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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."
I take this article with a HUGE grain of salt.
Everyone knows X-Rays can't penetrate metal.
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
So if I open fire on one of these, will I have a case for self defense?
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?
MOVIE [Imdb.com] I won't Bore you most. Look at the
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Given how things are going in America, the next time I leave I may just not bother with the return.
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.
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.
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)
Disregard that, I suck cocks
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.
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.
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.
Welcome to East Germany / Soviet Union, 21st century American style.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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....
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.
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!!!
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...
Americans have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Explain to me how al-Quida has not won.