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TSA 'Warning' Media About Reporting On Body Scanner Failures?
OverTheGeicoE writes "When anti-TSA activist Jonathan Corbett exposed a severe weakness in TSA's body scanners, one would expect the story to attract a lot of media attention. Apparently TSA is attempting to stop reporters from covering the story. According to Corbett, at least one reporter has been 'strongly cautioned' by TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz not to cover the story. If TSA is worried that this is new information they need to suppress to keep it away from terrorists, that horse may have left the barn years ago. Corbett's demonstration may just be confirmation of a 2010 paper in the Journal of Transportation Security that concluded that 'an object such as a wire or a boxcutter blade, taped to the side of the body, or even a small gun in the same location, will be invisible' to X-ray scanners."
Sorry, but a private citizen with no legal enforcement power (which TSA is and lacks) can not declare you an enemy of the state and have you sent to Guantanamo.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I remember back in 2002 I had this huge inner door house key, like really big old fashioned solid iron thing. It ended up being in my pocket as I walked through the metal detector, so I just clenched it in my palm thinking I'll have to show it anyway. Passed right through, not a beep. It was big enough it'd easily be the blade of a pretty good knife. And it beeped for some other passengers so it wasn't defective either. Of course this was after 9/11 so everybody was on their toes, I showed it to a friend and he was like "Seriously? You got to be kidding me..." but it happened.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
because thats pretty much what happened in Afghanistan in 2002, and how we got people like Khalid Sheik Mohammad put in the same facility with random teenagers and goat herders.
The TSA doesn't care if the backscatter scanner doesn't detect contraband. They don't even care if the terrorists know it. They don't want the general public at large knowing it because this kind of thing really messes up the security theater magic act. They also don't want to answer the accusations of exposing passengers to radiation for a less than perfect technology.
I saw a sign in the airport las weekend. "The backscatter scanner exposes you the same amount of radiation as you receive in two minutes in the airplane". Yeah but think of it this way; standing on a beach on a sunny day would you accept someone telling you that you were going to get a sun blast equal to two minutes in the sun in two seconds? Radiation doesn't always hurt bit it is always harmful to your DNA. There is a reason heath care providers put a limit on the number of X-rays you get in year.
The more citizens who fight the system, the harder it is for them to do any of that. What happens if/when there are 10,000,000 names on the Do Not Fly list?
Whatever happened to the principles the US was founded on? "Live Free or Die," "Don't Tread On Me," "Liberty or Death?" We've become a country of Bread and Circuses consuming, Entitlement gratified proles.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The radiation dosage received from the scanner is still less than what you get from the flight itself. If you are that worried about radiation, you probably don't want to be on the plane in the first place.
Ok, two things:
1. I need to get from A to B when I get on the plane. There is a perceived benefit and there is some incurred cost. Seeing how not a single one of these machines is know to have stopped a single terrorist, there is no perceived benefit to match going through the machine
2. You say that radiation dose is miniscule. TSA says that radiation dose is miniscule. Others say that due to improper calibration (how many of TSA employees are qualified to calibrate a medlical-like device?) or due to other factors the radiation received may be 10X or 100X higher than the "optimal". TSA had refused to do a health study, so even assuming I trust everyone equally, that's a 50-50 risk that TSA assertion is wrong.
And you say this on what grounds? The dosages that the machines give out is "Classified for National Security Purposes". They won't tell you how much you are getting dosed. It's illegal for them to tell you. Hell, if you listen to the TSA tell it, it's "the same as getting an ultrasound"
Could he have ever imagined the repercussions of his attack?
He did. Read "bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America". This was written before 9/11, and includes many of bin Laden's own comments. He recognized that America was too strong to take down, and had to be weakened internally first. His plan was to destroy America's moral authority in the world. He wanted a more oppressive and heavy-handed America, to help build hate and opposition in the rest of the world. That was the objective of his terrorism.
He succeeded.
It's hard to remember now, but just before 9/11, the US didn't have any serious enemies. The big players, Russia, China, Japan, and the European Union, were on good terms with the US. The Middle East was intimidated, but reassured by the fact that, once the US was finished liberating Kuwait, all the US troops packed up and went home.
If the US had simply focused on cleaning up the mess and finding bin Laden, we would have been far better off.
Anyone know if anyone has ever tried to go through one with a film badge dosimeter or something similar? That might prove very interesting.