Judge Orders NYPD to Release Records on X-ray Vans

http://www.propublica.org/article/judge-orders-nypd-to-release-records-on-x-ray-vans

by JumpCrisscross • 12 years ago

272 72 12 years ago

loceng• 12 years ago

'"While this court is cognizant and sensitive to concerns about terrorism, being located less than a mile from the 9/11 site, and having seen firsthand the effects of terrorist destruction, nonetheless, the hallmark of our great nation is that it is a democracy, with a transparent government," she [Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan] wrote in her decision last month.'

tightfleece2• 12 years ago

"releasing the documents would hamper the department's ability to conduct operations and endanger the lives of New Yorkers."

Then apparently the lives of New Yorkers are protected by security through obscurity, with absolutely no evidence of efficacy and absolutely no auditable evaluation of safety.

I'm thinking that a strong education in science should be a requirement for anyone who touches these programs with a ten foot pole.

munin2• 12 years ago

There's a difference between "secrecy" and "security", and when people complain about how releasing some information would hamper / endanger lives, they mean that some amount of secrecy is involved in protecting stuff.

Computer nerds often don't understand Kerckhoffs's law this way. The security of a system should not be dependent on obscurity, but some amount of security will depend on secrecy, i.e. your private key / password.

So for example, the list of all confidential informants is kept secret. The release of that list of informants would "hamper the department's ability to conduct operations and endanger the lives of New Yorkers", in addition to endangering the lives of the informants themselves. Does that mean that it is dependent on "obscurity", or, secrecy? Yes, but that is the way it always is. There will be some information that if disclosed could result in bad things happening. "Education in science" won't help with this basic fact about the universe.

Of course, whether or not these vans genuinely represent information that should be kept secret, who knows. Often people believe that too much information should be kept secret, and when you're talking about information in a free society, we probably should accept some danger over granting someone power, but that seems to be a minority opinion...

spiritplumber• 12 years ago

If someone is shooting ionizing radiation at me, on purpose, without my permission, I want to know about it. Especially since I am helping pay for it.

If it was me doing it to them, it'd be assault.

lifeisstillgood2• 12 years ago

I suggest not comparing secrecy and security directly. I suggest the real misunderstandings are the difference between secrecy and privacy, between vulnerability and security.

tightfleece2• 12 years ago

According to Kerckhoff, "A [crypto]system should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge."

If any amount of your security depends on hiding how the system works, you have a broken system (according to said law).

Nobody is arguiung that the van passcodes or personnel files should be disclosed; those specifics are immaterial. We are asking that how the system works, and how that is evaluated, be made public, and be placed under scrutiny. Otherwise, there is no reason to believe this system does anything but provide a vector for corruption.

kyleblarson• 12 years ago

I would take that a step further. I think that a strong general education should be a requirement to work in law enforcement.

psykovsky• 12 years ago

Where I'm from it's mostly the bullies who get to join law enforcement...

toothbrush• 12 years ago

> "releasing the documents would hamper the department's ability to conduct operations and endanger the lives of New Yorkers."

Ha, am i the only one that parsed that as "releasing the documents would hamper the department's ability to {conduct operations, endanger the lives of New Yorkers}"?

mgkimsal2• 12 years ago

Nope.

Should be rewritten as a movie review:

"releasing the documents would hamper the department's ability to ... endanger the lives of New Yorkers."

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

Same goes for NSA's "protection" through mass surveillance.

"These programs work" - they said. Except for when they were actually audited and the auditors found no evidence of the programs "working".

But whether they work or fail, they always seem to ask for more surveillance powers and bigger budgets. Mike Masnick also had a good article on this:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150109/06555029648/uk-in...

I think it's more a problem of following the leads they do have. 9/11 attackers were known to be planning an attack, the Charlie attackers were also known (not through their surveillance, but from a tip from another country). But they didn't follow through.

eli• 12 years ago

Don't be silly, there are obviously some secrets the government should be able to keep in the interest of security. The names of whistleblowers, the missile launch codes.

pdkl95• 12 years ago

What I want to know is if this could be considered willful negligence. In the past (i.e. before ~WW2) knowledge about the harmful effects of some types of radiation was not "common knowledge, even among otherwise educated people.

After the bomb (esp. after the Crossroads Baker and Castle Bravo test that introduced a lot of the world to the term "fallout") and the changes seen in medicine (x=ray, cancer treatments, fears about cancer in general) I would guess that most of the population is at least aware that ionizing radiation can be dangerous, even if they do not understand the specifics.

Radiophobia and the anti-nuclear movements have certainly amplified the fears about anything involving "radiation". The fact that "radiation" means "always very dangerous" to many people is evidence of this attitude.

So I suggest that trying to claim ignorance about the potential dangers of pointing an active x-ray emitter at someone should be handled the same way as we treat claims of being ignorant about guns. For most cases, claiming "I didn't know that guns were dangerous" is going to be dismissed as an obvious lie or gross negligence. Is there any reason a jury should treat "I didn't know that using an x-ray beam was dangerous" as a valid get-out-of-jail explanation?

Note: I understand that low-level operators may not have been told how the machine works (such things would be for a court to decide). Responsibility flows upwards, and if it was a commercial product, some Professional should have had to sign off on the design. In any case, someone had to authorize these scanners... which I call mens rea.

[edit] A valid defense, of course, would be to have the results of some very rigorous safety analysis that showed there was no danger. Preferably by a 3rd party. If this study existed, I suspect it would have already been shown to the public.

lifeisstillgood2• 12 years ago

It seems the NYPDs argument is that releasing information on the vans will allow people to predict where they are (or more likely be told ala speed cameras) and so avoid them (civilians as well as criminals).

That's kind of the point of a deterrent.

You cannot scan every car on every journey, at least not without a massive spike in cancers, so this is a deterrent.

And it's a secret deterrant....

So it won't catch anyone because you can't scan everyone, and it won't deter anyone because no one knows it's there

Seems a waste

pyre• 12 years ago

Reminds me of Dr. Strangelove.

  Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday
  Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't =
  you tell the world, EH?

UnoriginalGuy• 12 years ago

They have a very interesting way of reporting radiation exposure (ditto with airport scanners). Instead of reporting the total body accumulated dose, they report the dose a single scanning beam sweep induces over a small area.

These machines use a tight beam (or several) which sweep. Each individual beam when measured in isolation likely deliver 0.1 microSievert of radiation. However the total body dose (accumulated dose) is significantly higher than that (because you'd measure the total dose delivered, rather than the total dose delivered to a small 1x1 square cross-section).

This is interesting because while the body can and does (continuously) repair DNA damage, it has diminishing returns. So 0.1 microSieverts to the entire body is totally inconsequential, however 0.1 * 100 or more? Particularly to people who are frequently scanned (or those with weakened bodies due to illness or age).

Plus these X-Ray means can and do bounce. So imagine three 1x1 cross sections, you scan the left and right, but the middle will have a measurable radiation exposure even if not directly exposed to the X-Ray beam (partly because the beams are imprecise but partly because of reflected X-Rays).

Honestly 0.1 μSv is the headline figure. What is the full body accumulated figure? I'm going to guess as much as .30 μSv per scan.

athenot• 12 years ago

Also, these scanners are not operated by trained radiologists, and I am highly doubtful that those who do operate them have been given adequate clinical training—much less care about the clinical ramifications.

csbrooks• 12 years ago

"Honestly 0.1 μSv is the headline figure. What is the full body accumulated figure? I'm going to guess as much as .30 μSv per scan."

Should .30 be 3.0? Or...?

ak217• 12 years ago

The health concerns of radiation exposure of backscatter X-ray have never been properly characterized at all. One specific concern that was raised with airport scanners is that existing methods of estimating safety limit dosage simply don't work with backscatter, which deposits the majority of radiation in the surface layers of the subject (i.e. in the person's skin), which has much lower volume (and therefore higher radiation absorbed per volume) than the whole body. (http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2010/11/5810/ucsf-scientists-speak-...)

The privacy concerns are peanuts compared to the potentially massive harm that the X-rays caused in terms of skin cancer susceptibility.

The worst case is pretty scary and regardless of the outcome, I think the government (we the taxpayers) will be on the hook for huge liability litigation in the future regarding these machines.

It has legitimate uses for scanning cargo, and I see little issue with imaging a car if there's nobody in it, but one of these things driving down the street irradiating everyone is potentially a massive health problem.

tunap• 12 years ago

"I see little issue with imaging a car if there's nobody in it"

If you were to spend some time at a border checkpoint sitting in a chainlink cage(literally) in the accompaniment of other travelers as your vehicles are batch scanned you may change your mind. More so if that checkpoint happens to be located 100+ miles north of the border.

jpmattia• 12 years ago

The health concerns of radiation exposure of backscatter X-ray have never been properly characterized at all.

To amplify: The former head of homeland security profited handsomely from their approval. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12...

I wouldn't want to be in his shoes if there is ever a larger-than-average number of cancers in the TSA agents. Even if it is merely statistical fluctuation, his conflict-of-interest may come back to haunt him in ways he has not anticipated.

cjslep• 12 years ago

Instead of reporting the total body accumulated dose, they report the dose a single scanning beam sweep induces over a small area.

A major problem radiation dosimetry has is definitions are easily confused. The NRC's dose limits for individual members of the public [0] dictate a total effective dose equivalent of 1 mSv a year. The confusing part is keeping all the numbers straight if it is an effective dose, effective dose equivalent, or a dose equivalent. I'll get back to why I bring this up in a second.

I do want to say that I don't see the reference you are getting the 0.1 μSv per 1x1 (cm square?) area from the article (just mentions a per-sweep radiation measurement but doesn't report what kind of dose that is). However, from your sources it actually doesn't surprise me they are reporting the radiation dosage that way, if they are reporting it as an equivalent dose.

An equivalent dose normalizes for radiation type. A gamma or X-ray is weighted much less than alphas (typically 1 vs 20 weighing factors, depending on what standard you follow). But the equivalent dose does NOT take into account what part of a human's body you are irradiating. If I had to choose between a pinky finger and my thyroid, you can probably imagine which one I would pick to be subject to irradiation. Instead, the effective dose accounts for the different parts of the body (and effective dose equivalent for both). This is why I suspect the manufacturer preferred the equivalent dose as opposed to the effective dose - they are normalizing for the type of radiation but not the part of the body they hit. There is the ICRP's notion of an "ideal adult" but each person's natural variation of geometry (height, girth, etc) would skew the manufacturer's number in some way. Of course effective dose is still imperfect as it contains a general biological potency assumption but it would mean a lot more to the public than a count of gamma rays and their energies.

What is the full body accumulated figure? I'm going to guess as much as .30 μSv per scan.

That would depend on the van's speed, its beam patterns (spatially and temporally), the position of the person, etc. Honestly I can't tell if that is reasonable or not, but (returning to the NRC limits for the general public) keep in mind that the van would have to drive by you 1,000 times in a year to reach .3 mSv of your 1 mSv regulated limit with your guess. Of course, there are people out there that put lead-foil hats on and distrust the regulatory limit.

[0]http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part020/pa...

upofadown• 12 years ago

You can look at this the other way as well. The scanning beam only causes a low exposure at a point because it is scanning very quickly. The peak radiation is quite high. We know the dangers of cumulative dose because that is most useful in the case of low level exposure over a long time. Could it be possible that the risks are different for brief intense exposure?

nullc2• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model

If it holds, it's 'good' for the scanners because their high power shouldn't be penalized; bad for them because any dosage increases risk.

ZeljkoS• 12 years ago

From http://as-e.com/products-solutions/cargo-vehicle-inspection/...:

"Dose to Cargo: Less than 0.1 microSievert (μSv) per scan (equivalent to 10 microRem (μrem)), at an average speed of 5 km/h (3 mph) at a scan distance of 1.5 m (5 ft). Should a stowaway accidentally be scanned, the effective dose is well below the ANSI specified limit for accidental exposure and is equivalent to flying two minutes at altitude."

In other words:

a) "Beam" is not over a small area but over the entire scanning area.

b) The 0.1 μSv dose is for entire cargo.

c) The total body dose in above case is therefore much below 0.1 μSv (because person is much smaller than cargo).

Also read this: http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/PublicHealth/...

medecau• 12 years ago

Would a Geiger tube detect these X-Rays?

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8875

I'm thinking Arduino boards and webcams.

avn2109• 12 years ago

Why not just come up with a gas flow counter? That's what they do in real life rad labs.

fnordfnordfnord3• 12 years ago

I've built a number of these and it would be a challenge to make a robust, portable one. Mass flow controllers are expensive and sensitive, and carrying around a supply of ethane or other gas would be inconvenient; even if cool. The detectors themselves also tend to be quite sensitive (to motion, RFI, and everything else), though much of that could probably be overcome.

tdicola• 12 years ago

You can pick a great kit from MightyOhm that has the tube and supporting electronics to power it. It outputs data on a serial connection so it's easy to read from an Arduino. Check it out here: https://www.adafruit.com/products/483

It's best for detecting gamma rays and really can't detect alpha or beta rays, so for example a smoke detector's americurium source won't really set it off but old uranium glaze cookware will drive it crazy. Not sure about x-rays but I bet it would catch them since they're pretty high energy and penetrating.

throwaway76252• 12 years ago

It seems like this would do the trick:

http://www.polimaster.com/products/electronic_dosimeters/pm1...

At least if your phone could alert you when you're being irradiated you could take note.

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

> "The X-ray vans—which reportedly cost between $729,000 and $825,000 each—are designed to find organic materials such as drugs and explosives."

As much as I don't like this at least explosives are a good reasoning for using them. Drugs? Come on! Exposing citizens to radiation, no matter how little, so you can find people in possession of drugs is ludicrous. Every time you think the war on drugs has reached the height of stupidity they raise the bar even further.

mgkimsal2• 12 years ago

but but but ... sales of drugs might be used to fund terrorism (tm) !!!!

Seems to me, reading between the lines, you sympathize with terrorists.

godDLL• 12 years ago

/end sarcasm

tesq5• 12 years ago

The assumption that the public can be exposed to potentially harmful radiation by people with a badge and no accountable way of verifying any relevant degree of training, study or certification is equally as ludicrous.

There is no justification for violating the privacy of and imposing potential health dangers on the public.

pluma2• 12 years ago

Exposing citizens to potentially harmful radiation in order to protect citizens from potentially harmful substances. Typical War on Drugs logic.

johansch• 12 years ago

(Swedish. Politically speaking right-wing in that spectrum. In the US political spectrum; probably centrist.)

If I were a NYC citizen, I'd approve of a police authority that was innovative enough to bring these things onto the streets. NYC is a terrorism magnet, as has been shown.

learc83• 12 years ago

That's not the problem; their are ways to use this that don't violate the constitution. The problem is refusal to release information on what safety standards, if any, they are following.

Customs uses these at the border, but they make people get out of their cars. There are reports of NYPD ordering people to drive through these scanners.

Maybe this is safe, maybe it's not, but I don't trust a city police department to determine that.

TillE• 12 years ago

Putting aside September 11th (which would not have been prevented by x-raying vans), there have been zero actual bombings in New York City since 1993, just one pathetic attempt. And very few other incidents.

It's not a city that lives under constant fear of terrorist attack, and as such I wouldn't expect to see invasive measures like this except in response to a very specific threat.

blueprint• 12 years ago

You know what else is a terrorism magnet? US foreign policy. Employment of such technology might seem innovative from the surface, but you appear to completely ignore the real causes of why they must even consider bringing such technology into use. Their participation in what they themselves do not understand will only contribute to the causes of terrorism which originate from international actions by the USA. A human society functions much like a human being. They act and react according to what is inside of them.

By the way, I've been an NYC resident for 17 years and was born in the USA.

ceejayoz• 12 years ago

NYC is a terrorism magnet, as has been shown.

You must be kidding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorist_incidents_in...

fnordfnordfnord3• 12 years ago

>But most Federal Drug Administration regulations for medical X-rays do not apply to security equipment, leaving the decision of when and how to use the scanners up to law enforcement agencies such as the NYPD.

Brilliant.

tesq5• 12 years ago

What implications does this program have for the 4th amendment right to not have a search conducted without a warrant? If they're used on the public at large, generating mass probable cause or a blanket expectation that anyone could be a dangerous terrorist as justification is a scary precedent.

It's reminiscent of the FLIR vans used to catch marijuana growers that the Supreme Court determined to be mobile Constitution violators. They are still being used to bust people who like to grow Christmas trees or tomatoes indoors.

I feel bad for the minority that are terrorized by authorities suspecting them of engaging in criminal activities based on their nationality or skin color and fuzzy scans of their businesses, homes and vehicles.

seanp2k2• 12 years ago

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

What happened? War on drugs, 9/11, profit motive, and political motives.

xnull2guest• 12 years ago

And rising tension between nuclear powers.

tesq5• 12 years ago

Power will always opt for securing and expanding its hold, and in its paranoid frenzy it is evident that rights, people and property are expendable to the vanguards of absolute security.

I don't think anything happened that hasn't been happening since that quote was written. Those are just some new excuses to solidify the grip that the ruling class has at home and abroad.

throwaway76252• 12 years ago

The use of these vans seems like an opportunity for some investigative journalism.

Setup dosimeters to detect the x-rays as the vans pass by, record a video of it happening, then tell the pedestrians nearby that their government just irradiated them without their knowledge or consent and see what they say in response.

Or setup stands that detect the x-rays and automatically announce over a loudspeaker that people standing nearby are being irradiated an observe the reaction.

If the police are not confident that the responses will be welcoming, they should not be doing this.

serf• 12 years ago

I wonder how many shipments of dosimeter badges arrived 'like new'.

(I kid)

pluma2• 12 years ago

Fourth Amendment issues aside, as a non-American this strikes me as an obvious violation of Human Rights (especially the right to bodily integrity in particular).

I'm not sure what the situation is like in the US, but I'm fairly certain that in my country you couldn't be subjected to an x-ray scan without consent, unless there is sufficiently strong suspicion and an x-ray scan would be the least invasive option (e.g. this is why you can be forced to give a blood sample if you refuse to take a breathalyser test when assumed to DUI).

I have no idea how random drive-by x-rays on the street could be considered reasonable and not in violation of Human Rights unless you're in a freakin warzone.

Judge Orders NYPD to Release Records on X-ray Vans

Related Stories