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Making Airport Scanners Less Objectionable
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that one of the researchers who helped develop the software for the scanners says there is a simple fix that would make scanning less objectionable. The fix would distort the images captured on full-body scanners so they look like reflections in a fun-house mirror, but any potentially dangerous objects would be clearly revealed, says Willard 'Bill' Wattenburg, a former nuclear weapons designer at the Livermore lab. 'Why not just distort the image into something grotesque so that there isn't anything titillating or exciting about it?' asks Wattenburg, adding that the modification is so simple that 'a 6-year-old could do the same thing with Photoshop... It's probably a few weeks' modification of the program.' Wattenburg said he was rebuffed when he offered the concept to Department of Homeland Security officials four years ago. A TSA official said the agency is working on development of scanner technology that would reduce the image to a 'generic icon, a generic stick figure' that would still reveal potentially dangerous items." Reader FleaPlus points out an unintended consequence: some transportation economists believe that the TSA's new invasive techniques may lead to more deaths as more people use road transportation to avoid flying — much more dangerous by the mile than air travel.
As we can see here, the TSA doesn't like even blurry crotches. All that stuff we heard about "blurring the private areas" was a lie by the TSA and John Pistole because here we have someone who had to get patted down anyway because of a blurred crotch.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
"A group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raised concerns about the 'potential serious health risks' from the scanners in a letter sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology in April... 'While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high,' they wrote."
Continued - http://www.prisonplanet.com/naked-body-scanners-may-be-dangerous-scientists.html
Updated - http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-naked-scanners-airports-dangerous-scientists.html
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
there is absolutely no need for prison security in the airport for regular people just trying to travel. It is a just a big scam by Michael Chertoff and Rapiscan Systems to sell naked scanners to the tsa for billions in profits. I bet if they were not allowed to make any money they would no longer be pushing their use.
First of all, the presentation of that article on WashingtonPost.com was 4 pages of absolute horror.
Second, I heard this stick figure display was already being done in Europe, but it still doesn't make me feel safer or less worried about anything.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It would also be "less objectionable" if we were not exposed to significant dose of ionizing radiation.
http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf
I would think that the cosmic radiation dose you get on the airplane is much more deadly than even that.
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
Sorry, but there is an xkcd about rule 34. He is officially legit on this one.
http://xkcd.com/305/
But if they don't inconvenience people enough, they won't feel properly protected. An airline suicide hijacking is something that gets on TV, so people will be far more afraid of that than they would be of a more realistic danger.
The reason the US doesn't have a system like Israel's is that most flights in the US are domestic.
I used to think the same, until I found-out that scientists are warning these machines can cause skin cancer. See my message further below.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
For a typical cross-country flight in a commercial airplane, you are likely to receive 2 to 5 millirem (mrem) of radiation, less than half the radiation dose you receive from a chest x-ray.
So you may be right about that. However, the observation posted by commodore64_love above about the concentration of the scanner dose in the skin does alter the picture a little.
Of the transportation modes you listed the only one really suitable for long trips is trains. That could be another part of the explanation, people don't usually use cars and buses for very long trips which should be more likely to have accidents occur purely by virtue of them being longer.
If I remember correctly on the basis of time spent traveling, planes and cars have a similar death rate. So you're just as likely to die from one hour in a plane as you are from one hour in a car. For planes the takeoff and landing are especially dangerous, for a car the entire trip is roughly the same amount of danger (assuming road conditions, etc... are equal)
First (and least important), if you can distort the images, you can undistort them.
That's only true if the distortion is reversible and doesn't result in the loss of information. Distortions that result in information loss can't be un-distorted.
I mentioned this on the last TSA thread, but it bears repeating: In fact, campaign contributions were unnecessary for this, because the DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff who started this move had significant investments manufacturer of the naked-scan machines.
I am officially gone from
People aren't outraged about the nudity itself, they're outraged that they are (basically) being rendered nude against their wishes*. That's an entirely different issue, and quite a legitimate one. I've got no objection to a good steak but I'd still get pissy if an armed man started throwing slabs of beef at me before he'd let me on the bus.
*The choice between scan and "enhanced pat-down" amounts to coercion, IMO.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Profiling, how the Israelis do it, isn't what Americans consider profiling. Americans consider it "oh, he's Middle-Eastern looking, search him." What I've read is that Israeli profiling is "talk for a few minutes with a highly trained expert, who uses your reactions to profile you." I would probably work, but would also involve replacing a lot of $8/hr TSA grunts with $?/hr TSA interviewers.
And the standard magnetic scan. That can catch a lot and isn't invasive.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Your first point is wrong. They do indeed handle people's genitals now. Please do try reading about something before you comment on it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Actually your odds are a bit high. The Wall Street Journal says:
The odds of dying in a terrorist attack on a plane in a given year are 1 in 25,000,000.
The odds of a Westerner being killed by a terrorist in a given year are 1 in 3,000,000.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703481004574646963713065116.html
The NTSB says the odd for car accidents are:
The odds of dying in a car accident in a given year are 1 in 18,585.
The odds of simply being in a car accident in a given year are 1 in 5,889.
http://www.ntsb.gov/
2) Do you have any idea how much freaking money that "security theater" costs? Lots of campaign contributions later, it turns out we have a need.
Follow the money. http://www.politicolnews.com/chertoff-lobbyists-and-airport-scanners/: "The former Head of Homeland Security had an ulterior motive in promoting the Airport security scanning machines that people are objecting to so strongly. The company that makes the machine is now one of Chertoff's clients but in the past under the Bush administration Chernoff [sic] was selling these machines to the government and to the Obama administration and they bought it hook, line and sinker."
I didn't know if I should have laughed or cried when I saw this article.. but it just illustrates the problem with our country.. those who make the rules don't have to follow them.
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/nation-world-news/incoming-speaker-boehner-avoids-airport-pad-down-1008368.html/
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
In Schiphol, Amsterdam airport, the final screening (metal detector etc) was done at the gate. That airport has a shared area for both incoming and outgoing passengers. So also transit passengers.
Having airliners themselves do the screening becomes fairly easy to organise with such a layout.
Wrong on multiple counts:
Please take the time to learn about the technology before attempting to lecture people about how it works.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The wikipedia page talks about the "well dressed man" and congressional testimony revealed that various TLAs knew about him and intentionally chose not to revoke his passport or put him on the no-fly list.
The metric a rational terrorist would use is amount of terror per unit of effort.
Is the idea of being blown up while waiting in line to go through security (or for that matter, standing in line anywhere) more or less terrifying that the idea of being blown up in mid-air?
The fact that none of this is happening in the US despite how easy it would be to do and how impossible it is to stop proves that actual terrorists are extremely rare.
Again, i'm presented with a meaningless statement concerning the relative risks of car travel vrs flying. Please note: We do NOT choose travel methods based on mileage!!!! To say that air travel is markedly safer than by automobile is to ignore a simple fact: we choose the mode based on *time* to get there, NOT the distance! I might choose a vacay travel time that is reasonable based on total available vacation time. A month in Australia from Boston is worth spending many hours in flight. Death rates MUST be stated in 'deaths per hour in the conveyance' , not in fatalities per mile! When i do see such figures, then i'll pay attention... but i assure you that the numbers will not be such as to make flying seen to be so enormously safe.
You're wrong. Clearly the number of deaths should be stated in terms of 'number of stops for fast food divided by restroom breaks'. Anything else is meaningless. I can assure you that using this method driving will turn out to be much safer.
Isn't 'time to get there' directly related to distance and speed at which you travel? The only time flying is slower is when you have to spend more time driving to and from the airport than to drive to your destination. So basically what you are saying is that if traveling 1000 miles by car you were more likely to die, it would be ok because... you got to spend more time in your car. Right?
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible -W.B.
Perhaps this comes as news to you but normal swimsuits are designed with padding to support certain things (think like a bra) and to blur out features that would otherwise be visible in a contour with millimeter-level precision (nipples and crease of the labia, for instance).
But hey, if a contour is really no big deal there’s always water-resistant body-paint, just put some of that on the (in)appropriate body parts before you set your 6-y-o free on the beach.
Okay, here's a relatively recent citation to get you started:
[Cumulative Radiation Exposure Shows Increased Cancer Risk For Emergency Department Patients]
That said, it has been common knowledge in medical and scientific circles for decades, so it really doesn't need a citation.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
the police have to have probable cause to do a pat down. That is the difference. Innocent before guilty remember?
This is also true at Bangor International Airport in Maine (USA). The airport is so small they only have two gates, so they only have one security line. You only go through security just before you board, so you can arrive in the gate area 15 minutes before your flight and still get on your plane easily. If you aren't checking luggage and have checked in to your flight online, it's literally a walk from parking straight to security. I will occasionally drive the extra hour to get to Bangor (I live closer to Portland) because I more than make up for that hour in not having to worry about possible delays in security causing me to miss my flight.
However, such a system scales poorly, especially if you want X-ray machines for handheld luggage and backscatter machines for nekkid scanning and metal detectors. That's probably around a million dollars for each line you want to offer people, plus at least four trained officers (X-ray operator, backscatter operator, groper, and metal detector operator/guy who directs you to the groping station) and an airport with 20 gates realistically needs fewer than 5 lines. Put a full scan system at each gate, and you're talking about a really, really significant increase to the costs. It's cheaper to put one set of lines somewhere near the entrance to the flight area and declare anything beyond that a "safe zone".
The machines at Bangor sit idle for at least 45 minutes out of every hour. That system is only used there because, well, there's only the need for one scanning station. The TSA officers apparently work in some of the shops at the airport or take a lot of breaks or something because when no flights are active, they are nowhere to be found. It's wonderfully convenient, but expensive as hell. It's like having your own dedicated modem in the days of dial-up. It's far cheaper to pool the resources at the airport level and keep each machine operating at full capacity most of the time, and of course it's even cheaper to do what they do - not have enough lines to accommodate their peak traffic (another valid analogy from the old dial-up days).
Of course, such a system as they have in Bangor is very secure and far less inconvenient. It'd be damned near impossible to smuggle anything into Bangor's "secure zone" because the only thing in there is a few chairs, a ticket scanning station, and a door. All of it is glass-enclosed so you can clearly see passengers preparing to board from anywhere in the common area, but it's solidly sealed and there are no businesses and restaurants and hordes of employees and supplies and food being carted in there daily as in most airports (where if you really wanted to, you'd get a job with a restaurant and arrange to smuggle stuff in with the food and supplies shipments). It's less inconvenient because every passenger in line is there for a specific flight, so if you get held up in security you at least won't miss your flight. The attendants can see you in the security line and won't close the doors until the security line shuts down, which ordinarily happens about 5 minutes before boarding closes. If you get in line more than 5 minutes before your flight is set to take off, it's TSA's problem to get you processed before the flight takes off.
But it's all security theatre since the airlines armored the doors anyway, so the only thing you can do is take down an plane, and planes are not a terribly desirable target for the effort involved.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
The reason you are surprised is that terrorists are far more rare than you've been lead to believe.
Of course the government is doing its very best to manufacture domestic terrorists so at some point you must assume that they will be successful.
The only possible reason you've heard
absolutely no science to back that statement up.
is either because you are deaf, dumb, or lazy. The research is pretty clear. Flying causes skin cancer, but has little to no effect on the incidence of other kinds of cancer. Thirty seconds of google-fu brings up:
http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/about-cancer/cancer-questions/airline-staff-and-cancer
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC124549/
http://oem.bmj.com/content/57/3/175.abstract
Not only that. You choose to get in a plane and fly, the government makes you stand in a security line. Such a terrorist act would turn people against the government (who the sheep think are supposed to keep you safe), blowing up planes turns them against the terrorists.