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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."
Here's a sample of what they see:
http://www.freedomisslavery.info/index.php?p=1138
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.
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."
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.