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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
Pedobear TSA edition!
"Think of the Children" meets "Fighting Terrorism." Which one wins? News at 11.
The World is Yours.
Two ridiculous hot-button topics with opposing aims.
Wow, this is kind of like when the unstoppble force meets the immovable object.
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How deep we've dug ourselves.
Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.
I somehow doubt that their choice is limited to those two options.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
This is ridiculous. Child porn laws need to differentiate between nude images and obscene/exploitative images. Hopefully this security debate will fuel a rethink.
As much as I don't care for the losers working airport security, I'm more concerned about the trauma they will go through looking at average airline passengers sans clothing all day long.
Body scanners are optional, if you refuse, you get a pat-down search. :)
But some pat-dows may constitute sexual assault:
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/inappropriate-pat-down-searches-during-an-airport-security-screening.html
This may be a catch-22 for TSA
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
"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.
please think of the adults!
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...
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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.
We'll have to put kids in opaque balls and cast them out to sea so that nobody can look at them or touch them or think about them. It's the only way.
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.
If you think if the children, the terrorists win. Wait. No. If you don't think of the children, the terrorists win. Ahhh...my moral outrage is so confused right now.
I say the passengers for the flight get to take a vote to see who gets to go through the body scanning machine. I doubt you'll get a flight full of pedophiles, but some kids seem capable of blowing things up
Fear of pedos vs. fear of terrorists.
The cage match we've all been waiting for.
Anyone taking bets?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Its odd someone gets all the way from the middle east, thru Europe, all the way to Detroit with JUST the sort of device these things are meant to detect at JUST the time their deployment is starting to ramp up.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
Think of the child terrorists!
Note. This quote may have been altered for your safety.
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.
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 ?
Get the Queen to run the scanners. She is above the law (or ta least can pardon herself from anything)
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.
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.
Stupid friggin article.
First off, in order for the law to have any effect, you have to find someone willing to press charges.
Second, the charged person will have a right to be judged by their peers.
So, do you think anyone would prosecute someone under this law? Do you think any jury (including a judge) would convict someone for these circumstances?
This is how and why the laws work in the US, are they that much different in the UK?. Whoever wrote (and posted here) the article is just digging for attention on a non-issue.
Now if images did leak out onto the internet, then you have a case against anyone who allowed or enabled that leak. So, I would be all for stringent historical logging of usage of these machines. Some way to identify all persons who had access that could have leaked an inappropriate image, be it child or not. So, like other things, quit trying to stop a good thing based on exaggeration, and spend more effort discussing and fixing the real problem.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
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 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.
Everyone seems to immediately focus in on the fact that these things show naked images of people and completely ignore the fact that these images are taken by low energy x-rays that bounce off after traveling a few millimeters into the skin. They have already shown that even these low energy x-rays can damage DNA, Chromosomes, and (in males) the ability to produce healthy children (The scrotum isn't thick enough to reflect all the radiation). Radiation is an accumulative issue ... being a frequent flyer already at increased risk just due to altitude in our atmosphere, but having full body irradiation once or twice a week could very well cause severe medical issues.
I don't know about anyone else, but I fear cancer more then being killed by a terrorist on an airplane. And the idea that we are opting into getting cancer just makes it worse.
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.
The UK law prohibits indecent images. Nudity is neither necessary nor sufficient to indicate indecency under UK law.
Simple snaps on a nudist beach, medical photographs, photos gathered for evidence in court, snaps in the bath or on a rug - all perfectly legal. A fully clothed but sexually suggestive photograph of a child may be illegal - nudity is not the defining criteria.
There is no way these machines would fall foul of the UK law, so it's a complete non-story.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
i mean, pick any cause of death: pancreatic cancer, slips and falls, drug overdoses, etc...
you can say about all these kinds of death: "well, more people die due to car accidents..." so therefore we shouldn't care about other causes of death?
quantity of dead alone, as the only determinant to how much attention we pay to a cause of death, is demonstrating on your part poor reasoning skills. you can't imagine other factors that go into determining how much attention we pay to a cause of death?
something like terrorism is caused by other people ON PURPOSE. this makes it pretty serious, unlike blameless agendaless accidents or blameless mindless disease. when a committed organization has announced their desire to kill as many people as possible, and shown real capability and intent and follow-thru, that's a big problem. a little creativity results in something like 9/11. does anyone doubt that if an al qaeda asshole got a hold of a suitcase nuke they wouldn't set it off in the middle of a major western city? is it panic and hysteria to worry about that possibility? no, its simply prudent. in fact, an attitude like yours: "whatever," is UNDERreacting. there is just as much danger in a false sense of complacency as there is in a false alarm. the only attitude that makes sense is a prudent logical analysis, and that prudent logical analysis means you take the threat posed by al qaeda and the wannabes very seriously. because they most certainly intend as much death as they can get away with
terrorism isn't like cancer or car accidents. you need to pay a lot of attention to it: the cause is someone else, and the intent is death. a committed group wants to kill you, and they'll kill millions if given the means and opportunity. so it really does make a lot of sense to focus on al qaeda and the wannabes a lot of time and attention, and it is in fact perfectly proportional to the nature of the threat, since it is composed of creative committed organized disciplined and determined human beings, trying to kill you. totally different threat than accidents and disease: you can pretty much gauge things like road conditions for car accidents, air temperature for disease, etc., and come up with a mathematical statistical model for the kinds of death you are faced with
but when your killer is other human beings, and you see an escalation in mayhem and murder and threats, as we do today in the west AND the muslim world (don't forget that the most dead from groups like al qaeda are muslims), then you pay ALOT of attention to the threat: it doesn't follow statistics. it could be a hundred dead one year, a million the next, unless you get a handle on things. destabilize certain regions with terrorism and you get a war. a war is how many dead? still sound like baseless fear to react so seriously to al qaeda and the wannabes?
there's nothing wimpy or fearful about it. of course, there are hysterical people who are overreacting. but they are just as stupid as people like you, who are clearly UNDERreacting. you think its "wimpy". this is low iq, an inability to adequately and logically ascertain the venomous potential in a threat. to you, only statistics counts as what is a threat to you. one dimensional idiocy
a logical, prudent, levelheaded analysis of the threat posed by the rise of militant fundamentalist assholes hellbent on killing a bunch of people means we should pay them a lot of attention and throw a lot of money at the problem. really. no fear panic hysteria or wimpiness in any of that analysis, simple logic and reason
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
The software disguises the private parts of the individual before the image goes to the operator. The simple solution is for the software to doctor the image and enlarge desired features. Then everyone would want a copy of the image to hang on their wall at home. The airport could even make a buck off the images. j/k
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.