Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear Scanning Catches a Radioactive Cat On I-5
Jeff recommends Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat's story from a community meeting with Northwest border control agents. Seems their monitoring for dirty bombs from the median of Interstate 5 caught a car transporting a radioactive cat. "It turns out the feds have been monitoring Interstate 5 for nuclear 'dirty bombs.' They do it with radiation detectors so sensitive it led to the following incident. 'Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour... Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope [in the passing car]. The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot.' Did he find a nuke? 'Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier.'"
Emitting nuclear radiation is the equivilent of shouting "hey, here, look in my vehicle. I've got something NUCLEAR!" No wonder there's no privacy. I'm sure if the vehicle was glowing no one would feel bad about them being pulled over. This just happens to glow in a very different way.
...until some law-abiding citizen going about his lawful business gets stopped and accosted for no reason beyond "the machine said so" during a routine blanket surveillance sweep. Enjoy the slide into a police state.
The fear of a dirty bomb is not that people will die--not many would probably die from the blast, or the radiation. Dirty bombs are nothing more than panic weapons. The public is, by and large, so terrified of anything "nuclear" that a large radiation dispersal device going off in a crowded area would cause literal waves of _redoubled_ panic as soon as someone realized and communicated that the bomb had radioactive isotopes inside it. Justifiably or not, it would then be a blind panic--these people would be running from something they can't see or smell, and probably don't understand in the slightest. Now, being informed about radiation won't keep it from bringing you harm if you happen to be exposed to it, probably wouldn't be much comfort if a radioactive bomb exploded across the street, and won't give you instantaneous wind-direction and plume information; it might help to allay the fears of those who're outside the blast zone, and might help ease the process of relocating back into the contaminated region.
Sure, they're not weapons that'll kill millions of people at a stroke, but isn't one of the common themes of life that the most striking, obvious, and dramatic dangers aren't always the ones that should merit the most respect and attention?
The false positive rate does matter, regardless of whether or not rights are being trampled. When you conduct any sort of large scale surveillance activity, the base rate fallacy implies that most of the triggering events will be false positives. With too many false positives, your surveillance program is worse than useless -- it wastes money that could otherwise be better used on other security initiatives.
I know there is some emotional appeal in arguing that "if it saves even one life, etc. etc. then it's worth any amount of money" but in the real world that's just not true. In the real world, spending one billion dollars to save a life might be a bad idea if spending that same money on some other program would save two lives. In comparing the relative merits of two or more different security proposals, the false positive rate is one important factor to consider, because it affects the cost/benefit analysis.
Of course, people's rights matter as well, because that also affects the cost/benefit analysis. Unfortunately, the American public is seemingly too dumb to perform any sort of analysis involving more than one variable. Since the false positive rate involves math, it doesn't have any political appeal at all. Hence the Republicans fixate only on the terrorists, and the Democrats when not fixating on the terrorists focus only on civil liberties to the exclusion of all else.
Why should I explain the details of my cancer treatment to some TSA agent? My medical history is private and should be protected by law from unnecessary disclosure.
"Americans don't have a right to own dangerous radioactive components. "
I believe you misspoke, when you used the word "right" there.
Perhaps, you meant to say, "Americans aren't PERMITTED to possess dangerous radioactive components?"
While the "Right to Keep and Bear Property" isn't one of the explicitly enumerated ones in the Bill of Rights, the "Right to Keep and Bear Property" is the Right upon which *all* other Rights are founded.
Without that absolute right, the notion of having any Freedom or Liberty is ludicrous.
Yes, there's an obvious contradiction in being told that one is Free and at Liberty, but also told that they cannot own, possess or use property without obtaining prior permission from their Masters.
My only advice is: When presented with this historical opportunity to watch a civilization fall, enjoy the show!
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org