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TSA Accepting Public Comments On Whole Body Airport Screening
New submitter trims writes "The TSA is now in the public comment stage of its project to roll out Advanced Imaging Technology (i.e. full-body X-ray) scanners. The TSA wants your feedback as to whether or not this project should be continued or cancelled. Now is your chance to tell the TSA that this is a huge porkbarrel project and nothing more than Security Theater. You can comment at http:///www.regulations.gov and reference the docket ID TSA-2013-0004." Note: the backscatter X-ray machines are being phased out, in favor of millimeter-wave systems; the linked documents give the government's side of the story when it comes to efficacy, safety, privacy, and worth. The comment period runs until June 24.
Years of delays, violating a court other many wondered what the heck was up with the TSA delaying this public comment.
Now it's clear: They were waiting for a terrorist attack.
Are the TSA just going to say "We have listened to your comments, and are continuing to pursue security theater^W practices as they best "serve" our country", or is there some sort of accountability set up for what the comments are saying?
It's nice to see that even right after the Boston bombing, the comments appear to still be 100% against AIT scanners.
I am afraid that Michael Chertoff only made hundreds of millions with the old backscatter machines and needed even more government money, so his company decided to come out with some new units which the TSA will spend over a billion dollars to acquire. The military industrial complex will bankrupt us as Eisenhower predicted.
"That all said, I find it mildly absurd that any security we don't like we just classify as security theater.. How on earth can we on one hand argue that Bush et al had ample warning and did nothing and then on the other bitch when they do something? "
Here's the thing. They had all the information they needed to stop it - the problem was not too little information, it was too much. They had far more information than they had the capacity to analyze.
So the response? Not to upgrade ability to analyze the information already collectable, no. Instead, let's collect a few thousand times MORE information. Let's throw a dragnet over anyone and everyone and store every email on the net forever, in case we need to search back through it later.
This is security theatre. We all get used to being less free, to being herded around more like cattle, on the assurance it will make us more safe. It will not. The same agencies that HAD the information to stop the crime, but not the analytical facilities to recognise the fact in time, now have EVEN MORE info to sift through. The vast majority of it completely irrelevant to stopping terrorists - but a wonderful treasure trove for anyone looking for something to use against their political enemies.
In the meantime the terrorists are even less likely to be detected, since we are throwing roughly the same analytic capabilities at a ridiculously expanded data set.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
In any case I found this fascinating article http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2012/06/19/what-israeli-airport-security-teaches-the-world/ that Israel does not have x-ray machines, or taking off your shoes to go in the airport. They have behavioral based interviews. And in the end everyone wants to blow up Israel, and yet I cannot remember hearing of planes crashing into buildings, or even being hijacked. It's really quite amazing. I would cut the security theatre and go do what Israel is doing.... Which seems to be behavioral based interviews and paying attention to how people act.
Also they do a ton of screening on cars. In some US airports, the parking lot is right near the terminal. Drive in a car full of explosive material and you could do a lot of damage. Or even pull right up to the terminal unchecked for dropping bags. In some terminals you could even crash the car right through the glass doors and then go do something..... That's not security.
backscatter, or millimeter?
"Unnecessary" is the word you're looking for.
ALWAYS opt-out.
If they ask you why - which has happened to me in a very challenging fashion - say: "Because I want to."
Plan an extra 20-30 minutes on your arrival. It never takes that long. Have everything empty from your pockets and take off a belt, if any.
It's not as intrusive as the panicky say. Make sure you are clear that you want the screening in place, not in a private area.
"And friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in say 'Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.' And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The law disallows certain behaviors, regardless of technology empowering them. These scanners are unreasonable search of my person and effects. Traveling is not suspicious behavior.
My Comment to Them:
"I travel about twice a month and have been a regular traveler most of my life, and because of this, the deployment of this technology has had a major impact on my life.
This technology is not wanted by air travelers, and was put in place with less testing than the shampoo I am no longer allowed to carry through security. Experts have found that shadowing can cause items to slip through this screening, and these devices cannot detect anything inside the body. They have also created long, bunched up lines of people at airports, outside of the "secure" cordon, which would allow a terrorist to kill many more people than would be on a single airplane... and these deaths could ironically be attributed directly to the delays caused by these devices, which regularly slow the lines and require pat-downs when they don't read properly (my experience when waiting).
Security at airports has become a reactive reflex which always fights the last threat. I am confident I am not the only tax payer who feels their money was completely wasted on these devices, whose only value, I feel, was to make some contractor rich, and get some person re-elected by convincing the under-informed that they were "safe."
This particular upgraded equipment is security theater because numerous experiments have shown that it's easy to smuggle very nasty things past it without detection, and with fairly little effort. Knives, molded plastic explosives (simulated, if I recall correctly), handguns, etc. have all been successfully concealed from this technology. There are plenty of articles on-line detailing how it was done.
The purpose of these machines is to prevent those with malicious intent from getting dangerous materials onto a plane which they could use to hijack it and repeat the 9/11 approach. But since these machines have been shown to be remarkably bad at actually achieving this goal, going forward with the ludicrously expensive purchase and the continued privacy-invading operation of said machines is clearly not ACTUALLY making air travel more secure. However, it looks shiny, and to the average person who doesn't work with security and isn't used to thinking in "black hat" mode it can seem effective. Which is basically the definition of security theater.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Everybody here should enter the same comment: "I would like an independent body to calculate the cost vs. saved lives and compare it to other possible investments like traffic safety, cancer research, or promoting healthier lifestyles to school children."
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I take a bit of the opposite tact, as I prefer to be treated like a criminal in private rather than in full display of the public. That and it forces them to use additional resources, as now two people have to be monitoring the pat-down.
There are two reasons I choose to do it in public. The first is that in private it's your word against a bunch of TSA screeners. There are no other possible witnesses and I don't trust them not to side with each other given that you've already irritated them by singling yourself out. I'm not saying they are going to be out to do anything wrong, but if there is an issue then you are on the wrong side.
The second is that it is shocking how many people still don't understand they have an option (or have believed the FUD that it is some horribly demeaning and invasive process). By staying in the public space you help educate those that don't know.