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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."
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)
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.
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
Yes. But since you'll be dead, it won't make much difference.
Where is the truck sized one?
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!
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"
Could someone mod baby hitler out of existence?
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.)
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.
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.
Think of the settings e.g. bike, car, van, truck, big truck, heavy engineering equipment... ..
A final zap good-bye
Your paper work shows your flagged as having sold your home, moved cash around the world and seem to be emigrating
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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
Prob is, he has a point.
The US has the best healthcare in the world, as long as your insurance is good and properly paid. Get your health insurance cancelled, you'll go bankrupt just trying to stay alive.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Java? So they're breaking the EULA too?
Or does control of radiographic equipment not count as a nuclear facility?
... one cancer at a time. The terrorists will thank you the favour. :P
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.
Yeah, because without that operation, the crime lords would have been forced to fight with sticks and stones.
Right.
No matter how much the Right Wing Spin Machine wants to get people upset over it, it's not a real crime or offense. It was a rather standard undercover operation which recognized that the contribution was minimal, if non-existent, versus the gain from potentially being able to shut the whole thing down.
They didn't just do it with no purpose or forethought, but with a salubrious intent.
The same cannot be said of Nixon's Watergate burglars.
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.
Then you're probably better off emigrating ASAP.
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."
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.
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.
Hey not only did they do it once, they did it twice. There's a second gun-runner program that was dumping guns. "white" something or other.
Om, nomnomnom...
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)
So maybe Congress can create a health-care "reform" bill so complicated no one can understand it, but filled with enough time bombs and hidden boobytraps to eventually crash the private insurance industry. Wow, that's an incredibly cynical idea. I can't believe I could think of something so sinister.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Can someone here please whip up a design for a magnatron projection van? You know, for entertainment purposes.
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.
He and his wife were allowed to exit their vehicle before it was scanned.
That's nice. But the pics in TFA appear to have a person sitting in the driver's seat.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You're joking, but what do you think the "Donut Hole" with Medicare Part B is all about?
If you can't afford the drugs out of pocket, you die before filling the donut hole.
--
BMO
You're kidding me, right? The so-called 'Obamacare' bill that got passed was just a bailout for the healthcare insurance 'industry'. Healthcare insurance never needed a bailout. It was written by the lobbyists for the healtcare insurance industry. Do you really think they woulda written in little booby-traps to kill off the corporations that sign their paychecks? Be real.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
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?
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?
Sure they can. You just don't want to be inside the car being it with the high energy x-rays involved...
It was written by the lobbyists for the healtcare insurance industry. Do you really think they woulda written in little booby-traps to kill off the corporations that sign their paychecks? Be real.
Your belief in the honesty of lobbyists is really touching. Kind of like a politician who stays bought I guess?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
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?
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.
I've been around the block a few times. I'm pushing 60. And there ain't no way a lobbyist will spend his client's money in such a way to put that client out of business. If he did that, he'd never work as a lobbyist again, nobody would hire him. Why would they, when he'd put them out of business? You really think some CEO used to a life of hookers and blow wants to go get themself a real job and rub elbows with us plebians in the (shudder) middle class? They fought their way through Harvard Business School and the Wharton School just to keep that from happening.
From the point of view of the lobbyist, any legislation that increases his boss's clout or profits is a Good Thing, and doing whatever it takes to do just that with a politician is enlightened self-interest from the viewpoint of the lobbyist. They're not the movers and shakers, they're the errand boys in $1500 suits delivering the mail with a slicker, hipper rap than their bosses. If they didn't have that hipper, slicker rap than their bosses, they wouldn't be necessary.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
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.
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.
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
Unless we all end up sterilized due to them, and the human race simply vanishes.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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
The US has the best healthcare in the world, as long as your insurance is good and properly paid. Get your health insurance cancelled, you'll go bankrupt just trying to stay alive.
You don't even need your insurance canceled for that to happen.I have what some people would consider "good" insurance, and it is still damned expensive. For example, the birth of a baby would cost me about $15-20,000 without insurance (for a normal non-C section). With insurance, it is "only" going to cost me about $4000. I have a good job, so I can afford $4000 with a bit of sacrifice and wiping out some of my savings. A lot of people would either be put on a long payment plan or may even be bankrupted.
If the baby is born in Japan, the cost (I am told) is approximately $8,000 and various government programs and private insurance reduce that to around $3-4000 depending on where you live. Your company may give you a loan, and in certain places the government *pays you* (not a tax break, an actual check) every month until the baby is a certain age.
In Canada, universal government healthcare means you pay nothing.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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
You're starting to get it.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
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?
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.
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?
No, the American healthcare system is an incredibly expensive response to the fact that, through our fast-food tailored diets, we are killing ourselves.
Americans have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Explain to me how al-Quida has not won.
You don't have good insurance. When my daughter was born, I paid $150 out of pocket.
For great justice.
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