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New Body Scanners Installed In Airports
KahunaBurger writes "The Boston Globe has an article today titled "Rights backers fight scanner that gets under clothes". The US customs service has installed new scanners in five major US airports "that can see through passengers' clothes and search for contraband with an image that shows the naked body." Rights activists are equating this to a 'electronic strip search.' I don't know; getting frisked always makes me feel like a bad guy on COPS.
So am I the only one who read the article? These are customs scanners used only on international flights with people already suspected of possessing contraband. If you get snagged by a large customs K9 barking up your leg, I really don't think some push-button agent behind a screen seeing your willy is the biggest of your problems. Just my two cents.
Consider the ever rising age for requiring identification when purchasing alchohol or tobacco. What started out as a check against the young(read: politically irrelevant) became a burden against not only those commiting crimes but a privacy worry for anyone under the age of thirty(read: politically less relevant).
The parallels to not being able to move from city to city without the proper papers are striking, and while slippery slope logic may be fallacious, there's some pretty empirical evidence that this slope is very slippery, though it takes years to take the trip.
It is likely that the widespread presence of human scanning equipment would lead to mandatory "virtual strip searches" on everyone who passed through, just as the rather private contents of one's pockets and purses must be shown to an X-Ray technician in order to fly.
And strangely enough, should the equipment be there, this would absolutely be the right thing to do in terms of maintaining security.
C'mon. Many of us are network engineers here. If we don't thoroughly check the content that client software passes our servers, we're lambasted for excess trust as we should be. Network security is not different from physical security--the problem is that while packets don't mind being poked, prodded, analyzed, and logged, humans have a...somewhat different perspective. Worse, a human client can piggyback much more than a CGI exploit in their, um, packets.
Greater risk, with a higher "cost" of alleviating that risk. Ouch.
Frisking is undeniably more invasive than any scanner, but the high privacy cost means that agents cannot afford to roughly fondle every member of the public. The selection process used is guaranteed to incorporate profiles that are, at minimum, more accurate than chance, but much, much more questionable for political reasons. The entire quandry of getting full coverage on identified profiles without specifically inconveniencing those parties is cleanly avoided by a quick hands-free scan.
Security up, highly inconvenienced innocents who match the profile down.
Unfortunately, there's the whole problem of T&D.
Happily, this problem can be removed with some amount of programming. You're looking for an algorithm that takes the three input "discoveries"--
A) Blank backdrop
B) Skin
C) Object thicker than clothing that is obscuring skin
--and flags the machine operator if a given subject possesses any obvious non-skin segments in his scan. Should there be a hit, the computer could execute a filtering operation where the background flesh was erased from the foreground object, and a chart on the screen would overlay the shape of the object over live video of the subject. Should the only offending object be something that the agent could see directly on the person(such as a heart shaped belt buckle), the individual would be waved on. Only if the unidentified object could still not be easily explained by questioning the target would either a pat down search or a full scan need be executed.
Such a solution would prevent inappropriate context from being passed to the shape analysis system(another human) while still allowing universal, non-profiled, secure scanning of aircraft clients wishing to be granted access to company hardware.
I would feel safer with this system.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
You can choose NOT to use the airline's services. People tend to forget that they don't have a right to every single convenience that some company has to offer.
The question I have is do they get a Cinematic 3D view, or just a foggy outline. Do they get to laugh at this big splotchy birthmark on my butt, or just the big wart on my left toe?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Two problems:
It doesn't work. Airport security, including this system, exists primarily to make people feel safe. It has limited effect in actually making them be safe. Even if these systems couldn't usually be evaded even in the airports (and they can), all they would do is to cause people to do their evil deeds in the hundreds of other places that have equivalent crowds and less security... many of which places aren't securable in any reasonable way, so you can't just "fix the problem" by adding more security there.
It's obnoxious and not worth it, even if it did work. I come from a pretty radical place on this... as far as I'm concerned, all customs searches are unacceptable, as are all routine airport searches. Think about it... if they can search you at the airport, why shouldn't they be able to search you as you're walking down the street? What is the real difference?
The true cost of terrorism isn't what the terrorist do to you. It is what you willingly do to your own freedoms and liberties as a result of terrorism.
This is old news. I don't remember when I first heard this; might have been summer, 1999. They were testing this technology at two major airports as I remember it.
;-)
What really bothers me is that there are now concealed weapons that can't be found with metal detectors (non-metalic guns and knives, for instance). What 'hackers' need to do is work out a way to properly secure airplanes the way they've been giving information on how to secure networks. Unlike network administrators, I think the average airport is actually concerned about security and would take suggestions if we put some good ones together.
We can't always just say "this is a breach of my privacy" when the other side is saying "it's that or getting hijacked!" We won't get any public support that way.
Lets throw around some real ideas on how to detect contraband, etc. without (excessively) invading peoples' privacy.
Note: I say 'excessively' because if you have a rod in your back and didn't want anyone to know, they'll find out if they're in line with you at the airport. This is pretty unavoidable. However, having to be "naked-ish" for the security guard isn't great.
Idea: if we used the same technology with an AI system that recognised non-human items and displayed those areas on the security screen? Open source of course
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
First you have to be suspected of being a bad guy. Then you get asked to step into the little room. Then you get a choice of scan or frisk. I would guess that those who are still under suspicion after a frisk or scan will then be subject to a good old-fashioned strip search as well, and as much as I've travelled, I have NEVER seen a strip search in the public concourse areas.
The article also explicitly states no images will be recorded or saved. Do you imagine that these machines will all be hooked up with T3's so they can instantly transmit the images to Usenet?
I'd kinda prefer that the plane I get on arrive at the advertised destination without any bullet holes screwing up the pressurization. Seems like a reasonable device to me.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Honestly, I'm a member of the ACLU, and so I'm not unconcerned about civil liberties such as the right to privacy. But when issues like this arise, it always seems that an ACLU rep or Jon Katz or someone else is always ready to stand up and say 'Damn you! How dare you offer us a different option than we had before! How dare you offer us a new choice that may not be to everyone's liking! We demand Utopia, dammit! It's not enough just to offer us a possible improvement, and even give us the choice of whether or not to use it; it's perfection or nothing!' I'm a realist; I compare the proposed new system to what we have now. But every time an issue like this comes up, it seems to be an issue because it gets compared to the perfect world we all wish we lived in, and comes up short against that unrealistic standard.
I've read the comments suggesting that the libertarian thing to do is to boycott all airlines that are now offering this new technology as an alternative to the frisk. It makes me wonder why it wasn't the libertarian thing to do to boycott all those airlines that were frisking in the first place. And it makes me wonder whether libertarians actually get on planes feeling much better knowing that no one on the plane has been searched for guns or bombs.
My only real problem with the system as it's described is that they automatically assign someone of the same sex to be the one looking at the contours of your naked body. I think we should have the choice of having someone of the opposite sex scoping us out. Hell, if I get on the plane suspecting that the woman at the monitor got a cheap thrill out of seeing me naked, I probably won't have stopped smiling before we touch down again. ^_^
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
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- James
Did some digging around, and found this (rather small) image: http://216.149.33.140/products/lg_bod y02.html. Pretty danged detailed, even at this size. Imagine some security guard staring at a full screen image of yourself. Whee.
I remember reading about something similar, I believe it was gigahertz imaging, four years ago in Science News.
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