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Invasion of the Body Scanners!

SUNDAY JUNE 8 2008 9:00 AM

Submitted by DevilsReject. Edited By crispy.

TAGS: TSA, body scan, privacy, rights

In the never-ending battle to stop terrorists from hijacking planes, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) keep coming up with innovative ideas to improve security. It seems, though, that with every innovative idea we as citizens of a free country lose more and more of our privacy.

The latest innovative idea that the TSA has come up with is the full body scanners that have been installed in ten high-traffic airports.

Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport near Washington starts using a body scanner Friday. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.

Just looking at the image, it reminds me of a movie:

Unfortunately it's not some high-tech movie whose great intelligence impressed me. I keep thinking of the part in Idiocracy in which citizen 'Not Sure' is being scanned by an incompetent healthcare worker that can't remember which probe is the rectal and which probe is the oral.

Anyway ...

The scan doesn't take long. After walking through the regular metal detector, you are then directed into the booth.

Passengers who went through a scanner at the Baltimore airport last week were intrigued, reassured and occasionally wary. The process took about 30 seconds on average.

Not bad. This is actually quicker than the old system, and it removes the human error of the TSA Scanner. Evidently, in tests held prior to this, human scanners were missing things like weapons, chunks of wire, and parts that could be used to assemble a bomb once on the aircraft.

Of course, the system does have some drawbacks. There is a way to conceal things from the body scanner, using simplistic items.

The scanners do a good job seeing under clothing but cannot see through plastic or rubber materials that resemble skin, said Peter Siegel, a senior scientist at the California Institute of Technology. "You probably could find very common materials that you could wrap around you that would effectively obscure things," Siegel said.

Cool. The TSA's innovative new toy can be defeated with a piece of plastic or rubber. Impressive. Good thing they put that in print and made it public knowledge, too; that way the terrorists don't actually have to think on their own as to how to defeat this scanner.

So, after reading about the weaknesses and gaps in security of this new innovative idea, I came across something else that really disturbed me:

The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers' faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person's gender. "You can actually see the sweat on someone's back," Schear said.

So, in order to get on an aircraft, the TSA needs to basically view me naked, along with the sweat on my asscrack. This makes sense. This really leads me to believe in the whole "land of the free" phrase. Maybe, just for the hell of it, during TSA Screener training we can teach the screeners how to say, "Show me your papers!" with a thick German accent.

I am supposed to trust the TSA, who isn't well known for its grand implementation of past policies, and has a record of blatantly sloppy record keeping to delete these images immediately after they are taken?

Why don't I feel safer?

What makes the situation even worse is that most people passing through this booth, along with the TSA Screeners operating the booth, really don't even know what is going on.

Darin Scott of Miami was annoyed by the process.

"If you don't ask questions, they don't tell you anything," Scott said. When he asked a screener technical questions about the scanner, "he could not answer," Scott said.

No way?! An improperly trained and educated TSA worker? There's something new!

There are many problems with this system. One of them being that we normally call the police if someone is acting in a voyeuristic manner in our neighborhood, but we give the government the right to do it? We are willing to give up rights we normally protect in any other given situation, just to travel within our own country?

I am all about making air travel safer. I don't, however, believe that this innovative new idea is a step in the right direction. Treating me like I am the terrorist, and figuratively and physically stripping me of my personal rights as a human being, is never the answer to making something safer.

The TSA has repeatedly failed the nation in providing the citizens with proper screening. From the unqualified and improperly trained individuals who actually do screening all the way up the ranks to the people in charge of the TSA.

Rather than repeatedly coming up with innovative ways of stripping me of personal rights, they should come up with ways that still protect my rights and my security.

DevilsReject just doesn't want the world to know that he is phallically-challenged

25 Comments

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attn_Hussein_ho

Brooklyn, NY

February 2004

JUN 08, 2008 09:08 AM

TSA CORRECTION: ALL scans of UGLY people will be deleted. ALL scans of HOT people will be saved, backed up and traded by TSA employees and sold on the black market on biannual basis.

LostLucy

USA

December 2006

JUN 08, 2008 09:21 AM

Fucked up shit, and yet who here has been dragged aside for the pat down and pocket poking in front of everyone? I have, and in fact once (february 2002 in NYC) I was dragged away from my 3 small children with whom I was traveling alone, and they also got irate when I turned away to look for my youngest, who was scooped up into the arms of a National Guard in in full camo-faitgues with an automatic weapon. The guard stood there chuckling "oh I have 5 of these little ones at home"

AND I have *no piercings* -- there was no reason! Except ok, are dark haired women Al-Quaeda? Or was is that I'm sorta cute....

SO all I am saying is I think the tube is better than being pawed by those fucks .

punk

Phoenix, AZ

January 2004

JUN 08, 2008 09:32 AM

Hey, I mean, thank God they can check to see if someone has a +3 oz. bottle of water shoved up their ass. I was worried there, for a second.

Oh! Oh! Wait! They can't. If you have something shoved up in there real good, the scanners can't detect it because they don't penetrate skin. They just want to make sure we don't have any really sharp plas- SHIT! It's fooled by plastic, too! Damn it all to hell.

LostLucy

USA

December 2006

JUN 08, 2008 09:35 AM

^^ liquid crack! get it?????......

Sivart

Saskatoon, SK

June 2004

JUN 08, 2008 09:38 AM

Note to self: invest in rubber underwear before flying south.

Or grab the box of plastic wrap from the kitchen...

punk

Phoenix, AZ

January 2004

JUN 08, 2008 09:39 AM

Sivart said:
Note to self: invest in rubber underwear before flying south.

Or grab the box of plastic wrap from the kitchen...

That's just what you need. The TSA employee monitoring body scans to run screaming from their screening closet, "THAT MAN HAS NO GENITALIA! SEIZE HIM!"

turin

Denver, CO

October 2003

JUN 08, 2008 10:00 AM

I remember reading a while back that the designers were going to incorporate software that would identify and blur out a person's genitals. if that were true, and it worked, that would be so fucking sci-fi.

but even though major news organizations' science journalism is generally pathetic, it's unlikely they'd have let a little detail like that slip by.

LiquidSunset

Pomona, CA

August 2006

JUN 08, 2008 10:18 AM

Might as well outlaw all clothing in airports and have everyone fly naked..

IDGAS

Jackson Heights, NY

March 2004

JUN 08, 2008 10:50 AM

DevilsReject said:
This is actually quicker than the old system, and it removes the human error of the TSA Scanner. Evidently, in tests held prior to this, human scanners were missing things like weapons, chunks of wire, and parts that could be used to assemble a bomb once on the aircraft.

Of course the failure of the current x-ray the carry on luggage is operator failure. How long will it take for TSA operators to become board looking at middle aged business travelers and average 20 something guys? Hot chicks will be closely reviewed by the men and the hot guys by the women (I do not feel like doing the gay guys/gals...)

My favorite security issues blog Schneier on Security has an excellent overview of this issue in his March 23, 2006 posting "Airport Passenger Screening[/URL,]" some excerpts.

Airport screeners have a difficult job, primarily because the human brain isn't naturally adapted to the task. We're wired for visual pattern matching, and are great at picking out something we know to look for -- for example, a lion in a sea of tall grass.

But we're much less adept at detecting random exceptions in uniform data. Faced with an endless stream of identical objects, the brain quickly concludes that everything is identical and there's no point in paying attention. By the time the exception comes around, the brain simply doesn't notice it. This psychological phenomenon isn't just a problem in airport screening: It's been identified in inspections of all kinds, and is why casinos move their dealers around so often. The tasks are simply mind-numbing.

It seems like every time someone tests airport security, airport security fails. In tests between November 2001 and February 2002, screeners missed 70 percent of knives, 30 percent of guns and 60 percent of (fake) bombs. And recently (see also this), testers were able to smuggle bomb-making parts through airport security in 21 of 21 attempts. It makes you wonder why we're all putting our laptops in a separate bin and taking off our shoes. (Although we should all be glad that Richard Reid wasn't the "underwear bomber.") (emphasis added)

MrCrisp

Charleston, SC

August 2004

JUN 08, 2008 11:06 AM

i had to go through one of those the last time i flew. i had no idea what was going on, and all they told me was that they were sending me through the "back-up" line. i was with one other person, and yet the rest of the crowd going through the check in gate breezed by while i waited for my turn on the "30-second" machine. whenever i would ask questions, they would either be met by silence or a callous shrug. it didn't help that half the people working at the gate spoke little english (or conveniently used their limited lingo as an excuse to avoid assuaging my curiosity). after finishing with the machine, i was quickly frisked by a security guard. putting my shoes back on, i looked up to her and asked if it was SOP to single out members of the military for the increased security measure. flustered, she only told me it was procedure. something i'm all too common with.

IDGAS

Jackson Heights, NY

March 2004

JUN 08, 2008 11:08 AM

DarkRocker said:
Might as well outlaw all clothing in airports and have everyone fly naked..

The May 26, 2008 cover of the New Yorker

LSlice

Montclair, NJ

December 2007

JUN 08, 2008 12:32 PM

That's nothing compared to the FBI's biometric database.

http://folsomtelegraph.com/detail/84410.html

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

DevilsReject

Cleveland, OH

February 2007

JUN 08, 2008 06:02 PM

LostLucy said:
Fucked up shit, and yet who here has been dragged aside for the pat down and pocket poking in front of everyone? I have, and in fact once (february 2002 in NYC) I was dragged away from my 3 small children with whom I was traveling alone, and they also got irate when I turned away to look for my youngest, who was scooped up into the arms of a National Guard in in full camo-faitgues with an automatic weapon. The guard stood there chuckling "oh I have 5 of these little ones at home"

AND I have *no piercings* -- there was no reason! Except ok, are dark haired women Al-Quaeda? Or was is that I'm sorta cute....

SO all I am saying is I think the tube is better than being pawed by those fucks .

I don't fly much. Usually when i do it's for business purposes. But if for some reason i did fly for personal reasons, I'll be damned if they are going to separate me from my child.

I would end up in jail. I am like every other father, very protective of my daughter.

What really amuses me about all this is that while Airlines are trying to do things to draw people back into flying, the TSA is doing everything they can to push people away from it. I absolutely loathe flying, it's like pounding my fingers with a hammer, i'd rather drive.

It also makes me wonder that if the TSA is focusing so much attention on air travel, are they ignoring other types of travel that could be dangerous? I am pretty sure a substantial explosive on a subway could cause extreme damage in downtown New York.