Slashdot Mirror
Rapiscan's Backscatter Machines May End Up In US Federal Buildings
McGruber writes "The Federal Times, a weekly print newspaper published by Gamnett Government Media Corp, is reporting that the Rapiscan Systems 'backscatter' passenger screening machines used by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration will likely be redeployed to federal buildings. Rapiscan System's backscatter machines have exposed passengers to radiation since they were first installed. As previously reported on Slashdot, TSA decided last month to stop using the machines because the manufacturer was unable to make changes to the machines that were mandated by Congress. Now TSA is attempting to sucker another federal agency into taking the nude-o-scopes."
What better place for people to exposed to needless cancer risk from ionizing radiation concentrated just below the surface of their skin than the place that voted for this?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
You continue to fly.
You continue to work under unacceptable conditions.
Strike or suffer.
ruoy4bni
They would be great for checking the freshness of avocados. And maybe they can be used to irradiate the meat you buy.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What a fucking waste of money
So is it Rapiscan as in "add" or Rapiscan as in "ape"?
(should have tried with cyanide gas first)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Has there been some new threat to federal buildings that bypasses already existing metal detectors and x-ray conveyors such that the privacy and health of civil employees and visitors need be compromised? Or, are we trying to make sure the manufacturers' profits stay up?
Put one each doorway in all of the NSA buildings.
I occasionally fly out of Hartford/Sringfield (BDL) and they used to have these GE bomb sniffers & metal dectors. Which I don't think many would object to - metal detector and just something to sense explosives - that's pretty much all we really need.
Anyway, they were removed for these Rapidscans. I asked the TSA guy while he was feeling me up (I opt out ALWAYS when I see a Rapidscan) about those GE machines and commented how I MUCH prefered them.
He said, "They were a maintenance nightmare. So we got rid of them."
Now the Rapidscans are sitting there doing nothing.
So, while the sheep are so terrified of the extremely unlikely event of another 9/11 (the new cockpit doors eliiminated that threat), we will keep spending money on SHIT produced by companies that are well connected to Congress - maybe GE should have hired Chertoff.
Of course, the sheep will jump in their cars, speed around and tailgate, eat their junk food, and gain ever more weight. And while they are on their deathbeds, dieing form heart disease or from other complications from obesity or carcinogens while their savings are wiped away and collectors come after them for their healthcare bills (insurance never covers it all), they can be rest assured that they did not die a quick death from a terrorist.
It's pretty amusing watching people freak out over these things and call them nude-o-scopes and similar. Just like with gun-control laws, I don't care a lot about the underlying issue, but it's so tempting to take a stance just because the NRA folk are so bloody nuts.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Clearly, only visitors would be subjected to these kinds of scanning's, making it feel a lot like a way to keep voter participation to a minimum. Imagine having to pass through these 2+ times a day (before/after lunch) just to be a part of the system as a non-elected participant.
At the pre-launch meeting:
VP of marketing: we have several suggestions for the product name
CEO: it doesn't really matter, the sale is a shoe-in. We could call it anything we want.
Product manager: O RLY!?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
News at 6 from North:
In the land of the free and the home of the brave, people are so afraid terrorist attack, they have decided to give up their own liberty (and possibly their health) in exchange for (a possibly false sense of) security.
.....
I think that might be how the rest of the world perceive the new USA.
Adult movie theaters should be snatching (pun intended) these things up. New 21st century peep show technology!
The millimeter wave scanners run at 30 GHz.. 1mm wavelength. I think that propagation at 30 GHz is fairly well understood. Penetration is very small, so energy is deposited in the skin.
The only thing more disgusting than Congress would be an image of Congress, nude.
The USA has become a country too afraid to make their enemies feel insulted to do anything about terrorism.
We're in a new liberal world order here, and our "leadership" is far more interested in appeasing terrorists than actually doing anything about the problem of terrorism.
Our solutions to terrorism thus far have been to topple two nation-states, only one of which had anything to do with terrorism, and then retreat and cower in the corner and beg the world for forgiveness.
The citizens and non-citizens alike already know they are taking a risk in visiting a federal building. ;)
DOJ already has these in place... I worked on a contract in and out of that building all this past Summer....
As long as every official is FORCED AT GUNPOINT to go through them. Every single senator, Secretary, Tzar, even the President needs to be forced to use them at gunpoint like all of us have had to.
And every single one of the police force and security forces as well. they get the exact same treatment that is forced upon the rest of us.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
TSA still claims that NIST evaluated the machines and declared them safe even though NIST has plainly stated that it did not and can not.
No doubt some TSA officials are investors in Rapiscan. So there's no way that company will be taking a loss on these things.
Have gnu, will travel.
I was thinking I'd buy up all the old machines at bargain basement prices and then sell them to companies that do ore-employment drug testing.
A common way to beat a drug test is to smuggle in clean urine, say, in a condom taped to your thigh. If people had to be naked-imaged first, this would be quite difficult.
If these machines can't be used to fight terrorism, my company could facilitate their use fighting the war on drugs. And make a tidy profit too.
I was hoping that they could go into prisons instead of being destroyed. But only prisoners and their scumbag visitors have to. Go through them. Prison staff and lawyers get safe ones when they need to be screened. Actually scratch that, send the lawyers through the back scatter too.
If installed in Congress the low levels of radiation might actually render congress-men and (and -women) infertile, reducing the chances of their genetic material being passed on without the use of a clerk or student aid worker.
how democracy like.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
That would make more sense if anyone in America had actually supported this.
Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary, has spent years explicitly pushing Rapiscan in airports. His security consulting agency includes a client that makes the machines.
Seems fraternities could fund their parties by selling the pictures.
The primary risk is that the radiation is concentrated at the skin, but the "safety" studies the TSA was claiming to have used assumed that it's spread out through the body. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for doing an honest risk assessment. And because they were able to take them out of use because they didn't have a censorship feature, they didn't have to address that, but if they get deployed in Federal buildings, they might have to face serious challenges that they can't deflect by saying "Terrorist Underwear Bombers!"
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The TSA folks have apparently been passing around X-ray porn for a while, in spite of official claims that the machines don't support it. And the standard images of the naked TSA official that they keep putting in press releases are low-res newspaper-quality versions, not the full resolution that the actual operators can see if they want.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you were paying attention a decade or two ago, Federal court buildings and many state and local court buildings all got metal detectors in a big hurry after some judge got shot by somebody who didn't like a decision they'd made.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Who's the branding genius behind the name "Rape-Scan Systems".
I mean, really, that's exactly what it is--but usually they don't admit it so blatantly . . .
Not only are these scanners a very expensive waste of money as they fail to detect what they're supposed to detect, they're also a health hazard. Please stop this overpriced security theater and use the resources to actively prevent wannabe-terrorists from becoming the real thing. That's much more effective on every level. I mean even if the scanners actually work, what's to prevent a terrorist from setting off a bomb in the queue of people waiting to be scanned...? - By removing the terrorist of course. i.e. preventing radicalization or use early detection to identify and incarcerate those beyond prevention.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
There was a Congressional mandate for the TSA to do a real safety study on these machines.
After stalling for a long time, the timing of the machine's removal from airports may have made this request moot.
The removal and re-deployment should not be an excuse for the TSA to get out from under this request.
Rapey-scan
There, I said it.