While it's encouraging to see such a thorough debunking of the latest security theater technology, it's always been security theater... Allow me a few quick anecdotes:
My family is friends with a gentleman who was a green beret medic during Viet Nam, and later worked for the CIA. Once, when I was younger (and metal detectors were the norm), we had the opportunity to fly with him. He entered the metal detector before me, and was waved along. Once we were past the detectors, he turned to me and said, "Guess how many blades I have on me?" He then proceded to produce seven blades. They were a combination of ceramic blades (undetectable by the metal detector and sharper than most metal as well) and traditional blades held or placed on him so that they would not set off the detector. It was part of his CIA training to be able to do that.
I went to college at Stevens Institute of Technology. The Chemical Engineering department there has a lab known as the Highly Filled Materials Institute. When I was an undergraduate, I got a tour of the lab. They informed me that they had been working on an extruder that they were selling simultaneously to Picatinny Arsenal and Hersey. It turns out that C4 and Chocolate are both colloidal suspensions with nearly identical properties. A consequence of this is that in the X-ray machines used in airports, plastic explosives are indistinguishable from chocolate.
Shortly after 9/11 my father, a very frequent traveler, had forgotten his nail clippers in his carry-on luggage. Predictably, they were confiscated. When I greeted him at the airport, he remarked on how ridiculous that was, as he produced his fountain pen from his jacket pocket. "They let me on with this," he said. "I could have stabbed anyone in the eye with this and they'd be dead. What was I going to do with nail clippers?"
I used to build a detector for explosives in academia that is now being marketed to the TSA. To get funding for these projects, its pretty standard to rip another technology apart, point out all of its flaws, then argue why yours is better. But every technology has their drawbacks and ways of skirting around it. Today, most technology deployed is more as a deterrent and less as a counter-measure.
You want to know another way to hide illicit items in those body scanners? Surround the items in water.
There are also certain materials that give off false positives and most likely the software will scan the image response against a bank of known materials. I wrote pattern detection software that did just this. Oddly enough, cheese is one of them. So stick your knife in a nice big piece of cheddar and you might make it through just fine.
There's a simple explanation - the authorities' main priority is to prevent copycat attacks.
The most embarassing thisg possible for TSA would be an exact repeat of 9/11 - same weapons (wasn't it box cutters?) etc. So that's what they target first.
A new kind of attack is harder to predict and easier for the authorities to explain by saying "nothing like this has ever happened before, there was no way we could have prepared for it." And there's no way they could cover all possibilities anyway.
And to be fair, copycat attacks do happen (e.g. July 21, 2005 in London) so it is not a total waste.
I used to work at the airport and one of the odder duties was to test the screeners every few days with metal gun, grenade and bomb shaped items. The guy who trained me had a couple ways of getting them past without fail if he wanted to (usually he didn't care because they failed enough if they were put through normally on the belt).
The sad thing is these are the exact items they are supposed to be looking for and the things they are best equipped to detect and still a 20%+ failure rate.
You remind me of the occasional TSA "good catch" where they find some weed stashed in a jar of peanut butter. Peanut butter and C4 have the same density. Not a good place to hide your weed. ;)
>It was part of his CIA training to be able to do that.
In the '90s, long before 9/11, I was traveling with a girlfriend. She didn't want to remove her belt with a big metal buckle so she just went through the metal detector with it on. The machine buzzed and the agent sent her through again. A female agent looked sympathetic and told her to twist her belt buckle horizontally so it wouldn't set off the machine. That was my intro to security theater.
Moral of the story is that if you're a pretty white girl, you don't need CIA training to learn security secrets from lazy guards.
I cannot speak to the CIA training but I've received some concealed weapon scenario training mostly developed from lessons learned at penitentiaries. It is a terrible thing to be impressed by but inmate ingenuity staggers the mind. You've likely had several items in your carry on that could do much worse than the pen to eye (which I don't think would be fatal). In the attack tree, a shiv smuggled past the checkpoint would need to have the potential to coerce the cockpit before it would factor in to a risk matrix for the plane.
I served in Special Forces before and after 9/11. The 'security theater' points that many of you make are valid. I don't, however, believe the reactionary measures were to calm the fears of the American people. The severe restriction placed on travelers is similar to a trend of restrictions placed upon soldiers following 9/11. The reaction is CYA for senior leadership/command.
Accountability became a tremendous focus following the early campaigns following 9/11. A single casualty was regarded as a devastating loss. Clearing buildings early in the bloodshed of Iraq taught many commanders that the peacetime tactics largely learned from SWAT were not as effective in combat. The procedure was too slow for such a dynamic and hostile environment. Too many soldiers died because the common procedure for clearing a building broke down in structures of irregular layout and in cities crawling with hostiles. Before commanders and NCOs were prepared to blame the procedures, however, they were taking accountability for the loss.
An after action review (AAR) follows every mission and leaders are encouraged to highlight their mistakes before someone else must do it for them. An atmosphere of blame settled in while civilians back CONUS were tiring of the involvement. Casualties were frequent enough that many ODAs had suffered through a few. For most, it was their first time facing a grieving widow with a young child hugging her leg. Those stories, coupled with the blame, changed the landscape of command. CONOPS that were once routinely approved were rejected for increasingly vague reasons. Ultimately, the tone was that the risk was too great compared with the operational gain- almost like the soldier was too valuable to put in harm's way. But we signed up for that. The truth, I suspect, was that the appetite for risk taking at the senior levels was shrinking. If an ODA lost a man, the mission's CONOP would be scrutinized for evidence that all of the risks were accounted for, that the courses of action reflected sound decision making when assuming risk, that the operational gain justified the risk, and that good faith efforts were made to mitigate perceived risks. The AAR became a trial. While I was working through these challenges during deployments, I believe something similar was happening with security measures and leadership back home.
Creating an illusion of safety seems less likely the hope than creating an exemption from accountability. Negligence would be too likely the charge if tight restrictions were not put in place.
It really is all just security theater... keeping the peanut gallery scared, entertained... and at the same time self-satisfied about their unearned 'exceptionalism'...
BTW, has it occurred to anyone that someone intending a terrorist act could just blow up a carry-on before ever getting to the ridiculous scanner...
It'll shut down the airport for sure... and do it at a couple of airports simultaneously and you'll shut down the whole network for a day or two...
Stop letting government treat us like childish idiots... yes... things could happen... reasonable precautions should be taken. But this isn't a smart approach.
after being sick of trying to find a light for a cigarette after getting off a flight I started smuggling lighters with me onto flights. Over 30 international flights now and not once have they found the lighter.
it took me two flights of trial and error to work out the right method to smuggle it through. security theatre indeed.
Just more security theatre and corrupt politicians (guess who runs the companies the scanners are bought from).
The reality is that they can't keep weapons and drugs out of prisons where there are no freedoms, and there is plenty of time to be as invasive as you want to visitors and residents.
Additionally the security system has failed if the point you pick up the bad guys is by some low paid grunt at the airport staring at a screen. The point of airport security should be to catch occasional idiots and that is about it - something any metal detector can do.
The reality is that anyone determined can get through any security system and wreak terror. The response is to not be terrorised. It is to live well and not in fear. It is to have made their actions completely pointless.
Airport security is a stupid idea, it's a waste of money, and it's there for only one reason: to make white people feel safe! That's all it's for. To provide a feeling, an illusion, of safety in order to placate the middle class. Because the authorities know they can't make airplanes safe; too many people have access. You'll notice the drug smugglers don't seem to have a lot of trouble getting their little packages on board, do they?......
...and instead, we freak out as a nation, flush our civil liberties down the toilet to feel "safe", and let our country fall apart in the wake of our fears.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Bravo, USA, bravo. Osama is still #winning because we're still dealing with his terror of >10 years ago. Let that sink in for a bit....this is exactly what he wanted.
The response is to not be terrorised. It is to live well and not in fear.
An interesting comparison is a popular Israeli song from a few years back: Yalla Ya Nasrallah (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8pVvJIzllA). They respond to (not merely a single act, but frequent!) terrorism with taunts, humor, and an attitude of defiance.
I can imagine what a parallel song would sound like (Bring it on Osama / Blow up all the buildings you want . . . ). It would never have been written here. It would never have become popular. I see in that an indictment of the culture.
Hi Guys, Jon here, the creator of the TSA video you're discussing. Thanks for picking this story up. As a tech guy myself, I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.
How are you dealing with the legal bills? Do you have a team of lawyers, or a legal background as well (I see you went to Stevens Institute, so I'm guessing you have an engineering background.)
Even if you were forced to stand sideways, if you had objects hanging down the sides of the inside of your legs, would it still be visible? I would think that the outer part of the leg would block anything on the inside of the legs.
Rather than get rid of the body scanners, i think they'll simply just require you to stand sideways as well, or add a scanner on the side of the machine.
Creator of the video here. The other posters are correct that it's not simply a color change, it's that the backscatter effect reflects similarly from the object as it does from the wall of the device. There are no quick fixes: standing sideways might work, but now screening time doubles (which is actually a big deal to the TSA), the radiation dose doubles, and the machine's software isn't designed for that. There are different scanner manufacturers that have made machines that address this problem, but do so with 5 scans -- 5 times the radiation. Plus, there are other faults to the nude body scanners, and this is just the one I chose to publish. The scanners need to go.
That would be a reasonable and most probable bureaucratic response to this issue (apart from the option to simply ignore it), but it would double the radiation received and increase inconvenience. Ironically, the opposite of what the guy is fighting for.
I once got "sharp weapons" (a manicure kit) through London's Heathrow airport.
I was connecting from Shanghai and had stupidly left a souvenir manicure kit in my bag... they found it, but after some pleading allowed me to keep it.
As per usual, I picked up a bottle of liquor at the duty free in Shanghai before I left...
Not sure if I was meant to inform them I was connecting, or they simply forgot to do their jobs... but apparently I was meant to have my liquor in a sealed "official duty free" bag when I landed at heathrow.
Long story short, I got the full attention of about 10 security officers when checking through security in Heathrow. They were entirely concerned with the liquor I had purchased in shanghai, and were so vocal about the whole thing that I personally witnessed the xray machine man turn around and see what the problem was.
Everybody was trying to be the next big hero, when the only problem was I didn't have the right security bag, and who knows what else I might have had in my carry on? (Hint: I had "weapons", I mean nailclippers).
Summary: The background around the person is black in the scanner.
Place the object slightly distant from the person so it's also in the background (i.e. not silhouetted by the person), and the object and the background will look the same to the scanner.
A pretty good video, but it is not quite convincing enough for me to email to family and friends. Still, kudos to the guy who did it.
BTW, the first time I went through the backscatter scanner, I had a killer sinus headache within about 30 seconds. I went from feeling great to shitty almost instantly. Anyone else experience this? I have refused (opted out of) the scanner ever since. My many opt-out experiences have all been OK: a quick personal search and I am on my way. That is what I recommend to my friends and family to do.
BTW, part 2: the TSA corporation employees at the security checkpoints are not the problem, so be polite to them. The problem is the bribery and corruption that lead to the privatization of airport security.
Standing near a MRI machine is also likely to erase the magnetic material on any of your credit cards -- plus they could never shut off the machine. There's probably a bunch more obvious reasons why MRI was never chosen.
And if some metal object were to get stuck on the machine, they'd need a team of people to remove it. Every airport would also need to keep a good stock of liquid helium for the cases where machines need to be shut down.
The problem with this, of course, is the immediate (ie, sudden and possibly very visible) danger posed to people with devices embedded in them. Pacemakers and MRIs do not interact well.
I wonder if the color of the background is a simple variable or is based off physics rules? Does anybody know if they can change the color to something different?
The supposition here is that since magnetic scanners are being removed and replaced with xray scanners, which do not have the feature of detecting metal with magnetic fields, the new machines are more ineffective than the old magnetic scanners. This therefore single-handedly invalidates the xray machines and they should be removed.
The entire video is produced in such a way as to say this is a major discovery and that it will single-handedly trigger Congress and the TSA to backpedal on what they've been for the last 10+ years.
I disagree.
To state, I do not like the TSA. I do not like Congress very much. I have very little respect for the people that are commonly elected to government
because of the long history of ineffectiveness, ignorance, and stupidity that continually seeps out when they talk and make "decisions". The best I can say about our government is that it mostly keeps the really bad people out of power. The kind that become Caesars and Napoleons and Hitlers and Pol Pots.
My issues with this video are that its too filled with a political tilt. There is a clear play on emotions and rhetoric with less emphasis on the purported vulnerability being shown.
Further, the actual nut of the video, i.e. the demonstration of the vulnerability, is so underwhelming that its impossible to take the video in its entirety seriously. First, the most important part where the speaker is actually going through security is sped up past the point of being intelligible. That's the part that might actually get some interest.
If the speaker just showed that clip in its entirety, demonstrating how to attach the pocket and further how easy it is for him to get through the scanners, and providing pure technical notes as to the background color and such, it would be easier to take seriously.
As it stands, any reasonably competent person's first thought should be "So we just put a magnetic scanner before or after the x-ray scanner. Ok, problem solved." Other thoughts might be, ok so make people stand sideways, change the background color, etc. Obvious tweaks to the system to patch over this problem.
The video doesn't address this simple point and goes on to argue that no metal detectors invalidates the entire concept of xray scanners. Its a very bad premise to base such an argument on.
The argument against xray scanners needs to be based around the already-proven points:
*Violates people's privacy
*Security theater (which the Pocket Problem falls into)
*Possible negative health consequences for passengers and workers
*Over-reaching government bureaucracy
*Etc.
So in summary, I don't like this video because it shows nothing really new, makes a large claim on very little foundation, focuses attention on the wrong things, and is counter-productive to the task of convincing enough "policy makers" to start doing the right thing.
Every time I've gone through the new scanners, I've had to go through a metal detectors first, which would pick up this object. Anyone know if there are actually airports that use only the new scanners without a metal detector?
It has never been about real security. It's about the huge load of money that is funnelled through TSA who are set to spent it all, regardless of what they receive, on these magic wand devices or just angry personnel. Another reason is that security checks allow for arbitrary control of passengers. It's a powerful mechanism, just like a country with enough laws to make everyone guilty but where those laws are only enforced when "necessary", on a select few people. It's like legalized totalitarianism: all backed up by law and rules but the outcome is the same.
Nearly everything of this type is a giveaway to some private vendor with lobbyists in Washington. Whether it works or not is secondary to the primary purpose: handing money over.
Although he seems to be right that the detectors are useless since the guy who was pretty incompetent (set his underwear on fire) and still managed to get it on board a plane.
Does the scanner not pick the object up at all (I don't see why this would be true), or is this simply a matter of needing to change the background color?
It's interesting how so much is focused on airport security. Let's assume that we figured out how to make airline terminals 100% terrorist-safe and completely secure, no exceptions. (Yeah, it's a fantasy, but stay with me...)
At that point the terrorists will give up on the airports and pick something different. Remember that the first attack on the WTC, and the (domestic!) attack on OK City were TRUCK bombs. What's to stop someone from hijacking a tanker truck and detonating it? Trucker school must be easier than pilot school, right?
And if the terrorists are still hot and heavy for airplanes, they could bring down an airplane without actually going through airport security. At most airports I know of, the planes are vulnerable to ground-based attack on takeoff and landing. Not the same as crashing one into a building, but it seems unlikely that that attack is repeatable.
I have a great solution to this. Its cheap and easy to set up. Just tell people that planes are a bit dangerous and might well be stacked with terrorists and bombs. Fly at own risk. Be grateful if you land. No? Oh well.
In all seriousness though, I do wonder given the above, how much passenger numbers would drop. Flying is known to be very safe, and there was a statistic that showed more people died after 9/11 than in 9/11 due to people taking to the roads through fear of flying. Plus, there are not that many planes blown out of the sky by terrorists. If they did nothing, planes would still be statistically safe. Its kinda like those stats that show people drive in a more reckless manner because they now have to wear seat belts and have air bags etc. Take that lot away and people tend to drive safer.
No, Im not suggesting and of this, just food for thought.
[+] [-] jballanc|14 years ago|reply
My family is friends with a gentleman who was a green beret medic during Viet Nam, and later worked for the CIA. Once, when I was younger (and metal detectors were the norm), we had the opportunity to fly with him. He entered the metal detector before me, and was waved along. Once we were past the detectors, he turned to me and said, "Guess how many blades I have on me?" He then proceded to produce seven blades. They were a combination of ceramic blades (undetectable by the metal detector and sharper than most metal as well) and traditional blades held or placed on him so that they would not set off the detector. It was part of his CIA training to be able to do that.
I went to college at Stevens Institute of Technology. The Chemical Engineering department there has a lab known as the Highly Filled Materials Institute. When I was an undergraduate, I got a tour of the lab. They informed me that they had been working on an extruder that they were selling simultaneously to Picatinny Arsenal and Hersey. It turns out that C4 and Chocolate are both colloidal suspensions with nearly identical properties. A consequence of this is that in the X-ray machines used in airports, plastic explosives are indistinguishable from chocolate.
Shortly after 9/11 my father, a very frequent traveler, had forgotten his nail clippers in his carry-on luggage. Predictably, they were confiscated. When I greeted him at the airport, he remarked on how ridiculous that was, as he produced his fountain pen from his jacket pocket. "They let me on with this," he said. "I could have stabbed anyone in the eye with this and they'd be dead. What was I going to do with nail clippers?"
...I could go on, but why?
[+] [-] physcab|14 years ago|reply
You want to know another way to hide illicit items in those body scanners? Surround the items in water.
There are also certain materials that give off false positives and most likely the software will scan the image response against a bank of known materials. I wrote pattern detection software that did just this. Oddly enough, cheese is one of them. So stick your knife in a nice big piece of cheddar and you might make it through just fine.
[+] [-] finnw|14 years ago|reply
The most embarassing thisg possible for TSA would be an exact repeat of 9/11 - same weapons (wasn't it box cutters?) etc. So that's what they target first.
A new kind of attack is harder to predict and easier for the authorities to explain by saying "nothing like this has ever happened before, there was no way we could have prepared for it." And there's no way they could cover all possibilities anyway.
And to be fair, copycat attacks do happen (e.g. July 21, 2005 in London) so it is not a total waste.
[+] [-] Steko|14 years ago|reply
The sad thing is these are the exact items they are supposed to be looking for and the things they are best equipped to detect and still a 20%+ failure rate.
[+] [-] tsaoutourpants|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdc|14 years ago|reply
In the '90s, long before 9/11, I was traveling with a girlfriend. She didn't want to remove her belt with a big metal buckle so she just went through the metal detector with it on. The machine buzzed and the agent sent her through again. A female agent looked sympathetic and told her to twist her belt buckle horizontally so it wouldn't set off the machine. That was my intro to security theater.
Moral of the story is that if you're a pretty white girl, you don't need CIA training to learn security secrets from lazy guards.
[+] [-] unknsldr|14 years ago|reply
I served in Special Forces before and after 9/11. The 'security theater' points that many of you make are valid. I don't, however, believe the reactionary measures were to calm the fears of the American people. The severe restriction placed on travelers is similar to a trend of restrictions placed upon soldiers following 9/11. The reaction is CYA for senior leadership/command.
Accountability became a tremendous focus following the early campaigns following 9/11. A single casualty was regarded as a devastating loss. Clearing buildings early in the bloodshed of Iraq taught many commanders that the peacetime tactics largely learned from SWAT were not as effective in combat. The procedure was too slow for such a dynamic and hostile environment. Too many soldiers died because the common procedure for clearing a building broke down in structures of irregular layout and in cities crawling with hostiles. Before commanders and NCOs were prepared to blame the procedures, however, they were taking accountability for the loss.
An after action review (AAR) follows every mission and leaders are encouraged to highlight their mistakes before someone else must do it for them. An atmosphere of blame settled in while civilians back CONUS were tiring of the involvement. Casualties were frequent enough that many ODAs had suffered through a few. For most, it was their first time facing a grieving widow with a young child hugging her leg. Those stories, coupled with the blame, changed the landscape of command. CONOPS that were once routinely approved were rejected for increasingly vague reasons. Ultimately, the tone was that the risk was too great compared with the operational gain- almost like the soldier was too valuable to put in harm's way. But we signed up for that. The truth, I suspect, was that the appetite for risk taking at the senior levels was shrinking. If an ODA lost a man, the mission's CONOP would be scrutinized for evidence that all of the risks were accounted for, that the courses of action reflected sound decision making when assuming risk, that the operational gain justified the risk, and that good faith efforts were made to mitigate perceived risks. The AAR became a trial. While I was working through these challenges during deployments, I believe something similar was happening with security measures and leadership back home.
Creating an illusion of safety seems less likely the hope than creating an exemption from accountability. Negligence would be too likely the charge if tight restrictions were not put in place.
[+] [-] CulturalNgineer|14 years ago|reply
BTW, has it occurred to anyone that someone intending a terrorist act could just blow up a carry-on before ever getting to the ridiculous scanner...
It'll shut down the airport for sure... and do it at a couple of airports simultaneously and you'll shut down the whole network for a day or two...
Stop letting government treat us like childish idiots... yes... things could happen... reasonable precautions should be taken. But this isn't a smart approach.
[+] [-] nikcub|14 years ago|reply
it took me two flights of trial and error to work out the right method to smuggle it through. security theatre indeed.
[+] [-] perlpimp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rogerbinns|14 years ago|reply
The reality is that they can't keep weapons and drugs out of prisons where there are no freedoms, and there is plenty of time to be as invasive as you want to visitors and residents.
Additionally the security system has failed if the point you pick up the bad guys is by some low paid grunt at the airport staring at a screen. The point of airport security should be to catch occasional idiots and that is about it - something any metal detector can do.
The reality is that anyone determined can get through any security system and wreak terror. The response is to not be terrorised. It is to live well and not in fear. It is to have made their actions completely pointless.
[+] [-] raganwald|14 years ago|reply
—George Carlin, “Airport Security"
[+] [-] alapshah|14 years ago|reply
And lockheed (who has the backscatter contract) donates money all over the place: http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00303024
Follow the money, as always.
[+] [-] seanp2k2|14 years ago|reply
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Bravo, USA, bravo. Osama is still #winning because we're still dealing with his terror of >10 years ago. Let that sink in for a bit....this is exactly what he wanted.
[+] [-] Dove|14 years ago|reply
An interesting comparison is a popular Israeli song from a few years back: Yalla Ya Nasrallah (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8pVvJIzllA). They respond to (not merely a single act, but frequent!) terrorism with taunts, humor, and an attitude of defiance.
I can imagine what a parallel song would sound like (Bring it on Osama / Blow up all the buildings you want . . . ). It would never have been written here. It would never have become popular. I see in that an indictment of the culture.
[+] [-] tsaoutourpants|14 years ago|reply
--Jon
[+] [-] spolsky|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpdoctor|14 years ago|reply
Many thanks.
[+] [-] steve8918|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juiceandjuice|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danellis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ck2|14 years ago|reply
At a minimum his name will now show up on the no-fly list for the rest of his life. If he realized this, I am in awe.
[+] [-] TamDenholm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsaoutourpants|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raquo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prawn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RKearney|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reledi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waqf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GigabyteCoin|14 years ago|reply
I was connecting from Shanghai and had stupidly left a souvenir manicure kit in my bag... they found it, but after some pleading allowed me to keep it.
As per usual, I picked up a bottle of liquor at the duty free in Shanghai before I left...
Not sure if I was meant to inform them I was connecting, or they simply forgot to do their jobs... but apparently I was meant to have my liquor in a sealed "official duty free" bag when I landed at heathrow.
Long story short, I got the full attention of about 10 security officers when checking through security in Heathrow. They were entirely concerned with the liquor I had purchased in shanghai, and were so vocal about the whole thing that I personally witnessed the xray machine man turn around and see what the problem was.
Everybody was trying to be the next big hero, when the only problem was I didn't have the right security bag, and who knows what else I might have had in my carry on? (Hint: I had "weapons", I mean nailclippers).
[+] [-] ars|14 years ago|reply
Place the object slightly distant from the person so it's also in the background (i.e. not silhouetted by the person), and the object and the background will look the same to the scanner.
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|14 years ago|reply
BTW, the first time I went through the backscatter scanner, I had a killer sinus headache within about 30 seconds. I went from feeling great to shitty almost instantly. Anyone else experience this? I have refused (opted out of) the scanner ever since. My many opt-out experiences have all been OK: a quick personal search and I am on my way. That is what I recommend to my friends and family to do.
BTW, part 2: the TSA corporation employees at the security checkpoints are not the problem, so be polite to them. The problem is the bribery and corruption that lead to the privatization of airport security.
[+] [-] nivertech|14 years ago|reply
As an added bonus they can use fMRI mode and ask following questions:
[+] [-] catch23|14 years ago|reply
And if some metal object were to get stuck on the machine, they'd need a team of people to remove it. Every airport would also need to keep a good stock of liquid helium for the cases where machines need to be shut down.
[+] [-] MSexton|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] togasystems|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] borski|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geuis|14 years ago|reply
The entire video is produced in such a way as to say this is a major discovery and that it will single-handedly trigger Congress and the TSA to backpedal on what they've been for the last 10+ years.
I disagree.
To state, I do not like the TSA. I do not like Congress very much. I have very little respect for the people that are commonly elected to government because of the long history of ineffectiveness, ignorance, and stupidity that continually seeps out when they talk and make "decisions". The best I can say about our government is that it mostly keeps the really bad people out of power. The kind that become Caesars and Napoleons and Hitlers and Pol Pots.
My issues with this video are that its too filled with a political tilt. There is a clear play on emotions and rhetoric with less emphasis on the purported vulnerability being shown.
Further, the actual nut of the video, i.e. the demonstration of the vulnerability, is so underwhelming that its impossible to take the video in its entirety seriously. First, the most important part where the speaker is actually going through security is sped up past the point of being intelligible. That's the part that might actually get some interest.
If the speaker just showed that clip in its entirety, demonstrating how to attach the pocket and further how easy it is for him to get through the scanners, and providing pure technical notes as to the background color and such, it would be easier to take seriously.
As it stands, any reasonably competent person's first thought should be "So we just put a magnetic scanner before or after the x-ray scanner. Ok, problem solved." Other thoughts might be, ok so make people stand sideways, change the background color, etc. Obvious tweaks to the system to patch over this problem.
The video doesn't address this simple point and goes on to argue that no metal detectors invalidates the entire concept of xray scanners. Its a very bad premise to base such an argument on.
The argument against xray scanners needs to be based around the already-proven points:
So in summary, I don't like this video because it shows nothing really new, makes a large claim on very little foundation, focuses attention on the wrong things, and is counter-productive to the task of convincing enough "policy makers" to start doing the right thing.[+] [-] lojack|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yason|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|14 years ago|reply
Nearly everything of this type is a giveaway to some private vendor with lobbyists in Washington. Whether it works or not is secondary to the primary purpose: handing money over.
[+] [-] tlrobinson|14 years ago|reply
How hard would it be to construct a prosthetic fat suit that's invisible to scanners? I bet not very.
[+] [-] chrischen|14 years ago|reply
Although he seems to be right that the detectors are useless since the guy who was pretty incompetent (set his underwear on fire) and still managed to get it on board a plane.
[+] [-] saalweachter|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russell_h|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|14 years ago|reply
The object and the background both look the same in reflected x-rays. It's not just the background color.
[+] [-] mahyarm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bstpierre|14 years ago|reply
At that point the terrorists will give up on the airports and pick something different. Remember that the first attack on the WTC, and the (domestic!) attack on OK City were TRUCK bombs. What's to stop someone from hijacking a tanker truck and detonating it? Trucker school must be easier than pilot school, right?
And if the terrorists are still hot and heavy for airplanes, they could bring down an airplane without actually going through airport security. At most airports I know of, the planes are vulnerable to ground-based attack on takeoff and landing. Not the same as crashing one into a building, but it seems unlikely that that attack is repeatable.
[+] [-] alan_cx|14 years ago|reply
In all seriousness though, I do wonder given the above, how much passenger numbers would drop. Flying is known to be very safe, and there was a statistic that showed more people died after 9/11 than in 9/11 due to people taking to the roads through fear of flying. Plus, there are not that many planes blown out of the sky by terrorists. If they did nothing, planes would still be statistically safe. Its kinda like those stats that show people drive in a more reckless manner because they now have to wear seat belts and have air bags etc. Take that lot away and people tend to drive safer.
No, Im not suggesting and of this, just food for thought.