Opt Out of a Body Scan? Then Brace Yourself

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Opt-Out-of-a-Body-Scan-Then-nytimes-3016411705.html?x=0

by edw519 • 16 years ago

94 120 16 years ago

finance.yahoo.com

petrilli• 16 years ago

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

StavrosK3• 16 years ago

I came here to post this, there's nothing more to say. This is all very sad.

iwr• 16 years ago

We have always been at war with E̶a̶s̶t̶a̶s̶i̶a̶ Eurasia.

binarymax• 16 years ago

The repeated "Opt out!" yelling tactic is obviously a way to intimidate and humiliate the participant, and dissuade anyone else who would otherwise choose to opt out.

I have not had the opportunity to opt out yet. But when I do, I will gladly join in the opt out screaming session, and add some other choice words of my own.

I refuse to quietly be a part of some absurd bureaucratic plot that slowly and steadily strips away my civil rights.

StavrosK3• 16 years ago

"Opt out over here! I'm not going through the strip search!"

phpnode• 16 years ago

and then make a point of loudly enjoying the pat down.

roc7• 16 years ago

The whole invasive pat-down is just a way to intimidate and humiliate people away from that choice.

This is the last straw for me, personally. I'll just be vacationing closer to home now or working old-school road trips into my plans. Maybe if the outraged take a few less flights a year, the vacation, airline and union lobbies will take up the cause.

jules3• 16 years ago

For whom on HN are pat downs intimidating and/or humiliating? I personally don't mind it at all, but I can understand that they could be a problem for somebody.

I'm much more worried about CCTV's everywhere, cell phone tracking, internet usage tracking, tracking cars with cameras on highways that read number plates, etc. All these tools are extremely well suited for keeping a dictator in place. I'm afraid that if we get one, then we're not getting rid of him any time soon.

yardie3• 16 years ago

Just got through the airport lastweek and didn't have to deal with this silliness. But I can't wait to go back to the US so I can opt-out. I'm not a perv, but can't wait to see the look on the screener's face while s/he's forced to touch my johnson.

"That's not a roll of quarters my friend" :-)

shasta• 16 years ago

"I was going to guess nickels."

roc7• 16 years ago

"half-a-pack of certs?"

yardie3• 16 years ago

Maybe if enough protests come about in this fashion then the screeners will force their bosses to drop this stupid policy. Like, "I didn't take this job to be touching 500 penises a day. And everyone's got snarky comments!"

teilo2• 16 years ago

I am seriously tempted to find some metal tape for the next time I have to fly, "mark up" my t-shirt with a suggestion as to where the TSA can shove their body-scan machine, and walk through side-ways.

gjm11• 16 years ago

Sounds like a great way to get a real strip-search as well as a virtual one. Of course, you may be willing to accept that to make your point.

daten4• 16 years ago

Your idea reminds me of this story from 2006.

Milwaukee resident Ryan Bird wrote "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on a plastic bag given to passengers by airport security. As a result he claims he was detained and told that the First Amendment did not apply to security checkpoints.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/606142...

Kip Hawley was the head of TSA at the time.

corin_• 16 years ago

All it reminds me of is the person who actually had that idea, on this site, five days ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1849311

yread• 16 years ago

Hey thats not that bad - 25 minutes is well worth the fun.

mcantelon3• 16 years ago

For women, there are http://www.flyingpasties.com

daten4• 16 years ago

Baltimore Washington Intl. airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport both recently got body scanners. They both changed their process to close all lanes not equipped with a body-scanner and funnel everyone through the one or two scanners they had.

At BWI they would make every 15th or so person go through the scanner, or anyone who volunteered by walking up to it instead of the metal detector.

At Atlanta the scanners weren't even operational yet and they still only opened the metal detectors with scanners beside them and had an army of TSA screeners standing around doing nothing while a huge crowd of travelers waited in a very long line.

The processes have indeed changed.

daten4• 16 years ago

Additionally I would feel perfectly safe flying without any security screening at the airports.

No "terrorists" have been attacking schools, churches, malls, buses, trains, bridges, theaters, libraries, office buildings, etc. Either they only attack planes (not even the airports themselves) or there aren't enough terrorists to justify this amount of "security".

ceejayoz5• 16 years ago

I've always been baffled by the lack of those sorts of attacks. One can imagine the economic damage if everyone was terrified to go to malls, grocery stores, schools, etc.

Amazon.com would be about the only company to come out okay.

yequalsx2• 16 years ago

Every story about the TSA always seems to end with something like this article did:

"Mr. Delahorne said he was perfectly willing to comply with all procedures to ensure good security."

There's always a quote about how someone is willing to do what must be done to ensure our safety. It makes me think that news agencies are required to do this or get paid to do this.

percept2• 16 years ago

I just view it as a sort of standard disclaimer to preempt the usual criticism that dissenters are somehow ignorant, unreasonable, or un-American.

Basically: "I'm an otherwise reasonable person in full possession of my faculties."

yequalsx2• 16 years ago

That's possible but the impression that I have is that by always including such remarks it has the effect of making people who disagree with security measures as wanting something bad to happen. It's sort like the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Instead of focusing on whether or not the measures are appropriate the debate is about whether or not you want to be safe. I think it makes dissenters look bad by making them against being safe.

recampbell• 16 years ago

Who is responsible for crafting these procedures, I.E., requiring the body scans or alternative opt-out procedures? Do they have a name besides "Homeland Security"?

epochwolf• 16 years ago

Perhaps you're thinking of the Transportation Security Administration?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Adminis...

ajaxian2• 16 years ago

Serious question for the physicists: How feasible would it be to put a faraday cage in one's underpants that wouldn't trigger a metal detector but would mess up the body scanner?

Construct• 16 years ago

A Faraday cage is, by definition, a conductive cage. You'll have a hard time getting a conductive material through a metal detector.

Your best bet would be to construct a garment from a material which is significantly absorbs/attenuates the extremely high frequencies (30GHz to 300GHz) used by these millimeter-wave imaging scanners. Normal clothing passes these waves with minimal attenuation, where they bounce off of your skin and return to the scanner. The scanner then uses these returned signals to reconstruct an image of your naked body for the TSA to examine. If your clothing instead absorbs most of this signal, or at least attenuates it significantly enough to fall below the dynamic range of the imager, the TSA won't be able to see much.

Absorbing millimeter-wave signals to a significant enough degree will require a relatively thick material. I typically use RF foam in the lab when I'm working on EMI compliance issues because it is cheap and easy to cut to size. Attenuation data is scarce for the EHF band, but ARC Technologies has a lossy flexible foam that has 25dB of attenuation at 40GHz ( http://www.arc-tech.com/lossyflexiblefoam.php ), which amounts to 50dB of round-trip attenuation from the imager to your skin back to the imager. 50dB loss means only 0.001% of the original signal will bounce back to the scanner.

Even more absorption can be had if you use pyramidal foam, much like you see in a typical antenna chamber. ( http://www.ets-lindgren.com/pdf/absorber.pdf ) Of course, this probably won't be the most comfortable garment you've ever worn.

Still, I would imagine wearing such a garment would immediately raise red flags and you would quickly find yourself in a back room with some unfriendly TSA agents. You're much better off opting out.

koudelka• 16 years ago

Sounds like bacon underwear would work pretty well.

ajaxian2• 16 years ago

> Even more absorption can be had if you use pyramidal foam

Hell, it would also make the pat-down a lot more interesting!

Thanks for the detailed answer.

Of course my original question was somewhat facetious, but I do think it's farcical that, nine years after 9/11, in order to fly within the "land of the free and home of the brave" one has to be subjected to these humiliating so-called security measures. Military-industrial complex indeed! It would be interesting to trace the political donations given by the companies that make these machines...

daten4• 16 years ago

If it's made to bounce off of skin, what about leather clothes?

chopsueyar• 16 years ago

What thickness of foam are we talking about?

smountcastle• 16 years ago

What happens when a parent has their children opt-out of the full-body scanner? Can the TSA be sued for child abuse or can the parent press for criminal charges for touching?

DifE-Q• 16 years ago

I have curtailed my domestic flying personally or with my family due to these asinine security theater exhibitions. In all it amounts to about $5000.00 in lost revenue to the airline industry every year. So if enough people do this then hopefully that will send a message to these people.

Now there may be a time when I or my family have to fly and for sure I will be opting out my entire family. When they go to feel-up my children I will ask the person doing it if he/she has a history of child molestation...since they are getting all personal with me and my children I plan on getting personal with them.

I will try and remember to report back when with the results...

jonnathanson3• 16 years ago

I went through O'Hare recently, where they've installed a battery of these devices. The way they had it set up, it was used as the secondary screener for people who got called out for random searches.

Guess who got called for "random" searches in the machine? Pretty much every hot chick in line. Now, this observation was purely anecdotal, so take it for what it is. But the coincidence was not lost on me, or on anyone else in the line. It was disgusting behavior on the TSA workers' part.

mike-cardwell3• 16 years ago

I thought only women operated the machinery where women were scanned and only men, where the men are scanned?

adrianscott• 16 years ago

nope

nodata• 16 years ago

Well how would you ever know? You never get to see.

barrkel• 16 years ago

Gender doesn't necessarily determine sexual orientation; the machines are required to have facilities to store and transmit images; and besides, the mere power of forcefully suggesting someone submit to a strip search is titillation in itself, quite apart from viewing any resulting imagery.

travisp• 16 years ago

What's your citation for that? I've never heard of this and there's no mention of it on the TSA website.

biafra• 16 years ago

Maybe they save the pictures and share later?

yardie3• 16 years ago

Considering that TSA screeners have been known to change policy, at will, whenever its convenient for them I doubt this policy is consistently enforced.

iampims• 16 years ago

If that is really the case, I can’t wait for the deluge of lawsuits…

TSA is ridiculous.

vladk• 16 years ago

I was at O'Hare this summer and noticed the exact same thing. All the dudes ended up going through the metal detector, and most of the girls went through the full body scanner.

Then I got really upset when I saw them selecting a young teenage girl to go through the scanner as well - perverts.

sammcd• 16 years ago

This make me wish there was one nearby within site from an insecure area.

It would be very interesting to take data on male/female ratio over course of a few hours.

percept2• 16 years ago

I just returned from an international trip a couple of weeks ago and am glad I missed this. However the snap on my pants (!) must have set off the metal detector so I was still patted down.

In what other business is a normal, paying customer treated this way? Not quite the golden age of commercial aviation . . .

mcantelon3• 16 years ago

My guess is the option of opting out is likely going to be removed in a year or so. The most effective way to remove freedom and privacy is incrementally.

palewery• 16 years ago

I heard those body scanners can cause cancer

jasongullickson2• 16 years ago

To me this is just another reason (of many) that travelers should consider general aviation (charter, etc.) as an alternative to commercial airline travel.

The straight financial cost may be higher but avoiding all of this sort of nonsense has its rewards, and remember that most GA operators are locally-owned smallish businesses that appreciate your support and treat their passengers like customers and not like prisoners (or worse).

tocomment• 16 years ago

Tell us more. How would I get to cancun for example?

pchristensen• 16 years ago

I echo tocomment - for someone who has only ever flown commercial, how would one go about finding and hiring a GA operator? What's kind of premium would you expect pay for a regional (eg Chicago to Detroit) flight or a longer flight (eg Chicago to LA)?

Flemlord• 16 years ago

I'm also curious. Do you use a national charter company or do you have to contract directly with owner/pilots? How much does it cost? How fast is it compared to regular commercial travel?

jasongullickson2• 16 years ago

I'm actually pursuing my private pilot's license so my route would be a little different than most, but here in Wisconsin we have Wisconsin Aviation which operates out of several airports and provides everything from aircraft rental for pilots to full charter services:

http://www.wisconsinaviation.com/

chadgeidel• 16 years ago

I never thought of that, but wouldn't the TSA have authority over GA as well?

draebek• 16 years ago

I was once shuttled to a business meeting in a small plane (maybe six to eight seats). I had no idea what to expect, showing up for my small flight. I parked at the airport, walked down to the runway where I met the pilot. I said, "is there a security screening? I've got a knife [about 3.5in blade, in my pocket]. I've also got this big thing of water." Pilot said, "that's nice, hop on in the plane. Need anything else?" I even got to listen to my MP3 player during take off.

Assuming that what I flew was "GA," then no, it doesn't seem like the TSA applies there.

As for how you get these sorts of flights and how much they cost, I can't help. I was just the passenger, and haven't done it since.

saurik• 16 years ago

"""TSA’s Office of General Aviation is committed to working with the industry and community to develop and implement reasonable and effective security measures. As part of these efforts, TSA has recently launched the General Aviation Secure Program. This program is designed to build upon the Airport Watch program, encouraging everyone to be vigilant about general aviation security and report any unusual activities to TSA."""

[ http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/tsnm/general_aviation/programs... ]

( which I found via http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/tsnm/general_aviation/index.sh... )

hyperbovine2• 16 years ago

The GA safety record is 50 times poorer than that of commercial airlines. (http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety) I'll take the rectal probe, thank you.

ratsbane• 16 years ago

The GA safety record also includes student pilots, weekend pilots, crop-dusters, and other high-risk flight operations.

Scheduled airlines are operated under FAA Part 121 rules, charter operators work under Part 135 rules, and everything below that is under Part 91 rules. Part 135 operations are much safer than for all GA. It's safer than driving, though not quite as safe as flying a scheduled air carrier.

From the NTSB (http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/table1.htm), in 2009 scheduled air carriers had 0.006 fatalities per 100,000 flight hours, on-demand carriers 0.07 per 100,000, and all GA 1.33 fatalities per 100,000 hours.

jlujan• 16 years ago

I just passed through the airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The back-scatter scanner is right next to the metal detector and the procedure was that they would "offer" you the choice to walk through the new scanner and said if you turned it down that they would have to perform a physical search. I told them I did not wish to go through the scanner, at which point they walked me past the metal detector (not through) to the pat-down area. While standing there for a few moments for the TSA personel, several people went through the metal detector with no further search. Further, the notification that the machine is still in testing phase is posted after you have already passed through it. It was abundantly clear at that point, the new policy of intimidation and humiliation has nothing to do with my personal safety.

The unilateral and unpublished changes in screening procedure are blatant abuses of authority and undermine the principles of our society. The argument that I have given implicit consent to being searched just by buying an airplane ticket is completely voided when the search procedures are constantly changing without detailed public knowledge or immediate explanation.

I have no fears about flying in general or those caused by the threat of terrorism. I am much more likely to die in a small plane crash with one of my pilot friends at the controls. What terrifies me the most is this blatant disregard of civil liberties and the apparent complacency with which the public submits to the draconian policies being put in place without consent of the people.

AgentConundrum• 16 years ago

"No, no. The process has always been the same, at every airport."

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

tomjen34• 16 years ago

It seems that the best way to get around this would be to make life unbearable for the TSA agents. The politicians can't be reached.

While physically assaulting them would be very satisfying, simply freezing them out socially would properly be a better tactic, since it is impossible to arrest people for.

CapitalistCartr2• 16 years ago

"The politicians can't be reached."

Of course they can! Mail, email, they can certainly be reached, and right now they're extra sensitive to issues that upset their constituents.

CWuestefeld• 16 years ago

right now they're extra sensitive to issues that upset their constituents

Quite the opposite. Right now is the maximum time before the next election. That means they've got the longest time possible for you to forget. Any shenanigans they'd like to engage in would be safest now.

joshwa• 16 years ago

Original article (not framed by Yahoo):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/business/02road.html

verdant• 16 years ago

If enough would choose opt out (despite the obvious intimidation tactics), then the entire process would become so inefficient that an easy, efficient alternate would be provided (or the scanners removed altogether). It would likely take a majority of people opting out though.

nano81• 16 years ago

I think you overestimate government desire to eliminate inefficiency.

wrs• 16 years ago

More likely, they will just eliminate the option to opt out.

j053003• 16 years ago

Why the hell wasn't this an election issue? I would have gladly voted against any candidate who supported this.

roboneal• 16 years ago

An organization, say like the EFF, should coordinate mass "opt-out" travel at peak travel times.

A little "gridlock" might highlight the absurdity of the situation.

bartman• 16 years ago

I've been through Cleveland Hopkins Intl' and San Jose Intl' in the last days and there were "opt-out lanes" in which no body scanners were used and you went through the normal metal detectors. No pat down either. Nobody told you into which lane you have to go, so there was absolutely no pressure.

preek• 16 years ago

‘No, no. The process has always been the same, at every airport.’

INGSOC! We should have known, 1984 is long due.

ChristianMarks• 16 years ago

They can pat me down in the crotch until they're blue in the face: they'll never find anything.

SkyMarshal2• 16 years ago

I'm not sure what that means, or if I want to know, or if I'm seeing innuendos where there aren't any, but it made me lol anyway. Have an upvote.

SkyMarshal2• 16 years ago

To the frequent business travelers, might this increase the growing trend of working remotely?

Now that it's trivial to set up video-conferencing on your home workstation, and collaborate via online tools that range the gamut from github to office docs to just about anything you can imagine, might this drive even more people to shift business travel to remote work instead?

Opt Out of a Body Scan? Then Brace Yourself

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