Slashdot Mirror
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.
Anyone care to google: Funhouse mirror p0rn? Because I sense rule 34...
They'd still cause cancer deaths at a rate exceeding the terrorist threat.
"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
Then the TSA will be swamped with job applications from fetishists who like funhouse-distorted body images...
"Will you look at the size of her feet!!"
"... assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result." "Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists." http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/tsa_backscatter.html
I am embarrassed by people. Not because they're outraged about the scanners. But because it's over a little virtual nudity.
Worry about the incredible cost in hardware and training. Worry about some idiot cranking up the power, or a hardware flaw doing it for them. Worry about the infinite spiral of ineffective hoops in the security theater. Worry about what you're going to have to supper.
But, good grief, stop with the omg-naked and think-of-the-children crap.
Seriously, since 9/11 we have gone from a "let the hijackers land where they want and don't fuss" mentality to a "kill the fucker" sport mentality. Hijackings, at least on US flights are a thing of the past. Sure, ok, finding an explosive is a good thing, but at what cost? The chances of being on a plane with a bomb are so tiny it isn't even worth worrying about.
Lets go back to metal detectors to get the obvious and maybe walk bomb sniffing dogs through often enough to deter would-be "terrorists". Oh, and scan checked luggage all you want, just stop stealing from it, ok?
Nude photos and fondling my (and everyone elses) man bits isn't making me feel safer, it's just making me want to fly less and make me loathe my government even more. I'm spending less and the government is spending more. What a great recipe.
Yep profiling seems to work for the Israelis. Or eliminate the search completely (other than the standard Xraying of suitcases). Your American odds of dying in an airplane bombing are 1 in 500,000. That is about the same as your risk of drowning in a tsunami or getting hit by a meteorite. I think I'd rather take that vanishingly-small risk, rather than take the 1-to-1 risk that some TSA officer will be playing with my ___, touching my wife's ___s, and/or fondling my kid's ___.
If you really want to be afraid, fear your car. Odds of dying in a car is 1 in 100.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
the last line of the summary says it all
may lead to more deaths as more people to use road transportation to avoid flying — much more dangerous by the mile than air travel.
if it is true, and flying is already safer than road travel, then why do we need all the security?
This would still not make it any less objectionable from my perspective. As long as the distortion is occurring in software, it isn't acceptable. As long as the non-distorted data exists for even a microsecond on some hard drive somewhere, the data can be:
And that's assuming that they don't just tell us that they're applying this distortion while not really doing so. Given the number of lies the TSA has told about these things so far, I don't trust these people as far as I can throw them.
Only one thing will make these less objectionable: not using them. If you're going to blur the heck out of the image anyway, why not replace those $170,000 machines with $4,000 infrared-based thermal imaging cameras and be done with it? They're 1/42nd the cost, and they do the blurring in hardware due to the nature of the energy emissions being detected. They're also much faster than the TSA's expensive toys---you could walk through like you do a metal detector instead of having to wait for a scan---and they're passive, so there's no exposure to dangerous ionizing radiation (and before you say that this is a small amount of radiation, I'll point out that no amount of ionizing radiation is safe according to BEIR VII from the National Academies of Science).
No, these unholy abominations have to go. They're a fundamental invasion of our privacy, and a perfect example of wasteful government spending.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The problem is not that anybody will see the naked images, the problem is not even that these scanners are probably worse for your health than the terrorists, the problem is even not that somebody is touching 'your junk' and the problem is even not that none of these procedures are making anything any safer (they are not.)
The problem is that you are a human being, and if you allow yourself to be treated like cattle, they will.
The problem is that those Freedoms and Liberties are eroding and you are allowing them to take the Freedoms and Liberties away.
People died and killed others for this kind of stuff because it matters. You only have one life, do you want to be cattle or a human?
You can't handle the truth.
Italy has decided to dump the full body scanners because they are slow and ineffective.
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/international/italy-to-abandon-airport-body-scanner-project
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/italy-to-abandon-airport-body-scanners-20100924-15pgu.html
http://www.euronews.net/2010/09/23/italian-airport-security-axing-body-scanners/
Seems to me that ought be a clear signal that they are just security theater.
if it is true, and flying is already safer than road travel, then why do we need all the security?
1) The elite prefer, at this time, to control the masses by fear. Americans are carefully social engineered to be cowards, and the elite like it that way. Otherwise, all the lives ruined by the elites might want to take a few with em on the way out. So, keep them scared.
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.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The reason the US doesn't have a system like Isreal's is because they've taken a systematic look at the problem and have implemented a comprehensive, multilayered, efficient solution. In the US, we prefer one-step, silver-bullet type "fixes". Anything more complex would be argued out of existence.
Keep in mind that a terrorist (sorry, "freedom fighter") used an ass-bomb in an unsuccessful attempt on the Saudi Arabia's counter-terrorism minister.
Backscatter won't detect it. Groping (short of a finger up your asshole) won't detect it. Nope, we can only be safe if you drop trou and pull a goatse or let the TSA watch you take a shit.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Yes, so easy a "6-year old could do the same thing", and yet:
"The Livermore laboratory sent off a final application to the U.S. Patent Office on Nov. 23, 2006"
That provides insight to the absurdity of the patent process. Take something obvious, simple, and widely used, then say "Look! This is a brand new technique, just because no one has applied these algorithms to these sorts of images before."
Give me a break.
Better known as 318230.
The funny thing is, we don't really even need that! There were some very good measures put in place after 9/11 that prevented the use of commercial airliners being used as missiles against us, namely a locked and reinforced cockpit door and armed air marshals. This also prevents hijackings for any reason, such as extortion and the like. Either way, as long as these measures are in place, planes being used as missiles is mitigated. And I firmly believe I will not see it happen again in the US in my lifetime.
Now that the threat to the general public is diminished the only thing a terrorist can do to a plane now is blow it up, and to that I say: so what? It's a waste of a terrorist organization's resources, they can accomplish much better kill and terror rates on other vectors. I don't even think the TSA should be the one scanning the people at all, it should be the individual airlines. That way you can choose to pay for your security if you really want it, and competitive practices can find the optimal solution.
A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. -Ford Prefect(8777)
Ascribing it to a malevolent elite (reptilians?) makes the problem intractible. It's easier to solve when you realise that the people making these horrible decisions are the same kind of hacked-together animal brain as the rest of us, operating on similar drives toward similar objectives. That's not to say there aren't malevolent entities amoungst them, but those are the parasites, not the organism, and certainly not the pathology.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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
Like blowing themselves up in the security checkpoint line, for example.
the only thing a terrorist can do to a plane now is blow it up, and to that I say: so what? It's a waste of a terrorist organization's resources, they can accomplish much better kill and terror rates on other vectors.
And yet they don't... no one has walked into an airport and blown that up, even though it would work GREAT. It's as if there isn't a vast network of resourceful bombers looking to cause as much harm as possible... only a handful of amateurs. It's exactly as if that threat was overblown in order to gain power though fear.
You can't take the sky from me...
In the US, flying is definitely safer than driving. Especially to Europe.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
My wife and I were talking about this yesterday. We would rather be one of the many thousands of people a screener sees "naked" instead of one of the people being publicly fondled.
That's pretty much how they're counting on you thinking. Naturally a public groping is less appealing than a quasi-anonymous screening. However, your tacit agreement that this type of search is necessary in the first place puts you at a disadvantage to start with for it means you've dismissed option 3 out-of-hand.
That also leads to suggestions like those in TFA -- not to eliminate the searches, but to make them "less invasive". Too many people seem to think that the major issue here is nudity. A subset of people claim to be concerned about the radiation, but I think many of them are doing this to avoid sounding too radical about the real issue: for me (and I think many others), the issue is "unreasonable search" -- and as long as we continue to consent to the searches, they're allowed to do them.
Of course, you're free to fall in line and know your place. As for me, I'll speak with my wallet and contacting my representatives. I've already stopped flying unless the drive was more than 12 hours -- after all, 12 hours is close to break-even when you factor in flight time and security. (One one recent occasion I drove 500 miles and made it home before my flying colleagues.) I can and will stretch that to 24 hours, even though it inconveniences the hell out of me.
I'm just glad that the media is picking up on this issue. I only hope their attention span lasts longer than it takes for some administrator to soothe them by saying the searches will be "less invasive" from now on.
So? Who cares? If there ever was a use for Plato's noble lie, it's this. I'm spreading that shit around, because maybe it'll make people wake up a little bit.
Also: your chances of dying in a hijacking are something like one in a million or less. What are your chances of getting skin cancer from this device? If they're greater than one in a million (which is entirely possible), then it is not worthwhile to use these devices.
This is the same reason why the new breast cancer screening recommendations for women over age 50 say that they should get mammograms only once every two years, instead of once a year - the chances of detecting breast cancer are outweighed by the chances of causing breast cancer when you take a mammogram once a year.