Excuse me sir, do you have any foreign objects on your body?"
[Derek Smalls] "Um... Not really."
[Airport screener] "Sir place all foreign objects in this tray"
(Derek pulls a cucumber wrapped in aluminum foil out of his pants and puts it in the tray.)
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
"They should use Postgre because MySQL isn't a real database; I really need rollbacks and views in my app."
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Its people like you that piss me off. Yeah, you're entitled to your opinion, but for gods sake don't ruin it for those of us who VALUE our privacy and don't want everybody staring at our naked bodies under any conditions. Its not like this is taking anything away from you since you don't have an issue with it, but for a vast number of people, this is taking away something very personal that has previously been impossible to implement on a large scale like this.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It's not another article; it's the same AP article on a different site. Even the photos are the same. Think.
If I recall, the 9-11 dudes were all up in First/Business class. And OBL himself seems to be pretty wealthy.
The thing that gets me about the shoe-bomber is - he didn't even succeed! As far as I'm concerned he was a long way off from making that plan work out.
And the WTC bombers had no advanced weapons of any sort. Just knives.
Now if you tried to hijack a plain with a knife (even if you got a good long plastic one) you would be overwhelmed by the passengers and crew - because they would assume they were all going to die, so what's a knife wound or two? Before that was not the case.
I think these technologies are too invasive, but part of that is because there is a human monitoring them. I agree that's more accurate but perhaps a good compromise is to have the devices everywhere but with a computer monitoring them, reporting anything that "looks" suspicious or allows security people to see a scan of a particular person they are concerned about (which is just ripe for abuse, I know).
To have everyone subjected to a strip search so we can find the next person with a box cutter or the "Hat Bomber" (you know that's coming) is just insane, and has less payoff than building devices looking for killer meteors.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Before I went all digital, I would regularly stuff a bunch of film cartridges in my pockets. I'll bet that would look pretty interesting on this monitor! Even now I like to keep CF cards with me and away from the scanners. I'll bet if they try widespread adoption of these things they'll find all sorts of crazy things that people don't want scanned for all sorts of reasons (religious artifacts might be one example).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's *not* GWB. It's a paraphrase of Ben Franklin. A man who would be *appalled* by the restrictions on personal liberties that have been put in place by the Presidential Shrub's junta.
Read it again...
Franklin said (paraphrase): Those who would be willing to trade freedom for security deserve neither.
"Ok miss, for purposes of national security, can you turn around and grab your ankles? Thanks."
You should get +5 polite for saying "Please bend-over" in a friendly tone! You're so nice!
With backscatter technology, rays deflected off dense materials such as metal or plastic produce a darker image than those deflected off skin.
Just hide a razor blade wrapped in tape in your mouth (the teeth will block the X-rays), put a small piece of wood in your carry-on for a handle, attach them when on the plane. Bob's your Uncle.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft are behind this, it's the sort of privacy invasion scheme that Microsoft are well known for.
:)
Or maybe I hate Microsoft too much
One could use that line to make up an excuse for almost any change in widely used procedures. You may say it's not an excuse but think before you say it. How many stupid decisions and overly strict, intrusive security policies are made up based on that particular excuse?
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
Time for a new job. ;)
Fixing them machines...get your mind out-the-gutter...
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
RTFSig, Notice that he reversed "freedom" and "security".
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.