TSA Interested In Purchasing Dosimeters 117
OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA recently announced that it is looking for vendors of 'radiation measurement devices'. According to the agency's Request for Information, these devices 'will assist the TSA in determining if the Transportation Security Officers (TSO) at selected federalized airports are exposed to ionizing radiation above minimum detectable levels, and whether any measured radiation doses approach or exceed the threshold where personnel dosimetry monitoring is required by DHS/TSA policy.' A TSA spokeman claims that their RFI 'did not reflect any heightened concern by the agency about radiation levels that might be excessive or pose a risk to either TSA screeners or members of the traveling public.' Concern outside the agency, however, has always been high. TSA has long been criticized for its apparent lack of understanding of radiological safety, even for its own employees. There has been speculation of a cancer cluster, possibly caused by poor safety practices in baggage screening."
Re:Karma? (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? Karma? I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, no matter what. Most of these "guards" are just your average woefully ignorant citizen of America. They believe what the TSA tells them since they don't know any better and don't have the means to think otherwise.
Re:really?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Definition of "search"
In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that a search occurs only when 1) a person expects privacy in the thing searched and 2) society believes that expectation is reasonable. In Katz, the Supreme Court ruled that a search had occurred when the government wiretapped a telephone booth.[20] The Court's reasoning was that 1) the defendant expected that his phonebooth conversation would not be broadcast to the wider world and 2) society believes that expectation is reasonable. This is a threshold question in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, since the Fourth Amendment only protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. If no search or seizure has occurred, the court ends its analysis.
Stop and frisk
Under Terry v. Ohio 392 U.S. 1 (1968), law enforcement officers are permitted to conduct a limited warrantless search on a level of suspicion less than probable cause under certain circumstances. In Terry, the Supreme Court ruled that when a police officer witnesses "unusual conduct" that leads that officer to reasonably believe "that criminal activity may be afoot", that the suspicious person has a weapon and that the person is presently dangerous to the officer or others, the officer may conduct a "pat-down search" (or "frisk") to determine whether the person is carrying a weapon. To conduct a frisk, officers must be able to point to specific and articulatory facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant their actions. A vague hunch will not do. Such a search must be temporary and questioning must be limited to the purpose of the stop (e.g., officers who stop a person because they have reasonable suspicion to believe that the person was driving a stolen car, cannot, after confirming that it is not stolen, compel the person to answer questions about anything else, such as the possession of contraband).[21]
So, clearly travelers
Personally, I think we should hit 'em where it counts the most: in their pocketbooks. If all travelers simply chose another mode of transportation they would VERY rapidly find themselves with several quite influential allies: the airlines, the "hospitality industry", etc. (and yes, there ARE practical alternatives, at least for "domestic" travel: driving is still possible despite our rapidly deteriorating network of interstate highways and besides that people just don't ask themselves this [tqn.com] question enough anymore anyway!)
Re:really?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Amtrak is actually pretty good when it comes to the way they handle the TSA. Last time the TSA tried to search random passengers, the Amtrak Police had them escorted off the premises nationwide, and they were banned from Amtrak for a substantial period of time.
The Amtrak leadership is well aware that the only reason their ridership has been skyrocketing the past few years is that they don't put passengers through that bullshit. Riding Amtrak sends about as clear a message as you can send, and short of an explicit Congressional order mandating it, you're not going to see them allow the TSA to pull a power trip any time soon. To the extent that they are there at all, it is entirely at the discretion of the Amtrak Police.
More to the point, even the TSA has to be aware that they aren't useful when it come to trains. If a terrorist wanted to blow up a passenger train, there are approximately 21,000 miles of track that carry Amtrak passengers, and all it takes is one bomb on a trestle somewhere to kill an order of magnitude more people than you could kill with any bomb on the train itself. No terrorist is stupid enough to be a suicide bomber when they could achieve a bigger result (and a much longer-term disruption) by being the non-suicide kind, and any politician or other government official who believes otherwise is too dump to flip burgers.
In short, the TSA is about as useful to Amtrak as a tiger-repelling rock. Amtrak knows this, so they aren't afraid to tell the TSA to get bent when they step out of line.
WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
How do the personnel who work with ionizing radiation NOT have dosimeters already? I'm a graduate student at a state university who works with X-ray diffraction (XRD) occasionally. To just TOUCH the XRD equipment, I had to have ~6 hours of 'ionizing radiation safety training' plus a required dosimeter to track how much radiation I had been subjected to.
The fact that these people have been working around ionizing radiation without any documentation of how much radiation they have been exposed to is troublesome. Even if they are TSA/Nazi/Gestapo jackasses, they're still people in the end.