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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."
What where the consequences they where threatened with?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I would kind of suspect they know terrorists are already aware of the vulnerability, more likely they just don't want random Joe smoe smuggling a miniaturized gun onboard because he can, and then having an armed civilian on the flight if something goes wrong in the air.
Aside from just scrapping them entirely, wouldn't this be a non-issue if they just had the traveler rotate 90 degrees and repeated the scan?
Much like the underwear bomber, TSA has this all planned out.
1. Allow terrorist onboard with a weapon hidden at his side.
2. Civilians on plane stop terrorist when he attempts to take over plane.
3. TSA announces that the system worked.
These "reporters" are clearly interfering with step #1.
Conversation between TSA and reporter. TSA:You really don't want to run that story about the billions wasted on ineffective airport body scanners. On a side note I hear Guantanamo Bay is nice this time of year, me and the wife are thinking of taking a trip. Reporter: Don't I have constitutional rights of free speech and what not. TSA: Don't worry about that. I mean, we ignored them when we put the scanners in anyway, didn't we. Reporter: Oh yeah.
not only are they searching people without probable cause, the airlines should be left to police themselves so the tax payers wont have to pay for it, let the airline customers pay for it...
I will stay away from the airports if the TSA stays out of my pants, and I refuse to step in to your xray cancer machines.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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
I call BS.
I was wondering who would bring up the Barbara Streisand Effect first.
So now, Barbara Streisand is a Terrorist!
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Don't worry, they will have their checkpoints soon enough so they can grope her.
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.
I'm interested to see the text of this email. It's hard to judge just how egregious this behavior is without seeing the actual text.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
FoxNews is covering the story:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/08/blogger-shows-world-how-to-sneak-anything-past-tsas-nude-body-scanners/
I'm impressed.
The TSA needs to be disbanded at once with prejudice. It is nothing but kabuki theater masking fascism. It has no place in the America of our founders.
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.
Use the fucking metal detectors that are already there! They work great. They'll pick up any gun, even a small one. No, there is no gun that has no metal in it (nor bullets). What's more metal detectors are 100% within the range of TSA intelligence to use: Green = person ok, go through. Red + beep = person not ok. Even the untrained morons in the TSA can deal with that. The scanners though, they require knowledge an interpretation. You are presented with an image and you have to interpret it.
That is why so many people get sent for patdowns. Not because they found something but because they can't tell what they fuck they are looking at. They can't interpret the results.
The answer is in what they already have. Metal detectors work great. There's a reason why people like, say, the Secret Service uses metal detectors, and not these scanners.
Could he have ever imagined the repercussions of his attack. On so many levels, from more government ie: the dept of Home land security, to the ridiculousness of what we have to go through to fly. The whole country (or at least government) running around worrying about terrorists and the incredible expense it incurs. Our image around the world.... It goes on and on. He single-handedly turned the the U.S. into a near bankrupt, joke.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I have to agree with the posters above. In the 1990s, after winning the "cold war", the US was triumphant and popular. Apparently this went to the heads of the politicians. While there was brief talk about scaling back military expenditures (since they were not necessary anymore), instead the US scaled up, and started looking for places to use that military. 9/11 was a huge boon to those who wanted to go this way, and they have taken full advantage of it. The US now spends nearly as much on its military as the entire rest of the world combined. Internationally, the US behaves like a schoolyard bully - a bully utterly convinced of his own righteousness.
What I find saddest about this whole situation: most people I know in the USA don't have the faintest inkling of this. "Look at all the good we do." "The Iraqis should be thankful we got rid of Hussein for them." Etc.. It's really unbelievable.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.