Slashdot Mirror
"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.
If you walk through with a hard-on?
I was quite upset about this until I realised that
a) The person viewing the image will be in another room and won't actually meet me, and
b) I can stand in that thing and jiggle my lard around like the dancing baby from Ally McBeal and make whoever is watching them image lose their lunch.
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.
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.
If the pictures in the linked articles are true (which is not certain), I find the scan a lot less intrusive than a pat down. I'd rather have someone see a vague picture of my junk than grab it and my ass, while breathing in my face. I can't imagine anyone finding these pictures sexy, or even identify me from them.
My concern is more about the effectiveness of these scans. Is it more theater, or do they really detect something that a metal detector wouldn't ? The example pictures are showing a gun, which doesn't seem that good to me.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I do not know of Heathrow, but at least in some airports the computer that has your photo sits next to the one that just got the data of your machine-readable passport. Hopefully these data are not merged anytime soon. How could I know ?
This PDF has a table which tries to put radiation exposure from X Rays into context. For example: Computed Tomography (CT)-Body is comparable to three years exposure to background radiation. So how much radiation do I get from one of these scanners? I am a bit worried about it because I have had a lot of X Rays and one CT in the last six months.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
http://comics.com/pc_and_pixel/2010-01-27
--
Would you be prepared if gravity reversed itself?
Wonder if this, combined with rising fuel costs and carbon footprint concerns, will result in a world where civilian passenger flights are an expensive rarity. Would transatlantic passenger ships come back?
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.
The British government loves to promote people with interesting names. Our head of the armed forces is Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup.
- being sued for indecent exposure if the traveler happens to be a little excited when going through the scanner? - Suing the person checking the scanner of a naked child. - who owns the pictures? Even though it's not supposed to be stored, I can very well imagine that, if something shows up on the screen, there is some sort of "Take a picture so that it can be used in court"
This is totally unfair. They get to full body scan me, but still force me to wear clothes?
The flesh wants to be FREE!.
Let me fly naked, waving my bits free in the breeze for all to see. What's good for one is good for all!
*cough*
Might not be entirely serious.
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
Turn up naked.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
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.
a) Put the C4 in your intestines.
b) Wear a latex belly full of explosives/guns.
c) Be fat and hide stuff in the folds of skin
What we really need to do before signing off on anything is give a machine to Mythbusters for a couple of weeks, see what they can come up with.
No sig today...
...I can't help but think that the terrorists have won.
Interesting that they would do this so soon after the German TV show that demonstrated a person on whom exactly this kind of scanner found things like headphones, ball-point pen, cell phone, and so on, but completely missed all the bomb components deliberately concealed on his body:
German Body Scanner Demo
Even though it is in German, most of it is easy to follow. Just watch.
I bet someone can come up with a process to "restore" pictures back to form. I am also quite sure there is a lot of data that we don't see that would be usable to do that restore. Its going to have enough detail for 3D modeling.
I still do not see why they cannot extrapolate the images and present them "Total Recall" style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CX9Agzeh-c
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It doesn't explicitly mention child pornography, but that was (pretty obviously) the issue before.
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.
It looks so difficult to identify who the image belongs to, how would they know it was Harrison Ford or Henry Ford?
And they are far better then any foreign beaches. No burning sand to scorch your feet on, you do not have to actually enter the sea to be soaked to the bone and free condoms float by whenever you need one!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Its now time to be given government implants. All babies born from now on should have microchip implants with RFID and GPS tracking capability.
Its the best we can do. Its good for the people, and best of all... its good for the government.
Please report to your local police departments to have your chips installed and please remember to watch what you say.
That assumes some identifying information is being sent over to the person montioring the scanner - from the example images released I can't imagine anyone being able to identify their own mother from the picture let alone Harrison Ford...
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.
Just ban all air transport already and be done. I don't know which is worse, diing in a terrorist bombing or being humiliated on boarding.
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.
Money to be main in tinfoil underwear i think...
(with artificial genitals on the outside so as not to disappoint the security guards!)
Effing great, there goes my sex life.
Well, at least it was replaced with something that caters to my exhibitionist urges.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I really don't think the person who has to screen thousands of people per shift is going to be paying any special attention to MY (aor anyone else's) genitals. Although I am not a fan of intrusive security (especially when there are STILL so many other ways of smuggling a weapon or explosive on board), I'm not shocked by the concept that some security employee can see my penis.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If are not happy with the way this is being handled. And you live in the UK. You can always write to your MP.
there is a great website:
http://www.writetothem.com/
Which makes it really easy. Simply enter your post code, select your MP, then write them an email.
I've had positive results doing this in the past. If enough people agree then your MP will take notice.
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
you mean voyeuristic fetishists, then yes, they've won
but if by terrorists you mean militant muslim fundamentalists, then no, the goal of global caliphate does not include the violation of the self-conscious squeamishness of fat people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
A member of my family has and needs a pacemaker to stay alive. I have read several articles on the topic, and so far, there is no definitive answer on the possible effects, if any, on a person with a pacemaker. Let's say for sake of arguement there is a 1 in a 100 or a 1 in 10,000 chance of adversely affecting a pacemaker when walking through one of these scanners - would you take that chance?
Heathrow was recently voted as one of the worst airports in the world by frequent flyers (on the upside it makes other crummy airports look positivelly paradisiacal by comparisson).
I'm sure the mandatory body scans will really make it even more pleasant to go through it ...
Not to worry though, I'm sure that at least one of the following terrorist-favoring outcomes will come out of all this:
a) Due to the child "protection" laws in the UK (where seing pictures of an 18 year minus 1 day old person naked can carry a heavier sentence than raping an 18 year plus one day old one) they will be excluded, by which point the terrorists will start using teens as bomb carriers (or even better, have fake passports with dates of birth made up to have them listed as teens).
b) Terrorists will start blowing up the bombs before the security checks, since the extended lines you get mean that there are more people waiting in that confined space than you could ever have in a plane.
An even more interesting outcome would be if attractive people became the most frequent targets for the mandatory body scans and if (unauthorized) body-scan naked pictures of attractive men and women started circulating in the Internet, especially if the persons in question are recognizable (I wonder if fake lips/boobs stand out in the pictures): the likelly outcry might actually kill this one.
These X-ray backscatter machines are fairly easy to defeat, imho. All the bad guy needs is a pouch (say, a fake belly) on his body made from material that scatters Xray just like human body does (say, animal leather with a backing of some foil - I am sure smarter people can come up with a better idea), nicely fitted to body contour. Think one of those "fat suits" they use for make-up in movies.
Put anything you need inside and go right in. Then who cares if your genitalia is or isn't blurred.
In fact, I am quite curious what the next step would be once these machines are so defeated.
The security theatre you're referring to will be the Olympics.
Personally, I'm looking for some sort of reflective material that I can make into paint and paint rude messages to the security people on my body.
Modding "-1, Troll" is not a proper response if you disagree with me. Try reason.
Some of us live here, and have to put up with this nonsense...
Sarah Bennett says "The image generated by the body scanner cannot be stored or captured nor can security officers viewing the images recognise people."
Brilliant. Is she willing to put pictures of herself under this machine available somewhere so they can be viewed by random members of the public - not so we can store them and we can't recognise her in the image? Or is she a hypocrite who demands one rule for us, and another for herself?
A rule which meant under 18s were not allowed to participate in the body scanner trial has been overturned by the government.
Then the operators should be arrested for making child pr0n. Of course, I think it would be absurd to do so, but it's the Government that wrote that law too.
Yes they do, it's in the name Heathrow, that's located in the UK.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
An "expositionist"? So, you organize trade fairs and such?
The word is "exhibitionist", if you mean you like to show your goodies to random strangers.
Modding "-1, Troll" is not a proper response if you disagree with me. Try reason.
I suspect that the gloves have to come off sooner or later, and if we value our rights (instead of getting scanned, or having the arse reamed everytime we fly), rather sooner.
I envisage the following procedure:
a) Terrorists commit their act, killing x 'unbelievers' in a western country with conventional weapons.
b) All western countries collaborate to find where the attack came from (Jemen, Afghanistan etc) using secret services.
c) The west sets a ten-day ultimatum for the population to unconditionally hand over the terrorists.
d) If this does not happen, the west hits that country with a carpet bombing, remniscent of WW2, causing maximum civilian losses without regards to any conventions the terrorists haven't signed neither.
This will solve the problem with terrorists based in a muslim country. Against domestic muslim terrorists, other measures like mass expulsions of muslims must take place, even if these muslims have the passport of that respective country. Most muslims I know are first muslims, and then citizens of their respective country, else they turn into ex-muslims very soon anyway.
I personally do not think that one can negotiate with islamic terrorists, or rather, that the only negotiation point is the caliber you use to shoot them and their supporters. With muslim countries - once they know the consequences, they will not support such acts.
The aim is to make a terrorist attack so costly that nobody will support it or even think about it.
If a bunch of islamic terrorists actually manage to get hold of and use a nuke, chemical or biological weapons, make sure that country where the terrorists originated from gets turned into a wasteland through usage of nuclear weapons. No pity.
I am wary of the cancer risks from ionizing radiation, especially backscatter x-rays since the scattering is caused by x-ray energy being absorbed by the body's cells. No matter what PR bullshit they give out, its bad for the human body.
Actually, the risks might be over-stated, if you believe this guy. It might even be good for you, or so he claims.
Modding "-1, Troll" is not a proper response if you disagree with me. Try reason.
I'm transsexual. Based on how border guards tend to react from seeing a big fat "male" stamped in my passport I can't wait to have them able to scan my genitals... Fucktards...
Another reason not to fly. Period.
If god had meant us to fly he wouldn't have given us genitals.
Ok, it's NOT the NUMBER of people that they kill as such, but the terror they generate. The long lines are some risk, but much much better to make it more spectacular. An explosion wouldn't be as terrorizing as say a gas attack which could kill greater numbers in a terminal. Less al-kaboom, but still terrifying.
rewriting history since 2109
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.
Re: (a) - as pointed out in TFA and TFA, this won't be the case. The Government won't be changing any of the stupid laws, it'll just be having its cake and eating it. One rule for them, another for the rest of us.
The health effects of millimeter wave scanning are what we should be worried about - there's an unknown risk but a high possible impact: imagine if in 10 years time millions of people start developing melanomas as a result of being scanned.
The x-ray backscatter machines are much less worrying; we've had 100(?) years of experience with X-rays and we understand what x-rays can do to DNA.
But we have very little experience of mm level radiation.
What I've seen in the press is cheerleading. 'Experts say there is little cause to worry' with unknown experts talking in vague generalities. I've seen articles saying that the energy involved is less than the energy emitted by a cell-phone. That may well be the case, but it's not in the cell-phone spectrum, and even a little energy in the wrong place can do a lot of damage. Just see what a match can do to a pile of paper*.
Of course it's impossible to completely prove something is safe. But I don't think we don't have empirical evidence that it's safe. Or at least - I've not seen it.
I absolutely have not made an exhaustive search for literature on the health effects of mm radiation, and I'm not an expert. In the brief searches I have made I have seen that there's a lot of scare-noise based on what seems like only a few sources which imo are not applicable. What I don't see is a long list of studies. And even more striking is that that non-existent list of studies is not full of papers saying 'we found no observable effects'**.
But I have found that it's possible to cook bacteria with mm waves! Maybe this is a hint that there's a potential problem. And in the diagrams of atmospheric absorption of radiation that I've looked at, for example, it looks like mm waves are mostly absorbed, which suggests that we'd have little evolved defense to mm wave damage.
What I'd really like to see is a series of mm wave experts saying things like 'we've studied the health effects of mm wave scanners for 10 years now, and I'd have no qualms about subjecting my three month old baby to a scan because I'm confident that there's no health risk associated.'
* Pedants: yes, I know the energies involved are different orders of magnitude - it's a metaphor.
** It's quite possible I was looking in the wrong place. I'd be very pleased to see a detailed response with a link to this list.
That being said, as someone who flies a lot I'm in favor of keeping people with bombs off planes. It's like a public health problem, if there were certain people with a rare disease that made them explode on airplanes, I'd favor screening.
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
Until the technology improves (actually it is already better than what you have seen).
Sigh...
Just because something isn't possible now, doesn't mean that it won't be possible later. I said this in an earlier thread. 20 years ago it would have been impossible to consider that the Government would monitor every phone conversation in the US. Yet now? 10 years from now?
So yeah, tell me again those images are always going to be blurry monocrome and anonymous.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I guess this is a great market opportunity - we need to establish a new airline, that does _not_ do any of the silly security checks. advantages would include:
- shorter check in time: about 15 mintes tops, vs. 60 minutes
- always on time, as there are no long queues to wait
- nice, friendly service - no invasion of privacy ever
- cheaper, as the retarted 'security' personell don't have to be paid for
there would be a calculated risk: every 10 years, a plane would be lost to some human activity. this is a lower level of risk than the 'usual' plane crash due to failure - which makes it still the safest way to travel
OK, so how many people have been killed due to terrorists boarding flights in the UK in the past decade? How many have been killed due to terrorists on the London Underground and London buses. The London public transport system is a more successful target here. We can't possibly scan everyone who uses that, though therefore I guess we'll have to ban clothes in London. Getting on the tube at rush hour is going to get a *whole* lot worse than it is now ...
I can't imagine the operator will be allowed to have a pocket camera.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
"He who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserves neither" - Benjamin Franklin (paraphrased)
Imagine all the stalactites under the table and the sticky keyboard...
I see a possibility of couple solutions maybe more. On Amazon if you search for "Intimo Men's Liquid Metallic Boxers" I won't put a link as who knows what's in mine (Browser ID, etc.). These or something similar must do something to screw with the backscatter making it useless. Wasn't there military underwear with silver/copper threads or something that kills bacteria?
I travel once every five years or so I won't be able to try these any time soon. But I'm going to search around for something like these have them handy and try them when I do. I won't know if they work until I get scanned and then pulled over after for questioning. If/when I do I'll let the world know the results so everybody else can do the same thing. I believe there must be a simple way with a products like these to give the bird to the government and demand our privacy.
With all the metal it may be tough to get through security but if the wand starts screaming a pat down should solve it. If they're after my junk I don't want some guy in another room - I have the right to look them in the eye and see their look of envy.
-[d]-
They will X-ray all your stuff, they may check them more closely - by just a random pick or if they are suspicious for some reason. That will probably tell more about you than what your genitals look like (chances are they are just typical normal genitals). If they think you might have some narcotics stuck in your ass, they will physically intrude your body to try and find them.
Since you can put only a fraction of passengers through the scanners, the real problem is that how you use them scanner. It may be a real humiliation to the people picked. So, you cannot pick by race, religion and stuff like that. Random? - Okay but doesn't really stop any terror attempts. Maybe you are on some CIA watchlist, which doesn't necessarily make you a terrorist, but other passengers will think you may be a terrorist, even if you ware picked by random.
The Airport that introduced you to Cavity Search !
Now available with more balls !
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
"The law covers indecent images of children. They must be engaged in, or appearing to suggest, a sexual act."
That is not true at all. An indecent image of a child is a photograph or pseudo-photograph which offends against the recognised standards of propriety*. Figures collected by Garda, the Irish police, showed that 44% of convictions for indecent images did not involve images depicting any suggestion of sexual activity**. Some people have even been successfully prosecuted for possessing images of children which contained no erotic posing; just nudity*.
Don't believe the claim that UK law only criminalises images of child abuse. CEOP, the IWF, the NSPCC and others make a lot of money by untruthfully claiming that they require significant funding to fight a massive industry which systematically abuses children.
The images produced by airport scanners are likely to offend against the recognised standards of propriety and will therefore be illegal under UK law.
* http://newgon.com/wiki/Indecent_images_of_children#Indecency
** http://newgon.com/wiki/Research:_Child_Pornography#The_Nature_of_Child_Pornography
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
Back in 2002, Slashdot reported on Demron, a lightweight fabric that blocks radiation as well as lead. It's $600 for a medical apron that would effectively cover the torso, but worthwhile for some, perhaps. Such clothing might even become popular and reasonably priced if, say, it was designed to include a message or image viewable only on an X-Ray backscatter scanner.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
Take a tip from drug smuggers. Oh wait, Al Queda already did. Why is money being wasted on things that terrorists have already worked around? /people advocating these stupid machines should be liable.
In case no-one noticed, the last two attempts to blow anything up in flight, using a shoe, then pants, were utterly inept. Consequently, passengers have to take off their shoes, and now go through naked blob-body scanners. So the bad guys no longer have to actually come up with a viable attack, just persuade some idiot to somehow carry a noxious (of any description) substance onto a plane and fiddle about with it in order to ramp up the hysteria and precautions to a new and invidious level. We are making ourselves hostages to fortune here, because you just know how the next two attempts (I'm predicting both male and female protagonists) are going to go. At which point I hope that you've already unloaded any airline stock you happen to own. Remember, you read it here first!
I'm gonna sell tinfoil underwear and become rich!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
"Totalitarian control?" Yes it is the goal. First you get the people to be habituated to get scanned at airport. Then at the next occasion, you get them habits of being scanned at official government building, sometimes this is already in place. Then you get them to be scanned at major public transportation hub. Then you add camera everywhere, you make deep inspection of their packet compulsory, and sharing of their bank detail. The final step is to declare war on eurasia. And there you are winston Smith !
And you know the worst ? I am seeing it happening right now, and nobody is even reacting
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Which features designed to prevent images being removed from the device?
Oh, you mean the ones they told us are there? Baaaaa! Baaaaa! Baaaa!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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!!!
After scanning more than a couple of people who are shaped like me, they'll have security quitting in droves. The images will scar them for life.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Use a metal detector to scan the genital area. Then give (males and females) a lead jock-strap type cup. Now nobody can see your genitals, and you get a full body cavity scan. If lead doesn't work, figure out another material
We can do the safe thing and still have people feel like they are human beings treated with dignity.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Only if scanning doesnt make the lines longer and slower.
Thank God for the free market! At least we can still fly charter. It may cost more, but at least you can avoid all the mess. Flying used to be a luxury, it looks like its moving back in that direction.
For quick domestic flights check with your local small airport and you might find a pilot willing to fly for just fuel costs. Most pilots love to fly but it is very expensive maintaining an aircraft, if you help a pilot with their fuel and maintenance costs you may get quality cheap flights with zero security checkpoints!
It's not only privacy an issue, your not ment to submit the general public to ionising radiation unnessarily. Doesn't matter if it's "only a little bit", there should be a good reason to force people to have an x-ray.
The Christmas bomber if anything, proved that it's not possible to make a bomb out of liquids. This artical: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/ correctly predicted that the would be bomber is more likely to start a fire than an explosion.
...now there's a chance someone will see us naked... :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I don't know the resolution of the X-ray backscatter technology, but the other hi-res scanners they've been talking about get referred to as millimeter-wave or terahertz. A THz is about 1/3 mm. So basically, these devices have a resolution that'll show skin wrinkles.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It was a half-baked plot meant to fail, but also scare people. It was a pretense to install the machinery.
In case anyone thinks it's nuts, I urge you to think deep and hard about where we are going.
- every more of travel eventually will be subjected to extensive screening. all for the purpose of exercising control over people. it's air travel for now. it's train next. and even buses.
- people are forced to move to cities more and more (for work), and cars will be the enemy of the urban dweller. public transit decisions will be made to discourage automobile use (for now), and eventually severely limit it or make it unaffordable. you'll be able to travel only so far as public transit takes you, and you give up your freedom of movement, you're at the mercy of the powers that be. just witness the transformation that most large/significant cities are undergoing (new york, london, toronto, etc...)
- all your details are stored, including shopping, internet browsing. before too long, you'll only surf the "safe" kind of internet, and will have to pay for a license to access it.
If you don't see that we're heading towards serfdom of the worst kind, I say look again.
They will contrive scenarios that will be used as excuses or justifications to remove more and more freedoms. Eventually, you will own nothing, and you will owe your right of birth, existence, and death to the government.
Anybody who wants to look is more than welcome to do so.
From TFA: "Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said in the immediate future only a small proportion of airline passengers would be selected for scanning."
Well I'm sure Lord Adonis has no problem showing off his perfect greco-roman body, but what about the rest of us?
I won't be flying to Heathrow or Manchester as long as this is the case. And it's not about someone seeing my junk. That really does not bother me. All though it is interesting that if I whipped it out in the Airport I would surely be arrested for indecent exposure and yet this whole thing is compulsory. But this is more about the princicipal of the matter this is a gross violation of civil rights and I will not tolerate it.
If your a subject of her majesty the queen and you aren't up in arms about this and don't fight it tooth and nail then you deserve what you get.
Let's also not forget that what failed largely in the case of the attempted underwear bomber was not airport scanners. What failed was the American inelligence services. I mean for Christ sakes his father showed up at the American embassy in Nigeria and warned anyone who would listen that his son was a threat and they did nothing with this information. So why on earth should we give up our civil liberties as a fail safe to government mailaise and incompetence that is absurd beyond belief.
Also just from a pure safety perspective motor vehicle accidents cause about 40k deaths a year in the US alone and around 4million injuries. Terrorism over the last TEN YEARS in the US does not even rate by comparison. So there really is very little security to even be had as a result of giving up your liberties it's just insane.
Bin Laden will be happy when he hears about this in his cave in six months time.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I'm a nonsmoker.
There are economic advantages to smoking. It seems very silly to ban smoking everywhere, and at the same time keep worrying about the "aging population problem".
1) Smokers tend to die sooner after their productiveness declines. Whereas healthy nonsmokers are more likely to live for 1, or 2 more decades thus using up more resources and still get something just as expensive as lung cancer. Remember eating all that healthy stuff and getting good exercise means you are less likely to get heart disease or a stroke and so you are more likely to die of cancer. You can't avoid death, just postpone it.
2) If you do it right the tobacco taxes more than make up for what they cost (which means they help pay for the nonsmokers like me :) ).
For example: in the UK smoking related problems cost the NHS 5 billion pounds a year. However the tobacco taxes bring in 10 billion pounds a year. Thus UK smokers contribute more than they take out from the system. And it's easier to make smokers pay more in taxes, than to increase income or sales taxes.
By all means educate people about the dangers of smoking, and take measures to prevent nonadults from smoking. But if adults still want to smoke, let them - as long as it doesn't cause stuff to blow up etc.
As for 2nd hand smoke, it's simple: to increase the number of smoke-free places (e.g. restaurants, pubs), just tax places that allow smoking more than those that don't (e.g. require more expensive operating licenses). That way you get increased tax revenue, while maintaining choice. Banning doesn't increase tax revenue at all.
There are lots of unhealthy/risky stuff we do everyday which makes the danger of 2nd hand smoke pale in comparison. Consuming large fries+fizzy sugar water every day will probably kill most people faster than having them breathe in 2nd hand cigarette smoke everyday.
Compare:
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ped/content/ped_10_2x_secondhand_smoke-clean_indoor_air.asp
http://health.howstuffworks.com/death-by-auto-accident-or-french-fry2.htm
Yes there's a choice to consume fries or not. But with my suggestion (taxing places that allow smoking) there'll also be choice for both nonsmokers AND smokers.
Maybe every year a country should give a posthumous award (The Black Lung?) to the top smokers who died contributing to their country... ;)
So to you smokers out there, "Thanks!"
The only way to stand to terrorism is to be not terrorized.
You are not terrorized when you are killed, or 2000 of your countrimen are killed. You are terrorized when the killing scares you for life, when you become jittery, when you are afraid of your brown skin neighbors, when you allow your government to strip search you.
As Roosevelt said: the only fear should be the fear itself (or something to that matter).
Stop fearing, and the terrorism will stop. Admit that 9/11 and 7/7 was a blowback for your own actions, take it like men. I respect more the decision to go to war against us, Muslims, than all the humiliation you subject yourself out the fear of death. You will die anyway, 100% probability, as every living being on the planet, if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow, next year, next decade, next century. Life for the sole purpose of living does not cost much, ask the death row inmates. life is meaningful only if you can maintain your essential core that makes you an individual.
Somehow all those notions I am talking about became archaic in the Western countries...
Well, here, I have said it, mark me a troll now.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I did not notice that there have been already 574 replies to the article. I am sure there is almost 100% mathematical expectation that nobody will read my above comment as well as this comment. In this regards I wonder what is the statistics of views for the comments after N comments have been already submitted...
Never mind. I am just talking to myself....
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
My wife has two knee replacements and a pacemaker. She can't go through the current metal detector and I wonder if she can go through a full body scanner.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I was going to moderate some very good posts, but it occurred to me ...
I would gladly drive extra or pay extra to fly the Unsafe Skies. I bet that if some airlines and a specific airport in a major metropolitan area were to adopt a "We won't scan/frisk/xray/etc you" policy, customers would jump on it. Imagine this scenario:
- You don't have to take off your shoes.
- We don't want to see you naked.
- Aside from some bomb sniffing dogs and some Israeli-style attention, we don't check for much on planes.
- You can bring knives on the airplane. So can everyone else, though.
- Please no guns.
- We only fly to other airports with similar "relaxed" security, or else you need to go through normal security when you get where you're going.
I guess x-raying might be necessary, or perhaps a chemical sniffer (?) for bomb-stuff... but the general idea would be that we are Okay with armed passengers, as anyone that tries something with a box cutter will have a herd of angry passengers to deal with.
I wonder how financially viable that would be. Would it get more demand than the strip-search airports?
Let's see if I have this right. I do not have the option to not be seen naked in this scanner. If I try to bypass it, I get arrested. They say there's absolutely nothing wrong with being seen naked. However, if I decide to get it over with and just go to the airport naked they'll arrest me for indecent exposure?
I'm waiting for Z-backscatter technology to filter down to nightclubs.
At the cooler nightclubs, they'd probably send the images to big-screen monitors so everyone could watch.
Although, really, Z-backscatter images aren't erotic. If they were, there would be porno sites with X-ray images. They can be embarrassing, because they show flab very clearly. But that's usually obvious even with clothing on.
I hope they don't charge me extra for an oversized carry-on.
Throwing politically correctness out the window and taking in the facts and considering how many rights this is violating alone what is wrong with racial / age profiling in the situation? How many Caucasian Christians (or Asian Buddhists, etc..)attempted to blow up an airplane with him/her self on it in the last 10 years?? Racial profiling is the most effective use of security personal time and efforts. Why waste time scanning an old lady or child??
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.
What'd you expect, to be treated with dignity?
Now strip naked and get on the probulator.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Actually, it only took one. As soon as the passengers on the fourth jet heard about the first one and found out they weren't just gonna get rerouted to Havana, they put a stop to it.
Here's the meme we need to get going: Every terrorist attack since 9/11 has been ended by civilians. In fact, the ONLY terrorist attack that was stopped on 9/11 was stopped by civilians. Not "the authorities," not "the military," and for damn sure not the TSA. The civilians on the plane will put a stop to it. These intrusions on our civil rights are not only unconstitutional, they're USELESS. The people who are pushing this care everything for their personal power and nothing for your safety.
Actually, looking at the history of mass attacks and disturbances -- the UT Tower sniper, the VA Tech shooting, the LA riots, Columbine, Katrina -- the standard police response has been to hide and cower in fear while "the authorities" screech "officer safety, officer safety" at the cameras. Hell, in Katrina the cops joined in the looting. Drop in on the forums at "officer.com" some time. It'll take about ten minutes before you hear some cop whine about how he's not gonna risk mussing up his hair for "the sheeple..."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
It really boggles my mind how people get upset over body parts, I mean just exactly how does it hurt anyone for the security people (or anyone else for that matter) to see you bare?
And yet none of the hoorah is over the trend towards police states everywhere.
reports a few years back said X-ray backscatter devices aren't effective unless the genitals of people going through them are visible
Oh, sure. Now all of a sudden it's okay to show your genitals to the airport staff.
Yes, they do, and it's detailed here.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
My life has been missing that "vital zing" since the cavity searches stopped. I was always first in line, because I wanted that fist up to the wrist; and to be the glove puppet for that nasty, nasty orifice inspector..... Sigh.... The good old days of air travel are now gone forever.
.
Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
Sadly, I am out of mod points. Equally sadly, I doubt the TSA would allow this.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
New Labour have assured us that the images from these scans can't be stored, misused or sold on by corrupt staff. I won't bore you by reminding you once more of all the other assurances New Labour gave that turned out to be 100% untrue. Incidentally, what happens to people who 'choose' not to be scanned? Are they allowed to leave the airport unmolested, or is it straight off to the torture camps to explain their 'suspicious' behaviour?
...the naked rambler? He's threatened with jail time for being nekid, and now they want to make people passing through Heathrow nekid. Go figure
Seriously. How did we become so afraid? What ever happened to the "home of the brave"?
Now we see "terrorist" on every street corner or contrary opinion, and we collect entire libraries of fear: killer teen drivers, killer food, killer water, killer drugs, killer jobs, killer germs, killer bees, killer staircases.
Instead of facing dangers, we construct ever more convoluted ways to hide from them, and fail to just deal with them.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous balls.
I have simply stopped flying completely until they wake up and start treating the passengers decently and stop the completely stupid and inefficient security theater with an arsenal of scanners, strip searches and other deeply invasive measures. Proper profiling would do the trick much more efficiently and securely; the current scanners and methods still wouldn't have stopped the 9/11 terrorists for instance.
At the very least they need to do their job in ways much less abusive than they do today. They bark orders around and treat people like a cross between common trash and a heavily armed terrorists... smiling seems banned and people skills non-existent (job requirement it seems). Perhaps regulating the pay of the security personnel based on passenger evaluations would help? - More smiles, nicer methods, more flexibility, sense of humor... Could make the security check fun even! :)
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --