Boston Airport Replacing X-ray Body Scanners 119
OverTheGeicoE writes "Boston's Logan International Airport is in the process of replacing its X-ray body scanners with millimeter-wave ones. According to the article, nine of the new scanners have been installed already, and ultimately 27 of these scanners will replace the 17 X-ray backscatter scanners that were installed in March of 2010. The new devices are 'being installed come with software that replaces "passenger-specific images" — or nearly naked views of travelers — with generic outlines that highlight only anomalies such as belts, jewelry, wallets — or guns or bombs.' Perhaps this will help TSA workers avoid being part of a cancer cluster. Some speculate that TSA will ultimately eliminate all of its X-ray body scanners."
Who makes them? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That was exactly my first thought. Has Michael Chirtoff's company released a new product?
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Is it the same company profiting by replacing their old useless hardware with the new?
Whatever the company is that makes them, you can be sure the TSA have shares in that company.
Re:Who makes them? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the citations, I'm sure you left them out by accident...
Michael Chertoff, [gawker.com]George Soros [current.com]
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Here's the citations, I'm sure you left them out by accident...
Michael Chertoff, [gawker.com] George Soros [current.com]
Ok as long as King George is involved.
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No, the TSA does NOT have shares in that company. Individual employee's of the TSA do.
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All that's left is for the TSA to replace the complete assholes and morons that man the check points.
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Don't you mean pedophiles?
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Not if you're paying him.
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if ..um... shall we say "abnormally endowed" men will have their endowments highlighted as a generic outline?
If not, countdown until we hear about the "dildo-bomber" on the news...
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Is that a bomb or are you just happy to see me?
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Touch it and see if it goes off ;)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
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Considering your comment I was figuring I would probably cringe when the site loaded, instead I laughed.
There may have been handcuffs involved, but who is to say that didn't make it even more enjoyable for him?
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think the TSA understands cause-and-effect.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
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Does the 90 ml liquid limit still apply?
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Finally, a second reason to be glad if you don't have an abnormally large schlong :-P (the first being "sometimes it just won't fit")
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
(the first being "sometimes it just won't fit")
Hint: Girls come in different capacities.
Whenever you hear a girl say "I prefer big ones" she's really saying "I have a cavernous bucket of a vagina". Remember that and you won't go far wrong in life.
tsa blowing taxpayer money for no benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:tsa blowing taxpayer money for no benefit (Score:4, Insightful)
Waddaya mean, no benefit? I'm sure the shareholders of Rapiscan are benefiting greatly!
Oh, you meant benefit to the public. Nah, the TSA isn't interested in that.
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Food is essential but farmers are allowed to make a profit on it. The scanners are offensive because of the loss of freedom they represent, not because someone is making a profit on them.
Re:tsa blowing taxpayer money for no benefit (Score:4)
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my contention is there would be no scanners if no one could make a profit on them.
There would be no airlines if no one could make a profit... oh wait.
Re:tsa blowing taxpayer money for no benefit (Score:4, Insightful)
my contention is there would be no scanners if no one could make a profit on them.
Yeah - Free market rules!
Oh, wait, these are government mandated devices (pushed through with Chertoff's help who also consults with the contractor). And no one does any quality control - they are proven to be ineffective at actually detecting dangerous items, but more are bought anyway
It's like saying that if the speeding ticket/toll booth collection wasn't profitable it wouldn't exist.
Re:tsa blowing taxpayer money for no benefit (Score:4, Interesting)
Food is essential but farmers are allowed to make a profit on it. The scanners are offensive because of the loss of freedom they represent, not because someone is making a profit on them.
People _need_ food.
The scanner are _mandated_ by law.
Profiting from something that had been decreed necessary and made a monopoly by the government is the problem. Where are my non-TSA airports so that I could vote with my wallet? They would probably be cheaper, but I'd pay more to make my point.
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What is wrong is the loss of freedom that comes from the naked scanners (and the fact that they're ineffective, possibly dangerous, and were awarded to a government insider).
Re:tsa blowing taxpayer money for no benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
What is your objection to them making money on a specialized product like that?
Now, I can understand being upset if lets say the person majorly involved in getting them instituted turns out to own a very large part of that company.
The politicians shouldn't profit from it, but the manufacturer should.
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What is your objection to them making money on a specialized product like that?
They make money even after devices have been shown unsafe (I believe the old xray machines have been banned in Europe for some time due to health concerns) and even after the devices have been shown ineffective.
They should be making zero profit (maybe just cover the costs) from a device that has not delivered on the specifications. Without stringent quality control, that's literally just money being shuffled to contractors.
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Ok, I can understand that point, but lets just say for the sake of argument that it does actually work.
Any objections then?
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What in the fuck does that have to do with the point you were trying to make.
You were making the argument that the company making these machines is making a profit and for some reason you think that is wrong. I was asking what your objection is to them making a profit, not whether or not they were needed in the first place.
Why should a private company be asked to forsake all profits just because the government is mandating that their product be used? That is the question I would like to see you answer.
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They make money even after devices have been shown unsafe (I believe the old xray machines have been banned in Europe for some time due to health concerns)
The latter is true: X-ray backscatter machines were banned in Europe because of health concerns. The former is not true: they have not been shown to be unsafe. (It's probably most accurate to say that they've been shown to be safe, but that the level of evidence is unconvincing to many.)
It shouldn't surprise you that the Europeans, too, sometimes make decisions based on the feelings of their politicians and populace and not on hard evidence.
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What is your objection to them making money on a specialized product like that?
My main problem is it seems like a government official created a mandate, so a particular company could profit.
Were there bids for the devices?
Was there any study done to indicate the devices would solve the problem (which isn't a problem, but that is a separate issue)
Was there a study done to indicate the devices would be safe?
Or were they built, knowing they would be replaced in just a few years?
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I think it is the government mandated part that rubs him the wrong way.
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Re:tsa blowing taxpayer money for no benefit (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem wasn't the communism. The problem was the "show me your papers." We just learned how to import the second part without the first, it seems.
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True, I believe the Nazis started the "show me your papers", the communists just picked it up faster than we did.
Re:tsa blowing taxpayer money for no benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect it's because we don't live in a communist country.
Actually, it would seem we kinda do live in a communist country
In a capitalist country, airports would purchase the devices if these were needed by shopping around and choosing the best provider. And then if the public wanted the devices in the airport, the airports that had the devices would flourish (or vice versa). Also, in a capitalist country, devices that were demonstrably flawed (at actually detecting things) would be returned for a refund
Now in a communist country, the government might mandate that the devices must be built, irregardless of whether these devices actually work and installed everywhere. By the one contractor chosen by their government friends
Which country are we living in, again?
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The feasibility of competition between airports driving innovation aside, your definition of a capitalist country leaves much to be desired. Would
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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I absolutely should not have to pose nude for an audience and a camera in order to fly. The same goes for entering a courthouse.
I hate my fellow citizens for being so willing to give up their personal sovereignty so willingly. THEY make the world a worse place for ME.
That's not the most important problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The key problems with the X-ray machines were:
1. They were invasive searches without anything remotely similar to probable cause.
2. They don't actually stop people from carrying bombs onto aircraft (as has been tested several times).
Re:That's not the most important problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The potentially cancer-causing radiation is not a key problem? I think the standards for security screening need to start with "First, do no harm."
Waste and ineffectiveness is a problem, but it comes second to directly harming innocent people.
Re:That's not the most important problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the fact that they were unregulated x-ray equipment operated by un-certified amateur radiologists hired through ads on pizza boxes might qualify as a problem.
Re:That's not the most important problem (Score:4, Informative)
In the US virtually all x-ray machines (including medical) are operated by un-certified radiologists. Radiologists interpret the images, they do not (typically) run the imaging devices. Radiographer or radiologic technologist (or just "tech" as they are typically called in the field) run the devices. Fortunately, the techs in medicine are typically well trained and certified. I'm not sure about the TSA team, but probably not so much. So your overall point is probably still accurate.
Looking back at history (Score:5, Insightful)
We're going to look back at this era in disbelief. It will be like us looking back at early medicine where people took elixirs full of Mercury.
Re:Looking back at history (Score:4, Insightful)
We're going through the Gilded Age and McCarthyism for the second time now, how many times does history have to repeat itself until we learn?
Re:Looking back at history (Score:4, Interesting)
We're going through the Gilded Age and McCarthyism for the second time now, how many times does history have to repeat itself until we learn?
Fear is instinctual, so learning can't possibly win that fight.
Re:Looking back at history (Score:5, Funny)
Calibration; Europe (Score:2)
Secondary reas
No longer used in Europe (Score:3)
Secondary reason was European airports banning them, but that has since been reversed. UK doesn't let you opt for pat-downs, not sure about the rest of Europe.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm about to cite the Daily Mail), but it looks like [dailymail.co.uk] they're no longer in use in the EU -- the Manchester use was a temporary extension [metro.co.uk], an exception to the general ban last year.
According to this [metro.co.uk] the Manchester machines will be replaced by the end of October.
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That means kicking your neighbor in the balls when they say or do anything in support of the TSA. That means slapping your girlfriend when she says something retarded like "if it means I arrive safely then it's okay".
So what do we do with the idiots who advocate violence in response to someone freely expressing their personal beliefs?
Assert our Second Amendment rights and shoot them, of course!
Big whoop... (Score:3)
As my upper-middle-class, female, New Yorker friend just found out, the problem with the sanitized images is that forgetting a dime in your pocket will cause it to trigger a general alert and you'll be whisked aside for gate-rape.
And let's not forget that a butt-bomb, like that used by terrorists in Saudi Arabia in 2009, is still undetectable by gropers and scanners.
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Butt-bombs are relatively small. Instead imagine a skinny guy who is turned into an explosive hambeast through surgery.
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Butt bombs tend to shape the charge in such a way that they usually end up blowing it out their ass, the rest of their body shields those not behind him.
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That sounds like the aftermath of a trip to the local curry house.
Re:Big whoop... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, but some of us have rectums capable of allowing objects to exit as well as enter. So it may be possible that a terrorist has this capability as well, along with, say, a few of his friends, who could then assemble the device outside their anal cavity.
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Wow, and I figured someone would have replied with "Well then they just stick their ass to the window of the plane and kiss it goodbye."
But yes, it is possible for a few people to get on a plane, go to the bathroom, pull bomb parts out of their ass, and then assemble them on the plane. There are simpler ways of going about it, but it is possible.
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That happened to me recently. Actually it was two dimes in one pocket that set off the machine. The process went a little like this: I got asked a few times what I had in my right pocket, waited for a male TSA employee to come over, waited for the TSA agents to stop bickering, got a quick patdown (including a few squeezes of my pockets), turned my pocket inside out, discovered two dimes, went on my way. All the while I was staring at an outline of my body with a couple of red squares highlighting the ar
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Dime? That's high-density metal, of course they can detect it! I was more surprised when I failed the backscatter scan because of a folded-over receipt in my shirt pocket.
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My first (and only, so far) experience with these machines had the machine highlight 3 areas, the button on the front of my pants (no belt, just the plastic button) and both my cargo pockets, 1 of which contained my wallet, the other contained a single piece of paper folded over.
If these machines don't like things in your pockets, you should be told to empty your pockets first!
Though the person running the machine did admit that the machine doesn't like cargo pockets, even empty. I think the biggest surpris
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This actually happened in my case too -- they identified the piece of paper that caused the error and that was it. Most places I've been to, though, they make it abundantly clear that you need to remove *everything* from your pockets. As you point out, it's a pretty useless system if they don't.
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I had just finished going through the metal detector, and while I was about to collect my tray load of stuff, a person came up to me and asked me to come with him. he carried my tray of stuff and asked if I had heard about the new scanners, I said that I knew of them, but had never experienced one. The entire instructions I got were "stand here, hold your arms up, turn around" then he pointed out the yellow squares on the screen showing the "suspicious" areas. Had I been asked to remove things from my pocke
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As my upper-middle-class, female, New Yorker friend just found out, the problem with the sanitized images is that forgetting a dime in your pocket will cause it to trigger a general alert and you'll be whisked aside for gate-rape.
And let's not forget that a butt-bomb, like that used by terrorists in Saudi Arabia in 2009, is still undetectable by gropers and scanners.
Wouldn't the wire show?
--
Ok guys, quit whisking the passengers.
Slippery Slope is no longer a logical fallacy (Score:3)
When the multimeter wave scanners were installed, it was a lot of "don't worry, only a subset of travelers will be subjected to it" and "you can choose to be sexually molested instead". Fast forward a few years and now they're replacing regular X-ray machines with them.
How soon before you have to pass through one to go into a government building? A grocery store? Outside your own home?
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How soon before you have to pass through one to go into a government building?
This is already required at some courthouses in the US, they were there before they were in airports IIRC.
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How soon before you have to pass through one to go into a government building?
This is already required at some courthouses in the US, they were there before they were in airports IIRC.
I guess it's been that long since I've been to the courthouse... last I recall there were metal detectors but that's about it.
Except.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Except.... (Score:5, Informative)
Whoever marked this as flamebait should read this article [technologyreview.com] posted by numbius above. Worth study, it seems.
anonymous (Score:3)
When anonymous gets a hold of the image data and tags it to passenger's facebook wall... that will be the day public has had enough. It is hard to get people off the theater. When anonymous puts a hold of the image data and publishes senator's likenesses, that will be the day they outlaw it.
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Wait! That looks like .... Anthony Weiner [wikipedia.org]!
Least of their problems (Score:2)
Boston airport sucks great big dirty donkey dicks with a side order of shit.
If you have to go to any other terminal in the building you have to go though security again, and again. It can take well over half an hour to move from one part of the airport to another. It is fucking stupid and frustrating, the wife and I will do our best to avoid that airport from here on out considering the fun we had last time going though.
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Boston isn't really all that bad. Occasionally, you do get stuck in a security line behind 19 guys trying to bring box cutters on a flight. But other than that, its OK.
Just great... (Score:1)
Now we've gone from x-raying people to microwaving them.
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Yes, now that we can see all these wonderful tasty organs it's time to cook them.
No more hand searches (Score:4, Insightful)
Good, I can stop requesting on a hand search when I fly out of Boston. It's not that I consider the exposure particularly hazardous--I don't; I've voluntarily exposed myself to far more radiation over the years--I just saw no point in additional exposure to ionizing radiation when I can avoid it, and I don't really mind the hand search.
This thing can't detect shit (Score:2)
They tried it on Mayor Menino's skull and found nothing. He was shocked at the results, saying "bwafa nogga rifl plart." Strong words, indeed.
New and Improved (Score:5, Insightful)
We need more scanners.
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mm wavelength scanners will prevent Logan Airport from being blown up by LED T-Shirts [boingboing.net].
We need more scanners.
That's when Moononites invade.
I thought they weren't using naked images anymore (Score:1)
Or did they lie to us?
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Or did they lie to us?
Yes.
Of course they claimed they weren't storing the images... but that was a lie too.
Former Boston and Israel frequent flyer here... (Score:2)
At the risk of beating a dead horse... I'd like to share my experience with beating these systems. I'm personally much more interested in Boston's integration of Israeli style interview tactics. I lived in the Middle East for a couple years and went through the borders on an almost daily basis, and several times through the Tel Aviv airport (Israel's only international airport). Israel doesn't use anything resembling our body scanners, and instead relies on brief interviews of every person flying to determi
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Why not just get rid of it completely?
What does the "security" do? Here, in Israel, or anywhere else?
Interviews are mostly pointless. Any good person will breeze right through it. And only a TRAINED interviewer will have a chance of catching something.
But really, what is the point? To catch some mythical bombers? IF someone wanted to bomb a plane, they will figure out a way (and wait, they HAVE) whether we have professional interviewers, or radiation scann
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Just wait... they keep talking about adding airport style security to rail travel... and in some places in Europe they already have it...