Slashdot Mirror
Full-Body Scanners Deployed In Street-Roving Vans
pickens writes "Forbes reports that the same technology used at airport check points, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on US streets where law enforcement agencies have deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs. 'It's no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],' says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. 'But from a privacy perspective, it's one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.' Rotenberg adds that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. 'Without a warrant, the government doesn't have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,' Rotenberg says. 'If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.'"
I wonder what they will change. The amendment or make the use of these illegal.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Ok, how many "violations" have these scanners found that could be linked to something serious. No, some guy who carries a pocketknife daily who forgot to take it out at the airport is not a real threat.
There are three reasons why we haven't had any "terrorist attacks" since 9/11
A) Terrorists are stupid. Its not easy to carry out an attack.
B) People are smarter. Pre-9/11 if your plane got hijacked you simply complied with the hijackers, landed in Cuba, and were on a flight back home later in the day. Today, if someone would try doing that, they would be stopped by the passengers. And unless there was a plane full of terrorists, the number of average passengers are much, much, much higher.
C) Terrorists are rare. There aren't billions of terrorists everywhere, yes, there are a few, but the number of normal people outnumber them by far which makes stopping them very easy.
9/11 was a one shot deal and only was successfully carried out because prior to that the standard operating procedure for dealing with a hijacker as a passenger was to let them do whatever they want and try to survive because they weren't crashing the hijacked planes in buildings.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Who am I to argue? To all of you fools who believe it can't get any worse, I can only say, step outside the door. You haven't seen shit.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
"The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back."
A doctor needs informed consent to do an X-ray because of the risk from radiation. Why do these people think that they can irradiate people just because they want to? At least, as I understand it, at the airport you can decline to be irradiated and get searched the old fashioned way. With this you have no right to decline, or even knowledge that it happened.
I'm going to make x-ray resistant clothing and supply it free of charge to everyone in america.
Sure it might have a small side effect of being created with lead paint and turn your body into a microwave oven when they fire the xray in your direction. But just think of the look on the faces of the techs when they start to microwave innocent tax payers without their consent or knowledge and they drop dead. I might go as far to make pet clothing available but that has yet to be determined.
Likewise in people, plants, that sort of thing....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector
Send their radiation right back at 'em!
Seriously. If they ever start doing this, I *will* build something that will let me reflect it all back.
..."Google X-ray backscatter view". Germans are really going to love that one!
As technical people, when we instil fear about something, people will listen.
Sure, right up until they figure out that we, like everyone else whom they thought they trust, have also been lying through our teeth. At that point they bring out the pitchforks, and rightfully so. Remember that old saw "we have seen the enemy, and he is us?" We have to be careful not to adopt too many of the tactics of those currently in power or we, in the end, are no better. The ends do not justify the means
The reason that lay people tend to trust those with knowledge is because they don't have the ability to tell if that educated person is lying or incompetent, and because of that have no choice but to hope the expert knows what the Hell he's talking about. We've all been in that position at one time or another in our lives: having to trust someone that knows substantially more than we do about something important to us. It's rarely a pleasant position to be in.
Are you really telling me that it's okay to deliberately lie to people, abuse their trust in a big way, simply because it's for their own good? Because we assume that it's for their own good? That's precisely what our government and our corporate leaders have been doing to us for years. So far as I'm concerned, if we're so far gone as a society that we can't fight this with reality, with facts, with what is, then We the People don't deserve to survive anyway. In any event, that's not a campaign of which I would choose to play a part. Furthermore, you will have to accept that there will be some deaths involved should you be successful in this, as people who might otherwise have received a medical X-ray or CT scan refuse them out of fear. There are always consequences to fearmongering and ignorance peddling.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
SCOTUS ruled several years ago (and I'm too lazy to get a link to the ruling right now) that law enforcement could not use things like infrared and thermal imaging of a house to detect pot-growing operations without a warrant. Their ruling was something to the effect of "If a person can't see it from the street without using fancy equipment, it needs a warrant".
This is obviously different technology, but I fail to see how this would be any different in the eyes of SCOTUS and that ruling.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
There is something wrong with you if you need the government to run up and down the street with mobile scanners to ensure you didn't leave your child in the car. Forgetting your child in the car while you go to work shouldn't even be possible. How absent minded could you be?
if this isn't some sort of joke you should be neutered and have your children taken away.
They were using the x ray vans in Vancouver. I know one person who works as a delivery driver and he got pulled over downtown Van for having several 24L bottles of liquid in his van. Also they were looking for other things too as I also know of one person busted for having 10+ lb of weed in the car while driving through an area where the vans patrolled.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
If the officers don't like you, they'll peek at you naked with this device and then arrest you for undecent public exposure.
Next up in law enforcement technology: Directed transcranial magnetic stimulation to disable the visual cortex of bystanders to prevent criminals from identifying those who protect us, dualing in its use for making criminals confess all crimes they are accused for.
Just think, perhaps a secret police scan while mom was pregnant is why the kid ended up autistic. Or got cancer. Won't the police please think of the children?
How about this use. They've sold 500 of these, most of them most likely to ports. These devices are used to scan cargo containers. They are used to scan cargo containers arriving at our military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I see no reason at all for these to ever be used in the general public in the manner being put forth in this FUD article.
There is a legit and non-privacy invasive mission and use for these vehicles. Many more than 500 will be needed before we start getting to a surplus where they could be redirected to these "evil tactics". How many ports do we have, how many containers are unloaded every day, how many can they currently scan versus that total load.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
There is no minimun safe threshhold for ionizing radiation. The danger is cumulative across your lifetime. Radiation-related workplace safety regulations all take this into account. Some of the full-body scanners for airports use microwaves instead of X-rays, and so don't have this concern (though there may still be cause for concern).
This isn't some debatable area where there's no good evidence, but more reasearch might be helpful, like cell phone radiation. The effects of ionizing radiation is well-studied, and never safe at any level. There's a reason the dental technician leaves the room when she takes your dental X-rays, you know.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
On the other hand, if you are posting as a teenager in your mom's basement, please just ignore this for another 5 or 10 years. Someday it will be important to you.
As a teenager living in his parent's house, I find the issue extremely important to me. The preservation of free society against incursion of moralism and safetism is one of the most important aspects of sustaining oneself. In fact, as a parent, it should be more important to you than it is to me, because your child's life depends on it. The ultimate progression of a non-free society (which these vans and your idea are) is the genocide and killing of the undesirables. Wether your non-free society is based on the worship of government, race, health, the environment, or the greater good over the rights of the individual, the ultimate result is the killing of the undesirables. Your idea might save 100 or 1000 children in the short run. However, it, combined with all the other ideas for protecting people will lead to a genocide killing millions, as well as the war to overthrow that genocidal government. The most dangerous people are those that seek to protect us.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel