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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."

31 of 751 comments (clear)

  1. Government by dufachi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not illegal if the government does it. Right?

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    -Kinsey
    1. Re:Government by wvmarle · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Government by imakemusic · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And they should have to be naked. It's only fair.

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  2. Neat. by Moderator · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Think of the Children" meets "Fighting Terrorism." Which one wins? News at 11.

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  3. Unstoppable force, immovable object by SoVeryTired · · Score: 5, Funny

    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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    1. Re:Unstoppable force, immovable object by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey! I insist in patting down! Seriously, if I didn't fly I wouldn't have any sex life, so please, you can't take that away from me!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Ridiculous law by ramsun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is ridiculous. Child porn laws need to differentiate between nude images and obscene/exploitative images. Hopefully this security debate will fuel a rethink.

    1. Re:Ridiculous law by xs650 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Security debates don't fuel anything to do with think

    2. Re:Ridiculous law by Narpak · · Score: 5, Funny

      Security debates don't fuel anything to do with think.

      Unless you count Doublethink.

    3. Re:Ridiculous law by Itninja · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

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    4. Re:Ridiculous law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's funny. Some things (greek art, for example) lead me to believe that this isn't a universal truth, but rather a social construct.

      I recall when I was 12, all nudity was sexual, precisely because I was never allowed to see any "naughty bits". As an adult, there are plenty of naughty bits to be found if you know where to look and so it's not so thrilling any more.

      Perhaps this is simply a construct of the fact that child nudity simply can't be found anymore, anywhere, so people who are attracted to it have a lower tolerance for stimulus.

      This is also in light of the fact that from my understanding, the image of "dirty drooling pervert" isn't quite as accurate as most people would like to believe. 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. :-)

    5. Re:Ridiculous law by engun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Ridiculous law by mikael_j · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

      --
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    7. Re:Ridiculous law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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!

    8. Re:Ridiculous law by Shihar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  5. So, pat down for childs! by stm2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 :)

    --
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  6. 1984 came late... by dov_0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:1984 came late... by holygoat · · Score: 5, Informative

      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."

    2. Re:1984 came late... by Idiomatick · · Score: 5, Informative

      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

  7. It's the only logical solution. by HamSammy · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  8. Fear of pedos vs. fear of terrorists by istartedi · · Score: 5, Funny

    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"?
    1. Re:Fear of pedos vs. fear of terrorists by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Anyone taking bets?

      I'll make one on "we lose".

  9. Odd timing by icebike · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  10. Re:It's disgusting, frankly by GrubLord · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, it could very well get worse.

    The exact same image (or rather, one even more accurate) could be recreated just by turning down the surface-transparency on a medical scan (such as a CT scan). Once all those subcutaneous organs are properly filtered out of the scan, what's left is a high-resolution, extremely-accurate naked image of your child.

    Moreover, it's in 3D!

    When the for-the-children lobby figure that one out, perhaps we ought to expect most hospitals (already terrified of lawsuits) to start delaying or refusing potentially life-saving diagnostic scans on the grounds that they may constitute illegal child pornography.

  11. Re:Developed != Civilised by wvmarle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I totally agree with you. Many of these laws, and I have to say particularly coming out of the US closely followed by its lapdogs Australia and the UK, are quite horrible. However they all play on fear, and fear is a very powerful emotion. Western politicians are surely the best allies of Al Qaeda and related groups.

    Now again the discussion whether the guy that tried to blow up an airliner should be considered POW or common criminal. This is a criminal and I think he should be tried for that, and put behind bars for a long time. It's not a POW, and I have to look it up but IIRC a POW also has lots of protection, including that a POW shall be released soon after a conflict has ended. And a conflict like this is not a war, it can not "end" like a war.

    And airport "security". A miserable failure. I fly regularly within Asia and I do not feel unsafe because of terrorism risks. Common crashes due to pilot error or technical problems are much more common. Only once in Korea I had to take off my shoes, elsewhere not. Last week in Vietnam I walked through the metal detector which went off... then I told them "oh, must by my coat" (metal buttons), threw it on a box through the scanner, walked through the detector again, and was good to go. Not even having to take out my laptop from my bag. Quick and easy, just like 10 years ago. Except for liquids (I didn't try to take any).

    London is the most watched city in the world - but I have never heard about a serious drop in crime rates. Or a serious increase in crimes solved.

    And of course those privacy invasions only get worse, never better. No politician dares to remove those "security" cameras and other "security" measures.

  12. Re:Sent to prison for Cartoon Porn by Eraesr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  13. Re:Developed != Civilised by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Interesting

    London had 300 knife incidents on the Underground in a week.

    Given I've used the Tube nearly every day for the best part of 15 years at all hours of the day and have never seen a single incident, knife-related or not, you are going to have to back that claim up.

    I'm not saying London is crime free, far from it, but I've lived here for 16 years and can count the number of things I've seen or even heard of affecting my friends on my fingers.

  14. Re:Developed != Civilised by MasterPatricko · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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  15. Re:Sent to prison for Cartoon Porn by Hurricane78 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  16. Re:Developed != Civilised by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh please! can we just cut through the bullshit? You are probably from Europe, yes? Well let me explain how things are here in the USA: Here if you have a single dope bust the rest of your life is pretty much "deal or steal" since nobody will hire you for shit and many aid programs won't do jack for your junkie ass, so you have this HUGE underclass, that can't get any legitimate work, yet have their dope habit to pay for. How do you think they are gonna do that, hmmm?

    By robbing your dumb ass, that's how!!! You wanna know what would happen if you magically made all guns disappear from the USA tomorrow? I'll tell you what would happen, you would have machete slaughters all over the news like you get in Africa, that's what. Here the middle class is all but extinct, the underclass is growing by the day, and many have no jobs, no future, and no reason to give a fuck about you and your ideals. Do you HONESTLY think making all the guns disappear if gonna make Johnny Junkie gonna forget about the pain gnawing in his guts because he ain't had his fix? Get fucking real pal. There are places in every major city here where even the cops are afraid to go after dark. You think no guns is gonna make those into happy places?

    As long as you have huge masses of poor and drug addicts with no future and no reason to give a fuck you're gonna have violence, I don't give a crap if you ban guns or not. BTW drugs are illegal too, but I can score anything I want in under 30 minutes, you think I wouldn't be able to do the same with a gun?

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  17. Re:Developed != Civilised by bwalling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The US has a really poor mentality when it comes to crime. The purpose of a prison sentence is rehabilitation, not revenge. The tendency of people to assign labels and their inability to remove them is a real problem. I was recently in the jury pool for a case regarding a convicted sex offender who was accused of failing to properly register as such. During voir dire, I mentioned the Scarlet Letter. Sadly, neither the assistant district attorney nor the defense attorney had any idea what I was talking about.

    I'm honestly not sure what is the point of letting someone out of prison only to exclude them from all reasonable paying jobs. What do we expect them to do? Since we won't let them work, they commit more crimes. Then, we use the recidivism rate as an excuse for not having hired them.