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"No Scan, No Fly" At Heathrow and Manchester
An anonymous reader writes "It is now compulsory for people selected for a full body scan to take part, or they will not be allowed to fly from Heathrow or Manchester airports. There is no optional pat down. Also, a rule which meant that people under 18 were not allowed to participate in the body scanner trial has been overturned by the government. There is no mention of blurring out the genitals, however reports a few years back said X-ray backscatter devices aren't effective unless the genitals of people going through them are visible."
Especially when traveling with small children security on Heathrow was always a show stopper for me. There a plenty of alternative hubs to fly from, unless you want to go to London.
It is not possible to use technology to solve social problems
Yeahh... That's probably complete bullshit. I can just see British parents dragging their children through scanners that take pictures of their genitals.
If it is true, I see a precipitous drop in air travel in that country. Screwing with adults and their privacy is one thing, photographing naked children is some next level shit to put it bluntly.
The terrorists have won.
Since we're constantly being told the terrorists are "jealous of our freedoms", I think they can now say job done.
The goons working in security have a laugh at your expense and photograph the monitor output with their cell phones. Later, they upload it to funnypixxxxx.com.
If I was a local sheriff or whatever the British equivalent is, I would wonder over to Heathrow and hang out in the viewing room. As soon as a prepubescent child popped up on the screen, I would whip out my camera, gather evidence and then arrest the "viewer" or "viewers" for viewing kiddy porn. This is an extremely serious charge that effectively changes your life forever. Then I would let the courts deal with it. It would suck to be the worker(s) at Heathrow, but it seems it takes extreme action to wake people in Britain up.
I find it difficult to reconcile the summary's outrage at 'security theatre', with its outrage at 'naked' photos of children. If we are to use these devices, and assume (possibly a big assumption) that they can detect weapons then we must scan children, otherwise it really is security theatre. To exempt children would be to render the scanners truly useless. Am I happy with these scanners? No, but they've been in use for many years in other countries (like Russia) and they seem to be more effective at detecting suspicious devices than any other method, short of a pat down. However, I'm not sure why a pat down is not an acceptable alternative. Perhaps because security people are generally afraid of patting down peoples sensitive areas.
Better yet, as you are a morbidly obese male and as the X-rays from this device are designed to reflect from human skin, you can easily hide any contraband, smuggled pets, bomb belts or illegal aliens within your rolls of flab and they will be completely undetectable by the device!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Faces are basically unrecognisable, and if by some miracle you are recognisable, you'd probably get a nice payout from the ensuing lawsuit.
Firstly, it's not like these images are in any way erotic. I doubt very much they could ever really be used in fashion. Secondly, do you really think these screens are visible to the rest of the terminal?
No, of course they aren't. You might consider it a breach of privacy, but only the operator will see that blurry, monocrome image of your genitals.
Complain about civil liberties if you must, but at least use arguments that don't make you sound like utter retards.
If you are Harrison Ford, or Miley Cirus, or some other celebrity, do you really think that the operator is NOT going to whip out a pocket camera and image the screen, and sell it to some of the low-life websites that exploit such things for cash? Or, what if he simply posts it on the internet? Of course not every operator will do that, but there's always a bad apple in every basket, somewhere.
The image generated by the body scanner cannot be stored or captured [...]
So... how did they get the pictures into the article?
$> cd
$> more beer
When will this "War on privacy" end? Most likely only when and if people stand up to it. And they won't as they do not see it as a treath to whatever they have. I rather sit in a plane with a potential terrerist and riks to be blown to smithereens then people taking away my privacy rights because of some bullshit security.
The drive to the airport is still more dangerous then the flight itself and that includes being killed by terrerists.
When looking at it now, the stazi of Eastern Germany were boyscouts.
You should not fear anything but fear itself. But as long as the media is selling news as entertainment, we will be hearing about these outrages dangers that almost never happen. Man bites dog is news and this means that dog bites man isn't and won't be shown. That means that people do not get all the information they need to do some basic risk assesment.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You had nothing to hide. Privacy didn't affect you.
Until some goon started to look at your balls when you board a plane... lol.
Sorry everybody, but I find it more disturbing that my every move is recorded and stored than that some person checks my genitals. The genitals are pretty much the same for everybody - my travels, my bank account, my posts online, my phone conversations - those are things that make me unique. Those matter far more.
...I can't help but think that the terrorists have won.
This is what scares me. Will they require us to lift our fat so they can rifle through our folds? What about large breast? I was humiliated enough as a chubby child. Being forced to jiggle my fat in a body scanner will make me snap. A very hostile fat man will ground all flights for a week.
Terrorists blow people up. You complain. Governments try out all these devices to curb terrorists blowing people up. You complain. What will make EVERYONE happy? Nothing. So, I say do whatever needs to be done to make us all even the slightest bit safer. Our freedoms and rights aren't affected detrimentally by something like this. Sure, it would be another story if these things took full color shots and stored the digital images in some name searchable database, but guess what? It doesn't....so what's the ruckus about? 1. the person viewing the scans are in another room. 2. the images aren't saved at all, they're viewed by the device for weapons, visually ok'd by personnel and then gone into cyber oblivion. 3. kids are people too, and terrorists will use ANYONE to make their point. 4. those of you thinking about cell phone snaps etc. - very difficult task because generally cells aren't allowed into those kinds of areas and it would be very, very easy to trace the image leaked back to the person on duty at the time, so they'd have to be pretty stupid to do that. Frisking/Patting down may be able to detect certain weapons, etc. Pad scanning (with the handheld devices) also detects weapons and such. What though, stops the person who swallows something/inserts something anally or vaginally from recovering it in the lavatory and then blowing up or taking the plane hostage? Perhaps these scanners, that's what. So before you discharge your very loud opinion on how wrong, invasive/pervasive this is, especially because they want to scan kids....first of all, rtfa and second of all, think about a scenario in which a terrorist decides to blow a plane up with either something he can poop out, or his/someone else's chosen "martyred" child. War on Privacy? Are you serious? What exactly do you have to hide or protect that would make you so paranoid?
The article clearly states "The image generated by the body scanner cannot be stored or captured nor can security officers viewing the images recognise people."
and
"The equipment does not allow security staff to see passengers naked, she added."
And both of those statements are absolute, 100% bullshit.
First, when those machines were originally designed, it was a specific requirement that they be able to store a digital representation of the images for later offloading or transmission. It was part of the specification. To say that they can't do it is a complete fabrication. Granted... presumably they have the ability to turn this feature off... but that is very far removed from "cannot"!
And as far as not being able to "see passengers naked"? Give me an effin' break! The picture accompanying the BBC article clearly shows otherwise. They might be faint, but you can see the guy's scrotum and penis. And I have seen other pictures and videos taken using these scanners, and you can see whatever the hell you want.
I have come to expect bullshit from government, but such bald-faced and blatant lies take me by surprise.
Shooting out the question.....Does anyone know where we can complain? I am not a citizen of the UK, but I need to travel there. And well to be honest, this is another example of Government going TOO FAR! So, where can I complain? I can not vote there, but I can sure as hell make sure that I reduce/eliminate my travel plans to that country. At the end of the day, they will not understand anything untill they see tourists/travellers numbers decline, revenues plummet....then they will maybe begin to think....err maybe we went a tad too far on this.
So we are told that privacy is not compromised because the people viewing the images are in another room and cannot tell who they're looking at. Well, they're going to need *someone* to know who they're looking at, or else there's no bloody point in this system. Specifically, they need to be able to say "Bob, the feller in the machine has got a gun on his left calf". And Bob needs to be able to say "OK, I'm on it. Keep me updated with news from the other queues".
Well, if they can tell Bob that, they can also say, "Hey Bob, this one's got a tiny dick. And that sexy fucking bitch who just went through with the baby had the biggest fucking nipples you've ever seen". And Bob can reply "Alright, I'm pulling her over. I'll find her name and you Google her"
This system has no meaningful privacy protections. The protection that's most likely to be effective for any one of us, is going to be the large volumes of passengers they are dealing with, which reduces the time available for them to take a prurient interest in one particular passenger.
How many terrorist attacks have happened against planes? Well, depends how far you go back. You see, all the security is nothing new and BEFORE they were put in place, attacks happened far more often. That an entire generation has grown up without constant hijackings, that says something.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The scans can be as detailed as they want. The two scans shown in TFA are almost the only ones you can find in the Internet - precisely because they look pretty harmless. Go to the manufacturers' sites, and you will find no sample images at all.
Why? Because the scanners can see the pores on your skin if they want to. The general public won't like that, so they restrict real samples of what the scanners are capable of. It would be a public service if some /.er could provide real samples of what the scanners can do.
They may well start out providing only vague images; there are also efforts to provide some sort of pre-analysis so that the operator only sees a sketch. However, once the scanners are in place, it will be easy to justify increasing the resolution to provide better security. In the end, it's a fair bet that the scanners will display the equivalent of high-resolution, black-and-white photographs.
Anyway, it really is all theater. As pointed out in other posts, obese people can hide objects under their fat rolls. Non-obese people can hide objects in bodily orifices (this is already a standard tactic in drug-smuggling - nothing new at all). Anyway, just get an accomplice in the duty-free, and pick up your package after clearing security. These scanners are so entirely irrelevant to the real security issues that one wonders what the real motivations are...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Implementation of full body scans as described won't do much except harass the traveling public and invade our privacy. The terrorists will just move into a new method of bringing their weapons on the aircraft.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
All that these new security measures are doing, is moving the target from the "protected" airplane, to the unprotected queues of people at the airports.
Looking from an attacker PoV, which "mission" sounds better:
A) a high risk bomb smuggling operation to blow up ~200 people in an airplane with minimal explosives.
B) fit as much explosives as you can to your luggage and queue to the airport security check line at the most active time.
Scenario B has almost no chance of you getting caught before you can blow things up.
The security theatre you're referring to will be the Olympics.
Wear leather underwear. Backscatter doesn't penetrate skin? Try penetrating this cow skin!
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
How do you feel about these employees checkout out your wife and daughter's breasts and asses?
I have no problem with it. Just like I don't care when a doctor sees them. Being a doctor myself, I know that there's nothing "magical" that happens once you get your degree. We're still human, And you know what? You DO get used to seeing naked people, and it stops being a big deal.
Frankly if these machines mean I no longer have to take off my shoes and belt and watch, so much the better. Scan away.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I would take a picture of each of the guards at that scanner when a child went through and
then started a class action lawsuit against their company for promoting child pornography.
If you can allow someone to see a childs genitals without being for a medical reason or doctor,
I think this becomes a bit too close and personal.
none of that is terrifying. unless there's random bombings happening every few days , GET OVER IT!
people scare far too easily, because they're incapable of dealing with their emotions sufficiently.
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
Do you remember...
A large part of why people feel threatened by Muslims is just that they happen to be an easily identifiable foreign group. A security system based on racial profiling is a security system with a back door.
Oddly, the UK government did not lose its senses during the IRA attacks the way it has now.