Connecticut Resident Stopped By State Police For Radioactivity

So by Hognoxious · 2012-05-12 21:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

Did they shoot him, claim it was self-defense, and ship his remains to Gitmo? Or did they check out his story and send him on his way?

Seems like a non-story to me.

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Re:So by dlgeek · 2012-05-12 22:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

Without knowing exactly what they did, it's reasonable to assume they searched his car. Generally, this requires a warrant unless it's incident to an arrest, and even then, there are limits.

There's not much legal precentdent either way as to whether or not slight radioactivity consitutes probable cause, but it's a very worrying slippery slope if it does. Cop wants to harras you? All he has to do is put a few drops of some nuclear medicine on your bumper (or worse, on your person) and you'll be stopped and searched thoroughly, just because he thinks you're guilty. Hell, he can just claim you registered, search your car illegally and haul you in for whatever he finds.

TL;DR: It's a slippery slope for due process.
Re:So by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-12 22:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

The legal question of probable cause is what is significant in this story, not that they stopped him and let him go afterwards.
Probable cause is a reasonable suspicion someone has committed a crime. That is the key point: there has to be suspicion of a crime taking place. Radioactivity in and of itself is not a crime since it is legal to possess radioactive materials or receive treatment from radioactive materials (with restrictions). Just detecting it does not imply a crime has taken place (except for neutron radiation or extremely high radiation in unmarked vehicles).
It is important to ensure that the police use the probable cause standard, even in oddball cases like this. The definition of probable cause is a central item to maintaining the dignity of citizens from unnecessary searches. Poo-poo it if you want, but this is a significant issue even if you can't see it.
Re:So by chrismcb · 2012-05-12 22:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

Seems like a non-story to me.
A non story, really?
Officer: I noticed you were doing the speed limit. So I thought I'd pull you over and make sure everything was ok. Officer: You aren't doing anything illegal, and have done nothing to make us suspect you. But we suspect you are a terrorist....
And THAT is the story.
Re:So by fuzzywig · 2012-05-12 22:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

Or possibly it's some guys strangely interested in trying to bring balance by submitting stories with cops acting normally...
Re:So by rhook · 2012-05-12 22:49 · Score: 5, Informative

You need more than just reasonable suspicion to get probable cause for a search. They are not the same thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_suspicion
Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard of proof in United States law that is less than probable cause, the legal standard for arrests and warrants, but more than an "inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or 'hunch'";[1] it must be based on "specific and articulable facts", "taken together with rational inferences from those facts".[2] Police may briefly detain a person if they have reasonable suspicion that the person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity; such a detention is known as a Terry stop. If police additionally have reasonable suspicion that a person so detained may be armed, they may "frisk" the person for weapons, but not for contraband like drugs. Reasonable suspicion is evaluated using the "reasonable person" or "reasonable officer" standard,[3] in which said person in the same circumstances could reasonably believe a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity; it depends upon the totality of circumstances, and can result from a combination of particular facts, even if each is individually innocuous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause
"Probable cause" is a stronger standard of evidence than a reasonable suspicion, but weaker than what is required to secure a criminal conviction. Even hearsay can supply probable cause if it is from a reliable source or supported by other evidence, according to the Aguilar–Spinelli test.
Re:So by History's+Coming+To · 2012-05-13 00:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

And the guy in question not having any problem with it! "Apatow was more curious than annoyed by the incident."

So the conversation probably went:
"Good afternoon sir, I've stopped you because your car seems to be radioactive"
"Yes, I've just had a medical procedure involving a radioactive isotope, here's a letter from the doctor."
"Thank you sir, sorry for the inconvenience."
"That's quite alright, those detectors are very sensitive aren't they?"
"Yes sir, have a nice day."

So in other words, "policeman does the job he is paid to do and nobody cares except people responding in an alarmist manner on some website or other".

You know, on Slashdot they would have covered this from an entirely different angle, looking at the technology required to pick up relatively low radiation levels from cars. Oh....hang on...

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Re:So by rgbatduke · 2012-05-13 01:00 · Score: 5, Informative

The interesting story here is state police cars with built in radioactivity detectors, obviously either checking for dirty radioactive weapons, nuclear weapons or newly arrived aliens hot off the star ships skulking about in their human skin suits ;).

Precisely. I did not know that. Not only built with radioactivity detectors, but ones that are on all the time and are damn sensitive if they are picking up the excess flux from a human inside a car from a tracer treatment administered presumably some nontrivial amount of time before from a distance of what -- 7 meters? 10? 20? -- while driving down the road. Tracers are often very short half-life elements -- that's why they use them -- lots or radioactivity but for a very short time. They tend to be produced in the hospital immediately before use and be mostly gone an hour or two later (but with an exponential tail). Clearly they nailed him right after he left the hospital, and he left the hospital rather quickly after the test, probably less than 45 minutes after the production of the tracer.

Are they sensitive enough to pick up a nuclear bomb being transported? Not if it is made with bomb-grade Uranium, which is also the easiest thing to make a bomb out of, but which isn't radioactive, although you might pick up the trigger. Plutonium 239 IS radioactive, producing a 5 MeV or so alpha at a rate sufficient to keep Plutonium warm to the touch, but alpha particles are relatively easy to block. It also typically contains Pu 240, which spontaneously fissions and produces a surplus flux of a few ~10 million neutrons per second from a typical core. Neutrons are more difficult to stop, but the intensity diminishes like 1/(4\pi r^2) so that the intensity at 10 meters is ~10^7/1250 or around 10^4 per meter squared per second. A detector as large as 1cm x 10 cm would then pick up 10 surplus neutrons per second at 10 meters, assuming there was zero attenuation in between and a perfect detector, neither of which is true. MAYBE this would give them signal to noise of a decibel or two, but given detector efficiency probably not until you were much closer. Up close it would be better, of course. Presumably their detectors have some sort of built in discriminator looking for sustained signal to noise above some cut-off.

What the patient was probably emitting is gamma. Gamma radiation has a long range and isn't easily blocked.

rgb

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Re:So by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-05-13 02:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

That's kind of the point. Police acting normally includes stopping people on the highway and questioning them when there's no evidence of a crime having been committed.
What are they going to net in a sweep like this? Mostly patients like the above and delivery trucks with boxes of smoke detectors or lantern gas mantles. Maybe a few scientists.
Re:So by gpmanrpi · 2012-05-13 02:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Firstly, IAAL. While I agree this particular incident is not a big deal. Generally, in Constitutional criminal procedure cases this doesn't matter. Some of the best legal decisions have come from cases where the guy was guilty as sin. In fact, the majority of the decisions have, as normal citizenry have little recourse or time to deal with the fact that our rights have been violated. So, the problem is exactly that most people will not stand up to state interference into their daily lives.The collective we that is government will go to great lengths to keep ourselves safe, at the expense of ultimately endangering our safety in the long term. The slippery slope argument, which is proved likely by history, is that one can easily give the collective majority too much control over your individual liberty. Then everyone suffers as a police state emerges from relatively benign safety measures. Reasonable Suspicion has been watered down to basically mean an educated hunch, or a hunch++. You can have Reasonable Suspicion of a crime as a police officer based on your experience, the neighborhood (DWB), the smell of alcohol (which as we nerds all know is actually oder-less), etc. Reasonable Suspicion is a LOW hurdle. I too am curious about these monitors. What is their reliability? What is the standard that would make it reasonable for an officer to infer that a crime may be in progress? What is the normal radioactive signature of a motor vehicle? Does brand matter? What if it were sufficiently armored, or lead plated?
Re:So by loxosceles · 2012-05-13 03:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

You think that cops should be allowed to detain you (you're placed under temporary arrest during a traffic stop) merely to give you helpful health and safety information?

Hey! This is America! by Kergan · 2012-05-12 21:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

Should the police be allowed to stop and search vehicles which show a slight level of radioactivity?

Seriously? What kind of donkey are you?

You're living in a Police State that monitors its citizens and foreigners to an extent that developing countries can only dream of, molests travelers before they can board a plane, hosts a fourth of the world's inmates, locks foreigners for a decade without trial on tropical islands, and recently murdered one of its own citizen without trial... And you're fucking worried about your car getting searched because it's slightly radioactive? How about wondering what kind of turd bought the cop a radioactive detector?

Re:You might say I feel like by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-12 21:48 · Score: 5, Funny

"Up and atom!"

Re:You might say I feel like by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-12 21:56 · Score: 5, Funny

The goggles, they do nothing!

Re:Seems reasonable to me by goodmanj · 2012-05-12 22:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

I say yes. From a geiger counter's perspective, a legal, unshielded source could be indistinguishable from a very dangerous illegal source that's sitting behind a couple of inches of lead shielding. So long as the detectors only trigger false positives in highly unusual, easily documented circumstances like this guy's medical test, I see nothing wrong with his. If they went off every time somebody had a bag of potash fertilizer or a couple smoke detectors in their car, it'd be a problem.

Radioactivity only stays private if shielded. by jonadab · 2012-05-12 22:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

> Given that it is not illegal to own or purchase or transport
> radioactive materials (within limits for hobbyist use),

Yes, but if they're sufficiently radioactive to be detected from across the street, and you didn't bother to put them in a shielded container for transport, I don't think getting pulled over and asked a couple of questions is necessarily entirely out of line. It is worth noting that the radiation was leaving the vehicle and having an impact on the external surroundings, which is how the police knew about it in the first place. Now, in the case of the dude who'd just had a medical scan with radioactive dye, that was fundamentally unavoidable (unless he wanted to stay at the hospital until it wore off, which could be rather expensive). Nonetheless, the police didn't stop him out of randomness, or because they were busybodies, or because they had something against him personally, etc. They became interested in him because of radiation that was emanating from his vehicle. That's not (or at least not entirely) a private effect. It's a public effect.

If you're transporting radioactive materials for hobbyist use, and you want them to be private (so that they will not get police attention without a warrant, for example), you could always just keep them in a shielded container, so that the radiation remains private. Frankly, that's probably a good idea even at home (whenever you're not actively working with your hobby). Think of it in the same way as keeping your dog on a leash.

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No, that is not the question by mapkinase · 2012-05-12 22:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

Given that it is not illegal to own or purchase or transport radioactive materials (within limits for hobbyist use), should the police be allowed to stop and search vehicles which show a slight level of radioactivity?

That is not the right question to ask. The right question to ask is should government be allowed to do ANYTHING trumping citizen's rights that has been granted in 1776 in the name of security or any other names.

The question to ask is whether a country of free men, which US of A declares itself to be, "the most free country in the world", should continue a practice of "preventing" crime, from the one hand, and start fullfilling people's right to think and act within the limits of the law, no matter how close are they to those limits, and, from the other hand, should the aforementioned country start punishing people for crimes swiftly, without any delay, thus enforcing the responsibility of people for their action, which is the other obligatory immanent nondetachable side to the aforementioned rights.

That is the question.

As for the type of questions you have posed, they have been leading the country nowhere. Scratch that, they haven't been leading the country nowhere, they have been leading away from original rights of the people to lesser and lesser rights. They have been leading country away from its original state to 1984 state.

It's time to reverse Martin Noemuller fable back and instead of warning others about "what do you do when they will come for you?" it is time to call people "let's stop them from coming after anyone". It's time for stopping calling for "stopping" the process where it is now, because, face it, the point is rather arbitrary, isn't it? It's time for starting to call for reversal of the process back to the origins of the US

In every persistent ideology, that is the one that had existed for even only slightly longer than 236 years, there always have been restoration/revival movement and if this country wants to claim to have any ideology beside the animalistic ideology "compete and survive", it must prove itself by having this type of movement as well.

Wait... There was a number of people that were doing that all the time, actually, scratch that, I know exactly, what that number is, it is nine at any given time of recent history. Correction: they were supposed to be doing that in our name, on our behalf, but they have been failing to do that miserably and silly us, we made a mistake of giving them a total carte blanche to go with that with impunity by removing any accountability of their actions.

This is all theoretical and rhetorical, because, face it, there is no ideology left in US except the one I characterized.

So stop asking your silly questions like:

should the police be allowed to stop and search vehicles which show a slight level of radioactivity?

and move on. It does not matter if you actually have this local small most likely Pyrrhic victory in this particular case. Without the principle of following the principles, without people who are ready to sacrifice their 401k, their MTV, their suburban houses, and unltimately, and very essentially, their lives for those principles, you will be just going from question to question.

Do you know why people had more rights in the most despotic countries of the past? Of course, not because the despots respected their rights in any way.

People of the past had those rights because government could not technically stomp on them, they did not have the means, the force, the technology. Now the government respect those rights only superficially more than their despotic brethren of the past, in reality it systematically and slowly takes away all rights of people except the right for panem et circenses. Oh, that "right" to circenses is fulfilled on full blown scale. There should be some kind of Moore law for the number of "channels of shit".

Now the

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It's not "slight" radioactivity by NReitzel · 2012-05-12 22:59 · Score: 5, Informative

As a cardiac patient who has had isotope stress tests, and as a working chemist, let me state for the record that there is nothing "slight" about the level of radioactivity of a patient after one of these tests. Low level rad wastes, radioactive ores, uranium glass, all are slight levels of radioactivity, and measured as millionths of a Curie. The isotope used for stress tests is injected at 30,000 times higher levels, and the radiation emitted, gamma rays, penetrates through things like clothes, bone, muscle, and car doors.

The isotope used has a very short half-life so that two days after a test, there is very little radioactivity left, Right after a test a patient has a level of radioactivity that would scare the gloves off a rad-safety worker. If you point a Geiger counter at one of us, it doesn't click, it -whines-.

They pulled over a vehicle that was hot, and in other circumstances would represent a substantial safety hazard. More power to them.

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Re:GM Counter measurements are not Suspicions by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-13 00:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Bullshit.

"Reasonable Suspicion" would mean the Officer(s) was(were) guessing,

Reasonable suspicion isn't guessing. Reasonable suspicion is a >50% chance that a crime has taken place.

and the inconvenience of a "terry stop" is a very minor cost to pay
for the greater public safety.

What is the treat to public safety from a low level of radioactive material? Has anyone tried to determine this?

Let me do it then. There is no threat. This is just a useful fear that politicians like to exploit. The real threat is of the police encroaching on the rights of citizens which is occurring today, unlike the myth of radiological terrorism. If you don't feel this is true then please describe the attack vectors and sources of radiological materials that could cause significant damage.

Even if a "hobbyist" is transporting within CFR 40.13, for a detection to occur within a cruiser at a distance means that "something is spilling out"
or "radiating dirty" and that is not suspicion but probable cause.

No it doesn't. It could also mean than a citizen who hasn't violated any laws but received radiation treatment is driving down the road. There is no probable cause whatsoever. In fact, there is no case history of hobbyists transporting radioactive materials in such a grossly unsafe manner to set off police detectors. This implies that low setoff thresholds would likely be lawful citizens who received radiation treatment, which argues exactly the opposite direction as probable cause.

Be vigilant and observant, but not paranoid and irrational.

Really? You say that after your paranoid and irrational post?

Re:Defense Contractors by dragonsomnolent · 2012-05-13 00:55 · Score: 5, Informative

I'm going to blow a mod point and say those little white boxes are transmitters for a system of automatic weigh station check-ins and communicating with the driver whether or not he has to pull in to get weighed or if he gets to pass that station. http://www.prepass.com/services/prepass/Pages/WhatIsPrepass.aspx

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Re:What if I dont know I am radioactive ? by History's+Coming+To · 2012-05-13 00:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

A low level dirty bomb made from medical grade material would be very effective indeed. All you have to do is spread some radioactive material in a very busy public spot (sports stadium, political building etc) and then call it in. The resulting media and political panic will cause far more "terror" than the situation warrants, and the threat of lawyers in the future will make the cleanup ridiculously protracted and expensive. "Terrorists" don't create the terror these days, politicians and the media do. If the actual threat was in any way related to the fuss made then we'd make a much bigger deal over road safety and a cure for cancer.

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Connecticut Resident Stopped By State Police For Radioactivity

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