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Full Body Scanners Violate Child Porn Laws
gandhi_2 writes "The Guardian has a story about an ongoing legal battle over the use of full body scanners in the UK. The Protection of Children Act 1978, includes provisions in which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a 'pseudo-image' of a child... which a full body scanner does."
If the government does illegal things (like using full-body scanners on minors) then other people may file a complaint to the police, or directly start a law suit. This happens a lot in civil cases where people or companies sue the government.
The government makes the laws, but is not above the law (at least not in most developed countries with proper separation of powers). Indeed the government can technically do whatever they like, as long as they first make sure their own laws allow them to do so. That's all.
Many day care centers have glass walls and no doors to the toilets these days.
I once made a comment to a day care center "Is it for the protection of the children". She replied "No, It is for the staffs protection".
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Um...
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/britain-to-put-cctv-cameras-inside-private-homes/
"£400 million ($668 million) will be spend on installing and monitoring CCTV cameras in the homes of private citizens. Why? To make sure the kids are doing their homework, going to bed early and eating their vegetables. The scheme has, astonishingly, already been running in 2,000 family homes. The government’s “children’s secretary” Ed Balls is behind the plan, which is aimed at problem, antisocial families. The idea is that, if a child has a more stable home life, he or she will be less likely to stray into crime and drugs."
Misreported. No cctv cameras are in people's homes. There are 5~6 families that are forced to lived on government land because of misbehaving. It is offered as an alternative to jail for people with kids.
I mean it is crappy and all but not nearly as evil as wired/you put it.
The official site does give me the chills in some places. Though, they don't seem to go beyond what is normal in most neighborhoods (Even in the US), the way they phrase things is a bit much for me.
http://www.asb.homeoffice.gov.uk/default.aspx
London had 300 knife incidents on the Underground in a week.
If you have a concealed carry permit, you are allowed to carry a gun on MARTA in Atlanta.
We have had no gun issues and no knife issues.
how do you think those started their drug use in first place? they also were fairly normal persons with regular lives once.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
i'm with you there. the image should NEVER be stored, only fed live to a screen where the agent gets to make a call on pulling the person aside or not. the person viewing also shouldn't be allowed to see the person being scanned, eliminating bias.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
No, all criminal cases are "The Crown vs", not the Queen - the distinction I think is that it is the abstract office, not the person currently holding that office.
Besides, there is precedent that the monarch is not above the law.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It's not illegal if the government does it. Right?
In this case I think that is literally true. The CP laws in the UK have an exemption for those with a legal reason to possess or create the stuff (making a copy counts as "creation"). It was intended for lawyers and policemen who have to handle CP in the course of prosecutions, but it looks to me like it would be pretty trivial to extend it to the normal operation of full body scanners, just by having the home office declare this to be the case.
Besides, a nude image of a child is not necessarily CP. The key word is "indecent", which in this context has its normal dictionary meaning of "not generally acceptable". This means that the context matters as much the image itself. I seem to recall a case where a collection of cuttings from the underwear sections of child clothing catalogues was found to be indecent, even though none of the source catalogues were. Similarly a collection of scanner images made in the normal course of someone's work would be OK, but if some employee excerpted just the images of children then that would probably be indecent.
Of course, IANAL.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Seriously? You are trying to compare a city of 500,000 with a city of 8.5million? Well, still it fails. Yes, the situation in America really is that bad.
Murders rates for the most recent year I could find.
Atlanta: 129
[1]
London: 130
[2]
Yes, that's right, a city with 17 times the population has the same number of murders in a year. That's 17 times lower murder per capita. And the rates for murder are highest in London, they are practically zero elsewhere in the country. It's the same in any other civilised nation where the gun lobby doesn't have control of the legislature and gun laws are actually somewhat sensible.
I'd tell a UDP joke, but you may not get it. I'd tell a TCP joke, but I'd have to keep repeating it until you got it.
My error.
More people die from CANCER every year.
http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/mortality/index.htm
And we don't have 9/11's every year.
However, medical procedures are slightly different. Already a doctor can ask to analyse you, or your child with regard to a diagnostic reasons. (Gynos, etc). They will ask permission, and most people are fully informed about whats happening.
Have a nice day!
Having had to run the "abuse" email for an ISP, I had looked into the CP laws at the time.
In the US, it wasn't illegal to take your kids to a nude beach. However, if you had more than three photos of them nude, WHETHER OR NOT IT WAS A SEXUALLY SUGGESTIVE POSE, you were in violation of the CP laws.
Additionally, if you had pictures of your child in a sexually suggestive pose but they were fully clothed, you were also in violation of the CP laws.
And now they wish to add animated images where NO CHILD WAS INVOLVED IN ANY WAY.
Next step is the thought police.
so yeah, it has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with some politician trying to keep his "job" (I'd like to see one of those pansies actually WORK for a living!).
I'm pretty sure you pulled those "statistics" out of your ass, or from an NRA newsletter, same thing.
Here's an article: Tube crime plummets with knife scanners at stations: "knife-enabled offences on the London transport network had fallen from a mid-2006 peak of about 70 a month to about 20 today." "300 per week" is 1200 a month. So you're exaggerating by a factor of 60.
And as for the "no issues" of MARTA, Wikipedia mentions :"high-profile crimes on or near MARTA have created the impression with some that MARTA is unsafe and lacks a strong police presence, even though it has its own police department.[76] From 2005 to 2008, two homicides and one rape were reported on MARTA property. The most common crime reported was larceny. The most common area for crime was MARTA's rail service, followed by MARTA's parking lots. For fiscal year 2008, MARTA had a crime rate of 2.61 per 1000 riders (0.261%)."
So you're misinformed about that too. But don't worry about facts, you know you're right.
Gun nuts... gah.
"Does anyone have statistics on what percentage of the population are pedophiles? I'm willing to bet that it's a pretty low number."
It's not a low number at all, although the occurrence of "paedophilia" of course depends on how you define "paedophilia". I've posted these figures before, but since you asked the question, I'll take the risk of sounding repetitive:
From Hall, et al -
From the British Journal of Social Work -
From Is Pedophilia a Mental Disorder? -
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
If you want to compare apples to apples, try comparing the city of Atlanta to the City of London: 520,000 Atlantans as compared to 8000 Londoners, or 340,000 commuters.
They aren't useful definitions for this purpose. The City of London ("the City", "the Square Mile") is essentially a financial district. Nothing is open at the weekend. Government buildings are mostly outside the City (as are most landmarks you'd recognise).
The City has it's own police force, separate from the rest of London, mostly for historical reasons. Their statistics are here (big PDF). You will notice on page 20 that there were zero murders, zero attempted murders, zero manslaughters, but six threats/conspiracies to murder (I would guess they are mostly threats to CEOs, bankers etc).
Or try it this way: 5.4 Million in the Atlanta Metropolitan District, compared to 7.5 Million in Greater London.
That would be a better comparison. Note that the daytime population of Greater London is about 9.5 million.
An even better comparison would be to take a similarly-sized metropolitan area in the UK, but since one doesn't exist one half the size will have to do. The West Midlands (Birmingham, Wolverhampton etc) has a population of 2.5 million. Crime statistics (PDF)
There were 43 murders and 7 manslaughters, which is about the same as Atlanta. (I don't think the other statistics are comparable, unless the West Midlands really does have 10 times as much violent crime -- perhaps there's some difference in what's recorded.)