Slashdot Mirror
DHS Eyes Covert Body Scans
CWmike writes "Documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) suggest that the US Department of Homeland Security has signed contracts for the development of mobile and static systems that can be used scan pedestrians and people at rail and bus stations and special event venues — apparently at times without their knowledge. Under consideration: An Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance platform; an X-Ray Backscatter system that could detect concealed metallic and high-density plastic objects on people from up to 10 meters away; a walk-through x-ray screening system that could be deployed at entrances to special events or other points of interest, which could be installed in corridors and likely scan people walking through it without them knowing it, EPIC said."
If the technology is out there to do this safely and securely, how could it possibly be a bad thing. These being used at major gatherings - Olympics, Superbowl, World Cup - all round the world these should be able to be used given the current state of the world we live in.
What these guys clearly want is the right to search any and all persons without their knowledge and without anything remotely resembling probable cause. Right now, they can at least claim that you consent to being searched when you decide to board a plane. But this is something different, because you do not consent to a search when you walk down a street.
Now show me your papers please.
I am officially gone from
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
:(
They will probably use the olde Family guy argument -
Peter: Brian, are you suggesting that 9/11 didn't change everything?
Brian: What? No, I was just...
Peter: 'Cause 9/11 changed everything, Brian! 9/11 changed everything!
DAMN
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
give a man the power of God.
(I don't remember the exact quote)
I always thought that if things really got bad enough, I would have to finally take the plunge and expatriate.
Where would you go? It's the same shit or (usually) worse everywhere.
Yeah, I'm sure covertly x-raying people will go down really well with pregnant women. I don't care if they say backscatter x-rays emit a safe level of radiation that poses no risk to a fetus. I wouldn't trust it. First, I'm not convinced they've done adequate studies. Second, I'm not going to trust an x-ray emitting device that is neither medically certified nor operated by trained medical professionals.
The backscatter system is designed to penetrate the outer layer of the skin. Experts have written to the US Government with concerns only to be answered with "it is too low power!" But the fact is that these machines cause cancer, the only question is how much cancer and if we're happy with killing one additional person every year, ten, or over a hundred?
Luckily it is impossible to show cause/effect between these machines and the cancers we know they will cause. Thus we can go on irradiating ourselves for many generations to come. I'd be very concerned if I was a frequent flier. You're a guinea pig. But now they want to expand this ineffective and unnecessary security theatre into the general populous? Very scary thought.
Jan, 2010: Netherlands and UK.
Aug, 2010: Sale of vans with backscatter devices to U.S. law enforcement agencies
So this is the EPIC FOIA confirmation.
Head north. History should have told you that one.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
You know those WiFi-sensitive T-Shirts from ThinkGeek? Maybe it's time for something that responds to X-radiation...
Okay, let's just consider this for a bit. Storage costs are dropping like a lead balloon. Chip costs as well.
Soon the idea that people are filming their lives constantly will be a fact rather than a story.
Image processing of said films and audio will allow us to ask our devices where we put our keys, and they will answer (think cheap massive storage meets IBM's Watson).
Our cars will drive themselves (seriously, 40,000 deaths per year because people can't drive well consistently WILL be converted into less than 400 deaths per year because automated cars have limits). First the cars will just kick in when they have to to save our lives, then they will just take over the job. And they will be able to record where we have been, and be able to discuss where we want to go within that historical and geographical context (car meets Watson).
But then things get sinister. The TSA/FBI/CIA/... will be able to record all sorts of things, and ask about what people have been doing. (Video surveillance meets Watson). And there is going to be piles of video for "Surveillance Watson" to think about. Think traffic cameras, hummingbird sized drones, parking lot cameras, etc.
People are going to go into a rage here about the radiation. But what happens when we figure out how to simply understand the changes to the background radiation just because people are walking about? We have all sorts of RF to use, all materials give off a certain amount of radiation, and we are walking through all of it. We have all sorts of sonic sources to process. The bottom line is that passive sensors will *at some point* be able to do what requires active radiation sources today.
Today the limits on processing random data streams limits what government can do with all these sources of information that produce tons and tons of junk for each ounce of "useful-to-three-letter-org" information. The law is increasingly irrelevant when it comes to restraining what these organizations do. What has saved us is that it is just too hard to process that much data.
But at some point it will NOT be too hard to process that much data. We need to make the law RELEVANT in restraining how we are observed, because even if I am wrong about the details I gave above, I am not wrong about the trend. The fact is that technology is going to be increasingly on the side of those that want to know everything about us even if they have no right to gather that information. And we will increasingly see this used to punish those that oppose those in power.
What if they find something on the street?
Does their machine magically know if I have a CCW permit or not?
you need a permit to turn things opposite of clock direction? really?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Well, I think you should need a permit to create one of those goofy bassackward thread screw systems that go the wrong way -- those things are confusing!
DHS' $80-billion plus budget depends on keeping the people of the USA terrified. The small-timers would have to be blithering idiots not to leave that to the professionals.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The American College of Radiology and the Radiological Society of North America have already expressed concerns about the levels of radiation given to patients in the normal course of medical practice. They've already recommended limiting scans to cases where absolutely necessary, where you can justifiably state "getting this scan is worth increasing the odds my patient will get cancer."
Of course, the reality is worse. Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research is reporting the machines are likely to routinely emit 20 times the radiation reported in the spec and are flat out a major public health risk. Dr. John Sedat, Professor of BioChemistry and Biophysics at the University of California San Francisco and a member of the National Academy of Sciences sent a letter to the White House with the following:
“it appears that real independent safety data do not exist There has not been sufficient review of the intermediate and long-term effects of radiation exposure associated with airport scanners. There is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations.”
By the TSA's own numbers, which are undoubtedly low, they calculate more people will die from the eventual cancers than have been killed by all the terrorist acts in the world put together.
OK, so that's one side of the argument. What does the DHS have to say? Where are the medical professionals willing to certify these machines as safe?
Turns out, there aren't any. No medical professional of any kind has yet been willing to sign their name in public stating that these machines are safe. The only people saying so are the vendors who won the contract, and even they refuse to state unequivacably that the machines are safe, falling back instead on "We've built the machine to your spec and they should perform as ordered."
No one, not even the maker of the machines, is willing to certify them as safe.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I feel the same. I can carry a weapon where I live and most of h time I don't feel the need. Now I think I will out of principle alone. This with the new DHS posters at WalMrt that say "if you see something, say something" with a call in number. This really is starting to reek of a police state (even though the police don't seem to be in on it).
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Mod parent up.
As someone who worked in medical imaging, I'll add there is no documentation of what exposure you are getting, when you got it, etc. At least in a hospital, they make sure they don't X-ray you too much.
TSA does not have your health in mind, else these scanners would be FDA approved. Unlike a hospital which would get sued into oblivion if they ever used something not FDA approved.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
for starters as it would pretty much violate the Fourth Amendment.
Not a problem. The Supreme Court has ruled the 4th Amendment unconstitutional.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The constitution is just some old yellowing, tattered set of documents written long before we even had typewriters let alone computers. It may as well be some stone tablet uncovered from an archaeological expedition for all it matters now. The founders' mistake was in putting the same kind of faith in it that you are now. Maybe if natural language had been more precise so that founders' intentions couldn't have been twisted into exactly the opposite of what they had intended or interpreted out of existence entirely by a group of judges. Maybe if thinking for themselves wasn't seen as such a chore for most of the human population. Who knows? What should be obvious to almost anyone by now is that governments grow out of control. Always. And no damn piece of paper is ever going to stop that. He who has the guns, rules. Full stop. Also, the founders' screwed up in believing in their whole "balance of power" system. It just doesn't work. It is only natural for all the "branches" to work together. They are not natural enemies, but natural allies. So finally it has come to this. It was inevitable. OBL just sped it up a little. The only way this could ever be stopped now is through a real revolution with blood running in the streets. A civil war between those who value freedom and those who hate it. It's too bad that Egyptians and Libyans have far more courage than we do. We, the modern descendants of those terrorist-revolutionaries who fought and died for real freedom, are not worthy of their noble experiment. A republic--if you can keep it. We couldn't.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
My plan for dealing with this is actually to build a tinfoi-lined/metallic fabric trenchcoat-hoodie with a Geiger counter built in to detect the X-rays. It would get pretty hot inside so I'd leave it open until X-rays are detected. Maybe hook it up to my phone via bluetooth for upload to a Trapster for backscatter scanners? Oh and maybe add a detector for the microwave scanners if possible.
I'm not worried about the radiation or even care that much about people seeing my junk, it's just to give a big FUCK YOU to over-the-top surveillance.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Amending the Constitution is so difficult, comrade. Better if we merely ignore or reinterpret the Constitution per our whims. For the good of the country, of course.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
You don't even need a CCW in my state. I'm genuinely curious how this would play out.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Your chance of being injured or killed in a Random Terrorist Attack(TM) is already ZERO (since it is not a repeatable event), so this tempest in a teapot is just that.
No need to avoid NYC or anything (unless you really hate the best Chinese food, pizza, hot dogs, etc. you could ever lay your hands on).
Yeah, right.
Better not jump to conclusions.
We need a pre-pre-pre security checkpoint. Something that every good citizen can have in his or her home to verify loyalty. Like a Swibble.
Yeah, right.
I got my information from the WHO survey of their health and health care. http://www.who.int/gho/countries/cub.pdf
You could be absolutely right that all that data if propaganda, but if we're not going to use any data at all due to our inability to verify it personally (at least I can't), that doesn't mean we should resort to single data points either. Again, I'm not saying it's paradise there and no one ever gets sick and there are no health problems or systemic problems at all, but it certainly isn't nearly as bad as the US would have you think.
The report reads practically like many other countries, better than a good portion of them. Comparing with the US, despite having lower infant mortality rates, lower adult mortality rates, the same life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, lower incommunicable disease death rates, lower injury death rates, they spend 1/20th per capita to achieve that.
I can't believe I wore a uniform and served my country only to have the likes of you want to piss away all of our freedoms (without a fight!) because you're scared of a HYPOTHETICAL situation.
What a waste. I should've let the Communists hordes win, but Noooo, I had to slog it out in the friggin mud, sand and muck, freeze my *** off in a @*($&# GP-Medium and sweat my **** off humping Alice and Pig all over the &#*($ place for what?
Yeah, right.
The US government spent the 7 years following 9/11 keeping people terrified. If you read that as the government doing the terrorist's job, you possess properly working higher brain function.
/. crowd, but these high tech electronic gizmos don't work. People have made it through screening with handguns. And as people have said since the get-go, people don't even need to get past the security check to terrorize at airports (presumably all terrorist targets are air travel centric).
In fact, the US reaction went way beyond anything "the enemy" could have hoped for.
The alleged mastermind said directly that the attack was intended to bring financial harm to the US. The US responded with trillions of dollars of wartime debt. As a token of appreciation, the US threw in recruitment benefits that will help terrorist organizations for decades. While they were at it, the US government stomped all over rights of the its citizens. Heck, why not? As if that wasn't enough, they also work very hard at keeping the terror of 9/11 alive, playing with "threat levels" whenever the people don't seem terrified enough.
The truly astounding thing is how much money they are continually throwing at things that do not improve security at all.
This will not play well with the
Maybe gizmos act as a deterrent, "Ooh, surely their superior technology form an impenetrable barrier, lets just give up trying" but I doubt it.
Many people have been arguing for more effective, lower tech solutions that actually will work. Dogs and pigs can detect an enormous range of aromas, don't need to see a nearly undressed image of your body, don't need to physically touch your naughty bits, and don't expose you to radiation.
If the government goal was effective security, wouldn't they use the very inexpensive and very effective dogs rather than the machines that cost millions and are not effective?
What would be more intimidating, a refrigerator-sized machine or a pack of hungry looking German Shepherds sniffing at your pant leg?
Performance must be inherent in every aspect of the system. It is not an afterthought, but always thought. - me