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Full Body Scanners Installed In 10 US Airports
Lapzilla brings word that airports around the US are beginning to use a new type of body-scanning machine which records pictures of travelers underneath their clothing. The process takes roughly 30 seconds, and the person viewing the pictures is located in a separate room. We've discussed similar scanners in the past. From USAToday:
"[Barry Steinhardt, head of the ACLU technology project] said passengers would be alarmed if they saw the image of their body. 'It all seems very clinical and non-threatening -- you go through this portal and don't have any idea what's at the other end,' he said. Passengers scanned in Baltimore said they did not know what the scanner did and were not told why they were directed into the booth. Magazine-sized signs are posted around the checkpoint explaining the scanners, but passengers said they did not notice them."
Second thing:
Wonder if it would be legal to sell a line of rubberized scan-proof lingerie?
"Auntie Mandy's No-Scan Panties: The TSA won't see your va-jay-jay today"
"Bodacious Ta's Rubber Bras: If the TSA wants to see your nipples, make 'em buy you dinner first."
"Mr. Happy's Super Sleeves: Take a 'tripod' through the TSA scanner."
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Government-sponsored voyeurism has reached a new low. Who are we protecting ourselves against again?
Silence of the Lambs style human skin suit. A man needs his privacy.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Since I'm pretty sure you can't board the plane without showing ID at some point, what will probably happen is you won't fly anywhere that day.
Unless you look foreign. Then you'll fly down south for a nice vacation somewhere sunny. Like Cuba.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Even worse: They want to see our children naked!
Please will someone (aside from the TSA and pedophiles) please think of the children!
Would the recorded images of people under 18 be considered child porn?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Wouldn't this fall under the auspices of unreasonable search and seizure? It seems to me this manner of search invades personal privacy for no other reason than everyone is a criminal in the eyes of the TSA.
I would hope that this matter gets brought up in SCOTUS
I recently saw signs for this when going through LAX - but the serurity point I wnt through did not have them installed yet.
The sign I read had one line at the bottom that said you could opt/ask not to go through the screening process. It did not say what horrid, annoying or time conuming process was the alternative.
Like so many other times when dealing with law enforcement, simply say "no, I'd rather not."
You can board a plane without ID. However, you have to go through more intensive security measures, and you go into a separate line for that.
At some very busy airports, this has been occasionally used by seasoned travelers to get through security more quickly. It's a gamble as it depends on how busy the wand screeners are, but sometimes it works.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
That's not what they want. Fuel has moved from 10% of the airlines' cost to more than half, in some cases. Nearly a dozen airlines have folded in the last few months, and even the largest carriers are getting panicky. If anything, this is more problematic than the post-9/11 jitters, because everyone knew they would subside, but no one knows if this is going to be a bubble or if it's the new standard for oil. As someone who likes to fly 3-5 times a year (and would like to fly more), I'm concerned that what used to be comfortable $300 flights (I'm 5'4") will become crowded $450 flights, and that makes it hard for me to justify the expense.
The airlines would love to get back to competing on fares while also having a comfortable profit margin. It's just not in the cards right now.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Probably the most embarrassing thing that would be revealing some of the locations of body piercings.
This isn't an X-ray machine, or even a Z-backscatter machine. It's a millimeter wave device. TSA has a web page for the thing. It's not as detailed as a Z-backscatter image.
Here's the product page for the ProVision scanner. It's made by Level 3 Communications.
This thing was first announced last year, so the story is out of date.
http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2008/05/you-asked-for-ityou-got-it-millimeter.html
Yes, well, if they're going to be charging a lot of money for an uncomfortable experience, it doesn't seem very smart to pre-annoy the living heck out of the customers before they even get on the aircraft.
They don't need to be doing any of this nonsense. They just need to armor the cockpit and plop an air marshal on each flight. That reduces the threat to the less than it used to be; the trigger for all this hysteria was flying the aircraft into extremely high value and heavily populated buildings. So make that impossible and let the rest of us get on with our lives.
The real problem here is that hysteria is meat and potatoes for political stumping. Politicians have every reason to push this crap around -- it saves them from having to deal with real issues. Like health care, the infrastructure, the national debt, erosion of the constitution... you know, stuff that actually matters. But a huge number of people are gullible and stupid, and that's why this crap will never end, barring total collapse of the government.
Democracy is flawed from the outset. It allows any two uninformed people to outvote an informed person in a context where informed people are rare. Both in the general public and in the congress. Game rigged to fail, right there.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In the many years I studies physics, there were no particles I knew of that created something called "millimeter waves".
Er, studied physics where?
There's nothing mysterious about millimeter waves. They're from about 30GHz to 300GHz. They're not ionizing radiation, like X-rays. Here's a simple scanning millimeter wave radar system with pictures of the components and images from the system. Note the tiny waveguide and feed horn. It's a radar in miniature. This little unit runs at 35GHz, so it's just barely into the millimeter range.
In the millimeter RF range, it seems to be possible to get up to about 100GHz with off the shelf components using Gunn diodes and GaAs transistors. Above 100GHz is still mostly an area for experimental work. There are people working on "to 100GHz and beyond!. But not much is really working up there yet.
This isn't a backscatter X-ray system. That's a completely different technology.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is exactly what they want EVERYONE to think. But the truth of the matter is, no, you DON'T have to go along with it. People need to wake up and stop being a bunch of ignorant sheep in the face of all of this. Refuse the scan, refuse the pat-down, refuse to even fly anymore. Prices are going up and so is the amount of bullshit they make you go through to squeeze yourself into a cramped metal tube with not but a package of stale peanuts as food.
Really, why is all of this crap even necessary? All it does is create more headache for everyone involved. I'm not saying we need NO security, but this is honestly going completely overboard. Metal detectors? Good idea. Keeps people from bringing certain bad things on planes. X-ray luggage? Also good, for reasons stated above. Air marshalls? I'm not keen on the idea of firearms at 35,000 feet, but someone in law enforcement is a good idea if someone gets a bit drunk or stupid. Re-enforced cockpit doors? Should have been done a long time ago. That's just common sense.
Beyond that, I don't really see any of it as more than an excuse to spend vast sums of money. Air travel is still one of the safest (albiet nowhere near the most comfortable these days) ways to travel. The only reason incidents get so much media attention is the number of people killed in one event. Wait a couple hours and the number of deaths on the highway will take the lead once again, however. Bombings went out of style in the 80's, and you can forget about any more hijackings. After 9/11, do you REALY think passengers are going to stand for that sort of crap anymore? Not a chance. We're throwing money at phantoms, here. Attacking air travel is pretty much dead these days, but not because of any new security measures. All the same, I think I'll take my chances on the highway. At least nobody is going to attempt coercing me into a full-body scan and cavity search just to get into my car.
One final aside:
Wasn't the whole mantra several years back one of "We musn't change our way of life, or THEY will have won."? Now look at us. We allow draconian measures to be passed in the name of "security". We freak like children with imaginary boogeymen under our beds when someone even THINKS the word "terrorist." We happily give up privacy because we are sold on the illusion that it's for our own good and it will only effect those who have nothing to hide. We have become completely paranoid and changed the way we do pretty much anything, out of fear that we will get hit again. I'm sorry, but isn't that the very goal of a terrorist act? To have us do EXACTLY what we have done in the past seven years?
Society has become so caught up in going apeshit trying to prevent THEM from winning, that the exact opposite effect seems to have occured. Eight years ago, almost nobody had ever heard of the names being tossed about on the news. Now, it's foremost in everyone's mind. Their goal wasn't to savagely murder thousands of people, that was just the tool they chose to use. No, their real goal was to make themselves known, and us frightened. I hate to say it, but they succeeded.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
I get searched manually all the time. The wankers see the scars and can't figure out that I'm not going to rip weapons from the body. I guess they think I'm a T-101 or some crazy s**t like that. Heck, it's not like I'm wearing concealing clothing either, standard shorts and tank top. I figure it's easier for them to wand me when the TSA boy's and girls can see the f**king scars. Winter obviously makes this harder.
I was in a bike accident a little ways back. I have enough surgical steel in me to beep many place, but it has taught me a couple of things. The first being that many airports obviously turn down the sensitivity during busy times. I've had detectors that I've gone through and set off, not go off. Now if I, with 62 screws, 5 plates, and two pins don't set it off then WTF does? I doubt it's because they remembered me six months later at some busy hub.
Still, you gave up your freedoms and privacy to be safe, right? I'd feel safer guarded by girl scouts at this point.
If you don't agree with me, I'd can cite many history examples to prove my point.
I like to kill your couch. HE DIED HARD! MOO.
Yes, you can. Bruce Schneier did it. So did author Tim Ferriss. So did journalist Jim Harper.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
If someone puts a ceramic knife in his rectum, then my bet is that he's so hardcore he can't be stopped.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
I take it you haven't been a patron of the British rail system then.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
C4 is not unstable. Even so, an electric shock will not cause C4 to detonate. Such explosives require a large and quick physical shock (pressure) to start detonation, usually supplied by a blasting cap, which can be triggered electrically.
You need a blasting cap. One or two grams will be just enough. All you need to do is hermetically seal off that amount of substance (depending on which substance you're using and it's ignition temperature it can be anything from resin to wax), wash it in a solvent or any aggressive substance that'll remove traces of the primer and then put it inside your digital camera, watch, laptop or any other physically complex device. Modern blasting caps are detonated by very low voltages. I used to detonate them with those flat little button cells. Considering it's really easy to blow up a plane today there are only two possible explanations why it's not raining aluminum: 1. The terrorists are idiots and can't do this kind of attack because they lack knowledge. 2. There are no terrorists willing to hijack planes and kill civilians in modern countries just for the fun of it.
I just noticed I was modded troll. I find that very interesting. I merely stated my opinion on the matter. Although you may choose to submit, and voluntarily give up your rights, I do not. You may either not fly, or you may give up your rights. There is no choice, there is an implied consent at airports, and nowhere else in my experiences traveling by bus, or train, have I been required to give up those rights afforded me as a citizen of the United States. Why is it that Americans just accept that an airport is a magical place where the Constitution does not apply?