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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 posted this in a reply above, so feel free to mod me redundant if you wish. I have to stop the FUD spread, though, or we'll end up fighting a battle with the wrong facts.
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1) The scanner demonstrated is a body-heat scanner, picking up variations in infra-red radiation output from the body. The devices installed at Heathrow and Manchester are millimetre wave X-ray, measuring reflected x-rays from any item more dense than clothing.
2) When scanning properly, jackets are removed and placed through the baggage X-ray machine. The man has the containers in his jacket pockets. This would not be allowed.
3) The scan was done quickly, and is not representative of a full scan (remembering that this is not even the same scanner being used in the UK).
They say all of this in the video, and I posted a comment (which wasn't published) saying the same. The Reg was spreading FUD that day, and you bought it.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Another reason not to fly. Period.
If god had meant us to fly he wouldn't have given us genitals.
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.