There have been child suicide bombers in the Mideast, so if you exempt those under 18 from going through…
The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.
Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to “virtual strip-searching” and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.
Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.
They also face demands from civil liberties groups for safeguards to ensure that images from the £80,000 scanners, including those of celebrities, do not end up on the internet.
Is it not “Retention, transmission or storing of…..” that is the offence?
Is it not also the case, in law, that ‘security considerations’ can, and do, by-pass/overrule such regulations?
Is it not also the case that under existing ‘National Security’ regulations there are legal grounds for actually refusing access to such photographs/information under the ‘Threat to National Security’?
There are Laws, there are ‘regulations’ and there are other restrictions, most of which are unpublished and of which most of us have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever – by the way – we have no (legal) entitlement to such knowledge under the rules either.
Only an idiot would believe that security and freedoms or entitlements or rights have any universality. Sad, ain’t it? (But true)
no way they can stop one of these scanned images from leaking out into the world, nothing is ever perfect especially when people are involved with the system.
It’s called a cell phone camera. Everyone has them and you can take pictures of anything without looking like you’re taking a picture. I expect full body scan pictures of celebrities to hit the net within one or two months.
Where the fuck is the ACLU?
They sure have toned down their rhetoric after Obama took office. The lack of outrage on their website makes it sound like Guantanamo is shut down and Patriot Act was defeated.
#4 Oh, now you like what the ACLU does? Did you want a preemptive lawsuit from the ACLU?
Did you bother checking the ACLU website (which does have a position on this) ?
No. Because you are an airbag like the rest of the GOP sheep.
A newly-leaked classified memo from deep in the Department of Homeland Security is reminiscent of an old video game…
“All your genitals are belong to us.”
😉
I don’t understand why a person is looking at this image at all. Just use the thing as an input to a NN that is trained to see suspicious irregularities, then the person gets flagged down for extra inspection. I mean, image processing systems are used to make sure the drizzle of chocolate on candies is quality assured, why can’t this be done by computer??? Then the only output the machine ever makes is red light or green light.
Also, why is there no all in once machine yet??? Metal-detector/puffer/enhanced scanner??? I bet such a machine, combined with a NN made with off the shelf software would do a better job than the yahoos that the TSA hires to run all this machinery.
Would it be easy to adapt to the body scanner? Is all that expense easy to foil?
Since a pattern has appeared of terrorists attempting to smuggle explosive materials how difficult would it be to take a cue from the drug smugglers and conceal the material in a condom up his anus?
One bathroom break later and an enabled weapon appears for the suicide bomber.
According to the article: “Airport officials say the scanner image is only seen by a single security officer in a remote location before it is deleted.”
Oh great, so there’ll be a perve TSA guard in a “remote location” with a bottle of hand-lotion and his pants around his ankles getting a full view of every passenger.
Is anyone surprised that airlines are having financial problems?
#8 – I doubt a bomber (or smuggler) would need to go to that much trouble. Simply bribe the cleaning staff of the airport washrooms to smuggle whatever you want into the toilets (past the security checkpoints).
Or just walk down the wrong-way past the sleeping TSA guard, like this guy.
Swallowed, in the fashion of a drug mule, explosives could be set off while the individual sits unobtrusively in their seat.
#8 exactly. The scanners are expensive, monitoring them is expensive, and they get us from 99.9995% secure on domestic flights to 99.9997% secure.
…keeping in mind that we have had 19 hijackers on exactly four planes one day….on US domestic flights since what, 1976?
Do we really need more security on domestic flights?
#13 If you don’t care about the ACLU, shut your pie hole asking why the ACLU is not taking action on this. Which they are but you did not take a moment to check.
So now you claim to be in some middle ground. Basically, you stand for nothing and complain about everything. Perfect! In computer language you’re a “NO OP” instruction.
Now here’s modest proposal. Bar children from commercial flights. It will improve the flying experience for everyone else AND eliminate any child porn concerns.
They have many years ahead of them and don’t need to save time by flying. Ship the little bastards in shipping containers equipped with rest rooms and an Automat like food supply. What doesn’t kill them will make them stronger!
Maybe it’s about time we all became less self conscious about nudity, and less ashamed that we are just animals with very little body hair.
We are naked apes. Get over it.
Why do you people put up with this? Just stop flying on airplanes. Its POSSIBLE, dammit.
I like how all of the publicly released images from these scanners are the scaled down versions. Chating with my former co-worker who is now with the DHS, he showed me the true level of these scanners. Basically stand nude in from of a mirror and take a B&W pic of yourself, yep almost that good.
I told him I’m glad I left that line of work, anyone taking a scan/pic like that of my daughter, I will end your time here on Earth.
I yearn for the days of travel by horsepower, and self reliance. This society is so fucked up, it deserves to die.
#19,
Yet more evidence that these are perfectly acceptable datapoints for a NN built from off the shelf software, and no human has any reason to look at these.
The image on the front of this post is of two different people. Look at the hands.
Nice catch Chuck. “Single security officer in a remote location” = no supervision.
#23, just make the screener a woman then… and/or put a video camera on the screener. No big deal.
There, phone cameras and perverts are taken care of. Next?
Why don’t they test these scanners in prisons to detect and prevent smuggling of contraband by inmates, guards, and visitors?
Instead of wasting all this money on scanners we should use the best explosive detectors we have, K-9’s trained to find explosives. ” No artificial sensor has ever been able to match the sensitivity of a sniffer dog” Wired 9-10-09. The average cost of 1 dog + training is $10K. Have 1 dog at each line that checks each person+ bags for explosives. The also dogs have the added bonus of being smarter than most of the TSA.
Obama got it right in his speech today… hold the people in the government accountable for their failures. We knew that the underwear bomber had close tires to Al-Qaida, that he had spent weeks at a training camp, his own father went to the US embassy and told them that his son was dangerous, and the DHS desk-jockeys ignored it all, issued a visa, kept him off the no fly list. Obama made it very clear that accountability for effectively using the extensive tools that are in place will take a high priority.
Anyway, we now have one guy with a few grams of explosive in his underwear succeeding in marginalizing the liberties of law respecting Americans. Lots of whiny mama’s boys are calling for further measures “to keep America safe.” At best he could take down one airplane out of 13 million flights every year. Your fear level should be ZERO. Your odds of getting struck by lightning are 26 times higher than that of being on the plane that gets blown up. You want to worry about something real???? Worry about terrorists getting their hands on a few drums of that stuff that was ‘accidentally’ released by Union Carbide in Bhopal, India…. now that is a real terrorist threat, not this “I will blow up an airplane” fear.
As Awake hints in the above post, the next major terrorist action in the USA is unlikely to be airborne. Watch for a dirty bomb or a poisoned reservoir. Yet, the theater continues…
Full-Body Scanners are so “old technology.”
See:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/full-body-scanners-old-technology/
OK kids, *on this topic*…here is where i see the real problem with these scans..
When i was kid on up into my late 20’s I did my own B&W developing. I’ll be dammed if these do not look an awful lot like B&W NEGATIVES.
I’m sure with a little photoshoping they can be adjusted to yield near perfect photo images.
NO DOUBT, -the military already has a program that probably does exactly this: -to produce photrealistic images from microwave/EM scans taken of people through walls etc..
Given all the tools we have available to us today, this should be very easy to do with “off the shelf” software..
No doubt, very soon, there will be new laws put in place that make it a felony to possess any such images outside of “official use”
————————————
-slightly off topic “yada yada” section
In the end this is all *completely useless* because if anyone wanted to take a out a plane using conventional means..they would infiltrate the baggage/mechanic support systems of the commercial aircraft industry and simple install their explosives.
Unconventionally, there are plenty of electromagnetic pulse weapons that can FUBAR fly-by-wire aircraft and leave no trace.
This is whole x-mas bomber episode is a complete farce perpetrated by corrupt intelligence agencies to further the global fascist police state agenda of the few cabals vying for control of the planet.
They were very smart in doing it on x-mas day so that here on out, *naturally* every x-mas, the media will bombard us with reminders of that “almost fateful day on December 25, 2009” when a “Freedom and American hating MUSLIM” tried to kill a plane full of [“innocent” -of course] passengers.
(speaking of, anyone check the manifest to see who was on board? -also, given that this was the son of a banker..this may also have been a “public” message either BY or FOR the banking industry from one faction to another stating “don’t f’k with our “system” -we own you, or some other such nonsense.)
The only thing i’m sure of is that this whole event has nothing to do terrorism in the “traditional sense”
Until someone breaks the stranglehold the TPTB have on the media and our educational system (History, in particular) the majority of the public will continue to trade over every last bit of personal freedom and identity until at last, they re just put in a jail upon birth so that they have guaranteed safety from the horrors of life, from the cradle to the grave.
-Perhaps, a nation of sleepwalking ignorant idiots deserves no less..(?)
WAKE UP.
-s
I heard an El Al guy Alan Colmes’ radio show and he thinks America is nuts in how it handles airport security… especially our obsession with technology and bans on items.
Basically, he thinks the best strategy is to hire people who are highly trained at detecting deception during interviews of passengers — and then to interview everybody. (he was specifically against profiling.)
Of course, we’d have to pay those screeners well and that’s a deal-breaker with conservatives.
As is well-known now, we STILL don’t have a head of the TSA because Jim DeMint (R Asshat) is more against decently paid workers than he is against terrorists.
soundwash, No need for shop. As I said, the publicly released images are set to a lower setting than what’s used so the sheep don’t freak out on the news.
Here’s one that was released that was on a slightly higher setting:
Now, that’s not even the normal setting that’s employed, as that would be too shocking for the masses. The true setting that’s used is of an even higher resolution of the sample I posted. As I said, stand in front of a mirror and snap a B&W photo of yourself, that’s almost the true quality of what some fat ass alone in a broom closet is looking at. And as I said, you do that to my daughter, you will not be going home for dinner.