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Can Imaging Technologies Save Us From Terrorists?
itwbennett writes "In the aftermath of the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack, full body scanning technologies such as millimeter wave and backscatter are regaining popularity, writes blogger Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in a recent post. But, he asks, do they really work? The TSA seems to think so. It has just issued a contract to purchase more millimeter wave scanners from L3 Communications. Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary, told the New York Times that if these scanners had been in place, they would have caught the would-be bomber. Ben Wallace, the Conservative Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, disagrees, saying that the technologies can't detect the kind of low-density explosive that the would-be terrorist tried to use on December 25th."
He stuck them up his bum.
aren't these the scanners known to have health risks and/or not work?
Ben Wallace, the Conservative Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, disagrees, saying that the technologies can't detect the kind of low-density explosive that the would-be terrorist tried to use on December 25th."
Since when has a technology that doesn't work deterred the US from using it anyway? :(
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
...until some terrorist manages to get his underwear bomb past the millimeter wave. After that, will we all be required to fly in the nude? (If so, I refuse to fly unless I'm flying in a plane full of nothing but attractive young female swimsuit models)
Had DHS not been so secretive about their processes and people actually bothered to listened when the guy's father walked into the US embassy and said "I think my son is a terrorist" and actually looked into the matter it wouldn't have happened.
Right now I don't think I know if anybody without an TS-SCI clearance actually knows how to get on of off the list.
New scanners break child porn laws
because child porn laws are already being considered with these new machines, in the UK I believe no one under 18 can be scanned with one.
So, lets just hand them our playbook again. Instead of looking for terrorist we are looking to naughty bits.
We are nearly suicidal in our attempts to not offend anyone. What will it take to realize that feelings heal over time but death does not?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The government likes this war on terrorism so they will keep it going so they can do in the name of anti-terrorism whatever they like to do. Its like the neverending war from orwell's 1984.
There was an article that mentioned that use of these scanners violated GB laws on child porn. So now you have kids (up to 17) - very impressionable and angsty kids - that will become the target of recruitment by terrorist organizations. Epic FAIL.
What we need to do now is to accept that airline travel is not safe, and can never be safe. Everything in life that has the best rewards also has the greatest risks. Why can't we just factor risk into airline travel for the reward of being a timezone away in an hour? I would still fly. And those who wouldn't would push for a transcontinental high-speed train (Mag-Lev?) which would have a lower risk/reward, but just as cost effective.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
It promoted "terror". It's making the enemy (us) scramble, expend resources and showed the jihadies that the enemy (us) is still vulnerable.
That there were no dead bodies or a mile-wide debris trail in downtown Detroit is trivial -- because there COULD have been.
The only thing that will save us from terrorists is to refuse to be terrorized. When we go through all this bullshit, giving up our liberties, conviniences, travel, the terrorists win.
It's just more security theater. There are a whole lot of ways to kill large numbers of people, and no way to protect all of them.
Why are you so afraid of terrorists when only 3,000 people have died from terrorism in the US this century, while there are five times as many Americans murdered every single year in non-terrorist murders?
Murder is murder, why should political murder scare you more than some thug doing a drive-by shooting?
Free Martian Whores!
Disclaimer: I am an expert in millimeter-wave and terahertz imaging technology, both passive and active. I have posted here many times before, also as AC, for obvious reasons.
The short answer is a qualified YES. All imaging technologies can (help) save us from (some) terrorists. Specifically, those individuals carrying dangerous/unknown objects or materials outside their body, whether integrated with their clothes or simply bound to their body. The proof is in the images. I will provide examples if asked.
As far as safety concerns, the active millimeter-wave systems are safer than your cell phone or laptop wifi. The x-ray backscatter systems give you a dose of radiation that is far less than what you receive while flying over a few states at 39,000'.
The ultimate issue for most people is privacy. I won't get into that here; I just know the phenomenology and implementation side. I will answer any questions now, so please respond.
The article you linked to says no. The health risks are no greater than carrying a cell phone or spending 2 minutes in an airplane at cruising altitude (depending on the type).
Next time I fly I am going to use a paint-pen to write something clever on my ass and see if they notice. Maybe something like "open other end".
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
If only you hadn't been wearing a long black beard and carrying a prayer mat, you might have made it through the full body scanner quicker, then you really *would* have been first !
... is to the airline industry. My wife and I have flown once since 9/11. After being pulled out and "randomly" scanned at every single stop, we decided it wasn't worth the hassle anymore. Now we drive to where we want to be. It's amazing how pretty parts this country are from the ground. We don't really have any plans to fly again until this whole security theater thing has blown over.
Apparently we're not alone; general travel was up 2.2% over the holidays yet air travel was down 6.4%. This security nonsense only hurts the airlines. Soon we won't have a robust air travel system in the USA.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
If the photography, lighting, and touch-up are removed and the swimsuit models drop from a "10" to a "7", most slashdotters would still be on board, literally.
Unless they have nukes or something, terrorists are not much of a threat to the country. Recognize that governments never assume an actual responsibility to say protect you from crime. So what is happening here?
I suggest we are having a wave of terrorism to change the subject from the collapse of copenhagen. Some psych warfare.
Here is something to think about. There is a lot of talk about Yemen. So they talk about the underware bomber and Yemen. But the obvious factoid that he was recruited in Londonistan is never mentioned. And then we have supposedly released gitmo detainees to yemen with bad rsults. Of course, it is not mentioned that these people were released to the saudis. And sometimes the 9/11 people nationalities have actually been mentioned in the past.
Figure you are being taken for a ride.
Michael Chertoff, makes money from full body scanners. So he isn't exactly unbiased.
Also, he is kind of a jack ass who really doesn't seem to care for the constitution.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hear, hear. Your chances of dying in an aircraft terrorism incident are really, really tiny. People need to stop wetting their pants every time they get a whiff of some kind of terrorist activity - it only encourages more of the same. You are far more likely to die in an auto accident, from some other form of murder, by slipping in your bathtub, or even by being struck by lightning, than you are to be killed by a terrorist. So enough with the inane security bullshit, already.
2. The real problem is stopping another hijacking, not an explosion. Hijacking is much CHEAPER to defend against with a reinforced titanium door (light weight and strong) and the willingness to blow up the plane ourselves rather than let terrorists turn it into a weapon against a ground target.
The moronic TSA crap does not and can never stop terrorists, but it can delay, annoy and cost the flying public huge amounts of cash in an attempt to 'look like we are doing something'.
In my opinion, the terrorists have won. They destroyed our airline industry and convinced too many scared fools to willing give up their freedom in the 5 years directly after 9/11.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Could it be because he has a financial interest in selling them? Why, yes. Yes it could. Not that he ever mentioned any of that in his numerous television interviews extolling the virtues of the things - you're meant to think that he's flogging them because he's genuinely convinced of their effectiveness.
To be clear: I'm not opposed to the former DHS secretary taking a post-politics job in the security industry. I'm not even against him appearing on my teevee to flog his products. What stinks, though, is when he doesn't make it clear that his words amount to an advertisement rather than news.
Short answer: No.
Whether or not these scanners can actually detect such explosives is largely irrelevant.
This specific bomber was on watch lists, bought a one-way ticket with cash, and had worried his father enough for him to contact authorities. There are plenty of things already in-place that could have caught the would-be bomber, but didn't.
These new gadgets might very well help catch terrorists... But they aren't going to magically eliminate all terrorism.
They'll find an explosive that isn't detected. Or they'll carry it on in some way that isn't detected. Or they'll bribe the right people to get past security un-screened. Or they'll get people hired in the right places to bypass security entirely. Or maybe they'll blow up something instead of a plane - another building, or a train, or a boat.
We're still looking at treating the symptoms, rather than the disease itself. We're addressing specific actions - he tried to blow up a plane with a bomb in his underwear - rather than the root cause of these actions - religious extremism that's willing to sacrifice plenty of lives to make a statement.
As long as that extremism exists... And especially when we're willing to give their statements so much attention... Terrorism will persist, regardless of what technological gadgetry we put in place.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
...or at least, there is witness testimony strongly suggesting the bomber had inside help in the airport to get him past normal security, the answer is "No, full body scanners will not stop terrorists." What good is a full body scan if you have people on the inside that can get you past the scanner?
Don't take my word for it, listen to this NPR interview: Attorney witnessed bomber before flight had already bypassed security with no Passport
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Trained dogs and handlers are the best bet.
Dogs can be trained to not only detect certain substances but also detect fear responses. So something concealed in a body might make it through but the dog may still alert to the fear response so the person can be pulled aside for a more thorough search. Of course dogs aren't high tech so they can't be a solution in the US.
I see this situation as paying for federal government incompetence with my civil liberties.
I read in the news that various security & intelligence networks had red flags about the Nigerian terrorist but decided not to act.
The way to prevent future problems is to fix the broken process whereby a red flag can come up and be ignored.
Not by trampling on people's civil liberties and right to privacy.
This isn't the first time this bullshit happened.
Prior to 9/11 one of the terrorists told a flight instructor that he didn't need to know how to land. Reports about the hijackers were lodged in several intelligence/security agencies. They were ignored the way red flags about the Nigerian terrorist was ignored.
President Bush created an entire new Federal agency because he felt he couldn't fix the dysfunctional culture at the FBI.
Today I read that there was 3rd gate crasher at the White House.
It is time to start visibly firing people.
The private sector fires people for serious screw ups. Putting the lives of the President and other Americans at risk is of far more importance than a network admin downloading malware.
Send mirrors to everyone supporting the TSA, anti-terror overreaction and hysteria. Look in the mirror. You're the people who are helping terrorists win. When the terrorists give it their best shot, kill a few thousand and we shrug it off like nothing and go about our lives with no change, THAT is winning the war on terror. Turning ourselves into a police state while bombing the fuck out of random civilians in their country is giving them everything they could ask for short of sodomizing ourselves with a lit stick of dynamite.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Because privacy is still something we're raised to expect as a basic civilized consideration, a fundamental personal liberty to maintain social boundaries until we wish otherwise. It's just that simple.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If so, I refuse to fly unless I'm flying in a plane full of nothing but attractive young female swimsuit models who become nymphomaniacs when they see a slightly rotund computer nerd.
There, fixed it for you.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Observing the lines at the airport, I've noticed that the imaging machines are much slower than the rest of the line. They were only pulling 1 in 5 people out of the regular line to go into the imaging machine and the machine was still at full capacity. Is there anything in the works to make these machines process people faster?
Hi, original AC here.
It's not IR... IR cannot penetrate clothing, so it is not great for this application; here's the paper you want to read. As I said, the image in the NG article is in the approximately 100-2000 GHz range, and it's passive.
And yes, everyone is confused about the sensor modalities. There are three. 1) Active narrowband millimeter-wave. Basically imaging radar. 2) Passive broadband millimeter-wave/terahertz. 3) X-ray backscatter. (also active of course, but a stretch to be called radar)
Each one has advantages and disadvantages. The problem is that they all get lumped into the "body scanner" category in the popular press (since that is what they do), and then the advantages and disadvantages get completely mixed up. To answer your question, the TSA is currently using (1) and (3) in airports.
Regarding the "strip search" issue, it really seems to depend on the individual. Yes, the high-resolution systems essentially display you without clothing, but on the other hand, the images look nothing like what you would see with your eyes. It has been said that they could appear on the front cover of Time or Reader's Digest in grocery store checkout lanes, and they wouldn't get covered up like the cover of Cosmo usually does. That's just someone's opinion, of course. Everyone has them...
If you sew lead into your pants you'll just be pulled aside and asked to take them off. You don't have anything to hide, do you citizen?
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
I heard that the full body scanners can not detect an explosive device hidden by rolls of fat in an obese person. I can't picture those rolls being searched by hand either. Yuck.
Why wouldn't terrorists recruit fat people?
Why don't we just admit that airport security is futile?
Imaging technologies are in use, and have been for some time. So it's a perfectly reasonable request. Especially in light of the OP's claim that "The short answer is a qualified YES. All imaging technologies can (help) save us from (some) terrorists."
As for being deterrents, yes, they are. I won't support an industry that cares so little for my liberties, not to mention which encourages acting like a bunch of craven cowards. So I never fly.
As far as efficacy in stopping an infinitesimal number of these clowns from blowing themselves up (or incompetently attempting to, like mr-flaming-pants and mr-flaming-shoe) as compared to the number of flights per day... that simply hasn't been demonstrated. Nor has it been shown that they won't simply switch to shoulder-mounted rockets or something similar. Or different targets. The fact is, if there were a lot of 'em, there would be a lot of incidents or a lot of them getting caught. But there aren't. It's 99.9999% theater, and it's all at the expense of our way of life.
The real problem is that the masses live in fear inspired and encouraged by the media and the politicians. I stand against everything that makes that problem worse.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.