Slashdot Mirror
DHS X-ray Car Scanners Now At Border Crossings
OverTheGeicoE writes "CNET has a story on DHS' whole car X-ray scanners and their potential cancer risks. The story focuses on the Z Portal scanner, which appears to be a stationary version of the older Z Backscatter Vans. The story provides interesting pictures of the device and the images it produces, but it also raises important questions about the devices' cancer risks. The average energy of the X-ray beam used is three times that used in a CT scan, which could be big trouble for vehicle passengers and drivers should a vehicle stop in mid-scan. Some studies show the risk for cancer from CT scans can be quite high. Worse still, the DHS estimates of the Z Portal's radiation dosage are likely to be several orders of magnitude too low. 'Society will pay a huge price in cancer because of this,' according to one scientist."
We should have a one-day travel strike, where nobody travels except on essential tasks. Repeat regularly until results are obtained.
When the TSA starts costing businesses money, our bought-and-paid-for Congress will rein them in.
(Heh, you probably thought a B&PFC wasn't good for anything.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This will definitely increase cancer risks. In particular, it allows the Department of Homeland Security to spread and thrive.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
"One of the studies, which examined more than 1,000 adult patients at four hospitals, projected that the dose of radiation received in a single heart scan at age 40 would later result in cancer in 1 in 270 women and 1 in 600 men.
Risks were lower for those who received a head CT scan: 1 in 8,100 women and 1 in 11,080 men would likely develop cancer from the radiation, the study said."
These numbers don't have a direct translation for "Z Portal" cancer risk, but they're surprisingly high. Hopefully we get some very robust studies to examine the effects of the DHS scans in the near future. I guess it's too much to hope that the Department of Homeland Sarcoma would stop using the scanners until public and peer reviewed science exists to prove their safety.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Maybe they are trying to fix social security by having everyone die of cancer before they can collect benefits.
Oh, for crying out loud. Thanks a lot, government..
Brought to you by the same administration that gave guns to international crime lords.
The article specified X-rays or gamma rays. I hate the DHS more than anybody else here, because I have to drive through their checkpoints on a fairly regular basis, but I would hope that they would at least make everybody get out of the car and at a safe distance away from the machine while the scan is performed. They're looking for large amounts of money, dope, guns, or explosives; things that would not be carried on a person.
Also, as the guy below stated, freedom-loving Americans (and foreigners with business in the 'States) need to be more proactive at expressing their displeasure of the DHS.
So if I open fire on one of these, will I have a case for self defense?
1) It uses X-rays
2) The device is controlled by a PC running a Java app
3) It was put together by freelancers
Posting AC because NDA
What else to say than "it is another brick in the wall".
Geek reference : Fortress, it will end up like that anyway.
Where is the truck sized one?
If these things are going to project energy of a specific type and level, what happens if someone builds a device to trigger who knows what that activates when it senses that energy?
Everyone knows X-Rays can't penetrate metal.
So that my job in xraying metal is fake?
http://www.vidisco.com/NDTInspection.asp
These xrays are much more powerful (intensity and energy) than medical xrays.
I know someone that walked in front of one of these running machines a few decades ago (by accident, of course). He sufferred accute radiation poisoning that required almost 2 weeks to recover. Day after exposure, he almost could not walk.
Still, there is SOME kind of scanner technology that they DO use to inspect the cargo of 18-wheelers without emptying out the load. But it's NOT X-Rays.
Keep repeating after me. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is BLISS!
X-Rays can penetrate metal if they are powerful enough.
I hope you're joking!
They may be deformed cancer ridden and dead by their twenties but at least they will be safe fom evil terrorists.
This assumes professional calibration! This should read "The average energy of the X-ray beam when calibrated by an apathetic TSA employee is a hell of a lot more than three times that used in a CT scan calibrated by a hospital technician"
There is no reason for the government to care about people's health within a capitalist county, since hospitals are businesses, just like any other business. The hospitals get more money by keeping people sick than by solving the health issues, especially when expensive tests are preferred because they are newer (newer always is assumed to be better in a capitalist mindset brainwashed by planned obsolescence). The only thing limiting hospital's ability to keep people sick is the judicial system prosecuting liability. So, the more cancer people can accept as "necessary", the more money for hospitals (with more long-term illnesses that require expensive drugs and treatments), and the economy will be improved... especially when you consider how many baby-boomers this will impact (they are more prone to receive the cancer based on their age).
Actually, people who know things about (hard) X-Rays know that they can and do penetrate metal,
it only attenuates the photons, so if you turn the power up you can image through anything
(though it gets hard with 2.5 inch think solid steel, which cars generally don't contain.)
Really, if the government is causing Cancer, they might as well be responsible for everything else. Why not? It'll save on the litigation costs, and fix the rest of the problems with the system.
Sounds like a win/win to me.
You do realize that your average trailer, the kind that semis pull around, has barely any metal in it, right? I've seen in the back of hundreds of them over the years and they're actually mostly wood with a thing metal covering to protect against the rain. It's probably not any thinker than the metal in a soda can.
It is far too simplistic to say that "X-Rays can't penetrate metal."
X-rays are absorbed by a material by interacting with the electrons around the nucleus (or with the nucleus itself). This is a statistical question - X-rays will penetrate a short distance into a material. the more dense the material or higher energy (frequency) of the X=rays, the less they will penetrate. See for example
here.
There is a table at the bottom of penetration depths through lead as a function of energy of the X-rays.
Funny, then, that my research focuses on the behavior of X-rays through metals. X-rays can penetrate metals, depending on the energy of the radiation used. high-energy radiation passes through almost everything, and interacts only a little with intermediate objects. Hence, it is very well possible they are using X-rays for this, but they can pretty much only use it to visualize the internal metallic structure of objects as it will pass right through people.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
So, in addition to the pile of civil liberties and massive mounds of cash, we also get to have cancer and miscarriages inflicted on innocents in the name of the failing war on drugs.
A friend of mine visits Canada annually and described this type of automotive scan. He and his wife were allowed to exit their vehicle before it was scanned.
This was a truck mounted unit and may use different technology - but it provided a detailed scan which would show hidden people, drugs, and other things in their trunk or other hiding places.
The DHS looked at surveillance from vans with long-distance X-ray capability
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/02/docs-reveal-tsa-plan-to-body-scan-pedestrians-train-passengers/
e.g. "drive-by" mode and covert screening from vans http://www.as-e.com/zbv/
http://epic.org/privacy/body_scanners/Body_Scan_FOIA_Docs_Feb_2011.pdf
They build up a 3d like view of metal vehicles. You would think every person in the area would get into shielded rooms (control and guarded waiting room) as the vehicle in question was scanned.
I guess radiation is now 100% safe in the USA.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Same AC. Just wanted to clarify due to the present "Score:4, Funny", that I'm completely serious. They contacted me in 2006 for this project, since I have both a programming and physics background. Once I learned more, I told them to stuff it.
No need for other terrorist attacks: the US govt (TSA) terrorizes and, possible, kills their own citizens. What's more surreal: the citizens pay for it!!
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Since these are fixed emplacements, how can I be sure that the device isn't blasting me with X-Rays when I cross back from Canada?
The average energy of the X-ray beam used is three times that used in a CT scan
This may or may not be a misleading statement. There's inadequate context and specificity in the article. "Energy" here could refer to the total amount of ionizing radiation energy delivered to a person in the scanner, in which case these portal scanners could be considered extremely dangerous, since a typical CT is already a substantial and potentially dangerous radiation dose. Alternatively, the word "energy" may refer to the energy of the individual x-ray photons. In other words, if a typical CT uses 100keV x-rays and these scanners use 300keV. That is probably what was meant. It's clinically meaningless. Within reasonable ranges of several tens of keV to several MeV, only the total absorbed dose really matters health-wise, not the energies of the individual particles.
With that said, I still don't condone this type of intrusive inspection - even at the border.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
What about the x-rays penetrating window glass?
First, I haven't read TFA but, I live 5 min form a us Canada border crossing. They have been doing this for months now. When they scan the vehicles they have the occupants exit the vehicle and stand in a "safe area" over 100 ft away from the truck doing the scanning.
I'm wondering what if you don't consent to the x-ray. Will they throw your ass in jail for not willing to cooperate? If you are a tourist from Canada, are you allowed to turn-around and not go to the states? (this will obviously complicate any future returns)
It seems people have already had problems when they turn around at the airport or refuse the other xray equipment.
I'd like to see a waiver form. Do you consent to an xray? Are you aware that these pose a cancer risk? Are you aware that these machines may not be sufficiently or professionally calibrated which may increase your risk of cancer?
I'm a Canadian. So long as these scanners are in place, I'm going to reconsider any traveling to the US.
This policy is in place to catch money/drug/weapon smugglers and presumably terrorists. None of this will halt.
'X-rays' apparently covers a pretty broad range of energies. They're probably referring to 'hard' or 'high energy' x-rays. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_x-ray (3rd paragraph)
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_energy_X-rays
These xrays are much more powerful (intensity and energy) than medical xrays.
Which is the problem ( well, the health problem.. the fact we are doing it at all is another issue ) I guess this ensures that i will never be traveling abroad. While I'm already middle aged, i don't want to push my luck and shorten my lifespan, or destroy my quality of life as i get older..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The problem here is that these machines (and the ones like them at the airports) were never about public nor personal safety. They were always about creating the appearance that we are safer and making a few people with ties to the TSA quite wealthy. Until we actually fix the military-industrial-complex-like problems that plague our government at almost every level, we will increasingly have to deal with these stupid issues.
giggity
FTA:
[Blockquote]"Low Energy Drive-through Portal Non-intrusive Inspection Systems"[/blockquote].
That is, LED PNIS.
I don't think you can have enough protection against such a weapon in the hands of the TSA.
Java? So they're breaking the EULA too?
Or does control of radiographic equipment not count as a nuclear facility?
Not that anyone cares but if one of those things goes between the Canadian and US border than I'm staying out.. not that anyone cares, but screw it.
... one cancer at a time. The terrorists will thank you the favour. :P
Come on, everyone knows only terrorists get cancer!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac
Given how things are going in America, the next time I leave I may just not bother with the return.
It is likely Gamma, and it is actually an older technology. The DDR (Stasi-run former easter Germany) used Cobalt-60 sources to screen trucks for people hiding in them. Anybody in there would have gotten a serious dosage. Sometimes the drivers got this dosage as well, as the shielding on the Cobalt was retracted to early (this was done for moving trucks). All this was done in secret.
I think, once again, it is quite clear where the DHS got its inspiration.
And yes, even X-Rays penetrate metal just fine, just crank up the intensity. Typically Gamma is used though, because it penetrates a lot better at lower intensities. On the minus-side, for Gamma you need radioactive sources, while X-Rays can just be generated with electricity.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm sure they either have a special license, or simply don't care.
Seems like terrorists can now just lay back and let America's crazy so called war against them unravel. They don't have to build bombs, hijack planes or send dealy pathogens anymore. All they have to do is wait, and let the american government kill their own innocent citizens (through cancer-inducing scans), delibaretly and in the name of protecting the latter from the terrorists. Great job! Really. Osama would be proud.
Considering that the walls, roof and floor of an 18 wheeler trailer is not metal, xrays penetrate just fine. What I have a problem with is the amount of irradiated metal that will now be moving down the road, affecting everyone and the damn cockroaches. How soon will it be before we have to bow down before our cockroach overloads?
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Then you're probably better off emigrating ASAP.
The DHS is completely out of control. Like the CIA was (think "united fruit", "bay of pigs", and many, many more) only moreso, with a bigger budget, and including on American Soil[tm] instead of "merely" everywhere else. And still the American People[tm] do nothing. Freedom, liberty, land of the brave? Feh.
I don't understand why the government officials that are funding/sponsoring this crap aren't forced to go through all the scanners and such.
Why do they get to fly on private jets and such without having to go through the same invasive searches as the rest of us.
Someone should make all of congress and the executive branch go through this crap before they board their own "all first class", caviar and champagne filled jets.
How much fuel and money could we save if instead of putting congress/executive branch in first class chairs, we stuffed them into cattle car like the rest of us that fly?
To quote Animal Farm, "All animals are created equal, yet some animals are more equal than others."
so passengers can get out and walk through a walk-through scanner to the guard wicket. That way passengers are not exposed to the higher level scanner required to scan a vehicle.
Walk through scanner safety would be a future topic to argue.
Anybody designing these machines has to know the rules. The industrial one are necessary to be amped up and VERY clear they are not for people.
The people selling these know it's a gravy train they riding. Just like the telcos, there is certainly assured immunity from lawsuits when improper maintenance makes these even WORSE for radiation.
X-Rays can penetrate metal. For example, a standard thing in car fabrication is to X-ray the welds to look for defects.
It's a matter of intensity as with all things - for example your hands look pretty opaque under normal sunlight, but if you put a torch up against them you can see the glow coming through quite clearly.
The issue here is that the intensity of X-Ray radiation you'd use to scan through a steel and aluminium car body is considerably higher then that used in a conventional medical X-Ray.
John H? Is that you?
(also posting anon.)
Freedom loving Americans, that takes me back to my childhood to just before the fall of the U.S.S.R. Freedom loving Americans vs the Freedom Hating Commies.
Strange, some of the stuff we are doing now to preserve our freedom would sound like B-rate uber-U.S.S.R. activities back then.
you can look up MVACIS, there is a pic of one in the wikipedia article on backscatter x-rays (hmm wonder how that got there)
Can someone here please whip up a design for a magnatron projection van? You know, for entertainment purposes.
Does anyone know of the probability of dying from cancer after passing through a scanner. My gut feeling is that you have a greater chance of dying from one of these gadgets than from an actual terrorist.
I sure hope so otherwise I've been putting RT inspection on my welds notes for no reason.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Also, as the guy below stated, freedom-loving Americans (and foreigners with business in the 'States) need to be more proactive at expressing their displeasure of the DHS.
I couldn't agree more. I make my displeasure plain to every DHS employee I meet...but that's not really enough, is it? What kind of tactics would you suggest? I'd be up for anything nonviolent that would heighten the public's awareness of this threat to our freedoms. We need something like the "Occupy" movement, but with a more specific target, realistic objectives, and the self-discipline not to be provoked to counterproductive actions.
No risk, such as radiation, is too great in the face of security. Consider this kind of system. It politely asks people to move away. Side effects may include burns, cancer, and death.
I love our country. I'd love it more if they'd stop trying to kill me in the name of security. In the future, this whole period will be looked at with great disdain The question will be, how many will survive to tell the tales? The cancer clusters from those who operated the equipment and frequently passed through it will keep those numbers down.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Everyone knows X-Rays can't penetrate metal.
So that my job in xraying metal is fake?
http://www.vidisco.com/NDTInspection.asp
These xrays are much more powerful (intensity and energy) than medical xrays.
I know someone that walked in front of one of these running machines a few decades ago (by accident, of course). He sufferred accute radiation poisoning that required almost 2 weeks to recover. Day after exposure, he almost could not walk.
Still, there is SOME kind of scanner technology that they DO use to inspect the cargo of 18-wheelers without emptying out the load. But it's NOT X-Rays.
Keep repeating after me. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is BLISS!
I was a welder in the past and I know for a fact that xrays go through metal. They xray all the welds for anything important. Like the when welding the fuel take for the space shuttle. You weld all day and then it is xrayed ti make sure it is the strongest best possible weld with no flaws.
one problem is they're also looking for hidden passengers, no doubt.
maybe they should get the "real" passengers to hop out, then nuke the everloving fuck out of the car to take care of any illegals that may be being smuggled.
sounds pretty horrible to me though.
i love that /. exists - ever since 4chan jumped the shark, i've had nowhere to go.
Gamma radiation I could see, but X-Rays have a GREAT deal of difficulty penetrating metal.
I'd think the radiation risks would be different for gamma than X-rays, though. I'm far from anything even VAGUELY resembling knowledgeable on the subject of radiation, though. Just a layman's knowledge from high school that X-Rays can't penetrate metal.
Odds are the article says X-Rays when what they really mean is "electromagnetic radiation", not necessarily in the same frequency band as X-Rays. Hell, even LIGHT is "electromagnetic radiation". (Mind you, anyone who's had skin cancer knows light can cause radiation poisoning/damage/cancer, too.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
this is fucking scary. considering software control of these machines, even in mission critical stuff can go so horribly wrong (stuxnet + therac-25 = this).
why do i have to go to the USA this year? fuck it all.
Harassing TSA agents, DHS inspectors, or even the police is counter-productive. While there are "bad apples" who abuse their authority, most are just regular people trying to do a job which means constantly dealing with pissed off people. After a stint in a support and warranty call center, I can really sympathize with them -- there's nothing THEY can do about it, same as I couldn't wave a magic wand and make a warranty valid a few weeks after it expired, no matter HOW much a customer yelled at me.
Stick to hounding the government and the three letter agencies that make the DECISIONS to deploy these people, but let them do their job until their jobs are eliminated.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I stand corrected -- repeatedly, from many posts.
All I really know about radiation is what we were taught in high school -- I'm no expert.
Thank you one and all for educating me. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Erm, you DO realize aluminum is transparent to X-rays? Like visible light, there's a whole spectrum of X-ray energies.... I used to repair industrial X-ray generators, guess what the "window" was made of? Aluminum. Now shut the hell up with your misinformation.
Everyone knows X-Rays can't penetrate metal.
... at the level of power that also shows flesh, like you see on these pictures. Those images are obviously faked.
On the plus side, gamma sources are a lot more portable and don't need electricity. It's still a pain carrying the things up ladders though becuase of all that lead required to sheild even very small sources.
With a gamma source just about all you can do is open the door (I've read about filters to reduce intensity but never seen one). With an X-ray source there is a lot of control, and apparently it's a lot easier to collimate. I can't remember how thick the thickest welds and casting I saw X-rayed but it was certainly well over six inches thick and that wasn't at maximum intensity. Gamma was used on some welds on a blast furnace body that were around two feet thick.
Neutron sources get used in soil testing or for general purpose radiography by short-lived loonies in the third world that don't know any better than using reactor fuel to do the job.
Harassing TSA agents, DHS inspectors, or even the police is counter-productive. While there are "bad apples" who abuse their authority, most are just regular people trying to do a job which means constantly dealing with pissed off people. After a stint in a support and warranty call center, I can really sympathize with them -- there's nothing THEY can do about it, same as I couldn't wave a magic wand and make a warranty valid a few weeks after it expired, no matter HOW much a customer yelled at me.
Stick to hounding the government and the three letter agencies that make the DECISIONS to deploy these people, but let them do their job until their jobs are eliminated.
Since they're only following orders.
Gamma radiation I could see, but X-Rays have a GREAT deal of difficulty penetrating metal.
There is no real distinction between X-rays and Gamma rays in terms of their properties. They are named based on how they were produced and their application. Create them by accelerating electrons into a metal target in a hospital and you call them X-rays. Create them in nuclear or particle decays and they are called gamma rays. In fact if you create them by smashing high energy electrons into a metal target in a particle physics lab we'll call them gamma rays as well.
As for penetrating metal we make calorimeters designed to measure photon energies which consist of plates of dense metal - like lead, depleted uranium etc. As the photon penetrates these metal sheets it makes a shower of particles and we count the particles in the gaps between the metal plates. Such detectors are usually metres thick for GeV photon energies (probably at least 1,000 times higher than what these machines use - I hope!). But the point should be clear - give a photon enough energy and it penetrates lead and depleted uranium - so the thin sheet metal in a car is not an issue. However I'd not want to be driving a car which is being subjected to that.
Irradiated yes, radioactive no. The only way that truck will be of danger to anyone is if it runs over them.
Gamma radiation doesn't cause things to become radioactive. A common, really good and totally safe use of gamma radiation is to sterilize vacuum-packed food.
Implying 4chan was ever good
Welcome to East Germany / Soviet Union, 21st century American style.
90% make the rest look bad
Is that British English (i.e. "flashlight"), or are you Just That Crazy?
could this be a ploy to stop Mexicans from having children in the United States (Mexico 2 as collateral).
Everyone loves to hate the TSA. The TSA is just the dog, go after it's masters. By keeping the masters in office, the people are really saying they approve of the TSA. Sometimes I think the people in this country deserve the treatment they receive by the elite.
Yep, I interviewed at a company back in the 90s that made equipment to do X-ray inspection of steel welds. We're talking about things like 6-inch thick steel plates (and thicker), welded together; they would X-ray the joints to make sure the weld quality was sufficient. X-rays penetrate steel just fine, but you need very, very powerful equipment. Using it on a human is probably a death sentence, or at the very least will cut many years off your lifespan.
After the informed AC and Huxley.. above, NOW i understand the cancer threat .. and if it's this intense, it's not only likely, but probable.
How can this be legal? Or is it that any method is justified according to the stated ends.. and to hell with the rights of the populace?
Not now maybe, but the infrastructure its getting in place; and the masses are getting to it
A typical medical/dental xray lasts between 20-70ms, between 2-150mA applied (to tube head).
-How fast do you think these cars are getting through these portals? Certainly not 20-70ms!!! More like 4000-5000ms!
-Do you think the 2mA used on the cathode for medical diagnostics is going to penetrate the metal car body?
-They will have to make multiple passes at different mA to see different 'depths' into the car
Even if the "energy" (whatever that is) is only the same as 3 times a patient xray, the occupants are being exposed for 250-500 times as long.
I don't know about you, or the director of DHS, but I don't want the equivalent radiation dose (acute) of 750-1500 patient xrays.
They can explain away through trickery and vague terms like "energy" and "CT scans", but how do you fucking whitewash time itself???
Because terrorist are not reducing the population near as much as they had hoped.
Sure they can. You just don't want to be inside the car being it with the high energy x-rays involved...
Re How can this be legal? ...
The workers will get free gov health care till the very end. A family alone suffers an early death and builds a photo/flag/medal area in their home to a loved one.
The real trick will be the cause of death and the tissue samples. The tissue samples will not be kept for educational use and will be dumped after an "outcry" over what a gov hospital can legally keep/cost cutting/space needed/faith.
The database of deaths can be smoothed over with a normal, expected ratio of middle class nursing home causes - a strange cancer in a "young" person (40-60yo) becomes ~pneumonia.
This will ensure any book chapter writing dr/prof/phd in 20-40 years with good math skills and a US wide medical database can never do any meaningful epidemic work.
No people to interview, collect saved/outside dr notes/tissue samples/slides or hear the words he/she worked for the gov in this area all their life..... I will give you other numbers
Their will be 0 legal problems in the US.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The question noone seems to have addressed. What happens if you are pregnant? Ooops sorry?
Fair enough they want to scan cars crossing the border for contraban, but..
Why the hell are they too stupid to think about just making it work like an automatic car wash where you don't need to drive it?? Then the passengers in the vehicle can go to a separate room at least (although I refer to the actions performed on the passengers in the separate room as a separate argument, and not related to my suggestion to at least be out of the vehicle when it's scanned.)
When I was in the 4th grade, our social studies teacher explained that America was better than "Russia" because of a number of things they did that we didn't do. Every day, we are doing more and more of those things right here in America.
You weren't actively harming people. You were not acting against their Constitutional rights. You weren't acting against their human rights. The TSA agents may very well be actively harming people. Just following orders has been determined NOT to be a valid defense even for a draftee in the military. It certainly isn't for a civilian job with the TSA.
to replace all the members of government and the corporations that run them. This is sickening and an egregious affront to the constitution and even more so to the spirit of liberty that bore the constitution.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I have been seeing these backscatter rigs both stationary and portable on the NW frontier for 2 years.
I don't think it matters. Java is not certified for medical applications either. Of course most C compilers aren't either. But at least some are. I don't there is a single certified java implementation.
Case in point i am aware of a company that is trying to use smart phones to help diabetics. However the smart phone is nothing more than a glorified display since they are not permitted to be used directly on a critical piece of medical equipment. There is a certified piece of hardware that does the critical lifting.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Why use horribly expensive technology when cheap alternatives are available - alternatives that most likely are both safer and more effective?
These scanners cannot find anything a few trained dogs couldn't find just as well, and the dogs will be faster, cheaper and a lot less dangerous, even if they bite random people all the time...
We've had money dogs, drug dogs and explosives dogs for decades now, and any dog would most likely spot a hidden person or hidden exotic animals.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
It will only kill furriners and turncoats.
It has good moments, but they're buried in butt-loads of dross and group-think.
your hands look pretty opaque under normal sunlight, but if you put a torch up against them you can see the glow coming through quite clearly
Is that British English (i.e. "flashlight"), or are you Just That Crazy?
GP might be mad as a loon for all I know, but it is British English (with that interpretation) all the same. Guess the light would also shine through for a bit with the other kind of torch too, but only for the moment or so before the screaming from the burns started.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Yeah. It's a real shit the way that they get shot in the back of the head if they try to leave the DHS. Kind of like the old Sonderkommando in the concentration camps : first task is to execute the guy whose job you're taking, so that you have no doubt about what happens to traitors who try to leave the organisation.
Have they started to house the DHS/ TSA employees (and of course, their families) in government-controlled barracks? To stop the children learning things that might prevent them becoming good little Bush-Youth when they get older.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
So ... all those X-rays I've seen being taken of welds on pressure vessels and structural nodes ... are just fakes. Well, that makes me feels so much safer as I watch rust-cicles getting longer on the support frames for the drilling platform.
Trust people like Fred to be lying about the NDT work he gets paid for. He must just bash up the pictures in Photoshop. All the barrier chains, warning tannoys and other palaver is just smoke and mirrors.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Since they're only following orders.
The worst crimes in the history of humanity were carried out by people who were just following orders.
People following orders are still morally culpable for their acts.
1) It uses X-rays
2) The device is controlled by a PC running a Java app
3) It was put together by freelancers
Posting AC because NDA
Does no-one else really get the -OH-MY-GOD!- factor in this?
This system is going to cause innocent people to suffer a slow, prolonged, and painful death for no improvement in security.
America has already become a fascist country. Do something about it.
Then fly, and opt for the groping.
No particle radiation involved there.
(Yes, I know there's a third option, but that requires 218 Congress critters + 60 Senators + 1 President to wake up. Or, 288 Congress Critters + 67 Senators. Clearly 1 President == 70 Congressmen + 7 Senators.)
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The key principle of government is that you are told when you benefit. You don't get to choose.
Uh oh -- did I just contradict the fairy tale of "government by the people", where the ruled and the rulers are magically one and the same?
AC because I probably broke a law by walking away, but here's my story: My wife and I flew out of San Antonio recently. We're in line, and I'm telling her that I'm going to opt out of the mm wave scanner. I have no idea if they are a danger or not, but more important to me, I just don't see any benefit to exposing myself to that. Say what you will about a TSA patdown, but I certainly won't die of it. So In our dicussion the woman in front of us, who has a 12 year old boy with her, asks me if I think they're safe. I tell her that I have no idea. So she opts out with her son, and I opt out, and my wife opts out, and the guy behind us opts out because he's heard all of this back and forth. Right in front of the mm wave scanner each person tells the agent that they wish to opt out. The agent uses a shoulder mic to say "opt out" and then directs the person to walk around the scanner. No response from the other end that the message has been received, or what passenger the message references. In San Antonio at least, going around the scanner puts you in the same area as the people who went THROUGH it. On the far side is chaos. People getting their belongings off the belt, putting on their shoes. Two agents come and claim the woman and her son, and another comes for my wife. The guy and I are standing there in the crowd waiting, when another agent, who probably didn't realize we were waiting to be fondled, told us to get our things and go, so we did. Through airport security, no patdown, no mm wave scanner, no metal detector.
1) lead box
2) x-ray scanner
3) put in box
4) put all the TSA employees in it. Families too.
5) lock the box
6) just walk away
This is me being nice.
Let's see how they like vomiting their own intestines.
Since they're only following orders.
The worst crimes in the history of humanity were carried out by people who were just following orders.
People following orders are still morally culpable for their acts.
Actually, I think most of us picked up that is what the GP was already implying by his humorous 5 word interjection, but please, don't let me interrupt your needless exposition. ;-)
These X-ray machines are a massive health risk, this is one of those things that people will look back at in the future and think "Wow, WTF were these primitive morons thinking?"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Harassing TSA agents, DHS inspectors, or even the police is counter-productive. While there are "bad apples" who abuse their authority, most are just regular people trying to do a job which means constantly dealing with pissed off people. After a stint in a support and warranty call center, I can really sympathize with them -- there's nothing THEY can do about it, same as I couldn't wave a magic wand and make a warranty valid a few weeks after it expired, no matter HOW much a customer yelled at me.
Stick to hounding the government and the three letter agencies that make the DECISIONS to deploy these people, but let them do their job until their jobs are eliminated.
Doesn't sound like you think it's actually counter-productive, but rather just un-productive. At any rate, I'm with the GP and will be doing it, productive or not. I'm not looking to get better service, I'm just looking to vent my spleen on the proximate cause of my problems. If it's a drone just following orders, too bad.
I am not a crackpot.
I agree with you its not worth doing because its not productive not because its wrong. Nobody forced them to take that job.
In your case it would have been wrong to treat you poorly, there was nothing unethical about your processing of warranty claims, well unless you knew your employer was avoiding honoring legitimate claims consistent with the original contract and you were helping them to do that.
These TSA and other Homeland security folks know perfectly well what they are doing is extra-Constitutional. The know the DOJ works tirelessly to make sure the real issues never get heard by the Supreme Court and individual complaints are always decided on narrow tangentially at best related issues; or if they can't be the complainant is shuffled of to disappear someplace like Camp X-ray. They know this and they take these jobs anyway. The are collaborators, morally indistinguishable from the enemy they just lack the class.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I don't know what kind of trailer you're talking about, but the metal in a standard shipping container is MUCH thicker than the metal in a soda can. The thinnest metal is in the side walls and roof and it's at least 2mm of heavy, solid steel. A soda can's thickness is much less, about the same as a human hair.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
These X-ray machines are a massive health risk, this is one of those things that people will look back at in the future and think "Wow, WTF were these primitive morons thinking?"
Don't panic, if enough of these devices are installed we can avoid that problem entirely.
Fear is the mind killer.
Considering that the walls, roof and floor of an 18 wheeler trailer is not metal, xrays penetrate just fine.
LOLWUT?
There might be some cargo trailers with fiberglass sides but standard shipping containers are made entirely of plain old steel, always.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is there a lethal dose for exposure to government stupidity? Because I'm pretty sure I've been exposed to it.
I'll bet the elites don't have to go through these scanners.
Probably the easiest solution would be to stop the car and require homeland security agents to drive the vehicle through the scanner. Who would care if TSA agents get cancer.
Unless we all end up sterilized due to them, and the human race simply vanishes.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You're forgetting about "intermodal" containers.
When I was in the 4th grade, our social studies teacher explained that America was better than "Russia" because of a number of things they did that we didn't do. Every day, we are doing more and more of those things right here in America.
I'm not 100% sure I want your 4th grade social studies teacher from years ago defining our policies.
They use x-rays at some ports. I worked on a project that managed the use of these in foreign ports (so they could be detected before they got on a ship to the U.S.). The drivers go through them and the x-ray turns on when the occupancy sensor is triggered, but after the cab has gone through. I remember a few months after it had been in operation and we were asked to collect information on how many times the cab had accidentally been x-rayed because of occupancy sensor mistakes.
They also use passive things called Radiation Portal Monitors (RPM) or Advanced Spectrometer Portal Monitor (ASP). The RPMs are older technology and just detect gamma or neutron counts. These are tricky beasts because wherever they are installed has different background radiation, so they are all calibrated different. In places with higher background, the threshold for alarms is so close to the background that they get more false alarms, which leads to officer apathy, since every alarming container has to be examined with a Radio Isotope Identification Device (RIID), which is also passive but requires a few minutes and walking around each container. The ASP is supposed to identify the alarm and what element it is, which is then matched up with the manifest to make sure that, for example, a container of smoke alarms that alarms with Americium is acceptable.
Ports are supposed to monitor 100% of containers, which gets tricky since a lot of time it's a rush all at once when containers are being loaded or unloaded onto a ship. This can sometimes lead to long lines of trucks waiting to leave, which backs up the port and interrupts commerce. Many of the ports don't have the backscatter x-ray, but those that do certainly risk exposing the operators and cab drivers, some of whom only drive between the port and the company's nearby yard, making up to dozens of trips a day through the monitors.
X-rays are just a color of light, it's just beyond ultraviolet, and just like certain materials are clear in visible light and others are colored because it blocks certain colors of light, certain metals block certain colors of X-rays. Typically scientists and medical people don't think of X-rays in their color temperature, but by their energies. Medical X-rays are generally in the range of 145Kv, Dental are 70-90Kv and both are filtered through a 1.5 - 2mm aluminum filter.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Shipping containers have to survive being stacked high on ships in high seas, craned arround ports and so-on. Therefore they are built far more sturdily than regular lorry trailers which really only need to keep the weather out.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Totally different from slashdot.
Yeah, that Bush sure sucks. I can hardly wait until Obama takes office so he can put a stop to all this.
And this pisses me off to no end. You mean to tell me that I now have to take an increased risk of cancer every time I just want to go home to see my family?
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
When are people going to realize that this isn't about keeping 'the bad people out'.
It's about being able to catalog, track, and identify the people who are 'in'.
How far do the rays travel? Think about it - there's no back-stop to absorb the rays that don't bounce back. Are they irradiating nearby residences/towns? What the effects on the border workers themselves who walk around these devices on a daily basis? I mean it's hard enough for them to find decent workers who are wiling to work for low pay for the DHS now, imagine when they all start dropping like flies due to cancer what kind of people will be working those stops next....
And this should serve as an object lesson about speaking authoritatively on subjects on which you have little to no knowledge and training, especially on a tech heavy forum where there are CERTAIN to be experts on almost every technical and scientific field known to man.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
X-Ray Scientist here. I work with both XRF and XRD instruments for commercial and academic use. The simple fact is this:
"Research indicates that enough data of exposed population exists to show that there is no safe dose, no safe-dose rate, nor a safe dose threshold..." - Wolfgang Koehnlein, Direktor of the Institue for Radiation Biology, University of Munster, Germany
In other words, every single high-energy photon that hits you has a chance to cause damage to cell structure or DNA, leading to cancer. These devices WILL increase cancer risk., without question. Safety limits exist to account for REASONABLE exposure, due to necessity or unavoidable exposure due to voluntary actions (job hazzard, etc.). The DHS may argue that the risk is low, but it is still a risk, and an unnecessary one at that.
Occupants should step out, car goes through a car wash type scanner, which also neutralizes any living organisms in the vehicle before it comes out the other end.
You missed. Can you not think REALLY hard and understand what II'm saying?
Is it a police state yet?
Have the appropriate studies been done on this equipment? X-rays have been around for half a century and the risk vs dosage is well established. How much radiation are we talking about here with a new tsa scanner? Dosimeters can be given to passengers if the dosage is high enough to be of concern to document exposure and advise passengers of a potential limit to how many trips through they can make safely have any primate or mouse studies bee done in cars exposed to this new scanner? there are too many unanswered questions to pass judgenent on this new tsa scanner. WE need to get answers before depolying this device. I believe it is safe but I need to see some concrete evidence about this before I submit to one of these scans!!!
Gamma radiation I could see, but X-Rays have a GREAT deal of difficulty penetrating metal.
Hmmm ... Both of our cars seem to have a good portion of their surface made of glass, not metal. The area is enough to expose roughly half of our bodies to radiation (like the visual spectrum) that can penetrate glass. Do car windows also block X-rays? How about gamma-rays?
And where do you get a car that's made entirely of metal? They don't seem to be for sale hereabouts.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
OK, since you know what you're on about...
In the story's image, you can see clearly through the engine block, but the driver is quite strongly imaged.... ... is that even possible? Anything that can go through that much aluminum and barely ghost it... would barely (if at all) even image something like flesh?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Not very practiced with links, are you?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Since they're only people.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Good point. But if you've got the intellect of a gnat and the education of a cat, your employment options are severely limited in this economy, so maybe they don't have a choice... :p
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I have experienced a mobile x-ray unit on the Canada-US border crossing once. They wouldn't explain what they were doing, but since the border drones get everyone to get out of their cars and take their pets with them, it was a pretty good assumption that they were pumping our vehicles full of radiation to snoop around.
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
Woosh...
The TSA are the terrorists!
They sexually assault people and try to give them cancer.
WTF!?!
Someone do drive-bys with EMPs please. Destroy their equipment with as little electronic collateral damage as possible.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
This is a pretty stupid idea, but I would have less of a problem with it if you can ask an attendant to drive through with your car while you sit safely out of range.
Twinstiq, game news
Except those of us who used to watch as NDI labs routinely X-rayed welds, castings, and even whole aircraft to discover hidden flaws in the metal...
There are some nice water cooled X-Ray tubes that woudn't fit in your dentist's office
If that isn't sufficent even more powerful gamma ray sources are avialable too...
4chan was never good
Yes, they are just "following orders." Now where have I heard that line of reasoning before?
Americans have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Explain to me how al-Quida has not won.
I don't think the explanation needs to be that complicated.
This isn't a long-term strategy -- it's an expensive system that benefits the contractors that build it which will be abandoned in a decade over health concerns once something better is invented. Then more money will be thrown at contractors to impliment that.
"Health concerns" in the short term can very easily be brushed aside. You don't need to suppress research, it's fine for all of this to be right out in the open. The threat of "terrorism" and weapons smuggling will be seen as the greater evil that needs to be protected against, and we've seen numerous times over the past decade that we're willing to allow the government to sacrifice time, money, and freedom in order to "secure" us.
Unless we all end up sterilized due to them, and the human race simply vanishes.
Yeah, there's pretty much zero chance of that. :-)
That should be:
"the more dense the material or LOWER energy (frequency) of the X=rays"
In other words, to penetrate further they just bump up the /frequency (i.e.energy). Or to stop more x-rays of a given energy, they need to thicken the material the x-rays are trying to pass through.
I come here for the love