Slashdot Mirror
Maine Senator Wants Independent Study of TSA's Body Scanners
OverTheGeicoE writes "U.S. Senator Susan Collins, the top Republican on the homeland security committee, plans to introduce a bill that would require a new health study of the X-ray body scanners used to screen airline passengers nationwide. If the bill becomes law, TSA would be required to choose an 'independent laboratory' to measure the radiation emitted by a scanner currently in use at an airport checkpoint and use the data to produce a peer-reviewed study, to be submitted to Congress, based on its findings. The study would also evaluate the safety mechanisms on the machine and determine 'whether there are any biological signs of cellular damage caused by the scans.' Many Slashdotters are or have been involved in science. Is this a credible experimental protocol? Is it reasonable to expect an organization accused of jeopardizing the health and safety of hundreds of millions of air travelers to pick a truly unbiased lab? Would any lab chosen deliver a critical report and risk future funding? Should the public trust a study of radiology and human health designed by a US Senator whose highest degree is a bachelor's degree in government?"
Isn't this something our fabulous leaders should of demanded before spending a crap load of money and deploying them all around the nation?
As a public health measure, we specifically designed our scanners to operate 95% on faith beams and only 5% on ionizing radiation(the fact that this also allowed the sleazy contractor not-at-all-definitely-not connected to our former leader, who definitely isn't a lich save on BOM costs was unconnected with this decision...)
If you allow skeptics to get near the machines, they'll jam the faith rays and force us to either face further terrorist attacks or turn up the radiation!
...where whathername insisted on "designing the study".
As opposed, of course, for calling for a study to be done - not the same at all.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
TSA must have gotten their marching orders recently. They have been pretty strict about pushing as many people through those radiation machines as possible for that last couple of months. Prior, you could pony up to the metal detectors without much hassle. Now, you are told to stand in the long imaging line. And this is the case at several airports I travel through.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
<quote>TSA would be required to choose an 'independent laboratory'</quote>
How independent if the TSA has to choose it?
The real investigation should be who got rich from all this.
our lawmakers and executive branch are in the pockets of large corporations. federal government buying tons of equipment increases shareholder value and provides certain benefits to those who greased the skids.
Can't we judge the experiment on its merits (good or bad)? What does the educational background of the person proposing it have to do with anything? The scientific method doesn't break just because someone without a PHD proposes the experiment.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
This nation worked very hard to elect a vice-president whose highest degree was a bachelor's degree in communications, and she had to transfer 4 times to get it. I don't think the people really care.
The single most significant missing component in all our security efforts is a cost analysis. Are we spending too much, too little, or about the right amount? Some say that measuring that is hard, and it is. But measurement is inherently approximation (there is no such thing as a ruler that is exactly twelve inches long). Once you accept that, it becomes much easier to measure lots of things (see also: How to Measure Anything).
Can we begin with a very rough boundary estimate? I think we can. Here's one I did in my head while driving through the desert recently:
I am willing to accept having two of my one thousand closest lifetime United States citizen acquaintances die in terrorist attacks. That is an acceptable risk level. If we can get there, I feel we have done all we need to do. By the same token, if we are spending any significant amount of money to go beyond that level, I am less supportive. I don't think it is worthwhile to catch every terrorist any more than it is worthwhile to catch every speeder or jaywalker. Two in one thousand, lifetime, sounds like about the right number.
OK, so, how does that work out as an annualized US death toll? (please note: I did this in my head, and am mostly just regurgitating it here -- please correct me if the math is off)
Desired Death Rate: 0.002 per lifetime
Lifetime Length: 80 years
Annualized Rate: 0.00002 risk per-annum per-person (equals 0.998 chance each person will reach 80 before dying from terrorism)
United States Population: 300,000,000
My Maximum Acceptable Annual U.S. Terrorism Deaths: 6,000
I think we should be trying to stay under 6,000 United States citizens dying from terrorism every year. It is the acceptable rate, to me, in terms of the risk of my acquaintances dying. Any significant spending we do to get under that number is -- to me -- emotionalism, not rationalism. Given we haven't reached 6,000 in the past 20 years, I suspect we are spending too much.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I keep seeing these things that seem to be attempting to show that these naked scanners are unhealthy. But is that really a distraction from what we should be considering?
1. Doesn't human dignity require that we treat travellers as people and not the same way that we treat convicts?
2. Don't these security measures do more harm than good by forcing people to accept a microcosm of "police state" for no discernable benefit?
I have never supported Susan Collins for other issues.
But I have to ask why the OP decided to belittle the Senator's formal educational credentials? This seems like a distraction for the real question here: are these full body scanners actually safe, and, that's the question the Senator has introduced to be studied.
The Senator has asked a good question here. I praise her for asking a question in a time when the knee jerk response has been a resounding YES to police state control. The OP has held up a straw man in questioning her education.
Isn't this something our fabulous leaders should of demanded before spending a crap load of money and deploying them all around the nation?
Isn't this something that's better late than never, considering that it's too late to say it should be done beforehand?
This. Politicians are not engineers. And even if they were, when they do something right, it makes more sense to praise them for it than it does to point out how foolish they may have been not to have done it earlier. Attacking them only makes sense if you are trying to defeat them in the next election--which is probably not the right thing to do when they do something right. =)
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I think it's unfair to dismiss a suggestion by a member of Congress just because their educational and experience background doesn't match up with every possible legislative issue that could possibly cross their desk. This is why Congressmen have staffs with more diverse educational backgrounds, and I'm 99% certain that whatever he proposes is going to have been written by one of his staffers. Of course, if you're a cynic, then it was written by a lobbyist, vetted by a staffer then proposed by the Representative from Maine, but hey, I don't think what he's proposing is all that unreasonable.
Letting the TSA pick an organization to do this is ridiculous, the GAO should be the one in charge of figuring out if this is harmful. You need a completely unbiased third party, not the guys who fouled up the "evaluation" in the first place.
As someone who works in radiation safety for the government, I can tell you that studies on these scanners have been done. There is virtually no risk from the scanners. You get far more additional radiation from flying in the airplane than you do from the scanner. The risk from these scanners is not the unknown value.
The unknown value is the benefit from the scanners. As far as I know, no study has ever shown that these scanners provide any benefit. Therefore even though risk is very small, benefit is even smaller, and the risk-benefit tradeoff is lopsided against the scanners.
Oh dear flying spaghetti monster, quit trying to be sensational. It takes away from the genuine problem.
(1) Experiment design. The senator won't "design" the study. I don't know how you got such a stupid idea. The senator is requesting (demanding, commissioning) the study. The bill is her effort to pin down what questions the study should answer. It's a darn sight better than just handing the scanner over to some folks and saying, "Take a look at this here doohickey and tell me what you think." She isn't going to come up with any actual science processes.
Think of it in programming terms - the senator is the boss, and she tells the programmer (scientist) what the program (science study) is supposed to output (what question the study is supposed to answer). She doesn't tell the programmer how to write the program, step-by-step. If, against all odds, she does stand there and try to tell you how to code each detail, you politely get her requirements again and shoo her off to do her actual job instead of yours (or you turn down the project). Nothing fancy to get so upset about, and a darn sight better than doing nothing and hoping for the best.
(2) Picking an unbiased lab. Of course the TSA will try to pick someone who will give them the results they want. The question is, how many labs (or scientists) do you think the TSA can influence? The TSA is not in the science business or the nuclear business or the detector business. They are in the business of training people with the IQs of dogs to bark when they see something gun-shaped and to sniff your crotch for dangerous materials.
In this I can at least claim some level of insider knowledge. I am a grad student at a nuclear physics lab. Nobody here has any special regard for the TSA - not the director, not the scientists, not the grad students. Now, we certainly aren't immune from political pressures, but in the end, no one is. However, most of the scientists here would rather be at odds with the TSA than have their professional reputation ruined by certifying a device as safe that can be demonstrated to be dangerous. Professional reputation is everything in science. If the TSA gets pissy at a scientist, then that scientist can go work in Germany, or France, or Great Britain, or India, or the various Arab countries with an interest in nuclear physics. If the scientific community gets angry at a scientist for endorsing something that kills folks, then there is nowhere in the world that the scientist can hide his damaged reputation.
(3) Lab funding. Labs are funded on fairly long cycles. Ours is funded on a five year cycle. So, any lab like ours would be fairly immune to a temporary temper tantrum by some government official. We're not completely immune, but our funding is mostly determined by the President's office, the DOE, and the NSF. Note how there is no mention of the TSA in there. The TSA doesn't fund a darned thing in science, and so we couldn't care less about offending the TSA. As I said, we aren't completely immune from political pressures - if a senator got really angry at us over such a thing, the study might be squelched and our funding might get reduced or cut. That's very uncommon, though. Usually, senators don't want their name next to a study that erroneously says something is safe if it actually kills people. It's bad for the senator's re-election efforts. It's especially bad if the word "nuclear" is involved anywhere - nothing scares the public (and thus, the politicians) like the word "nuclear."
(4) My professional opinion: You've completely got the wrong take on this. You probably didn't read the article at all. If anything, Collins is trying to use politics to squelch the scanners, not to cover up defects in the scanner's design. If there is any political pressure on the scientists involved in this study, it will be pressure to declare the devices unsafe and unsuitable for use. And, while I don't agree with playing politics with science, I do agree with squelching these scanners.
By the way, as a nuclear physi
The obvious answer to the question is, as usual; "Follow the money!"
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-11-22-scanner-lobby_N.htm
http://www.infowars.com/chertoff-linked-to-body-scanner-manufacturer/
IMO, the *real* question we should be asking is why we believed this costly new technology, coupled with a whole new govt. agency to operate it, was going to accomplish anything substantial in the first place? The argument over the cost is tough to make without somebody insisting that either A) it created so many new jobs for American citizens that it added a lot of value, and/or B) if it saves even ONE human life, how can you put a price on that? So IMO, we can probably just ignore the "cost" angle, and simply ask if the TSA screening procedure we've implemented is a net positive, or a net negative for everyone?
Personally, I think you've got to be drinking some serious govt. kool-aid if you REALLY believe this nonsense of putting anyone on a secret "watch list" (based on the discretion of agents hired from the general public at hourly pay starting at around $11/hr.), and making everyone walk through body scanners before boarding commercial planes is going to save you from terrorist acts. As one of my friends pointed out, you can go to most airports in the U.S. and find that the only thing keeping you from wandering out to the hangars and runways is a chain-link fence around their perimeter. If someone REALLY wanted to sabotage a plane, they could throw on a mechanics' outfit or something, run out onto the tarmac, and do whatever they wanted to do with a parked jet, or even quickly insert something into some luggage on one of the transports, waiting to be loaded onto a flight. Trying to secure the plane from the terminal's boarding gate so heavily ignores all the other possibilities. Meanwhile, we've created a situation where EVERYONE is inconvenienced and put at risk of being falsely labeled a "potential terrorist" for transgressions as simple as wearing a t-shirt with a counter-culture political message printed on it, or making the wrong comment while standing in line.
Freedom = 0, Terrorists = 1 by my score-card
It's a zero sum game.
Unless your wife flies multiple times a week or lives/works in a likely "use a passenger plane as a missile" target then it would be much better (in a purely selfish existance) to not spend it on the TSA. Instead spend it on medical research, or road safety, or funding medical checkups, or any of thousands of other things that are far more likely to save their life.
Even if you do fly every day and spend all the time you aren't flying in a famous sky scraper you'd still be better off seeing the money spent on preventing the other things that are orders of magnitude more likely to shorten your life/reduce your quality of life.
So no the premise isn't wrong. By spending the money on that you are deciding not to spend it on something else. And that something else is *far* more likely to "save your life".
...before there was a cancer cluster amongst TSA workers in Boston, and before the frequently flying public was exposed to that much danger. Yes, it's good that it's being looked at now, but it was absolutely irresponsible to deploy these in the first place.