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Homeland Security: New Body Scanners Have Issues
Fluffeh writes "Although the DHS has spent around $90 million upgrading magnetometers to the new body scanners, federal investigators 'identified vulnerabilities in the screening process' at domestic airports using the new machines, according to a classified internal Department of Homeland Security report. Exactly how bad the body scanners are is not being divulged publicly, but the Inspector General's report (PDF) made eight separate recommendations on how to improve screening. To quiet privacy concerns, the authorities are also spending $7 million to 'remove the human factor from the image review process' and replace the passenger's image with an avatar."
Oh no! something isn't perfect so it must be a huge scandal! And they spent $90 million! Government could run for almost 30 minutes extra if they had that money back!
This is getting to the point of ridiculousness due to the another article bringing up issues with the body scanners. The public really needs to send letters and sign petitions in mass to get rid of this expensive cancer causing paper weights.
I think the DHS should allow folks to pay to have their own avatars for screening. It would raise millions! And there are plenty of choices! and of course there are these.
When they said they were removing the "human factor" I assumed that meant they were removing the TSA agents looking at the images and replacing it with some kind of image analysis software... not slapping the equivalent of a black bar over the naughty bits.
Also, I'm surprised they only estimate it to cost $7 mil... seems like it's not enough for sufficient profits even with the inevitable budget overruns.
I certainly hope replacing the passenger's naked photo with a paper doll isn't enough to "quiet" the privacy concerns.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
If this is not like the technology "displayed" in Total Recall it will never be acceptable.
How did these officials ever think the technology as deployed was even remotely acceptable? Yet people never seem to get the hint that the bigger the government the less it really has to care.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
1. introduce stupid, useless, expensive technology
2. profit
3. fix it
4. profit
5. it is useless after all
6. goto 1
Do we at least get to customize our avatar as one can on many websites?
boats against the tide....
One less thing for us to worry about.
Until the next thing for us to worry about, and there will always be another thing.
Always.
Forever
Dad joke win!
... along the lines of "if they did this avatar thing from the beginning the TSA maybe would have only earned half the animosity they deserve" and go on about how sometimes focus groups actually work that might bring out, you know, glaring errors in design.
But you know what? That doesn't fucking matter. What matters is that the American Public is crisis fatigued out. I am crisis fatigued. I turned on the news yesterday to find out that we discovered another underwear bomber and that the design was "sophisticated" and a dog and pony show was trotted out on the Today show by the fucking CIA.
I want you, every one of you, to ask yourselves, when was the last time the CIA did intelligence press releases? It's like science by press release - you get bogus shit like cold fusion because what it's really about is someone trying to stoke his budget.
And that's what it's all about. It's just corporate welfare and agency empire building, marketed through fear. On a societal level I can't think of anything more evil except waging war through bogus excuses all the way from the Gulf of Tonkin to GWB's "weapons of mass destruction" bullshit.
And we're going to shovel good money after bad because so many honest, hard working people are just trying to get through life without increasing the rage factor and generating more heart disease worrying about shit like this.
Jeg opgiv.
I am so disheartened.
--
BMO
Postscript:
About sophistication:
The fucking Soviet Union of the 1980s could launch nuclear tipped missiles and have them explode over a US city with an accuracy of a couple of feet and this was entirely credible. Comparing the war on terror enemies to the enemy of the Cold War, I do not find any fucking sophistication. Yesterday's announcement of more underwear bombs paired with the word "sophisticated" made me want to scream. What an abuse of language. What fucking Newspeak. What fucking doublethink.
To help pay off the deficit, the TSA is now offering lead-lined paper bags to cover your face when going through the strip search machine. At an affordable $15 a piece, it is a small price to pay for privacy.
sudo make me a sandwich
"To quiet privacy concerns, the authorities are also spending $7 million to 'remove the human factor from the image review process' and replace the passenger's image with an avatar."
http://www.imaxmelbourne.com.au/images/uploads/Avatar/Avatar-BIG-1.jpg
"Sorry, buddy, you're gonna have to check that bow."
I 'll play devil's advocate below- so, under the assumption that the TSA and their paraphernalia are vital in present-day USA:
.. spending millions [..] upgrading magnetometers to the new body scanners ..
As most of you probably know, the "new scanner" operates at the THz range: that wavelength is being exploited because a) it "sees" through clothes and b) it gives a nice contrast.
A little more detail: the incoming radiation mostly penetrates clothing both in its way in and out -- i.e., penetrates clothing in its way in, does not penetrate skin and instead gets reflected back, it then passes again through clothing on its way out and gets registered on the machine. Now, other material (say a ceramic knife, that does not register in the magnetometer) or a "suspicious" looking box strapped on the body, will reflect the incoming THz radiation but on a different way: by taking advantage of this, a contrast image can be constructed, and what is not skin becomes conspicuous. So you can obvisouly see why this is something an authority appreciates, and you would be in denial if you don't believe that the scanners are here to stay. Sorry, but now they have established their foothold in reality, so you have to learn to get used to them being around for quite a while.
.. spending $7 million [to] replace the passenger's image with an avatar
Okay, now I am done playing advocate- my points:
a) $7 million for software development seems a lot in the expensive side, or so I think. Anyway the federal budget for toilet paper is probably higher. And
b) most importantly, couldn't that had been implemented from the start of the project, out of respect for the citizen? I mean, how hard can it be? Is there a reason why this "extra humiliation" factor had to linger around for so long?
c) I wouldn't hate TSA so much: the guilt will be hard to cope with once the cumulative radiation damage becomes apparent on its not very bright staff. I don't think there will ever be a concensus regarding the damage one gets (or not) from the respective radiation: just see how after more than a decade the cellphone radiation is still supposed to be under debate, and how results are "inconlcusive".
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
I know everybody is hung up on 'oh noes, that tsa screener is going to see a blue image of my naked body'. Am I the only one that feels sorry for the guy/gal that actually has to sit all day and watch naked blue bodies? for every swedish bikini model that passes, i you have at least 10 overweight slobs. How can the screener ever have sex again after staring at these blobs going by day in, day out?
I doubt al Qaeda had any intention of this bomb going off. They put it in somebody's underwear, just so Americans would now have to strip to get on a plane. Government officials need to stop going on TV and saying that the terrorists "hate freedom." Because they do. And if the terrorist's goal is to attack freedom, guess what, government? YOU'RE LETTING THEM WIN. Put an X-Ray machine, a Geiger counter, and a dog at every terminal in the country. That's it. When the terrorists have a bomb that isn't made of metal AND is made of a chemical the dog can't detect, send a sample of that chemical to every airport in the country, and teach the dogs to smell that too.
I have issues! And no one is giving me $90M to fix them...
Yet ANOTHER reason to get rid of the TSA. We waste dollar after dollar on that stupid agency. And according to their own stats, we're no safer now than in 2001. Moreover, from a constitutional standpoint:
1. The Federal govt has the right to secure the borders -- this is the job for border patrol, NOT the TSA
2. Inter-state flights - not within Federal jurisdiction
3. That leaves flights that go across state lines, but do not leave the US.
The only place where the TSA arguably should have any authority is #3. And if we do #1, #2, and track & deport known terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, then the need for #3 becomes very minimal.
Let's face it, the TSA is filled with a bunch of inept, under-achieving goons, who have shaky justification for their jobs (at best) and should be replaced with private security companies. Such companies could be under appropriately laws to make sure they can be prosecuted for violating the 4th amendment, civil liberties, etc. and they'd have plenty of incentives to do things right...
OK, rant ended.
I've seen mainstream news reports referring to the Abdullah al-Asiri assassination attempt on Mohammed bin Nayef as an "underwear bomb" when it's generally accepted to have been a body cavity ("in da butt") bomb. It makes me suspicious that this latest report of a new, improved underwear bomb is a similar euphemism by the major news sources. Certainly none of these expensive scanners could find something that isn't even really in the underwear...
I think this is more lies from the TSA. If your going to eliminate the 'human factor' then why do you need to replace the image with an avatar? Why not just remove the display that shows the image?
Right way to remove 'human factor':
Image sensors create a naked image of you, computer analyzes it, sounds alarm if your a threat, the image isn't stored, and there isn't any hardware (display) to show the image while it's being analyzed.
Wrong way (the new TSA way):
Images sensors create a naked image of you, computer transforms naked image into an avatar, naked image is analyzed by computer (analyzing the avatar wouldn't produce as accurate of results as the original image), avatar is displayed on a screen that isn't viewed by anyone because the human factor has been removed.
The TSA is retarded, lying about removing the human factor, or most likely, both.
Do you want to date my avatar...
Perhaps this will increase the job satisfaction and reduce depression amongst TSA screeners. Seriously...who would want that job? For every 1 person they might want to see naked and put their hands on...they are required to look at and feel up a hundred more that they would rather just run away from.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
I mean, what a great mind-fuck to AQ. What if they caught the guy, stuck him in a cell in a friendly country, then decided that they'd do a little psychological warfare and said this guy was a double agent all along. I mean, if there aren't any embedded agents, why not freak them out and have them wondering how many people are working for the other side?
And it seems odd that they out a double agent as intentionally one, not just some poor schmuck that got compromised.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This is the same thing that the TSA previously dismissed as "some guy" making a "crude attempt" at getting around screening procedures. At least they are acknowledging it now.
http://blog.tsa.gov/2012/03/viral-video-about-body-scanners.html
They have also said that these things are completely safe despite inadequate testing. Or that there are sufficient procedures in place to protect people's privacy. I wonder how long it will take for them to change their minds on that too.
The BBC report on it is so sensational that it's reminiscent of Monty Python's "How not to be seen": "This is what could have happened if the underwear bomber had succeeded.... BOOM!" Priceless.
The guy didn't have a target, had no target or plane ticket. It was,"Even more sophisticated than the last one!" Ah yes, more sophisticated because it used a shiny silver button instead of a switch? Yes let's all get worried.
-
That's the problem with separation of church and state. The government cannot use religion to inflict fear to get people to conform, so they have to resort to other tactics such as the war on terror. When people in power keep people in fear, the people in power can pretty much do whatever they want, whether church or state.
Why don't they change the background to some pattern rather than solid black? Wouldn't that eliminate the problem where you strap something on your side and it doesn't show?
>get erection during body scan
>WHAT ARE YOU DOING, AVATAR?
Pat down everyone! Just take every single person and give them a full body pat down, they do it at concerts after all. If you can't do the job using technology then do it by hand.
http://twitpic.com/3djlet
Have gnu, will travel.
if these scanners were really about safety then pass a bill that the makers of them cannot make a profit and no executive in the company can make more than $150k per year (total compensation).
Because if you announce that you better back it up with action on information only that guy would know otherwise the bluff is called, and given that he was either going to succeed (die) or get captured they wouldn't tell him anything.
It would be like putting an unexploded bomb in a POW camp and claiming it was a double agent
Now capture a known leader and his camp and then claim he was a double agent and act on intelligence only he had, then you'll have 'em guessing.
The airport in Bozeman, Montana did at least.
The screen shows just a generic outline with a highlighted area of where something was detected.
However, this doesn't end the privacy concerns. The device still has a full-res picture (visualization) in it, it just doesn't put it on the screen. And I don't believe for a minute that the device doesn't store the picture despite what they say. If I were designing the system, I'd store the picture at least for a couple days.
What happens if they are doing testing where they try to sneak weapons on board and they make it on? You would want the data so it can be analyzed after the fact to see why the system didn't detect them. What happens if a plane blows up? You would want to look at the images to see if the software missed a carried device.
There's no way you'd just throw the data away, it really harms your capability to improve the system over time.
So I still have privacy concerns.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Why do you think that picture is anybody but some random taxi driver in NYC that's been moderately Photoshopped?
(Assuming this whole silly story has any basis in fact.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I could have designed an equally useful and 100% safe system for far less:
1) Put up prop booths with no real functionality
2) Tell everyone it is a sophisticated scanning system when it is actually just a prop.
3) Pay people to occaisonally go through and "get caught", thereby reinforcing the illusion.
4) Profit!
Then again, I suppose there is a good chance that is exactly what they are already doi*(#&)^)$^NO CARRIER
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Or the agent pretty much started the whole bomb plot to justify TSA and defense spending.
Just opt out people. As has been pointed out before, if enough people would just elect to bypass this mess, then the machines would be gone.
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
Fahd al-Quso was killed in a drone strike on Sunday.
"my avatar has brass knuckles. 2 points."
"fool, kneel before me! my avatar has two rocket launchers, 99 energy points, and ten grenades!"
meanwhile, far behind, the $8-an-hour "agents" are hassling a little old lady with a walker and leading another Congressman into the back room holding cells for having a tie clasp.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The entire cost of puffer machine R&D was significantly less than that.
It is not theft. It is still harmful, wrong, and completely unjustified, however.
... this freaking DHS + TSA clusterfuck already? Have they done anything better than what was done before without being completely moronic, stupid, and wasting money. As for post 9/11, all you had to do was coordinate the then-existing agencies together better. (I actually was working on a project for that, until the DHS was launched) It's madness. You know what "hope and change" what could have been? Get rid of this crap.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I came through Honolulu this past Monday and was surprised to see that the body scanner image being shown to the agent was only a blue avatar outline and when it found something that needed further investigation it simply highlighted the area on the avatar which leads to a pat down by a TSA agent.