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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.
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.
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"
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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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".
What does this have to do with body scanners? You must realize that x-ray machines have been used for luggage and carry-on bags for years and years, and pre-date the TSA taking over operations. It is amazing that they were ever able to put them in place without requiring dosimeters badges for employees in case of leaks from the devices.
That way my point. Your oath to support and defend the Constitution should prohibit you from following orders for illegal searches.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Umm. That badge showing something is actually a problem. Yes, yes, I'm totally explaining your joke.
I'm totally for the dosimeters since our heroic not-quite-officers-of-the-law TSA employees are subjected to MASSIVE radiation due to the oodles and oodles of dirty nucular bombs being smuggled into the US. If the badges show anything then I'm fairly certain this will be the explanation. Why haven't they found anything? Because they do not have enough authority and the damn liberals hold our beloved TSA Nightwatch back. Illigal immigrants smuggly dirty bombs past our borders using sophisticated anal concealment methods. That's at least a pound per trip per border crossing.
Also we need new uniforms. With skulls on them.
endofrant
20 minutes into the future
And don't be shy about calling them traitors to their faces.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Definition of "search"
In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that a search occurs only when 1) a person expects privacy in the thing searched and 2) society believes that expectation is reasonable. In Katz, the Supreme Court ruled that a search had occurred when the government wiretapped a telephone booth.[20] The Court's reasoning was that 1) the defendant expected that his phonebooth conversation would not be broadcast to the wider world and 2) society believes that expectation is reasonable. This is a threshold question in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, since the Fourth Amendment only protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. If no search or seizure has occurred, the court ends its analysis.
Stop and frisk
Under Terry v. Ohio 392 U.S. 1 (1968), law enforcement officers are permitted to conduct a limited warrantless search on a level of suspicion less than probable cause under certain circumstances. In Terry, the Supreme Court ruled that when a police officer witnesses "unusual conduct" that leads that officer to reasonably believe "that criminal activity may be afoot", that the suspicious person has a weapon and that the person is presently dangerous to the officer or others, the officer may conduct a "pat-down search" (or "frisk") to determine whether the person is carrying a weapon. To conduct a frisk, officers must be able to point to specific and articulatory facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant their actions. A vague hunch will not do. Such a search must be temporary and questioning must be limited to the purpose of the stop (e.g., officers who stop a person because they have reasonable suspicion to believe that the person was driving a stolen car, cannot, after confirming that it is not stolen, compel the person to answer questions about anything else, such as the possession of contraband).[21]
So, clearly travelers
Personally, I think we should hit 'em where it counts the most: in their pocketbooks. If all travelers simply chose another mode of transportation they would VERY rapidly find themselves with several quite influential allies: the airlines, the "hospitality industry", etc. (and yes, there ARE practical alternatives, at least for "domestic" travel: driving is still possible despite our rapidly deteriorating network of interstate highways and besides that people just don't ask themselves this question enough anymore anyway!)
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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!
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
Driving is definitely possible, but with the high cost of gas these days, it's not really that much cheaper than flying. Even if you pack all the food you'll need along the entire trip, you're still going to need a place to sleep at night. Now, I've done my fair share of cross-country road-trips, and I've spent many a night sleeping in my car at a rest area, but that's not really an option when you've got a family in tow. You could also camp, rather than stay in hotels (which we did a lot when I was a kid; I grew up an Army brat and moved constantly) but most people I've met aren't into camping their way across the country.
Trains aren't an option, either...they cost just as much as a flight; take the same, if not more, time to reach a destination (passenger trains regularly get stopped so that freight trains can pass them, for hours at a time sometimes) and honestly, unless you're going to a major city, odds are very high that the "train station" you're going to end up at is going to be a platform in the middle of nowhere with no place to rent a car, eat (unless you count vending machines or, if you're lucky, a gas station), or do anything really beyond wait for someone to come pick you up. Our rail infrastructure fucking sucks for long haul passenger runs. There are only a handful of routes left that even go cross country anymore. If we had real euro-style high speed rail that wasn't constantly being stopped for mile and a half long freight runs creeping along at 40 mph it would be more realistic of an option, but as it stands now, it's really not. I took Amtrak a few times as a kid and I just won't do that anymore until there are major improvements. The only up-side is the fact that you get a more comfortable seat.
Besides, TSA is moving to trains, so if you're trying to avoid having your rights violated, don't worry, they're going to violate them there, too. TSA is also starting to branch out to the highway as well, so no buses, either. You won't even be able to go to a sporting event or other large crowd event without the TSA being involved soon.
Like it or not, the TSA is going to be pretty much everywhere. I'm sure that at some point in that not-to-distant future trying to avoid the TSA in itself will be a reason to be suspicious. We're literally going to have to stay in our homes or walk from point A to point B to avoid a possible search...
That 4th Amendment sure was cool, wasn't it? I'm gonna miss it....
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.
That's mostly inevitable when you allow one agency to both define the problem it's there to solve and solve the problem. Without something to force the agency to restrain its growth you're not generally going to see it stopping.
Amtrak is actually pretty good when it comes to the way they handle the TSA. Last time the TSA tried to search random passengers, the Amtrak Police had them escorted off the premises nationwide, and they were banned from Amtrak for a substantial period of time.
The Amtrak leadership is well aware that the only reason their ridership has been skyrocketing the past few years is that they don't put passengers through that bullshit. Riding Amtrak sends about as clear a message as you can send, and short of an explicit Congressional order mandating it, you're not going to see them allow the TSA to pull a power trip any time soon. To the extent that they are there at all, it is entirely at the discretion of the Amtrak Police.
More to the point, even the TSA has to be aware that they aren't useful when it come to trains. If a terrorist wanted to blow up a passenger train, there are approximately 21,000 miles of track that carry Amtrak passengers, and all it takes is one bomb on a trestle somewhere to kill an order of magnitude more people than you could kill with any bomb on the train itself. No terrorist is stupid enough to be a suicide bomber when they could achieve a bigger result (and a much longer-term disruption) by being the non-suicide kind, and any politician or other government official who believes otherwise is too dump to flip burgers.
In short, the TSA is about as useful to Amtrak as a tiger-repelling rock. Amtrak knows this, so they aren't afraid to tell the TSA to get bent when they step out of line.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
Surely if they're being exposed to X-rays a film badge would be a better idea?
Film badges are one common type of dosimeter.
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.
My only experience with the scanners was the Dallas International airport. I just politely told them I'd like to opt out of the scanner. The guy pointed me over to another guy and told him I was an "opt-out" in a loud voice. Several people in line looked surprised there was such a thing as "opt out" (sigh). I got a pat down without any junk-grabbing and I was on my way in about 30 seconds.
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."
I too find it sad that so many people go in as sheep. There is no way these scans are a good thing for your health.
I got a pat down without any junk-grabbing and I was on my way in about 30 seconds.
You don't have enough data, my friend. While I do find the pat downs reasonably professional (just pointless), I do have some other data points for you:
Once, a TSA employer tried to explain to me how media portrays them unfairly and how these are "new" safer machines.
Even better, once I spent about 5-7 minutes waiting for a same-gender agent to come over and give me a pat down. I was standing at the entrance, waiting, while my brand new expensive laptop was sitting on the other side OUT OF MY BAG and in a SEPARATE BIN at the end of the baggage x-ray belt. I wonder if these accidental delays are a lesson for opt-outs? Who would be responsible if someone took it? I couldn't see my laptop from where I had to stand.
Sorry, no. You've obviously never been here.
First, if the cops are operating at night, then how the hell are they going to see what color their skin is at a distance?
Second, in the daytime, you can't see drivers, because everyone (and I mean everyone, rich and poor) has heavy window tint on their car windows. With all the sunshine we have here, it's unbearable to not have any tint.
The cops are selecting certain minorities based on the fact that those minorities (usually being poorer) usually drive crappier vehicles, cars with broken taillights or headlights, and very frequently breaking traffic laws (turn signals, etc.) as they're not educated. Of course, these sweeps probably also get a lot of poor white people or poor black people, but sometimes you can tell the hispanics' cars apart by the way they're decorated, so I wouldn't be surprised if they don't look for those indicators (though again, they probably end up pulling over some poor black people that way, since they tend to like many, but not all, of the same automotive decorations). For example, a low-riding 80s Chevy pickup is 99% probably a hispanic male. A late-model VW GTI is almost definitely not. Profiling? Sure. But good luck proving it; the late-model GTI probably has all its lights working fine, and it's pretty hard to fault a cop for not pulling over a vehicle at night with non-working lights.