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."

Comments

Stop aiding

[Anonymous Coward]

the enemy by pointing out stupidity!

Re:Stop aiding

[Narcocide]

I really want to understand this joke.

SSDD

[Johann Lau]

As far as I'm concerned, all of this airport security--the cameras, the questions, the screenings, the searches--is just one more way of reducing your liberty and reminding you that they can fuck with you anytime they want. Because that's the way Americans are now. They're willing to trade away a little of their freedom in exchange for the feeling---the illusion---of security.

-- George Carlin

Re:SSDD

[Johann Lau]

Sure. Meanwhile, funneling mountains of money into BS like this, not to mention all the military hardware, ends up leaving more people out in the cold, and effectively killing them, than all terrorist attacks of all history combined, and people who do the real harm get rewarded for it ("too big to jail"). I mean, it's not like people have this inate tendency to be hateful towards freedom and generosity -- it's just that that's all pretty much BS, and for all we know, every single terrorist was trained by the CIA, because that's what's needed to keep people in check and the actual wolves running wild. That surely would make more sense than the hilarious explanation you're offering. Thanks for the chuckle though.

Re:SSDD

[dgatwood]

A terrorist who is actually planning to blow himself up anyway would simply do so between the scan and the pat down upon detection—probably diving into the security line to maximize the casualties. The body scanners are thus completely and utterly ineffectual as a deterrent.

More to the point, the terrorists weren't afraid to bring box cutters onto an aircraft; the metal detectors were obviously not a deterrent. Based on that bit of history, what possible reason could you have for believing that this magic tiger-repelling rock will work better than the last one?

Re:SSDD

[LordLimecat]

Meanwhile, funneling mountains of money into BS like this, not to mention all the military hardware, ends up leaving more people out in the cold,

There are several assumptions (mostly incorrect) in your post:
A) that money that is spent on airport bs would otherwise be allocated to "the people out in the cold"
B) that there are a large number of people in this country dying of exposure (the number is astonishingly low)
C) That those who DO die of exposure could have been saved with more money
D) that if the government doesnt become a charity, then it is responsible for their deaths

You may want to reexamine these assumptions. B especially you may want to research.

Re:SSDD

[dgatwood]

At the time of the 9/11/2001 attacks, it was legal to bring a box cutter aboard an airplane.

Untrue. Pocket knives were legal. Box cutters and straight razors have never been allowed as best I can determine. (Source: planesafe.org)

Besides, there's reason to suspect that they were never taken through security in the first place, making the entire question moot.

By the way, it might be happening again.

Re:SSDD

[wvmarle]

A large part of the US military spending goes to destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both in the name of liberation and whatnot - but the fact is that lots and lots of locals have been killed, either directly by bombs or bullets, or indirectly due to loss of their home and destruction of general infrastructure in their countries.

Not bombing Iraq and Afghanistan would save the US a lot of money (effectively lowering your immense deficits), and would have saved many lives in the countries affected. Not having military operations all over the world would possibly even have prevented many terrorist attacks to happen in the first place, due to less bad blood about US activities.

Sure you can not prevent all actions from all mad men. Most bombings on US soil have been by US nationals. But not meddling in other countries' internal affairs helps a lot (and that's not an endorsement of either the Taliban or of Saddam Hussein). Leave that meddling to the UN, it's what that organisation was set up for to begin with.

Re:SSDD

[mSparks43]

I'm still waiting to get asked to go through one of these scanners (UK doesn't send everyone through them).

I can get naked in under 5 seconds, and plan to demonstrate this skill as soon as they request naked pictures of me.

Only fair I share the wealth of my gorgeous nakedness with everyone in the airport when requested to do so by airport staff.

My wife panics everytime we get near them, she knows I'll do it, and is obviously petrified I'll get mauled by all the sex hungry girls in the vicinity.

Re:SSDD

[HBI]

Why is this insightful? Where has the UN had any success at all? Just last week, a dual veto of a SC resolution that would have done something about Assad killing his people in Syria occurred. This is an effective organization, one that can't do jack shit about people being killed in the street? But this isn't isolated: let's see what else the UN has done.

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.

UN peacekeepers have been involved in Israel since 1948. Note the many wars since.

UN peacekeepers have been in Cyprus since 1964. No resolution, of course.

We can't forget the Iraq-Kuwait observer mission from 91 to 03. They really prevented war in Iraq, border incursions or ground to air attack. They also made sure Hans Blix got into Baghdad and got his mission accomplished. Not.

Note the rush to get the UN involved in such affairs as:
Vietnam
Bosnia
Serbia - the Kosovo intervention happened after the Serbians were pummeled outside UN authority...Russian veto again...
Afghanistan in 2001 (they were there in late 80s-early 90s...great job, UN, first in stopping the 10 year Soviet occupation and then managing its aftermath so well)
Libya in 2011

The list just goes on of UN failures in action, or failures to act in this area.

Test First

[Rtarara]

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".

Re:Test First

[0123456]

Go back to the old scanners. Try again in a few years with better tech if you actually create some.

Why would you do that when you can sell useless machines now and then sell slightly less useless machines again in a few years?

You seem to be under the impression that the scanners are supposed to achieve something other than enriching the people who make them.

Re:Test First

[TheSpoom]

Testing would have delayed the goal of making Michael Chertoff more money.

what the tsa will actually do

[prehistoricman5]

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.

yup

[Anonymous Coward]

I was part of a team bringing forward a competing technology to those scanners (standoff biometrics, no weird imaging, ~5 different measurements, easy to beat one, hard to beat them all). We thought we had won the tests. At least, we found all the people sneaking stuff in during our test and we knew they couldn't have detected certain things - like explosives, which they still can't see.

Due to the nature of my sensor work, much of my clothing is covered in explosives residue. A good scanner should really pick me out every time, but I only ever get "caught" when I'm selected for random screening.

We were pretty surprised when we found out they were selected. I guess we should have worked harder on our lobbying and less on our engineering.

Re:Day in court for pointing out the obvious

[Riceballsan]

Indeed all of the actual holes that were exploited on 9/11 were pretty much patched very early. The main holes being 1. Policies saying let hijackers do whatever they want, wait till they land to have them arrested. 2. the cockpit doors being weak. Even if the underware and shoebomber both succeeded (both of which succesfully being thwarted without the super overintrusive new TSA rules), air travel as a whole still has less total risks than driving to the airport. In the end soceity has to realize that to some extent we have to ballance control of horrible deaths. I would imagine there are far more ways that people die that could be prevented if we applied anywhere near the money we put into TSA post 9/11 than we saved in reality. There are no shortage of underfunded disaster control, rescue, fire departments, starving homeless etc... We also could improve the quality of life by putting things into schools, or encorage more science by funding NASA etc... Decisions inspired by sudden knee jerk fear are rarely good ones and often we forget the scale of what we are fighting against is actually very small.

TSA is an expense account scam

[Okian Warrior]

The inquisition (yes, that one) was an expense account scam. Since the accused was required to pay for their own inquisition, the system simply padded the expenses to the limit of the available money.

The TSA is the same thing. People wail and moan about how stupid/intrusive/incompetent/useless they are, and miss the larger picture.

The TSA sends money to corporations, and the corporations grease the political wheels.

There's no rocket science, no ulterior motive, nothing else to consider. Like the inquisition, the TSA doesn't need to justify expenditures with usefulness or effectiveness. The more they spend, the more they get to spend. Cause and effect.

Why do you think they spend billions on technology, but pay only slightly above the minimum wage and spend so little on training?

People keep grousing about the TSA as if that will make a difference. It won't. They have been generally incompetent from the start, and there's nothing that people can do to unseat them from their position.

Voting hasn't helped. Contacting representatives hasn't helped. Complaining to the TSA or their employees hasn't helped. Legal action hasn't helped.

There's one obvious remaining course of action we can take to rein in all the government waste and corruption. Can anyone think of things to try before we take that last drastic step? I'm out of ideas...

Re:TSA is an expense account scam

[dgatwood]

There's one obvious remaining course of action we can take to rein in all the government waste and corruption. Can anyone think of things to try before we take that last drastic step? I'm out of ideas...

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.

Re:Surprise it took that long

[dgatwood]

Yeah. I was worried about the TSA folks having a cow about my valve oil, so I dutifully packed it in a plastic bag for my first post-9/11 trip with an instrument, wondering if I'd have to dispose of it anyway. I don't think anyone else brought bags, and as far as I could tell, nobody got pulled aside. (I waited around as folks went through just in case I needed to pass somebody a spare plastic bag.)

It's kind of scary to realize (in hindsight) that between the couple of dozen brass players, we probably walked through the TSA checkpoint with between fifty and a hundred fluid ounces of light petroleum distillates (basically kerosene) without comment....

If we had been terrorists, I suspect that the plane would not have reached its destination. It scares the crap out of me to realize that in spite of all their amateur theatrics, we're really not significantly safer than we were before.

Re:Scanner image hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

we all look lumpy *and* bald going through the scanner.

I achieve /that/ look without any expensive technology...

An alternative

[shiftless]

Maybe the government could stop aiding the enemy by being stupid.