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Airport Screeners could see X-rated X-rays
AdamBomb writes "Think airport security is bad enough already? Well, the Department of Homeland Security is now planning on rolling out new machines that will allow screeners to actually see through clothing. Could be bad news, though privacy advocates are obviously fighting it."
But you lot will take it lying down just like you do with everything else.
Here's a sample of what they see:
http://www.freedomisslavery.info/index.php?p=1138
Maybe not a repost on slashdot, but I remember reading about this in Time over a year ago ( 2 years ago? ).
This is old tech, and while privacy is a concern, I'd rather have someone checkin' out my jimmah if it means weapons have a lesser chance of getting on the plane.
As an asside: I don't think tighter passenger security is where we should be headed: I think we should lock down the air planes. The cockpit simply isn't accessable from the main carrage of the plane, there would literally be a seperate entrance externally. Further, I favor undercover armed guards on every flight. Police officers, if you will.
I think this would go a long way in making our flights more secure, without having to resort to privacy encroachment methods.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Repeat after me:
Glocks are not undetectable ceramic weapons. Glocks are relatively normal guns with lots of parts in them that will set off metal detectors.
Keep repeating this until you have learned it.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
. "I have a beautiful 29-year-old daughter and a beautiful wife, and I don't want some screeners to be looking at them through their clothes, plain and simple," he said
The operators of the scanners are only allowed to scan people of the same sex as themself.
Underholdning.info
This is great demo use of this device because gun shootings on planes are like daily occurances. Thankfully we will finally be able to see the people that bring guns on planes.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
http://www.rapiscansystems.com/sec1000.html
1) The images released to the news are intentionally blurry. The real images are much sharper. You can also see e.g. the shinbone as the backscatter radiation penetrates not only clothing, but skin.
2) The amount of radiation received is portrayed as being low. What they neglect to mention is the dosage per UNIT TIME. Sure, you get more on an International flight, but it is amortized over a number of hours, not minutes or seconds. For example, a bone marrow recipient has the old defective marrow killed off by radiation over a couple of days; the same dosage would be fatal if given over a short time period. You also have to add in the cumulative effect of being scanned now in ADDITION to any other radiation you already would receive. If you fly frequently, this may be alarming.
3) This still does nothing for explosives smuggled internally, or for the 95% of unscreened checked luggage. It also does nothing to protect people standing in lines for tickets or at the terminal.
For instance, imagine the TSA actually catches a suicide bomber strapped with explosives. Well, he or she can take out hundreds of people in those parallel security lines, from a combination of different flights...
Thus, all the screening they have added is NOT for protecting people, but for protecting PLANES. Planes are expensive.
Finally, remember in Israel they made it very hard to hijack a plane. What happened? They got suicide bombers every OTHER place instead. Night clubs, restaurants, cafes, on buses, in traffic, everywhere. If you don't want suicide bombers, you have to prevent people from WANTING to do it in the first place. Trying to catch them in the act is going after the symptom, not the root problem.
Airplanes are more secure now for one reason only. The passengers now know to fight back.
We aren't going to see another hijacking for that reason alone. However, there are numerous ways to sneak items onboard which could take out the plane. And it is trivial to leave an unattended package in a crowded line, and an incident at a major airport will shut it down and snarl traffic across the country just as well as if it were on a plane.
It is impossible to stop 100% of determined attacks. The best defense is to avoid having enemies that hate you to that extent in the first place.
Rather than being afraid of "scary things yet to come", if that has an overtone of "don't panic"..., have a look at this excerpt from a scholarly article (and that's by a Professor of Law) on what was known the technology could do more than half a decade ago already: Froomkin, The Death of Privacy, p. 1499-1501 (p. 39-41 of the PDF).
Resolution 1 millimeter even back then, with drastic explanations of what that means.
Now... panic!
People without weapons make their own. The weapons tend to be psychological, and kids do get hurt.
Two years ago, my kids elementary school had open gates during school. Some crazy in Nara kidnapped a girl and killed her and now there are copycat attempts everywhere, and the kids' school has cameras and guards and locks the gates.
My wife tells me about a young high school girl about her age (okay, this was a little while ago) crossed a yakuza sugar daddy and was found in the burned out wreck after an explosion in an apartment parking lot just down the road from the train station here, not three miles from her parents' house. She heard the explosion, IIRC. This is moderately upscale neighborhood.
And there's the sixth grader in Suma, cut off a third grader's head and hung it on the school gate there, four or five years back.
Kids get thrown off roofs of schools for being different, or hounded until they jump themselves.
Gun control only hides the violence.
Gun crime is up by about 2%. I would struggle to call this "Way up" oh and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4071363.stm
Should clarify the situation regarding self defence in the UK
While the decline from '03 to '04 is good news, the significant figures are those that include the period from immediately before the adoption of the UK's victim disarmament law until the present day.
For the overal historical picture, see "Guns and Violence: The English Experience"
In a nutshell, crime in the UK was on a fairly steady decline until the proponents of victim disarmament started to get their way in the 1930s. It all really hit the fan in the late 1990s, when the gun ban precipitated a sharp rise in gun crime.
When a government is willing to imprison an innocent man for defending himself from criminals, you should certainly expect a jump in crime.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Planes are designed to fly with windows missing. It does not cause a catastrophic loss of stability, all it does is depressurise the cabin. Wear your nice yellow mask and everything is fine.
Come on, these things fly with engines missing. One window isn't a major problem. The size is determined as one which can be shot out and the plane can still fly.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Now with full body naked airport scans of JLo, Jennifer Aniston, Britney Spears, ...
A rapid depressurization at high altitude in any plane can mean a number of people pass out and die before they have a chance to put on their mask.
If for some reason the crew cannot put on masks rapidly then their capacity to react can become impaired due to hypoxia, even if the depressurisation is not rapid. This
might be a useful reference.
I would like to see a report of how effective all this airport busy work is.
How many would be terrorists have we caught using these measures?
True story:
We're (Husband,wife, 2 year old son, parents) headed to a state to visit grandparents. We get delayed in a layover state and the airline issues us aall a one way ticket on another flight.
My 2 year old son gets flagged as a suspect becaue of the one way ticket. Not I or my father in-law, my 2 year old son!
The screeners come up to us and take us to another area. We're not alowed to touch him at this point or we'll be handed to security for resisting. All we can do is follow.
The screeners themselves said that this was ridiculous and were apologetic for the procedure they were required to follow.
It was pretty terrible to watch him freak out in the hands of another adult but then he said "doctor?" and we said "Yes, they're doctors" to agree with him so he's at least civil.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
That is a fucked up example. He shot someone in the back that was running away from his house, then let him bleed to death on his lawn before he was reported missing the next day.
There was no reason for him to fire and in most US states he would be facing charges for his actions.
Not that you are deliberately misleading people or anything. He shot someone in cold blood and let them die in one of the most horrible way imaginable. Hardly "innocent".
Adding backstatter technology is NOT a net gain in security. It's false security, unless one adds intrusive body searches on top of the scanner.
"Yes, Jayne, she's a witch. She's had congress with the beast..."
"She's in Congress?" - Firefly, "Objects in Space
Handguns are heavy. To make it easier to carry one around all day, Glock designed a line with some parts made of plastic rather than metal to make them a little lighter. It worked so well that now many handguns from other manufacturers have plastic frames.
There's still plenty of metal in them and they will set off detectors.
The "undetectable plastic gun" thing was FUD, pure and simple.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
When a government is willing to imprison an innocent man for defending himself from criminals
tony martin is hardly an innocent man he was convicted of manslaughter by a jury, the only reason the charge was reduced from murder was Dr Joseph found Martin to be a paranoid nutcase and not able to make rational decisions.
the man shot an unarmed teenage boy in the back, with a gun he was not legal entitled to (his shotgun license had been removed when he started shooting at people scrumping apples.)
in short tony martin is exactly the sort of person i want locked up, one un-able to distinguish between revenge and justice.
the only other case i can think of where the "victim" of crime was jailed for "defending" himself involved a factory owner who set a man trap in his factory for burglars (notice BTW burglars are UNARMED unlike robbers), he then proceeded to brutally torture captured burglar.
Now if you are sitting there and thinking good, it should be his job to meet out punishment to criminals, then you also are confusing revenege and justice and should go back and join the mob weilding pitchforks to which you obviously belong,as you are clearly not a civilised human being.
Airlines are private companies, and while they are subject to certain anti-discriminatory rules, no, you don't have the right to cross the atlantic IN THEIR AIRPLANE if they don't want you to. you are completely entitled to cross the atlantic on your own. you can swim, row, whatever, however you may have some difficulties at the far shore with customs and immigration officers of that country.
you could always start your own airline with different rules...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Not urban legend, however, is a little knife I saw advertised maybe 30 years ago, made entirely of plastic and glass fiber. The catalog (P&S Sales, a fairly trustworthy outfit) said it would take a shaving-sharp edge as I recall. It was dubbed the "CIA Letter Opener".
Dunno how you'd detect one of those without X-ray imaging or physical contact.
Why not make the door for the airplane pilot bullet proof and locked from the inside. That alone would have stopped 9-11
You don't really think that do you? Seriously, there's traffic between the cockpit and the cabin all the time - so there has to be a communications link
Call the El Al, Israel's national airline and ask them how it's been working out. All their planes have locked and bulletproof doors to the cockpit and plain clothes law enforcement on each flight. There have been many hijacking attempts, none have been successful. No "little girl with a razor blade to her throat standing in a pool of her fathers blood."
Actually, only half wrong. But I thought I'd take the opportunity to use my favourite "subject" heading.
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Lets talk British crime rates. Yeah, baby!
Violent crime has fallen by over a third since 1995. So, since they tightened gun laws violent crime in the UK has *fallen*. (Not risen, fallen.)
Source: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/hosb1004.
Now, I know there are people who don't like the British Crime Survey. But their methodology is simple. Every year they ask 30,000 people "have you or a close friend/relation been the victim of a crime, if so what was it and how many times did it happen?" Essentially, the survey strips out the absurdities of police crime reporting changes. (See http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/20
Now, I'm not claiming that guns cause crime. But the evidence is certainly more mixed people (on either side of the debate) believe. And the main argument, I believe, against letting the populace bear arms is the risk of accidents. (See http://www.kidsandguns.org/study/states_deaths.as
Anyway, just my thoughts,
Cheers,
Robert
--- My dad's political betting
Actually, I just went on my honeymoon (gasp! Married Slashdotter!) and was suprised to learn that lighters (even the non-fillable bic disposables) and matches are confiscated.
When I flew about a year ago, they confiscated a refillable lighter, but let me on the plane with a non-refillable (yup, I smoke....)
Now, we got on the Cruise ship and I had to pay 3.50$ for a novelty lighter (seemed to be the only ones they had for sale) of which I had to throw away before I got to the security check in Orlando.
Apparently, even if you put them in your "checked" luggage, they'll still confiscate them.
Now I know you can't really smoke on planes anymore, but what is the point of confiscating a lighter? I can see if you had a bulk pak of 30 of them or so, then you might have a problem; but when they see I had 3 packs of cigarettes stowed away in my carry-on, they had to have somewhat of a clue that I would be using the lighter to smoke a cigarette every now and again.
Not to mention the lighter that got confiscated on the way down to Orlando was 3/4 empty.
Karnal
Nail clippers are not confiscated, thanks for playing... Here's the list in case you were wondering: http://www.tsa.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/Permitted _Prohibited_5_16_2005_v3.pdf
You're either a cretinous Fox News slave or you're knowingly mendacious. Either way, fuck you
What did I do to get this kind of language??? From ACLU's own website: The American Civil Liberties Union today told a House subcommittee that airline passenger profiling would be a dangerously ineffective, invasive and potentially discriminatory practice
The grandparent post was about a 2 year old getting searched in the name of being fair to everyone and I pointed out that it would be discriminatory and the ACLU would be all over them if they picked only on suspicious characters. Are you seriously telling me that the ACLU would be in favor of not screening small children but only suspicious characters??? How do you reconcile your claim with their own news release say that profiling better not be used because it might discriminate??? It's all very fine if you want to support searching small children in the name of being fair, but don't blast me if I agree with the grandparent that it's silly to do so.
at 36k feet, 6 miles up
:)
Small nit: 36,000 ft is 7 miles, not 6. 1 mile is 5080 feet.
There was one where the wrong screw sizes were used in a window in the cockpit.
I saw a special on that accident. Interestingly, the pilot actually survived. His legs remaind inside the cockpit below the knees (his ankles actually caught on the control column, forcing it forward, and thus forcing the plane into a steep nosedive), and he was pinned to the outside of the fuselage. I saw it on "Mayday," on Discovery.
However, this was not due to rapid depressurization. When the cockpit window blew out, air was rushing directly into the cockpit at over 600 mph. Given that the cockpit is a closed environment, this caused a tremendous whirlwind effect in the tiny, closed space. The captain wasn't "sucked" out so much as "blown out."
A similar opening in the cabin, where the window is parallel to the airflow rather than perpendicular, wouldn't have nearly the same effect. Besides, Mythbusters broke this myth.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
This was essentially a human-scale version of the explosive trace detector that they currently use on luggage. The air jets are designed to dislodge trace particles/explosives residue that might be attached to your clothing, which could indicate that you were either carrying a bomb or were working around one recently (or were playing golf on a recently fertilized golf course).
As far as not explaining what it was, shame on them. SFO is not known for great security staff--a little known fact is that the "TSA employees" at SFO are not really employed by the government, but via a contractor (just like the old way--SFO is one of the "test" airports for the third-party contract system). Not that TSA staff are universally stellar (some are better than others), but I always find that the SFO folks are at the bottom of the barrel.
Lighters have been banned since about three weeks ago. I currently work for an airline, and we've been confiscating literally HOARDES of them. But your allowed to take 4 books of strike on back matches. Go figure...
I'm amazed at your restraint. I have no doubt that had it been me I would be in jail at this moment. I could not watch my son so frightened without acting.
Please understand that I don't mean anything personal against you, but that incident would be the end of my freedom. I'm positive.