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LA To Become First In US To Install Subway Body Scanners (apnews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the there's-a-first-for-everything dept.

Los Angeles officials announced Tuesday that the city's subway will become the first mass transit system in the U.S. to install body scanners that screen passengers for weapons and explosives. "The deployment of the portable scanners, which project waves to do full-body screenings of passengers walking through a station without slowing them down, will happen in the coming months, said Alex Wiggins, who runs the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's law enforcement division," reports the Associated Press reports: The machines scan for metallic and non-metallic objects on a person's body, can detect suspicious items from 30 feet (9 meters) away and have the capability of scanning more than 2,000 passengers per hour. On Tuesday, Pekoske and other officials demonstrated the new machines, which are being purchased from Thruvision, which is headquartered in the United Kingdom. In addition to the Thruvision scanners, the agency is also planning to purchase other body scanners -- which resemble white television cameras on tripods -- that have the ability to move around and hone in on specific people and angles, Wiggins said. Signs will be posted at stations warning passengers they are subject to body scanner screening. The screening process is voluntary, Wiggins said, but customers who choose not be screened won't be able to ride on the subway.

8 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. What About Bikes, Scooters and Skateboards by careysub · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A fair number of people riding the Metro take auxiliary transportation modes with them - bikes, scooter (powered and unpowered), and skateboards all which are large metal containing objects, in addition to various other cargos. Subways aren't planes - people take them to go shopping, and there is no "cargo hold" or a place to "check baggage" - people carry everything they are taking on their person. Also people are often moving pretty fast to make it from one line to the next in their commute. What happens when one of these monitors triggers? Though they do have Metro Cops, they have never had enough to have them posted routinely at every Metro entrance or transfer point. How is this really going to work?

    And does the "mass casualty" standard make any sense? Two of the worst mass shootings in the U.S. history - the Luby's (24 dead) and Virginia Tech (33 dead) massacres - were done with hand guns - both of them polymer frame Glocks that have less metal than standard handgun designs.

    --
    Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    1. Re:What About Bikes, Scooters and Skateboards by dwillden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Contrary to they Hype and fears when Glocks first came on the market, they have never been even remotely difficult for metal detectors and these scanners to detect. Low metal content is an issue for metal detectors anyway not these millimeter wave scanners. Any sufficiently solid object will trigger them. Not long ago I got sent through the scanner at the airport and my military issue plastic web belt with plastic buckle that I wore specifically to not have to take off, triggered the scanner. It was too dense, so I got the hands on molestation treatment.

      A Glock has a great deal of polymer, but the barrel, chamber, magazine, trigger mechanism, springs and firing pin, as well as all the bullets are metal and will set off a metal detector, The polymer and all the metals make for a rather solid, gun shaped mass that the scanners will see.

      They stick out quite clearly on the x-ray scanners your carry on items go through as well. In 2002 my Nat Guard unit was doing security at the Olympic village, working with Secret Service agents; during a slow time they showed us how effective the x-ray machines were, one of the SS agents put her firearm (a glock btw) through the scanner, there was no question there was a gun in that backpack she put it in to run it through the scanner. The shape was obvious as was the stack of bullets in the magazine and even the one in the chamber was visible (jacketed lead slugs tend to show up very well).

      Even the current "undetectable" scare about 3-D printed firearms is bogus again because they have metal components and the ammo that will trigger a metal detector and the large mass of Gun shaped plastic will stand out on the scanners.

      --
      I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
  2. Looks like a portable device... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looks like a portable device, either an IR camera or terahertz scanner, not fixed infrastructure like airport body scanners.

    So it will likely be deployed at random entrances to the system. Time for a Twitter feed with locations where the LAPD is deploying the damned things, same as feeds of drunk-driving or immigration checkpoints. Be a good citizen, watch the cops like a hawk watching a tasty piglet.

  3. What is a weapon? by Xoc-S · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If I buy a rack of kitchen knives, I can't take it home on the subway? What about knitting needles? I sometimes carry a pen knife. Scissors? Will the play-doh for the kids look like plastic explosives?

  4. Re:Taking away rights because 17 years ago airplan by sdinfoserv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Or 2nd amendment right. Washington State (Where I live), permits concealed carry. You can take your concealed loaded handgun on any public transportation, (except planes, because that's federally controlled. It is legal to bring a locked gun with you in an airplane, if you're legal to have the firearm in the leaving and destination locations and you declare it. That's US wide).
    The difference in CA is that they've so removed gun ownership rights.

  5. Re:Would this hold up in court? by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That is the idea of why its been set that way and everyone is scanned. Random stops of people who are criminals are difficult to present as "random".
    The need for some type of reasonable and articulable suspicion is removed when everyone is scanned.
    Scan everyone and that later legal question is stopped. Its not the police selecting any random person. Everyone gets a scan thats equal before the law.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  6. Re:voluntary by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Indeed.

    As as bad as the cognitive dissonance of voluntary compliance.

    Huh? Is it voluntary or compulsive?

    *facepalm*

  7. Re:And that way, you never will. by ooloorie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most importantly to contribute to this discussion I have to say that vast majority of the critical opinions in the US about Europe is from people, who have never been there and vice-versa.

    Most Americans couldn't care less about Europe because Europe is of little importance to them or the world. The people who still comment are emigres like myself, and we don't do it because we care about the future of Europe, but because we don't want more bad ideas to spill over from Europe to the US.

    - getting around using public transportation in the US cities is not that bad either, just people usually drive

    People drive in the US because it's fast, cheap, simple, and convenient. Why people drive less in Germany is no great mystery: on average, Germans are poorer and the government deliberate makes it expensive to drive. And the German government subsidizes the kind of transportation that the intellectual and political elite in Germany prefers, which is why public transit is excellent near political power centers and universities.