Documents Reveal TSA Proposal To Body-Scan Pedestrians, Train Passengers

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/02/docs-reveal-tsa-plan-to-body-scan-pedestrians-train-passengers/

by georgecmu • 15 years ago

124 43 15 years ago

As long as people will irrationally fear "terrorism" and will be willing to let anything pass in the name of fighting terrorism, this will go even further. They'll let them even do random check-ups in your home. TSA wants to go much further, just like any Governemnt agency would. By going further and expanding their territory, they will get more funds.

Bud• 15 years ago

This is what we get, as a society, for not insisting that "Homeland Security" be shut down back in, say, late 2001, once it became clear that it could do absolutely no good for society, and would certainly cause great harm to Constitutional rights.

The permanent fear culture of security theater is now far too entrenched among moneyed interests. It will take a massive effort by the public and by Congress to even begin to uproot it.

narrator• 15 years ago

The rule in American government is that only solutions that will be considered to any political problem must involve spending more money. If you want to shut down Homeland Security, I would suggest proposing replacing it with a new agency that can spend more money than Homeland Security is currently spending.

rhizome• 15 years ago

Wouldn't that be the same as just renaming the agency? It's going to be comprised of the same career people and contracting companies anyway. There needs to be hard restrictions on their powers.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

When a strong regime receives new powers from the people they are rarely given back. Don't kid yourself, DHS, the Patriot Act, the border fence, and now SOPA, once they are passed they aren't ever going away.

ams6110• 15 years ago

Yeah if they are taken back it is usually done by force or revolution, seldom pretty.

sixtofour• 15 years ago

I wonder if North Korea is open to sister city treaties?

danilocampos• 15 years ago

You know how country musicians remind us that "freedom ain't free?"

Well, it ain't. But it's not under assault by people with different-colored skin in foreign lands.

The people who want to fuck us out of our freedom are people we keep electing, or are appointed by the same. Can't believe no one's ever written a country song about that.

People want to rag on OWS for being unfocused or whatever. But you know what? I'm glad to see a few comfortable first worlders step up and provide a sustained cry that they're not comfortable with the status quo.

I don't know what the long-term solution is for this power- (and genital-) grabbing nonsense. But I'm pretty sure it starts by getting pissed off and is continued by saying so, out loud, in public, in numbers.

delwin• 15 years ago

Agreed, wholeheartedly. And the media isn't helping, enforcing the idea that there are two parties in America: Republicans and Democrats. Countries are not divided like that anymore, and perhaps never have been. Government will always be about the powerful versus the powerless. And the politically-influenced media renders most of us ignorant (I consider myself pretty aware, but who knows what I haven't found out yet; I learn new, shocking things every day!).

rdtsc• 15 years ago

Forgot who, perhaps Chomsky, said that the rich in this country are actually veritable Marxists. The poor are not, they don't believe in class struggle, they fancy themselves as pre-rich, by being carefully groomed via propaganda. The rich on the other hand are Marxists because they understand very well how the class system works, and they are actively engaged in making sure their class survives and dominates the working class.

EDIT: The bit about rich being Marxists is apparently Chomsky

"""I think he would take it for granted that elites are basically Marxist - they believe in class analysis, they believe in class struggle, and in a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time. And they understand. They’re instinctive Marxists; they don't have to read it."""

T-hawk• 15 years ago

> The people who want to fuck us out of our freedom are people we keep electing

A big part of the problem is that, no, they aren't elected. Not a single position in the TSA is elected. Nor the EPA, or OSHA, or IRS, or any of twelve dozen other agencies who heap mounds and mounds of their own productivity-sapping laws on everybody. Who votes for that garbage? I didn't and nobody else did.

Electing Congressional representatives is too far indirectly removed from this process. Each vote for a representative is the amalgamation of dozens or hundreds of other issues. Congress functionally has free rein to do anything it wants with the TSA and all the other bureaucracies, because they just aren't important enough to cast your precious single vote compared to hotter-button and directly life-relevant issues (abortion, Social Security, immigration, take your pick.)

How can we vote down a TSA action like this with such an indirectly removed vote? What if I like the rest of my representative's opinions but abhor the TSA, how can that be expressed in a single vote? It's a frickin year until the next election, do you think even 1%, never mind 50%, of voters in my district will remember and care about this then?

In some sense, representatives are obsolete. The technology certainly exists now for a much more direct form of interactive democratic government, where we could individually vote on things like the TSA. But how would the current system of elected representatives ever yield to direct democracy? How would even one, never mind 220, representatives ever be in favor of eliminating their own power and positions? Remember that the districts themselves are drawn by the two parties in power (there's no difference) to keep those two parties in power. It's 1984, the governmental structure has created and warped the system to keep itself in power for perpetuity. Overturning it is literally not possible. The system itself, like Newspeak, prevents even the expression of doing so: How do I vote to not have a Congress anymore?

(Dang, I hope this isn't one of pg's honeypot karma-eating politics threads.)

(Edited a few times to phrase myself better, especially about those indirect votes.)

18pfsmt• 15 years ago

While the U.S. doesn't have a form of direct democracy at the federal level, many states (mostly western) do have voter-led referendums and/or initiatives[1]. I believe the states with medicinal marijuana laws have them _because_ these processes are in place.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiatives_and_referendums_in_...

brc2• 15 years ago

I think you don't need to go to the level of individually voted items - even though the technology would actually make it reasonably simple.

Just having recall elections on all elected representatives and recall referendums on specific issue should be enough. I realise some states like California have something like this.

Case in point : my local representative just switched political sides because the current government threw them some inducements to do so. This ends up so I voted for a person who now supports the people I explicitly didn't want in power. There is nothing I can do about this except wait for the next election. If I had a recall vote I could organise a recall election - but, more importantly, it's unlikely they would have even contemplated the move if they knew a recall was a possibility.

Similarly for the TSA if sufficient opposition was found via petition (say, 10% of registered voters) then an online referendum could be undertaken - ie Disband TSA, yes/no.

This type of thing is dangerous because you could easily end up with deadlock and inertia, but hopefully the mere threat of being overridden or recalled would prompt more representatives to think about representing and listen more.

But I think the key is to lower the cost of voting. But then I'm also very wary of electronic voting systems, so it would have to be extremely secure. Probably two-factor authentication secure.

tomkinstinch• 15 years ago

Imagine if scanners were everywhere, but rather than scanning for weapons they were scanning for tumors and other health problems (and since this is fiction, also imagine that the ionizing radiation dose is negligible).

DannoHung• 15 years ago

Given that this is fiction, can we imagine that the scanners also find malfeasance by businessmen, government officials, and all other echelons of the powerful?

drivebyacct2• 15 years ago

Ironic given that many indications imply that the backscatter scanners may deliver unhealthy or unsafe doses of radiation.

nodata2• 15 years ago

Why would you need these scanners "everywhere"? Why not just walk into a health place and walk out again? Why not have one at home?

marchdown• 15 years ago

Hey, Americans. This whole mess is truly unbelievable from over the pond. Aren't there legal procedures in place to stop this unconstitutional, incredibly annoying, intrusive and expensive fearmongering campaign? Yeah, it was introduced at precisely the right moment by people in positions of trust and power, but haven't you had quite enough already? The head honcho, Pistole, is a deranged veteran of War on Terror. There isn't a yota of evidence in support of their paranoid fantasies. No one is out to get you. Just back down before you've found yourselves living in a police state without a legal recourse.

I know, this has been said time and again already, but venting your frustration on the internet is counterproductive — it assuages an urge to actually do something — and do something you should, because TSA won't dissolve by itself. But there's another side to the endless discussions on the Internet — by illuminating legal specifics of the situation you could effect a slow, incremental progress in public awareness.

anigbrowl• 15 years ago

Where are you posting from? I don't support this, but I still find the US preferable to living in London and being recorded by 100 CCTV cameras a day. Motes, beams, etc.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

I believe Internet support is a necessary prerequisite to see that you are not alone in this. This was a critical thing in the revolutions in Egypt and all the other countries. It's much easier to go outside and protest when you see pictures and messages from thousands and thousands of people on the spot.

potatolicious• 15 years ago

I once made the mistake of expressing this opinion (i.e., that airport security is pure theatre, completely irrelevant, and isn't making anyone safer) on a shuttle for a high-tech software company.

I guess I kind of assumed that software engineers would be natural skeptics, and predominantly liberal to boot.

Well, nope, that wasn't a safe assumption at all. I had 2-3 people agree with me enthusiastically, 4-5 argue passionately about how the terrorists would win if we let up, and the rest of the bus just stared like me like I just transmogrified into Osama himself for daring to suggest such a thing.

So yeah, if the a supposedly scientific, data-driven, skeptical population broke down like that, I'm not surprised that this sort of thing is happening without much resistance. And it's for this reason I hold nearly no hope that any of these abuses will ever be curbed.

The only question I really want answered is: when did America turn from being such a badass, never running away from a fight, to such cowards, willing to do anything, give up anything, for one iota of perceived safety?

This was in 2009 FWIW...

tptacek• 15 years ago

I want to move to your dimension. In my dimension, the bad-ass America of yore imprisoned the entire Japanese population of the west coast during WWII. Compared to HUAC, the TSA is positively rational.

It is not remotely hard to see why we have the TSA and it has nothing to do with cowardice; it has to do with rational actors and their incentives. To wit: there is no incentive whatsoever for anyone in authority to dial back airport security. It's the same reason you have to "turn" "off" your iPod at takeoff and landing.

This isn't some scary new trend. Our whole system of government is designed with the assumption that stuff like this is going to happen. The Constitution isn't an electric fence. It is the constraints provided to a stochastic and inefficient algorithm to get it to eventually converge on an answer John Locke might have approved. 10 years is the blink of an eye in historical terms. Give it another few decades.

Meanwhile, it is simply people's job to hypothesize about "harmlessly" "scanning" mass transit passengers. I guess it's good that we freak out about it, to quash it earlier in the process than later. But nationwide deployment of strip search scanners at train stations isn't imminent.

steve-howard• 15 years ago

I'll let you know when I've got a few million to plunk into someone's campaign funds. That's what do something means around these parts.

eli• 15 years ago

Greyhound buses too.

suking• 15 years ago

Pretty soon they'll be scanning us to get onto freeways...

hammock• 15 years ago

Update: A TSA official responds in a statement that the “TSA has not tested the advanced imaging technology that is currently used at airports in mass transit environments and does not have plans to do so.”

This is false and I have photo evidence.

One year ago I noted that the TSA was doing naked scans (looked like mm wave) on everyone in the tunnel between the Chicago subway and the O'Hare airport, just outside the train platform in a non-sterile area and hundreds of yards away from any actual airport terminal (if you have ever gone to O'hare via the train, you will know once you get off the train it's about another quarter mile walk through a tunnel to get to the airport). I spoke to an agent that was there on site and he confirmed they were "doing tests." Told me they were not stopping anyone that day based on what they saw in the scans, but I would have guessed they would radio intelligence to the airport personnel if they saw anything suspicious.

Here's the photo[1] I took of the scanning station- there were two set up on either side in the tunnel such that you could not exit or enter the subway station without passing in front of it.

[1]http://twitpic.com/35njtt

lurchpop• 15 years ago

Here's another story about the vans from the year before: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/08/24/full-bo...

Ryanmf• 15 years ago

On the topic of roving backscatter vans:

“From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,”…says [Joe Reiss, Vice President of Marketing at backscatter developer American Science and Engineering, Rensselaer '85, Northeastern MBA '91].

In that case, Joe, it sounds as if you're a bit too ignorant and/or selfish to be making that call.

watmough• 15 years ago

Look for a white cubic box, with vents, on a F350-type / Dodge Sprinter chassis.

I'll be keeping my eyes open for these. It seems surprising that this can be permitted, bearing in mind the radiation being broadcast from these machines, in order to produce the backscatter for imaging.

Any in Texas, are likely trolling 59 in and out of the main border crossings for drugs.

VladRussian• 15 years ago

Seems like tin foil hats, jackets and pants are going to be in fashion

aantthony• 15 years ago

It should say "Documents CONFIRM TSA Proposal To Body-Scan Pedestrians, Train Passengers". I mean, it's not like it's a secret.

brc2• 15 years ago

But the TSA (and Homeland Security) is now a full-fledged government bureaucracy, complete with a power structure, employeees with statutory rights, and inter-agency links, and no doubt pocket congress members with 'TSA creates jobs' talking points.

The job of the people at the TSA will always to be to ensure the TSA not only continues to exist, that it continues to grow and become more important. Any actual security outcomes will be a side effect, not the primary goal. At no point will the management say 'know what? We're actually wasting money here, let's recommend to congress that we be disbanded'.

It's madness when creating these institutions not to put a self-destruct clause in them. Ie, In when created in 2001, it would be decreed that in 2011, a review will be organised to see if the TSA has actually materially affected terrorism activities.

Of course, the review would be a whitewash, but at least it would keep people remembering that this was a temporary solution to a temporary problem.

SkyMarshal• 15 years ago

>It's madness when creating these institutions not to put a self-destruct clause in them. Ie, In when created in 2001, it would be decreed that in 2011, a review will be organised to see if the TSA has actually materially affected terrorism activities.

Better yet, a sunset clause, where the agency is automatically disbanded 10 years later unless explicitly renewed by Congress for another ten years. Slightly better chance of it getting disbanded then.

JoeAltmaier• 15 years ago

The Post Office seems to keep getting funded...

agreenberg2• 15 years ago

Just discovering this thread...I'm the author of the article linked above, and I actually wrote a follow-up to the story a couple of days later.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/09/tsa-nev...

The DHS was totally dishonest with me in their comments on the initially story, and less than fully honest even in their subsequent follow-up response to my questions. I was disappointed that only a fraction of the readers who read the first post noticed the second, so I'm glad hammock below was able to point out the DHS's contradictions.

Thanks to everyone for reading.

zacharycohn• 15 years ago

Thanks for updating us. Can't you update this article?

agreenberg2• 15 years ago

Done.

nodata2• 15 years ago

Don't be disappointed. Include a link to the new article.

kevin_jacobs• 15 years ago

This is from March 2011, I haven't found any newer articles on the same subject. It seems no new news on this front since then?

LeafStorm• 15 years ago

I don't know whether they were referring to intercity passenger rail (Amtrak) with this, but what's rather surprising is that now Amtrak, at least in North Carolina, has just about zero security. You line up on the platform, you show the conductor your ticket when you get on the train (or say that you need to buy one), and then there's a random chance that your ID will be checked after you sit down and the train gets underway (mine never has been). Checked baggage is probably checked (not sure), but they don't even run your carry-ons through an X-ray scanner or ask you to walk through a metal detector.

At most stations the platform is at least locked most of the time (even if it's only with a gate and a chain-link fence), but at some (like Raleigh) anyone can walk up to the platform at any time. Yet despite all this I can't recall ever hearing of a violent act of terrorism being committed on a train.

yock• 15 years ago

Side-stepping the obvious civil liberty issues, where exactly does the "Transportation" Safety Administration derive its authority to screen people who aren't using public transport?

Documents Reveal TSA Proposal To Body-Scan Pedestrians, Train Passengers

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