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The Ineffectiveness of TSA Body Scanners
TheNextCorner points out a video that lays bare a glaring flaw in the TSA body scanners used in airports to detect weapons and explosives. In such scans, citizens are depicted in light colors, while metallic objects show as very dark. The problem comes when you consider that the images are taken with a dark background. From the transcript:
"Yes that’s right, if you have a metallic object on your side, it will be the same color as the background and therefore completely invisible to both visual and automated inspection. It can’t possibly be that easy to beat the TSA’s billion dollar fleet of nude body scanners, right? The TSA can’t be that stupid, can they? Unfortunately, they can, and they are. To put it to the test, I bought a sewing kit from the dollar store, broke out my 8th grade home ec skills, and sewed a pocket directly on the side of a shirt. Then I took a random metallic object, in this case a heavy metal carrying case that would easily alarm any of the “old” metal detectors, and walked through a backscatter x-ray at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. On video, of course. While I’m not about to win any videography awards for my hidden camera footage, you can watch as I walk through the security line with the metal object in my new side pocket."
-- George Carlin
Go back to the old scanners. Try again in a few years with better tech if you actually create some. Actually test the tech out next time, preferably with open field testing. Geeks can break most anything and it's best to see how they can BEFORE you implement the "important terrorist stopping scanner".
the "enemy" is much smarter than 10000 bureaucrats being sold by a used car salesman
after all this decades enemy has sustained life for thousands of years in an environment most of our citizens would die in, in a matter of hours... they do have some tricks "up their sleeve"
whenever the authorities want them to slip through.
[conspiracy mode on]
With Israeli security companies controlling American security, you just as well let everybody on board because
when the Likud-Neocons decide to shock the average American again to justify their Iran war, terrorist will miraculously defy all security measures.
[conspiracy mode off]
Since obviously a metal detector will detect that sort of thing, the tsa will now buy new millimeter wave/backscatter x-ray scanners with a traditional metal detector integrated into the system. The only reason they're going to give up their toys is because they can get better ones.
Fuck Beta
It should simply read, "The Ineffectiveness of the TSA"
Silence is a state of mime.
The entire TSA can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground.
Idiocracy is a most apt description of our political class...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
We were pretty sure that there was a problem with metal objects taped to the inside or outside of people's bodies when Adam Savage walked through with two 12" razor blades. This story just provides an explanation of why the scanners don't work.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Even Gestapo officers had friends...if they knew what was good for them.
Blank until
Yes, but you're not going to like it. It involves people like you banding together to run for office, then passing laws banning all non-medical use of X-ray or millimeter wave imaging within the bounds of your community or state. If every state did this, the TSA and the companies it supports would eventually wither and die on the vine. Even if they started overturning the laws in the supreme court, after about the twentieth state passed such a law, they'd have their hands full in court for decades—a big enough money sink that it just might be enough to extricate their crania from their recta.
Remember: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Soap hasn't worked. Jury hasn't worked. Yet we as a society seem to have skipped over the most important one on our way to the fourth. Never forget the second.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It seems obvious to me that the TSA knew the machines didn't work effectively, but that this didn't matter to them. Airport security isn't about making the skies safer, it's about scaring (some would even say terrorising) the public in order to give the government more power and control. In his video he even says that there was no threat with the old metal detectors...
There are so many ways one could commit an act of terrorism at an airport without getting on a plane if one were so inclined (I'm not, by the way!) and every time I fly I see more. The full body scanners do nothing to increase a person's safety.
Let's face it - the terrorists have won. The public are terrified. Sadly it's their own governments which have done the terrorising.
I'm glad the EU has declared backscatter X-ray scanners to be illegal to use in European airports. I work in a radiation industry and know a considerable amount about X-ray physics and medical imaging, and these scanners should never have been taken into use for public screening.
I love going through the US airports and requesting a manual search when they try to put me through the backscatter machines. They always make a big drama over it, but I explain that I work in a radiation industry and I will not subject myself to additional radiation given a choice. Backscatter machines fall into this category, and so far I have not been through a single one. If they try to force me to go through one or not pass the security checkpoint, I will take it all the way to the top if needed. I will not tolerate being scanned by a backscatter machine, nor should anyone else. It's not been proven safe for human use or effective at increasing security.
And let's not even get started about the fact that the TSA have been caught multiple times storing images from the backscatter and millimeter wave machines, when they say publicly that the images are not saved. There is a reason why they earned the nickname, pr0n scanner. There is no valid reason to save the images after you pass screening, unless they are simply playing the CYA game. This should not be allowed.
Note, the backscatter machines are far different than the millimeter wave scanners used in some airports. Millimeter wave is known to be safe. Backscatter is NOT and should never be used on the public.
Mod parent up! Terrorism is all about... Creating terror! And disrupting societies by leading them to change significantly due to that terror. If societies refuse to change, terrorism will fail and the funding will stop coming. Look at IRA and ETA, they were not defeated by expensive equipment or civil rights limitations, they were defeated by societies refusal to become terrified.
If I needed a firearm on an airplane, I would probably use the 33 gram CO2 cartridges from the life vest conveniently located under my seat. Put it in a fitting pipe, and all you need is a crude firing device to pierce the seal - blunt force will do.
The TSA lines are there for your illusion of safety. Your real safety lies in the fact that it is rather unusual for people to conspire to kill a plane full of people, themselves included.
It's only scary at first. Despite all this, no successful terrorist attack has successfully been carried out on planes for over ten years. Instead of getting rid of an overpriced, useless and redundant mess of an agency, we continue to praise it for stopping terrorists, even to the point of being scared when realizing they didn't actually stop any terrorists.
- "Why are you constantly clapping?"
- "To scare away elephants."
- "But there aren't any elephants here!"
- "Yes. You're welcome."
Well, I guess it's not completely irrational. Automated systems don't deal with highly unlikely exceptions as well as humans sometimes do. Though they also tend to make much fewer mistakes under normal circumstances (or under types of exceptions that were taken into account by the engineers) than humans do... If money wasn't an issue, I'd say that the autopilot + usually passive human operator solution is the best of both worlds. Which is exactly what Google and others have in mind while designing autonomous cars -- it would be silly of them to build/market the technology as completely driverless. And I imagine that the transition will really be very gradual. I don't think the first "self-driving" consumer cars will drive themselves completely from point A to point B. More likely we will first see for example highway-only self-driving cars, which sounds like both a much easier engineering problem as well as having higher potential for saving lives (no falling asleep and drifting, no lane changing into a car in the blind spot, etc). There would have to be a system for smoothly transferring control upon entering an leaving the highway, but again that seems like an easier problem that urban driving with all of its messiness and variety of environment types... As usual, I think the anxiety of people predicting the implications of the technology is highly exaggerated compared to the actual disruption it will cause.
weinersmith
Maybe the government could stop aiding the enemy by being stupid.
Great, now we'll get a bigger dose of "safe" radiation as they take side pictures as well.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
There's something missing from your prescription: Ensuring that the new laws that get passed actually get enforced.
That is unfortunately not a minor issue. For instance, Massey Coal has routinely violated laws on mine safety for decades, and donated heavily to the campaigns of the state prosecutors and judges to prevent those laws from ever being enforced - it took the bad press of the Upper Big Branch deaths to put the CEO (who had specifically told his subordinates to break the law) on trial. Similarly, Goldman Sachs probably (although they've never admitted it in court, they're willing to settle the case) committed fraud worth billions, and is going to be let off with paying a fine that's a fraction of the revenue they received for the fraud. And Dick Cheney told the world he committed war crimes (specifically, he ordered torture of prisoners, using the definitions of torture the US used after WW II) on national television, and is still free.
I am officially gone from
Korea? The only reason action was taken in Korea was that the Soviets boycotted the session in question, avoiding a Security Council veto. The UNC structure and DMZ are still there, 60 years on. All of the allied nations have fled except the US. There's a rousing success story.
South Korea has about 49 million people living in it. Depending on how you count it, they have the 12th or 15th highest GDP in the world . I think 49 million people would argue that it is a rousing success story. Moron. However, I do agree with your general point that the UN is mostly a legacy of failure, but your cited example of South Korea is a big time fail.