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T-Ray Camera Sees Through Clothes, Preserves Privacy
Quite a few readers are sending in stories about ThruVision's products, slated to be demonstrated in Britain next week, that are claimed to use Terahertz radiation ("T-rays") to detect foreign objects under clothing, without revealing body details, from a distance of 25 meters and while the subject is in motion. T-rays lie on the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared and microwaves, and are the subject of lively research efforts worldwide. ThruVision says it developed its products in cooperation with the European Space Agency.
pr0n!!
oh wait.....
I love humanity, it is people I hate
Everyone knows the real threat is breast milk and hand cream. Why are we scanning bodies for weapons when there are people trying to get on the plane with Starbucks coffee??
.... it detects foreign objects? a tampon? or only objects RIGHT under clothes? Cause we all seen news of drugs hidden inside human orifices.
...so long as you redefine privacy to mean exclusively "photographic images of your body", and exclude anything else including the contents of your own pockets. That's a pretty narrow definition of privacy. So narrow, in fact, that it stops being privacy at all.
jpegs or you're lying!
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
The "naught bits" might not be very clear, but a lot of people would be unhappy with security guards looking at images of you like the one shown in this article. Would you be happy with some guy looking at a picture of your teenage daughter like this?
Last year they installed a device at Airport Schiphol in Amsterdam, that can also scan through your clothes to see what's beneath it. Read the article [url=http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/174-amsterdam-airport-body-scanning]here[/url]. Some articles on the internet claim that "The Security Scan scanner is based on a technology that uses millimeterwaves. The waves will persist over clothing, and are reflected by the skin. Also other materials, such as plastic, metal, wood, iron, ceramics, etc. reflect the waves. This will help to detect suspicious objects." More information can also be found here.
To repeat what others have said, requires education, to challenge it , requires brains.
Time to make some aluminum foil underpants to go with your hat.
)9TSS
'cause then you'd be able to disguise a weapon of mass destruction as a mere tool of rape.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Any deice that attempts to see things you have decided to conceal is a threat to privacy. Just because I choose to conceal something doesn't make me a terrorist, I could be concealing an external bladder bag (or any other kind of medical device), women (and guys, I suppose) may have given themselves some non-surgical "enhancements". There are all sorts of things I may be concealing that are no threat to anyone, but could embarrass me if they were made known to others.
No, the question here isn't whether this is a threat to privacy or not - it is. The question here should be is it a threat we're prepared to accept. How much of our privacy are we going to give up for a sense of security?
...owwwww my sperm!
OH wait.. that was an F-ray!
I drink to make other people interesting!
They can do what they want, but they'll never see through my tinfoil overall. I even have a catheter, so I never have to go pee. They've got cameras in the toilets, too!
I'm an infovore...
Planes hijacking using knifes cannot happen again. The 9/11 was a one-time event. Before it, in case of plane hi-jacking, passengers sat quietly, waiting for the hijackers to finish their negotiations. After 9/11, taking back the control of a plane at the risk of getting hurt is the most intelligent course of action. This is what apparently happened on UAF93. Now you can't hijack a plane without anything short of an automatic gun.
All this craziness about uber-security is just useless, the only risk today is the risk of bombing and it is already hard enough to bring a big engine in the cabin. Bombings are far easier by bringing a car full of explosives into a crowded area...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
How can anybody claim that something that can tell if I'm wearing nipple rings or a Prince Albert, or a variety of medical devices from colostomy bags to artificial breasts "preserves privacy"?
It's a really unfortunate choice of names, this "T-ray." Inevitably, it wants to make a person associate these waves with x-rays. Photons are photons, but as far as these guys go healthwise, it's pretty certain they'll have more in common with radio or microwaves than x-rays. Heck, the reason they call them x-rays and gamma rays in the first place is because they're in the regime where it makes sense to talk about photons as particles, rather than waves. And they call them "radio waves" and "microwaves" because THEY are down in the more wave-like regime. Just call it "millimeter wave" and be done with it, before we get people claiming they're getting ARS from T-ray devices.
(Let us not forget that a single terahertz-range photon carries about 4meV of energy. That's little-m milli, not big-M mega. These guys might cause some heating, but they're not going to be ionizing many atoms in your body.)
Am I the only one wondering, for example, why the hell they're selling glass bottles in the shops past the security check (just smash one of those and you have a potentially deadly weapon) when they won't even let anyone bring their own beverages?
Schiphol has had this technology for a few years now. The 'technicians' watch the show in a curtained box some distance from the gates and relay findings to security. When I asked if it was a 'sub-millimeter' system, I was told so, with a smile. They also have infrared that can spot people with a fever, who cannot fly. This system is passive. This device operates at about 10uM or 30THz.
BTW, 1mm = 300GHz and a true 'T-ray' is at about 1000GHz or 1/3mm.
Something that just occurred to me is a different use for this technology (assuming it's safe, and depending on the range).
What about using it in military outposts (especially in areas where suicide bombers are prevalent) to check people approaching. Much less of a privacy concern there, and much more useful too. Possibly create a vehicle mounted system that could go out to investigate suspicious people loitering around the area or even approaching the gates.
These devices use sub mm wavelengths, which means that they would be stopped by metallic meshes with a mesh size of 0.1 mm or so.
(I have seen women's party dresses with meshes like this).
So, what if I wear a metallic mesh shirt or coat ? Or pants ? So much for the T5000.
BTW, has any physicist ever used the term "T rays" ? What dumb-ass marketing guy thought that up ?
After reading TFA and some of the linked material, it came to mind that if a small T-Ray scanner that would fit in ones hand were invented, it'd certianly have most of the capabilities of the tricorder from Star Trek. Identify materials, scan tissue for disease, etc. Interesting...
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
That you can avoid all the insane inconveniences of airports and aeroplanes by travelling on a train. Tiny carbon footprint in comparison too. Perhaps it's time for the airport security industry to be taught that lesson.
Bastard! you robbed me of my chance to get a +5 funnay!! I WAS JUST GONNA MAKE THE FUTURAMA REFERENCE :.(
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Lots of people look at your bits with your permission; doctors, correction facility officers, the military, visitation people at airports. You could get around the awkwardness easily by establishing a code of conduct, and special procedures (like, I only want to be seen by a woman - ok, get in this special line here). But it would be expensive, and it would add a notch to the paycheck of the otherwise menial job of airport security officer. This technology is only being developed to avert payrises. Because T-ray /will/ be there at some point.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Link with pictures here
I think thats a great idea. I'd find it amusing a bunch of female terrorist whipping out their strap-ons and proceding to shoot the place up. THAT would be a sight to behold. Guerrila warriors with Boob-bombs. While i'm sure this scanner would be used in conjuntion with other tech my image would make a great traditional war painting.
What I'm carrying beneath my clothes is private. My privacy is not limited to just how well Nature has gifted the size and shape of my body's outline.
This device could be better for some limited security tasks like scanning for weapons at building entrances. But let's not pretend that it's a cureall for invading privacy somehow without invading privacy. If we do. then it'll be in use everywhere, and privacy will be as gone as the emperor's new clothes.
--
make install -not war
See if our emperors actually do have any clothes.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
how long it takes after this thing is installed before all the attractive women develope cancer
That's nothin. The good folks in alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.female have had this technology for years.
Actually there is a good reason for the plastic bag.
The plastic bag is used as a quick way to confirm that the passenger is bringing on less than a certain total volume of liquids. You are allowed a single one quart bag, therefore it is obvious at a glance that you are carrying on considerably less than a quart of liquids or gel.
It's not a foolproof way to keep terrorists from assembling a liquid bomb on board. It just means you need a larger number of suicide bombers at a go. If you reckon that you're most concerned with bombs made from a gallon or so, you theoretically could face four terrorists with quart bags stuffed to the gills with flexible 3 fl oz sachets of explosive gel. However it's pretty certain they'd attract attention. With "normal" payloads of toothpaste and and aftershave, you might need a lot more than four conspirators.
This points out another aspect of the "mindless" security procedures. "Mindless" has its obvious disadvantages, as in the case of the elderly lady I once saw having her mascara confiscated, as if a couple cc of liquid was a deadly threat. On the other hand, the screeners are supposed to recognize that this is fifth or six guy they've checked in with a baggie stuffed full of trial size after shaves. Attention and judgment, like anything else, is a limited commodity, and it's not to be wasted on granting exceptions -- even reasonable exceptions -- to the rules. In fact, in a busy check-in, it's not really appropriate to chat up the screeners, much less engage them in a debate about whether the rules ought to apply to your mascara. It's not that you aren't right, it's that society can't afford to hire enough screeners to debate whether the rules should not apply to individual things.
The place to debate this is where the rules are made, not where they are applied. In fact, rules tend to start out more inflexible than they need to be, because more flexible rules are more complex and have more borderline cases that could result in checkpoint debates.
It comes down, in the end, to economics, and that's what people miss when they get frustrated by the absurdity of the rules. The point of the rules is to keep flying cheap as much as it is to keep it safe. That's the trade-off. Sure, we could dispense with the 3 fl oz container in a baggie rule and be just as safe,but we'd be paying somebody to open up that sixteen ounce bottle of pantene and sniff it. Sure, we could allow a half empty six fl oz bottle in the baggie, but then we'd have to pay the screener to eyeball it, and then argue with the passenger whether it's more than half empty or not.
I don't buy the "focusing on many things" argument. It's really the number of parameters the screener must handle. The early version of the liquids rule was "no liquids at all"; logically, the class of banned items was larger, but the screener had only a single question to answer: is it liquid? For the convenience of the passengers, we now allow 3 fl oz bottles, and it's the relaxation of the rule that makes the inspection more complex. Taken to its extreme, the rule becomes simply, "don't let anything on the plane that might be dangerous." That rule goes without saying, but it's not an easy one to apply. Your anecdote of getting something through in your jacket doesn't prove anything, other than that things get through, which of course is true. It was true when the rules were much simpler, as on 9/11 when the box cutters didn't trigger anybody's suspicion.
The truth is, if you wanted inspections to be more effective and cheaper, you'd just get tougher on the passengers. If they've got a 4 fl oz bottle, it goes right in the trash; if they argue, you assume they are creating a diversion and you give them and their companions a thorough inspection, even if it slows the line to a halt. Eventually, people would lea
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I can't wait to see the T-ray kill a bunch of velocirays and then bellow loudly as a banner falls from the sky saying "When Privacy Ruled the Earth."
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.