Slashdot Mirror
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.
Will it detect a pressure cooker?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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.
Isn't it a little late for a public comment period?
Body scan was of the most high-standard quality! Great holding pen. Quality of the internment was superior. TSA is exceptional.
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.
Wow, I jokingly made comments a long while back that it wouldn't surprise me if the TSA opened up these comments the moment a bomb went off somewhere, considering how long they've just been sitting on it.
But now that it's happened, I am surprised. If there really is a connection to the timing, that's downright shameful. However that's not entirely anything new for the TSA.
"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.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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.
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
Only the machines from Rapiscan are being phased out. It's not because of safety, rather it's because Rapiscan can't deliver software to remove human-in-the-loop (eg removing the need for a human to look at you naked).
They've awarded additional contracts to both Smiths (makers of the garbage "puffer" machines) and AESi (in addition to the current millimeter wave machines from Level3). I believe that AESi's devices are back scatter x-ray.