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TSA Interested In Purchasing Dosimeters
OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA recently announced that it is looking for vendors of 'radiation measurement devices'. According to the agency's Request for Information, these devices 'will assist the TSA in determining if the Transportation Security Officers (TSO) at selected federalized airports are exposed to ionizing radiation above minimum detectable levels, and whether any measured radiation doses approach or exceed the threshold where personnel dosimetry monitoring is required by DHS/TSA policy.' A TSA spokeman claims that their RFI 'did not reflect any heightened concern by the agency about radiation levels that might be excessive or pose a risk to either TSA screeners or members of the traveling public.' Concern outside the agency, however, has always been high. TSA has long been criticized for its apparent lack of understanding of radiological safety, even for its own employees. There has been speculation of a cancer cluster, possibly caused by poor safety practices in baggage screening."
Don't want to be mean but I think it would be really really really cool if they find plenty of radiation.
Only took them how many years?
How exactly does proving that standing around a bunch of X-ray equipment causes radiation exposure hurt those whose policies put those people there in the first place? No karma. Not hardly. OSHA should have been all over this from day one, to protect these employees.
I am a little disturbed they want to (appear to) do their own testing in this manner. I seriously doubt we'll see honest results out of the TSA management. Once again, OSHA needs to run this. Self-reporting will only toe the party line, that the machines are perfectly safe.
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Really? Karma? I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, no matter what. Most of these "guards" are just your average woefully ignorant citizen of America. They believe what the TSA tells them since they don't know any better and don't have the means to think otherwise.
"Have you seen my marbles"
No job is so important, and no service is so urgent, that we cannot take time to perform our work safely. The question is, why weren't these put in when the body scanners were first put into use?
So they are just obeying orders?
Well I'm a federal employee too and I had to take this little oath.
"I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
More like "I'll believe it when I see it" -- someone somewhere (probably the DOJ) will "realize" that just admitting the possibility there's any risk of cancer from their "radiation scanners" opens them up to a zillion liability suits and the iron wall will come back down because denial is their chief weapon. That and fear, of course ('cause it sure ain't surprise...or a ruthless efficiency, etc.!!!)
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...what-do-you-expect-when-paying-people-who-don't-know-who-Rutherford-was-$10-per-hour department.
Yep. They'll just go back and ask for more "emergency funding" to replace all the machines with more expensive ones.
Even if the dosage is 'safe', the chances of it giving you cancer are still HIGHER than those of being blown up by a terrorist. Just saying.
No sig today...
Another minor act in the continuing "Security Theatre".
So they are just obeying orders?
Well I'm a federal employee too and I had to take this little oath.
"I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
So, please tell us why federal employees have no problem violating the Fourth Ammendment?
We were involved a significant amount with the TSA (and FAA before), and was amazed that other countries made it mandatory to require the badges, but the US firmly said no. When we asked why that was 'cost,and it might confuse people if the badge showed something that wasn't really a problem'.
Perhaps they can start offering free screenings for testicular and breast cancer. They are going to be grabbing them anyway.
It's sort of like the guards at the gas house getting a taste of their own poison....
trout007 doesn't understand karma. He's like one of those dipshits who gets laid off from a Fortune 500 company and goes back and shoots the receptionist, a rent-a-cop and the janitor. They just want to lash out in anger so much that they don't even see that they're doing it wrong.
More like physics. If you use an equipment to irradiate others, you will get some of that radiation too.
And don't be shy about calling them traitors to their faces.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
So, they went from refusing to allow employees to wear dosimeters and claiming that the machines were "proven safe", to buying a bunch of them?
http://tsa.afge.org/workerscomp.cfm
http://blog.tsa.gov/2011/06/tsa-cancer-cluster-myth-buster.html
Expose them to a lethal dose (in the 10 Gy range), and tell them "Well, that's what it feels like. Now you've got 2 weeks left to work. Move on." Of course they'll be bleeding and losing hair and fingernails and vomiting and shitting all over, but that should hardly be an impairment in their line of work. 15 days later they can do the next batch and so on. Come on, whatcha waiting for? Wave your flag chantin "USA! USA!" and walk into the irradiation booth. It's the PAH-THREE-OWTIK think to do!
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Yes it would be Karma if the people using X-ray scanners to irradiate people against the 4th amendment got high dosages of radiation.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Surely if they're being exposed to X-rays a film badge would be a better idea?
It couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of folks.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Even hospital personnel with only occasional, incidental proximity to x-ray devices wear film badges. I'm honestly surprised that people operating technology that emits ionizing radiation aren't wearing exposure devices already!
How convienient. Another justification for spending which -- NOT so ironically in the business of government -- will be used to "fix" a failure born of prior spending.
At the top of the pyramid, of course, it hardly matters where the money goes or whether you "succeed" or "fail". What matters is that the money passes through your hands, giving you a chance to leverage that cash flow for personal gain.
The TSA agents are people, people that need a job. Just because their job make your airport visit a little less comfortable does not mean you should wish cancer or infirmity on them. Bad Karma on you, I say.
They absolutely should be wearing dosimeters. OSHA should be all over this, but that would be like your cop uncle giving your dad a parking ticket.
As far as the policy goes, I agree with Bruce Schneier, it is "security theater" and I don't believe it is effective.
read this: http://www.cntraveler.com/travel-tips/safety-and-security/2007/03/Inside-Job-My-Life-as-an-Airport-Screener.print to find out what it's like on the other side.
"Within an hour, two of the three lanes at our location are shut down because of possible radiation leakage from the X-ray machines—an inspection reveals that the heavy flaps which seal the compartment are defective. A co-worker who's been on the job since before 9/11 tells me that screeners used to be given dosimeters to measure their exposure to radiation but that the devices were eliminated in a cost-cutting measure. We were told in training that OSHA has determined that our exposure levels are acceptable, and that is the last time I hear it mentioned. It takes days before the machines are back up and running."
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I think the early point was it would be Karma if the scanning machine reached across the continent and gave various politicians and TSA leadership cancer as THEY are the ones making the decisions not if the person paid $8 / hour to stand next to the machine and make sure you put your keys in the little bowl before passing through got cancer. Again, I'm not sure you truly get the idea of Karma.
The TSA should consider that dowsing rods and e-meters would be just as effective for the purpose of screening passengers, and much safer all around
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Maybe those back scatter x-ray devices aren't as safe as the TSA says they are.
Why don't you waste a few billion on some of these?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
Oh wait, you already have? Not fucking surprising, you bunch of brainless fuckwits.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
And this being the TSA I bet the dosimeters will be purchased under a no-bid contract from some politician's buddy at the low cost of $100,000 each.
We dont have the budget for this. Hire people smart enough to follow the rules and you wont have a problem.
We have had baggage handlers for years with no problems.
Or let them learn the hard way. could not happen to a nicer group of ass holes.
In times of famine, anyone in the military gets dibs. (Keep in mind, 5% of the total population is in the Korean Peoples Army)
How exactly does proving that standing around a bunch of X-ray equipment causes radiation exposure hurt those whose policies put those people there in the first place?
It's OK to cheer when the good guys plug the bad guys even though they're just foot soldiers. They depend on our obedience for power.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I agree with Trout007, the politicians aren't the only problem, if people refused to work for the TSA there would be no TSA abuses of power. It's the fact that all those pedo freaks and general scum are willing to work for the TSA that we have problems.
A government agency that can't get employees has an extremely limited ability to commit acts, good, evil or otherwise.
Personally, I don't really care what happens to a bunch of perverts, it's they're own damn fault for being willing to stand near the equipment.
So, we should stop prosecuting Nazis that were only following orders and issue formal apologies to the ones that weren't issuing the orders?
Cancer sucks, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for anybody that got cancer as a direct result of following criminal orders and sexually abusing random citizens.
Ultimately, they're felons or at best guilty of committing misdemeanors. It's not just a job, it's a job where they're being specifically paid to break the law and with great frequency.
That's what the Nazi's said. Ignorance is your own fault not someone else's. Following orders is no excuse for doing something wrong.
If all of the employees are starting to raise a fuss and filing lawsuits, that'll get more traction than trying to lobby some senator who (i) flies on a private plane and bypasses security; and (ii) has several million dollars of stock invested in the companies that make the machines and gets campaign donations from their executives.
Especially when you look at the reality.
On 9/11 the only thing the terrorists had were boxcutters. You could sneak a sharpened glass or ceramic knife today to do the same damage. The reason 9/11 was possible is because the FAA policies trained flight crews to submit to the terrorists demands. I'm sure the flight crews that weren't killed were helping the terrorists herd the passengers into the back telling everyone it will be alright against everyone's natural instincts. It wasn't until people on the last flight found out what was going did they do something about it.
To prevent another 9/11 all you need to do is.
Reinforce the cockpit doors.
Arm the pilots if they want.
Keep the metal detectors.
Work on explosive sniffing tech.
Then anything that got by the passengers would take care as a means of self preservation which we have seen over and over again.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
How do the personnel who work with ionizing radiation NOT have dosimeters already? I'm a graduate student at a state university who works with X-ray diffraction (XRD) occasionally. To just TOUCH the XRD equipment, I had to have ~6 hours of 'ionizing radiation safety training' plus a required dosimeter to track how much radiation I had been subjected to.
The fact that these people have been working around ionizing radiation without any documentation of how much radiation they have been exposed to is troublesome. Even if they are TSA/Nazi/Gestapo jackasses, they're still people in the end.
But those people "paid $8 / hour to stand next to the machine and make sure you put your keys in the little bowl" are part of the problem.
To coin a phrase- 'If there were no soldiers, the Generals wouldn't be able to wage war.'
Karma is blind to intent.
I suppose I also could have posted this in the other recent TSA article. I'm flying to the US (Newark) for the first time in years (last time wasn't long before 9/11), and given everything that's been written about the TSA over the last while, what advice do other Slashdotters have about dealing with them at the airport?
I'm thinking especially, what kinds of potentially dubious scanners does one encounter these days, and is it practical to refuse any without undergoing a particularly intrusive search or being rendered somewhere unpleasant? I'm not a card carrying tin foil hat wearer but I've heard from someone in the know recently that it's unwise to even stand within line of sight of the ends of a bog standard x-ray bag scanner, so I'm not relishing having to drag myself through anything scanny.
I'm only likely to have an iPhone/iPad and the usual bits and pieces in hand luggage, but I'd like to avoid having my person, bag and devices unnecessarily probed if possible. Given what I've read about TSA people skills recently and the fact I'm a foreigner (albeit a white European), I'm also loathe to kick up any fuss unnecessarily.
So, any tips?
I couldn't agree more. My method of contributing to the solution of this problem (the existence of the TSA) is to make their day just a little bit worse, in hopes that I can tip them over the edge into resigning a job that no honorable man or woman should hold. So I offer job counseling: "Isn't there a concentration camp you should be guarding?", or "You know, male prostitutes generally enjoy more respect and job satisfaction than a TSA employee". On my last walk through the X ray chamber, they wanted to grope me because their machine had detected "anomalies" on my body. (It was my metal suspender clips; I politely offered to take them off, hold up my pants and walk through the machine again. They said this was against the rules...I had to get the rubber glove treatment. That's when I got...kinda mean.) The first thing I did rather surprised me: informed that I would be groped, I said "hell no!".
Of course this put me in an untenable position—I was visiting my eighty one year old aunt in the Old Country, and for her, I had to get on that damn plane. Besides, my daughter was with me. I was eventually going to have to climb down, but how? Then they gave me an opening: they threatened to call the police. (In case you don't know it, these poor jerks don't even have police powers—they cannot arrest you.) I said "great"! I want you to call the police. I am not afraid of the police." When the cop came, I made a big deal out of how glad I was able to see a real police officer, and how I respected his job (effectively playing him off against the TSA grunts). I asked him to search me. Unfortunately, that didn't fly, but he did offer to witness the search to make sure everything was on the up-and-up. I took the deal because I had to fly...had this been a recreational trip, I would have found out what happens when you really refuse the grope.
I couldn't help but notice how surprised the TSA grunts were when I refused the grope. Do most people just quietly submit to this violation of human dignity and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States?
Please don't think I was having fun. It has gotten to the point where I get the sweats just thinking about going into an airport. I do not enjoy verbally abusing people. I would have much preferred just to go get on my plane without any fuss. Somehow, I feel a moral imperative to not submit quietly to things I know are wrong. Do not go gently into that night, my friends.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
"Hey, are you guys unionized?"
"No, we're exposed to ionizing radiation."
There's absolutely no evidence of any relation between exposing people to radiation for silly reasons and cancer! Oh, wait...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
[TSA employees] make your airport visit a little less comfortable [...]
No, they don't make it "a little less comfortable." These are criminal thugs violating my fourth amendment rights in a systematic manner. That's not "less comfortable;" that's a fucking outrage that makes me depressed and sick to my stomach... just reading about it. I stopped flying six years ago, and they've only gotten more cavalier in their abuse of Americans and (the few remaining) foreign visitors since then.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Your argument is, at best, a ridiculous hyperbole.
read this: http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2010/11/20/how-the-tsa-legally-circumvents-the-fourth-amendment/
The Feds have given them the authority. It's "reasonable", and unfortunately currently legal.
Don't like it? Write your congress-critter. Run for office. Lobby. Protest. Sue the feds. Don't fly.
Me? I don't like it, but I like how a jet aircraft can get me 1,000 miles away in ~2 hours, compared to driving 15-20 hours. The TSA screening is a minor annoyance. So I tolerate it.
I'd rather the TSA have a asshole detector at the checkpoint, or a assholes-don't-fly-list. There are a lot of completely rude assholes on airplanes. Trust me, your fellow passengers are far more obnoxious and deserving of an ass-whipping than some poor schmuck TSA agent.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Even hospital personnel with only occasional, incidental proximity to x-ray devices wear film badges. I'm honestly surprised that people operating technology that emits ionizing radiation aren't wearing exposure devices already!
Guess how highly educated the average TSA line worker is. Now compare this with the average education level for hospital personnel. I suspect this disparity might have something to do with the lack of dosimeters among TSA workers.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."