Comment Period for TSA Proposed Nude Body Scanner Rule Ends; 97% Opposed

http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/jonathan-corbett-publishes-comment-for-tsas-proposed-nude-body-scanner-rule/

by tsaoutourpants • 13 years ago

60 41 13 years ago

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tsaoutourpants• 13 years ago

Happy to report this major victory to you guys. The TSA for years has cited badly worded and poorly conducted opinion polls to show that America is ambivalent towards the nude body scanners and pat-downs. This is a clear blow to any argument of a public mandate.

krichman2• 13 years ago

But they aren't going to remove them because wealthy people with connections have a vested interest in selling Rapiscanners to airports.

fnordfnordfnord3• 13 years ago

Thanks for posting the link to their webpage in here Sunday. I don't want to miss any chance to fling poo at the TSA.

edit: FYI, My comment hasn't appeared yet. When I submitted it, the form had a notice that comments were subject to moderation and that it may take (a few days?).

danielweber2• 13 years ago

A "badly worded and poorly conducted opinion poll" is surely more scientific than a call-in survey triggered by outraged groups.

jrockway2• 13 years ago

Why are we outraged about the body scanners, again? They don't show the TSA agents any pictures of you, just "yes" or "no". They don't delay lines anymore, either, you step in, the thing spins around, you step out, and in like 2 seconds, you get the "yes" or "no".

(There were reasonable complaints about backscatter x-ray machines, but those are gone now and only millimeter-wave units are in airports. So there's no nudity and no ionizing radiation anymore.)

I dunno, I'm just not outraged. The machines seem pretty nice, to be perfectly honest.

lukifer3• 13 years ago

I'm deeply skeptical about any procedure involving radiation that isn't a medical necessity, even though I'm sure the vendors have commissioned plenty of studies to support their alleged safety. (It's telling that they don't make pilots and employees go through the scanners daily.) I already get enough naturally-occurring radiation by living high above sea level.

wl• 13 years ago

Your objection applied to the backscatter X-ray machines that are no longer in use. It doesn't apply to the millimeter wave machines, which do not expose passengers to any ionizing radiation.

ghayes• 13 years ago

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe the machines do take nude pictures but only show the analyzed image to the operator. Additionally, it's a question whether the machines make sense in regards to a cost-benefit analysis. Finally, privacy is still important and we shouldn't use tactics that are unnecessary. Funneling some percentage of users through the machines while allowing most to pass through metal detectors may be an effective strategy that doesn't involve analyzing nude photographs of every passenger.

fnordfnordfnord3• 13 years ago

That's a recent change that occurred only after many demonstrated cases of abuse by TSA staff, and lots of whining about it.

krichman2• 13 years ago

My opinions:

1. You can't trust them to not save the images and use or accidentally leak the images later, some scanners in courthouses were found to be saving images.

2. It's not reasonable to require knowledge of everything one carries on one's person.

3. Experts seem to think they (scanners) are easily defeatable, in which case metal detectors and chemical sniffers are equally capable.

4. The owners of the scanning company are involved with Homeland Security so we are basically rewarding someone for having a gigantic conflict of interest.

Radix_2• 13 years ago

Because we'd like to meet our family directly at the gate?

I like your argument but meeting family at the gate was one of my favorite things as a child. And it won't be enough unless I can arbitrarily check through security to meet my family.

danielweber2• 13 years ago

That has nothing to do with the scanners and everything to do with requiring a boarding pass.

The TSA does a lot wrong, but just because the TSA does it doesn't mean it's wrong.

tzs• 13 years ago

One hypothesized mechanism for how cells detect damaged sections of DNA involves variations in how currents flow along the DNA. Conceivably, non-ionizing radiation could cause current flow that could interfere with this mechanism.

I believe this is currently (no pun intended!) speculative, but until we know a lot more I'd prefer to be cautious.

estebank3• 13 years ago

Regarding convenience, just travel internationally and you will see just how "convenient" and "enjoyable" the USA is to get in and out compared to other countries.

As for the machines and process themselves, there are plenty other complains that are far more important than speed, convenience or how much the UI shows. Sadly, usually and kind of ironically the only TSA agent that treats me as anything else than a piece of meat is the guy doing a pat-down, and that guy has me literally by the balls.

fnordfnordfnord3• 13 years ago

Air/Train/Bus travel in China during the 2008 Olympics wasn't as troublesome or degrading as in the US (but was still more than it ought to be).

peferron2• 13 years ago

I travel internationally and do not notice a stark difference between the security checkpoint procedures in the USA and in other countries. The only difference I can recall is having to stop for a few seconds in the millimeter scanner instead of just walking through a traditional gate, but this is hardly a major difference. Can you mention anything else?

pekk• 13 years ago

I don't like the scanners. But if you think America is the worst, I wonder if you have traveled through Schiphol. Or Israel. Getting the verbal third degree is also quite invasive and uncomfortable.

PavlovsCat3• 13 years ago

As far as I'm concerned, all of this airport security--the cameras, the questions, the screenings, the searches--is just one more way of reducing your liberty and reminding you that they can fuck with you anytime they want. Because that's the way Americans are now. They're willing to trade away a little of their freedom in exchange for the feeling---the illusion---of security.

-- George Carlin (who said that before the TSA, before watchlists and no-fly lists)

By the way, are the ports still wide open? They sure were for years after 9/11, and I guess that nobody smuggled in a container of nukes was mostly because nobody cared to do that. Kinda like why the big guy in the supermarket queue doesn't just start bashing everyone to death with the cash register, even though they could.

Human decency prevents terrorism for the most part, not security. The actual good you could do with the TSA budget, bleh. New scanners just make that worse. So now the rapist is using your money to buy condoms. I admit that is better than non-protected rape. But other than that...

616c• 13 years ago

Your point is valid. I was told by a high school admissions counselor, back when such topics were interesting enough to consider counter-terrorism and terrorism research interesting (thank God I saw the light and chose different interests over time) that the graduate of my high school who went to one of the most prestigious schools in that field (St. Andrews in Scotland, if you can believe; lots of weirdos in the CT scene graduated from there because professors are field policy guys with more war stories and connections than common sense) had interesting experiences.

He ended up doing CT for the state of Illinois. His greatest concern, as told to me, was water systems. There is terribly security at water reservoirs and water utility systems, worse than nuclear powerplants and other sensitive infrastructure. The simulations they did with predicting terrorists poisoning water supplies made him lose sleep, regularly, and he was one guy in one of fifty states who was paid to focus on such things, because he, not others felt it was a priority.

At the end of the day physical and digital security are similar: no network can be 100% secure and everything is mitigation, so is living in the real world. Terrorism can be stopped and not mitigated. People who believe the opposite are the assholes who sold out and are selling out what little is left.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

I guess that nobody smuggled in a container of nukes was mostly because nobody cared to do that. Kinda like why the big guy in the supermarket queue doesn't just start bashing everyone to death with the cash register, even though they could.

Human decency only goes so far. A non-trivial portion of the population are fucks. But in civilized society, even the fucks know that they can't take on the whole crowd, and they know that justice will be swift, which is why they stay in line. But the promise of swift justice does not exist everywhere, and "human decency" only does so much. When I lived in Bangladesh, we lived in a walled compound (iron gate, high concrete walls with broken glass embedded on top), in a nice neighborhood in the capital city of Dhaka. One night we had an entire bus full of thieves show up at the gate demanding to be let in. It took the police almost an hour to show up, during which time the thieves threatened to run the bus through the gate.

The difference between the U.S. and Bangladesh is not that the former does not have indecent people. It's that in the former, such brazen lawlessness would have been met by a SWAT team, while in the latter a few cops showed up when they felt like it.

Also, ask Israel how well the whole "human decency" thing is going for them.

mikeash• 13 years ago

I object to spending large quantities of my tax money on useless things.

gergles• 13 years ago

It's more invasive than necessary and doesn't work any better than metal detectors. Why should the default position be "they're not that bad"? Any search at all I'm not thrilled with and the metal detector is about the extent of what I'm willing to permit as 'reasonable' without suspicion and without a warrant.

bulatb• 13 years ago

The headline seems to be misleading: it's 97% of the last 100 comments.

michool• 13 years ago

Whatever the rationale for body scanners they aren't an effective means to detect explosives for the simple reason that they don't see inside the body. There are already plenty of cases, in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan to name two, of bombers hiding explosives in their anal canal.

jmadsen• 13 years ago

There are so many potential jokes about the 3%, I can't even think where to start