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US Marshals Saved 35,000 Full Body Scans
PatPending writes "A Gizmodo investigation has revealed 100 of the photographs saved by the Gen 2 millimeter-wave scanner from Brijot Imaging Systems, Inc., obtained by a FOIA request after it was recently revealed that US Marshals operating the machine in the Orlando, Florida courthouse had improperly — perhaps illegally — saved [35,000] images [low resolution] of the scans of public servants and private citizens."
The more these assholes abuse their power, the less willing the public will be to entrust power to them.
Oh god, who am I kidding?..
And they'll get about as much of a punishment as Charles Rangel.
Like maybe: "The officers involved have received reprimands that will go in their permanent record."
If someone is going to invade my privacy for pointless security theater, I might as well make it as uncomfortable and inconvenient for them as possible. In airports, I always opt for frisking instead backscatter. No pictures to save then, either.
No, it's the fact that the data isn't supposed to be stored. They're retaining the data illegally. That's what we're supposed to be even more worried about--the abuse of the system.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
No, what you should be worried about is that other people are concerned, and the government that represents them doesn't give a shit.
You should be concerned that the government that represents them lied to everyone and said that images could not be saved on the machines that the TSA was getting.
You should be concerned that you are being asked to give up more and more privacy, now the privacy of what is under your clothes and in your pockets, for little more than the simple assertion that it is needed, with nothing of significance to show any real credible threat whatsoever.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I thought that for passengers' privacy, the nude-o-scope operator was in another room with no view of the real person, but these photographs match each person with their scan so there obviously is a simple way to view person both clothed and naked! ohhh, the opportunities...
tsa.xxx would be ideal!
You mean the same machines that we're repeatedly told cannot save images? The ones people don't like because of the privacy invasion and the answer is always "the machines cannot save images"?
Who is actually surprised by this?
Is anyone really surprised? Have you ever met a mall security guard, bouncer, airport monkey who wasn't a complete power abusing ass? Face it people do give them grief and it can be a shitty job so the only people that are going to take it are the type who are looking to bully the public.
None of the politicians would stand by any government servant. If there is one thing civil servants know, it is when the shit hits the fan, one of them will be scape goated. Media would be going fanning the flames. All those liberatarians and the small government conservatives and the "tax cuts will solve everything" crowd will be silent, very very silent. There will be no one to tell in the media frenzy, "It is sad it happened, but it can't prevented without serious invasion of privacy of millions of people and huge expansion of the government and law enforcement expenditure."
Next time a terrorist blows up a plane, stand up and say, "yeah, it is sad and tragic. But we as a country have gone through far worse. We lost a million soldiers in WW II. 50K in Vietnam. Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, London were all bombed mercilessly. We survived. Compared to that it losing two buildings and 3000 people is nothing. If we cower in our shoes and crap in pants, the terrorists have won. Just let us go back to normalcy." But no one will.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Trains don't fall from the sky. They run on electric power. Carry many more people than planes. Stops right in the middle of downtown, origin and destination, no trip to and from the airport needed. Sometimes you can just get on, no papers or checking at all, and buy the ticket later on board. Sometimes there is a restaurant car, or a bar car. You can see the scenery, it is less than a yard away from your window. You have long seats, tables, lots of space, walk around the cars. You can get off at the next town, walk around, and take the next train. There are almost never any accidents. Did I say it's electric?
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
1. radiation exposure and some mall cop staring at my dick. with pictures for permanent internet memories
2. some mall cop groping my dick
i choose 3: fuck flying. taking the airplane is a burdensome horrendous experience that just keeps getting worse and worse. it makes driving 20 hours seem more attractive than flying 4 hours
"the terrorists have won" is a lame trite statement, but it's true. they've permanently altered our society to turn us into scared cattle and they've permanently made airplanes a hellish unattractive transportation method
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So where are the political people who promised us it was "impossible" for the images from these scanners to be saved? It was clearly a manufacturing possibility that the images could be stored. And the rule of operation is that "if it can be done, it will be".
Geeky systems observation:
There needs to be a better political process where, when the political message is later proven to be a lie, we can shoot the original messenger. Because without negative feedback the system will continue to run amok. The current political process is not good enough and has a large enough time lag that corrective factors build up and sever oscillations occur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_margin
It has been pretty apparent that these things could save images from the very start.
Have you ever seen a picture of these scans? Were you at the airport at the time, or was it on TV or the internet? How do you think it got there?
Who cares whether the machines can save images or not anyway? Any screener with a camera phone could just take a picture of the screen.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
They're retaining the data illegally.
No one really seems to care if anything is illegal anymore, as long as it isn't a "classic" crime like assault, robbery, murder, drugs, or the like. The notion of illegality is as benign and dead as ever. Now it seems, laws are merely for retaining and furthering the authoritative reach of those in power, not as a code by which we determine what constitutes a crime.
... against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." Shall not be violated. Here I was, locked in a bathroom with two police officers, being searched, all because I didn't get lucky when somebody went searching for a promotion in a post-Columbine fear state.
I've had money stolen by Fortune 500 companies and those employees laugh at me after I read the applicable laws aloud to them, even though they were clearly -- even personally -- in violation. It's all just a joke, a game. Of course, they win, because it wasn't enough dollars and cents to coerce me into jumping through all the necessary hoops and sending of all the paperwork to the various & mysterious government entities whom I would need to reach out to in order to even have "THE LAW" enforced.
Nearly ten years ago, I was searched every single day before class my senior year. I dropped out because they wouldn't stop and I was sick of it. No due process. There were no charges, no arrest, no evidence -- nothing. Just some overzealous police officer saying I did something (I didn't), and that being enough. The police are the authorities on reality now, I suppose. Be searched, or be denied an education! No one cared at the school, the local school board, the state department of education, the ACLU, the attorney general's office -- whoever I reached out to. Couldn't even find any money-grubbing lawyers to take on the district. I was only seventeen, a definite no one. Why should they care? There are no consequences if they don't.
There, in the corner of a locked bathroom, lay the United States Constitution trampled, battered, abused, and with a page upturned to the fourth amendment, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons
So, the law is dead. It's because nobody cares. No one is individually accountable. Nothing matters as long as you can have your TV dinner in front of a friendly glowing screen made just to keep your empty mind company; crawl under your made-in-China blanket at night; and sidle up to that wife of yours you met staring down the packets of pet niblets at the grocery store in the dog food aisle.
Take away a person's false sense of security and all of the comforts of modernity, perhaps they'll have time or be more inclined to think about trivial, meaningless things such as "sense-makery" and "justice."
not much, just being forced to manually insert line breaks into my comment
This isn't the ONLY thing either...
Big Sis Caught Lying To American People
http://www.infowars.com/big-sis-caught-lying-to-american-people/
Video: Big Sis Caught Lying
http://www.prisonplanet.com/video-big-sis-caught-lying.html
'Naked' scanners at US airports may be dangerous: scientists
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h08khPyFPinX_4vNYd1JZwn8hV4Q?docId=CNG.442824fa7c08853af96322d7315a6f02.461
Shocker: TSA Has Been Molesting Children For Years
http://www.prisonplanet.com/shocker-tsa-has-been-molesting-children-for-years.html
TSA Now Putting Hands Down Fliers’ Pants
http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-now-putting-hands-down-fliers-pants.html
TSA Gives Rapists And Illegals The Green Light While Groping Children
http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-gives-rapists-and-illegals-the-green-light-while-groping-children.html
The Truth is a Virus!!!
I think that the $10K lawsuit and arrest was an empty threat, not actually happening. But that's still a pretty dirtbag Nazi kind of thing to threaten somebody with.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Lying about this is unconscionable, but I can see a valid reason for them wanting to save such things: it lets you know how they were defeated last time.
Suppose that somebody does manage to sneak something deadly on board. If this were a bug in a piece of software, you'd all want to leap to reconstructing the event, and you'd be irked if you knew you had deliberately thrown away a crucial piece of information. Especially since if it happened once, it could happen again. So you'd have to go on lockdown.
I'm NOT trying to justify this. Lying bad, radiation bad, groping bad, virtual strip search bad, TSA bad, pictures always leak, terrorists winning, Orwell right, etc. I'm good with all that.
But I'm a bit surprised that they didn't even try to make the case for saving the pictures, perhaps with an public key encryption and the private key kept only on a piece of paper locked in a safe somewhere. I guess they felt it was futile; people are uncomfortable enough about the pictures as it is.
In the US, once you enter in an agreement with any corporation you lose some rights. What the TSA is doing now is no worse than what many software companies do with their EULAs, it's just more obvious because it's physical.
No. That’s bullshit.
Certain rights can’t be contracted away. Period.
That’s why almost any contract has a clause in it that says something to the effect that “you may have certain rights that are not listed, or we may not legally be able to indemnify ourselves from certain warranties or liabilities, in which case those claims are held void but the rest of our contract is still actionable”.
Writing a clause into a contract that takes away my inalienable rights just makes the contract illegal.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Child porn.
Why should I care about the low-res crap copped from some security scanners?
Seriously, as long as they don't give me cancer (which is iffy so I'm "opting out" until "the science is in") or cause growths (like a second head,) who gives a fuck?
Hell, if they turn the heat up in winter, I'll walk naked through the airport. It won't be pretty but neither is comedy.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I won't be flying anymore. The fact that the TSA is now allowed to grope, fondle and molest people under threat of prosecution is beyond belief.
Newsflash to the TSA, it's not an optional screening if there are serious consequences to saying no. I wouldn't consider something optional if the alternative is paying a $10,000 fine or being arrested. Sure technically there isn't a gun to the head, but no reasonable person is going to conclude that there isn't force being applied.
This isn't any different than when a Priest, teacher or parent pressures a child to allow touching which wouldn't normally be tolerated. There is no informed consent when the party asking for it has the power to inflict such serious consequences.
Last EULA I read also had a clause that stated that if any of it would be illegal or unlawful, those parts were inapplicable to me. This is nothing like a EULA.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Ok, take a moment and think about this.
How, exactly, would they know that they are going to be detected on one attempt, and know that they are not going to be detected on another attempt? What used to be "additional screening" a few years ago is now applied to all passengers - we're all getting a pat-down or backscatter scan now.
The moronic thing is thinking that someone who is going to set off a bomb to kill hundreds in an airplane would not set off a bomb to kill hundreds in a crowded security area.
Nah, this is pure spite.
For years, they have allowed people to walk through metal detectors and, if it goes off, to walk back, remove some metal object and try again. Any terrorist with half a brain could have used this to accurately calibrate the metal detectors.
Heathrow, on the other hand, once you set off the detector, you are going to be "wand-ed" and get a pat down. No second chances.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"They are charging and fining anyone who submits to examination and then backs out."
He refused the examination and left. What did he submit to?
"In the US, once you enter in an agreement with any corporation you lose some rights."
TSA is not a corporation. When did he agree to this arrangement?
The difference being that if I enter into a contract with a corporation and they change the contract without my consent after I agreed to it, I can opt out of the changes and cancel my relationship. If I purchase a non-refundable airline ticket previous to TSA's new nude-o-scopes being put in place, I cannot get a refund on the grounds that I disagree with the new TSA policies.
There's one good reason to treat pilots the same as everyone else: Consistency - everybody on the plane goes through the scan, no special exceptions because special exceptions can be exploited. For example, someone could impersonate a pilot. The guys at the checkpoint are barely competent enough to run the checkpoint as is. Making them verify pilots' credentials, especially in the face of a determined attacker who can presumably afford good forging skills and can bribe the right people to tweak the databases (after all al qaeda aren't just terrorists they are super-terrorists) would be exceptional. Easier to just apply the exact same procedure that the TSA droids do all the time.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Point of fact - while I don't disagree with the general point of your comment, this statement is not true: they are arguing that it is a very small fraction of the radiation dose from a chest x-ray. Rough numbers, a chest x-ray will deliver ~100 microsieverts of ionizing radiation. The TSA specs say that a single scan delivers ~0.02 microsieverts. You would need to go through 5000 scans to reach the equivalent of one chest x-ray.
There are, additionally, scientists who dispute the accuracy of the 0.02mSv rating, and claim it's far higher, though I haven't seen numbers indicating exactly how much higher. Assuming it's 10x higher than the TSA published, you'd still be looking at 500 scans to achieve the amount of radiation exposure as a chest x-ray. For pilots, and other frequent fliers, this could move it into the realm of being a significant individual health concern, above and beyond the aggregate public health issues.
Even at the TSA-rated numbers, the x-ray scanners will pose an aggregate public health risk - even with a VERY low individual risk, you are multiplying this exposure across millions of passengers every year - you're going to see some non-zero number of cancer cases being triggered by the xray exposure from these devices. If the TSA-rated numbers are significantly lower than the actual radiation exposure (as some scientists are suggesting), you're looking at a ticking time-bomb, regardless of privacy issues.
They could opt for the millimeter-wave scanning devices instead, which do pretty much the same thing, but don't include the fun feature of exposing you to ionizing radiation; however, even if they moved all their scanners to that technology, that still wouldn't address the numerous legitimate privacy concerns inherent to the use of the technology in the first place, and there are some potential concerns about genetic damage caused by exposure to waves of this frequency as well.
I do not automatically consent to a search just because I buy an airline ticket. I don't consent to a search just because I get in line with that ticket. I don't consent to a search even when I get to the front of the line. I don't consent to a search when hearing what they want to do to me. I only consent to a search when I say "Yes, I consent to be searched". What kind of fucked up situation are we in where once you're past a certain point, you suddenly cannot back out of having a TSA agent rub you down? What happened to "The right of the people to be secure in their persons...against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."? I'm not talking about even to the level of probable cause, but just to the standard of reasonable suspicion. Refusing to be manhandled by TSA agents is not grounds for reasonable suspicion any more than refusing to speak to the police proves your guilt.
It is, by far, the busiest travel day of the year in the US, so that might be worth something, but I agree that an ongoing boycot is the only real way.
Then again, the airlines would probably just blame the 20% on the economy and ask for a bailout.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
At this point, Obama is just as guilty as Bush, given the fact that he has the power to stop it and hasn't yet (nor even made mention of wanting to). The security theater is about the only truly bi-partisan thing done by our government.
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
What the TSA is doing now is no worse than what many software companies do with their EULAs, it's just more obvious because it's physical.
Problem with that being that I don't recall signing anything of the sort. In fact, I doubt the fine print on the TICKET says anything of the sort. Also the important fact that the ticket came from a commercial entity and not the TSA. If you read the story of that guy, he is told that even walking into the airport obliges him to give up his rights. We're far beyond contract here into the realm of 'radioactive court cases' that no judge will rule against, no lawyer would touch. I feel stupider for you comparing the two.
You know what makes the best terrorist target? Inefficiency. A big fat line of Christmas travelers who are only checked if they have a boarding pass halfway through the crowd of people lining up to get INTO the security screening. You will continue to be a target as long as efficiency is orthogonal to profit.
Also, get over yourselves. Scary boogie-men from outside the Great Fatherland have NOTHING on terror compared to our own government and armed forces. When I'm driving to work in the morning, I'm not worried about Al-Qaida, I'm scared shittless about the bored cop on the corner who just might be looking for an excuse.
Yes... Because you know... A fine will keep them from remembering what they learned...
Whatever fucktard.
In the US No CONTRACT can waive your rights under law.
The only recourse is the deny service.....
The US sup court ruled years ago that the only reason these security searches at airports were legal was that people can decline at any time and choose not to fly... including after they were already in the terminal...
The only way to FORCE a person to be searched is with probable cause.
Otherwise.. Well...
Terrorists are everywhere.. Mall, court house, airport, bus, concert, wal-mart....
Lets just always search everyone all the time... It's not like we have the right to be secure in our person.
Oh, wait.
Fuck you