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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."
It's not illegal if the government does it. Right?
-Kinsey
How deep we've dug ourselves.
Yet another example of how "think of the children" has a myriad of untended consequences.
It's not to say that I'm hugely in favor of full-body imaging devices, but I'm also not in favor of draconian laws about "pseudo-images" which serve little to no purpose as well.
How about we agree that if nobody gets hurt, we won't press charges.
Lame.
"But back to those privacy concerns. Some lawyers believe having a young traveller pass through the full-body scanners could violate child pornography laws. As a result, Canada is exempting passengers under-18 from the new measures."
from http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/01/06/f-rfa-common.html
Personally, if I were asked to go through one I would opt for the pat-down instead. Want to get your rocks off feeling my rocks? Go for it, but I won't have my naked image stored in a computer that politicians claim is hack proof and will get deleted right after.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Security debates don't fuel anything to do with think
If we continue to allow such invasion to our personal dignity as full body scans, scatter ray etc in public places WITHOUT DUE REASON OR WARRANT we are only one step away from having cameras and microphones in all of our houses. For anti-terrorism measures, instead of investing far more in either more labour intensive approaches such as metal detectors or explosive/chemical sniffers, governments have chosen far more invasive options with dubious increase in safety for the innocent.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
...I would go a bit further: I don't want my naked image to be seen by anyone. Unless I was a porn star, which I'm not (and not intending to be one through this technology).
It's indecent, and I am principally against it. It's attacking the integrity of the human body, and a number of other basic human rights.
In The Netherlands, some person from the PvdA political party called it totally acceptable to introduce body scanners as flying is "voluntarily", and thus you would not be able to refuse it once you bought a ticket and boarding the plane. That person probably has no idea that a significant number of flying-hours is made by business travelers who are not doing that voluntarily, and cannot refuse (lest be fired).
A lot of stupid arguments are floating around in these days why the body scanners are OK, but every one of them can be refuted by a simple - but basic (like human rights) - counter argument...
Let's hope the political process works and we can indeed always opt for a pat down (or more, if suspicion arises *after* the pat down and normal security screening - that failed for Schiphol), or we have hundreds of thousands of people added to a virtual "no-fly list" as per arguments above...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
A child protection law is actually protecting the privacy of adults?
This cant be right, I'm certain the PC committee will rectify this before tea time.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Broadly, speaking, those are the options.
They could rewrite the laws that define nude pictures of those under 18 as automatically pornography.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Perfect. There have been suicide bombers younger than that. I feel much safer now...if perhaps a tad undignified.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
This is a good example of a world gone mad. Since when is every individual a suspected pedophile? Pedophiles are an absolute, absolute minority. Most adults actually have a natural instinct to be protective of children, this is known psychology. Somehow, the assumption seems to be that the norm is to abuse children and the exception is to care for them.
I find it even more amusing that there is no worry about the privacy of adults. Isn't their privacy being abused by these full-body scanners? Won't 99.99% of cases be that guards screening this would get a kick out of seeing an adult nude and not give two hoots about naked children? Does anyone have statistics on what percentage of the population are pedophiles? I'm willing to bet that it's a pretty low number.
Of course, your work in prisons may lead you down that path to some extent, but I would hate to think of the conclusions of a sociologist who was only ever allowed to study the prison population of the culture he was trying to understand. :-)
This sounds an awful lot like how people who spend all day working with drug addicts in rehab tend to have this image of all illegal drugs as horrible and talk about how the majority of drug users are broken worn-down people, they just see that all day and never see the girl smoking a joint at a party, or the friends who take some ecstacy at a rave and then go home to sleep it off, they just see the guy who smokes 5g of weed per day, the habitual coke-head and the heroin addict who's ruined his life and base their image of drug users on these people while not realising that the average drug user is a fairly normal person with a regular life...
(This was not meant to be in the defense of child molesters but rather as an example of a similar situation in which it is easy to get a warped view of reality based on a poorly chosen sample group)
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Or, as someone mentioned higher up, don't fly and get fired. Some of us do have to go places as part of our job...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Supposedly, for now, they'll just stop scanning those younger than 18 years.
Which, given the age of maturity in the culture that supplies most terrorists today, is kinda pointless.
As an adult male, I know that when I go out in public I act coldly and hatefully towards children.
It's the only way to keep people from calling me a pedophile! Being nice to them just makes people scared of me!
Presume guilty except in explicit evidence of innocent. And even then, question exactly why an innocent person would need evidence of innocence.
Wait, no damn! That means I should stop hating kids because it looks like I have something to hide! Is there any way to prove the absence of something? Science gave up trying to do that with God years ago!
Anyone taking bets?
I'll make one on "we lose".
No, it isn't.
First of all, an animal won't care, as it grows older, that there is a picture of its genitalia, or it being involved in a sex act to which it did not consent, extant in the public space. Or even just lying there, exposed. People -- they generally will care. That even applies to baby pictures. Parents think they're cute. The subjects, not so much.
Secondly, the real issue here is that the problem law is one that outlaws not images of real people, but any rendering, artistic or otherwise, of a real or imaginary young person.
As far as the airport scanners go, (1) inform the public what they face, and (2) they can choose whether to submit. This is very harsh, but it still allows for privacy and most liberty, excepting that travel using someone else's privately owned conveyance has preconditions no sensible person would put up with (and hopefully, that will kill the air travel industry, finally teaching the idiots in government a lesson.)
It is much more disturbing that art and less-than-art expression, harming no individual, utterly victimless, is being cast as criminal activity. That's straight up repression, censorship, and foolish to boot.
Here, it would be straight up unconstitutional. Which is not to say, of course, that they wouldn't make laws against it anyway, they've stepped on eight of ten of the bill of rights amendments as it is, not to mention other parts of the constitution. But at least you'd have a leg to stand on to object.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In agreement with the parent, there are plenty of examples of governments making laws to sanction immoral actions; consider the apartheid regime in South Africa, where as the government 'needed' to do something illegal, e.g. force mass evictions based on race to provide new land for development of suburbs for whites, new laws sprang into place. A more recent example example would be the US and the patriot act. Granted, the introduction of laws that curtail civil liberties or are immoral had to be sneaked in, often on unrelated bills, but it is another case of a government making laws to suit it's own purpose.
Which brings me to my actual point. It's not only developed countries that have a proper separation of powers. Many developing countries have the same legal principles enshrined in their constitutions. It's just that those principles are often ignored (including in developed countries) by the corrupt. Corruption is a part of human nature, not a part of just 3rd world human nature.
It's generally pointless. If you present a loophole people who want to do something illegal will use it. If you do not scan a specific group of people and this is known, you needn't scan anyone. Because all materials you are looking for will be carried by a member of that group of people, if necessary one such person will be taken along for that single purpose alone.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sorry, that is an over-broad statement. I can think of plenty of counterexamples.
But even drawn pictures can have a sexual or erotic intention. A full body scan isn't in any way sexual. I find it odd if people define (child) pornography by the amount of visible nudity (and come on, a full body scan shows a real abstract image of your body). Pictures of genitalia in biology books or information booklets on STD's aren't considered to be pornographic either are they? I find the whole discussion to be really over the top and really strange that people even come to a conclusion like this. Over-sensitive idiots if you ask me.
Do note that I'm not saying that there is no privacy issue with a full body scan. It's just that jumping to the child pornography conclusion is absurd.
More people die on Britain's roads each YEAR than have died as a result of terrorism in TOTAL.
Each and every day we take far greater risks with our lives that that posed by terrorism.
Yes things changed on 9/11...
We all became wimps as our leaders showed fear...
Where's the spirit of Winston when we need him ?
The scan image makes the dude look like a f*cking ken doll, true you could kinda make out his balls, but really, come on, ken dolls have a bulge too. Worse still, I fear that if children are exempt from such scans, terrorists/smugglers will start using children as mules (they probably already do, but this would certainly increase that).
I understand the mentality behind such a reaction, but really, which is worse: a pedo possibly getting jollies from a doll like image of a child (internet child porn is a far more explicit and available), or a child being used as a bomb or drug mule?
Geeks don't grock information, they grep it.
why is it that anyone who makes a salient point feels they MUST then follow it up with a conciliatory "of course, you know I don't condone....."
Why is THIS the ONLY topic in the world that requires such a follow up? Don't you think it would be absurd for someone to point out something intelligent about fascism... or even human rights violations... and then feel like they have to follow it up with "of course, you know, I don't actually think fascism is a good idea... I'm just saying...."
If terrorist find that they can skip the scanners by bringing children, they "WILL" bring children. It's not like they only try to blow up 'Adults only' planes.
What if the individual watching the scanner has children.
Although I will sound very sexist in saying this, but if the person behind the monitor is a woman who has children of her own, I think that would place her in the least likely demographic to be a 'sicko'.
Would this be viewed as discrimination, or protecting the most vulnerable?
(I'm working on the assumption that there are far fewer women than men who've been indicted for possession of child pornography)
but... but... but... I was told that if I ever saw a child naked I'm a pedophile, and if I don't want my and everyone elses privacy continually violated then I am a terrorist... that means I have to be a pedophile or a terrorist?
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Why don't we just make it illegal for people under 18 to have bodies? They're too young anyway, and having a body just encourages them to explore it. At their age they shouldn't be taking on such adult burdens.
In one stroke, we get rid of under-age pregnancies, statutory rape, pedophilia and many other issues related to under-age sexuality.
Children should be heard, but not seen!
I am anarch of all I survey.
Nothing could be more true. The damage the 'terrorists' have done is damn near zero. A few busted trains, a few blown up airplanes, and and few buildings? Pfft. It doesn't even rate as pocket change next to one hurricane in terms of costs. In terms of lives lost it doesn't even exist on the same scale as mundane boring shit like cold or warm weather, car accidents, the common cold, and other stupid shit no one gives two shits about. The "terrorist" have done so little damage as to not even register as a cost in terms of lives or cash compared to the normal boring dangers that we face without blinking every single day.
Well, that is true if you don't take into account violent government overreaction. The countless TRILLIONS we have spent in over reacting done VASTLY more damage than any terrorist can even begin to contemplate. We take a mosquito bite and respond by chopping off our own limb. Who to blame? Well, I blame two groups. First, I blame the brain dead masses who can't get it through their thick fucking skulls that they are more likely to be struck dead by a lightening bolt than a terrorist, and who squeal to be striped of liberty and dignity to prevent an absurdly rare way to die. Second, I blame the utterly spineless politicians who play into this fear. I would have had infinite respect for a politician who responded to a terrorist attack by shrugging and suggesting that the best course of action is to invest in lightening rods, because they are a shit ton cheaper than this mindless security theater and will save more lives with a billionth the cost. Even better, spend one millionth of the cost we were going to spend on stripping every single citizen naked who gets on an airplane and dump it into fighting a real threat, like the common cold, the flu, and choking on medium sized objects.
Anyone who would rather see their wife or daughter get stripped naked in front of machine rather than endure the nearly incalculably small risk of a terrorist attack is a spineless piece of shit. I can't decide who pisses me off more, the wretched spineless cows who whimper to politicians to strip them of their money, liberty, and now their fucking clothes, or the bottom feeding piece of shit politicians who agree to do it.
Bah. This whole 'debate' (if you can call such inarticulate babbling from politicians "debate") pisses me off to no end.
Hrmm ... interesting experiment.
Try your very best to 'flirt' with the person who's going to pat you down. Moan softly but audibly when they start. They start up high, so try to press your chest against their hand.
I'm very curious about the number of times, the pat-down is completed along with the distribution amongst gender, age groups and race.
Just because someone finds it arousing doesn't make it porn.
I'd offer up a counter-argument here and suggest that, like Art, Porn is in the eye of the beholder (should that be "hold of the beholder"?).
Sure, there's a variety of legal definitions, but they are, to all intents and purposes, to be used as yardsticks - indeed the (legal) definition of Porn is different in different countries (hell, probably different in different states in the US!) and has (and I'm sure will) change over time within a country.
Remember that Legal Definitions aren't Fact. You only have to look into the mirky world of fetish to see that Porn means different things to different people - Actually "Porn" probably means the same thing ("Things to get off on") but you get my drift. Consider the foot-fetish folks. People who like to see images of people smoking! Tub- and those 2:1 cup- ladies.
Now normally we're happy to let people float their boat in whatever way they like (as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses) but Society has decreed that some practises are verboten and try to make such materials as would arouse those folk verboten too. They've drawn an arbitrary line in the sand (this horny and no hornier) which has no real effect on those who crave the material but just follows the common Political adage that "Something Must Be Done: And this is Something".
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
I think this is an excellent idea: I would engage the right thoughts to get wood as I passed through, and recommend all others do similarly. It would be a silent yet dirty protest of the modern era.
When they march into your town, do not look away as if you have something to hide, but stare straight into their eyes so they can see your hatred.
But even drawn pictures can have a sexual or erotic intention.
But nobody has been violated to create them.
(I won't get into whether a full body scan counts as violation. And of course not all nude images are automatically pornographic. What about holiday photos from naturists?)
Which is absolutely not the point.
The real point of the legal definition of CP should be: Something that hurts children, and therefore must be prevented.
But of course, right now, the real point is: Something that a politician thinks, the most extreme conservative groups might objet to, and therefore cost him votes, or will be picked up by the media, and so in the end costs him power.
They don’t fuckin’ care about children getting hurt. All they care about are their own asses. The whole idea of just forbidding to talk/see/hear anything about CP, instead of preventing the actual action that hurts children, is just sick. Because it protects CP. If accidentally stumbling upon a CP site and then call the cops to put them in jail, means that you will be put in jail, then CP is safer than it ever was!
And that is what ever people who got themselves raped as children say.
Besides: About full nudity of children:
I remember that when I was a child, we were at nude beaches in France, where parents and their small children run around completely naked. So what? They are children. If you see them, that caring instinct instantly kicks in. And if not, then still what’s so special about nudity?? I just don’t get it. It’s the freakin default. Being clothed is the weird thing.
You’re not a perv when you let them run around naked. That’s just natural.
But, you’re a perv, if your thoughts when you see them, circles around sex.
Also here in Germany, it’s nothing special to let small children run around naked at swimming pools (especially open air ones) in the summer. I think: How weird is it, that we aren’t naked too.
We did it for centuries. Millenia. Hundrets of ’em. Until that sick disgusting religious mind-twisting came around.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I even think of putting a show on for them! So that THEY don’t want to see me. ;)
Now this is the first time I regret, not being Goatse. ^^
But I think of at least making it look like a huge buttplug. ^^
And one of those elephant trunk underwear things.
Perhaps some huge fake nipple rings (close to exploding with delight) with a chain in-between them, and a throbbing fake cock hanging on them.
And just to fuck with them, I might simulate cumming when being patted down in the hip region.
Yes, around people I don’t know and don’t like I have no shame, as long as it’s hilarious to me to see their faces in disgust. :D
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I don't know who wins and I don't care, but I'm sure the losers will be us.
I'm tempted to agree with you... really strongly tempted.
But but but:
1) Your argument relies on the countermeasures (the government's reaction) having no impact, ie absent the countermeasures, terrorism would not be substantively more prevalent than today. You have only to look at Israel to see that countermeasures are able to have a discernible positive impact in reducing terrorism. If there were no countermeasures, then it is likely that there would be substantially more terrorism, and the chances of being harmed in a terrorist incident would increase accordingly.
2) Your argument also assumes that terrorists will never gain the means or the opportunity to carry out attacks that harm very large numbers of citizens (I presume you will agree that they have the motivation). I'm in no position to carry out a realistic threat assessment, but I'd be surprised if that were the case.
All that said, I still agree that these scanners are a ridiculous intrusion and will not help solve the problem. I'd far rather see more behaviour-based profiling.
I thought the idea of freedom was that your freedom to throw a punch stops at the point where it reaches my face (but not sooner).
And the concept of limiting freedom of thought is just ridiculous.
So as long as the pervert's hands are on his own crotch, and not on someone else, he can think about whomever he wants.
But yeah, your final statement is clearly worded in a way to politically incite the masses.
Oh Come on. Atlanta has about 500 000 people. London has 7 500 000. That is 15 times as much. You can't make such crime comparisons between the two and claim the reason is in one difference.
But if we want to make such comparisons: Finland has about as strict gun control laws as you can have (to get a small handgun you need to prove that you are a hobbyist, need to have belonged to a shooting club for at least a year, need to get a doctor to review your mental health... There is more, but you get the point) and Helsinki is about the size of Atlanta. Know what? We don't have such problems in our subways either!
I know that mods are from USA, largely libertarian, etc. but modding the parent up for that? Jesus Christ.
This is a good example of a world gone mad. Since when is every individual a suspected terrorist? Terrorists are an absolute, absolute minority.
FTFY.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
I agree. But having done some volunteer work inside prisons a few times, and having spent a significant amount of time conversing with pedophillic sex offenders, I can tell you one thing: unlike 'regular' porn, child porn plays to an entirely different audience. People who desire it see any child nudity as erotic.
I know this wasn't what you were getting at, but this is precisely why the definition of child porn should be very narrowly drawn. Pedophiles may find the sunday paper underwear ads erotic, but we can't go around banning them. The point should be whether there was any harm to the child involved in the production, not how turned on the viewer/consumer gets by looking at it. In most cases, pictures/videos of simple nudity should not be illegal to possess.
The real intent of these modern child porn laws is to punish people for having thoughts we're not comfortable with.
The US itself created those "economic waves" when it chose - yes, chose - to hugely overreact to the insanely-hyped threat of terrorism. You played right into the hands of whomever is responsible for the 11/09/01 events in NYC and elsewhere.
I think you hit the nail right on the head.
Though, that is the whole issue. Why do we even have this debate? Why do we need these scanners in the first place. Simple answer: we don't.
All they will do is inconvinience and hassle anyone with some minor indiscretion to hide (like a few pills or a bag of pot), which will be essentially as close to 100% of the people going through as it gets. All to catch... well... who exactly?
We see one of these bomb incidents maybe once a year? Twice? Throughout most of the world? Then on top of it, a significant number of those, fail to even work, or are stopped on the plane by the now alarmed passengers. All this, without said scanners in place.
Seems to me all this is.... a huge waste of time and money.... all justified by dramatic images of families and children dieing in tragic plane crashes. Even though, its a farce. Those same children are WAY more likely to die in random car crashes, or from the flu than some terrorist act.
I keep seeing a room full of bearded turbin headed men exclaiming how wonderful it is that they don't even have to succeed in blowing anything up and the whole western world cowers in fear and runs around like a bunch of ninnies over it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Which is absolutely not the point.
The real point of the legal definition of CP should be: Something that hurts children, and therefore must be prevented. But of course, right now, the real point is: Something that a politician thinks, the most extreme conservative groups might objet to, and therefore cost him votes, or will be picked up by the media, and so in the end costs him power. They don’t fuckin’ care about children getting hurt. All they care about are their own asses. The whole idea of just forbidding to talk/see/hear anything about CP, instead of preventing the actual action that hurts children, is just sick. Because it protects CP. If accidentally stumbling upon a CP site and then call the cops to put them in jail, means that you will be put in jail, then CP is safer than it ever was! And that is what ever people who got themselves raped as children say.
The problem is many people are under the delusion that what somebody else thinks, and does with their own body; harms them.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
No, it's not. I was pointing out that such images are not the same as images of an animal, which was the assertion of the post I was replying to.
My personal position is that photography is a form of speech, and that the proper course of action is to prosecute for coercion or nonconsent if the photographs actually depict that and the subject(s) agree, or are determined to be unable to agree -- that is, they cannot demonstrate an understanding of the photograph and the potential social consequences of its exposure in varying degrees: family, friends, enemies, people they don't know, and broad publication.
The critical underlying issue is a combination of one or more of the following factors: informed consent, coercion, and physical harm. The correct way to deal with it, in my view, is to actually address those issues.
I also don't particularly agree with drawing a line in the sand by age and claiming that it adequately describes an inability to consent. If you go to extremes, it works, but it doesn't work at all when deployed as is, in the teenage years (and sometimes late in the teenage years.) Many teenagers are well able to give informed consent; many adults are not. I'd prefer to see consent validated by decent answers to a series of questions about understanding of consequences, potential consequences, and so forth. Both at the pre-photography stage, and, if a legal tangle arises, at that stage as well.
In other words, I think the whole system is broken. I also think that our society (speaking of the US) is utterly unable to deal with this issue, and it isn't going to get fixed in any way, shape or form -- it's just going to get worse.
Speaking as a photographer, my chosen response to the current situation is to refuse to take pictures of anyone aged less than 18 under any but the most mundane circumstances. Same thing as a martial arts instructor; I won't teach kids. I think it is obvious that society has turned youth itself into a weapon to be used in an almost indiscriminate manner against honest citizens. Often based on no more than the flimsiest of accusations. In my opinion, the best way to protect one's self at this time is to steer clear of said youth.
I also think that parents who take "cute baby pix" in the current social climate are taking risks they don't comprehend, risks with no sunset, in fact risks that are very likely to escalate long after the photos are made. The term "witch hunt" is entirely appropriate for all the connotations of danger, lack of common sense and outright cultural insanity.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If one can't give consent, then one can't travel. I didn't lay out the details because I thought it was obvious. These are private conveyances, and if they require a scan before they'll let you travel, then either you must consent, or you can't travel. If you can't consent, you can't travel. Ergo, as according to the law kids cannot consent, kids can't travel.
And as I also said, I hope these consequences destroy the airline industry, dealing a huge financial blow to the economy and the government -- because I can't see any other way they might be brought to their senses.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I was in the store one day when I saw a child huddled under a rack of clothing crying. I didn't see a parent nearby so I asked the child if he was lost. He quickly bolted out from the rack of clothing and down the aisle to where his mother was. (Quite far down. Far enough that I wouldn't have any way of knowing she was related to the child.)
Now the only reason I took this "risk" of asking the child was because my own two children and my wife were with me. So I looked more like "family man" and less like "creepy guy approaching child alone in store." If I was by myself, I'd think twice about trying to help the child* because of the risk it'd pose to me. And the fact that I'd do that saddens me. It's the reality of the situation that we automatically think of 30-something guy approaching a child with no parent around as having some sinister motive and the man can get in trouble for it. Swap the 30-something guy for a 30-something woman though and suddenly she a caring motherly type looking out for the child.
*At least, I wouldn't approach the child alone. I'd stay away, tell the the child I'd come back with some help and would get a store employee to assist me in finding the child's parents.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Well, that's the true essence of terrorism. As a terrorist, you would not have to actually DO anything. All you have to do is scare people, i.e. terrorize them into being afraid.
It does not matter the victims are hurt or not so long as they cower in fear all the same.
In the west, we have proven we will happily shed rights and convenience and freedoms in the name of "safety" until we reach stone-age levels of living, because that's the only way to be sure.
Ironically, this is exactly the same result desired by the terrorists themselves. We simply do it for them without the terrorists having to do anything substantial.
It's a brilliant scheme.
Sig for hire.