Oh fer cryin out loud...

This is not from The Onion:

TSA warns of implant bombers, prepares fliers for swab tests

The latest threat to America's skies -- explosive surgical implants that authorities have dubbed "belly bombs" -- poses a security challenge so bizarre that air travelers learning of the new danger Wednesday could only scratch their heads and wonder what's next.

If those fliers had collagen injections or dental implants, what's next may mean having their heads examined. Literally.

The Transportation Security Administration advised airlines that terror groups are believed to be experimenting with explosives that could be implanted in buttocks and breasts, allowing suicide bombers to pass through airport body scanners undetected.

[snip]

The TSA said it had no evidence of a specific plot, but intelligence sources indicated this new twist in bomb-proofing international air travel was likely the handiwork of Ibrahim Asiri, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the Christmas Day attempt to bring down a Northwest Airlines plane by the so-called "underwear bomber."

Few Americans could have imagined when the first airport metal detectors were installed more than four decades ago that travelers would one day be expected to nearly disrobe before boarding their flights. The idea of implanting explosives in the same places plastic surgeons use to "enhance" many Americans does not strike Zoltan Prokay as far-fetched.

"If they do it properly, like a breast implant where the skin is stretched to accommodate the device, it could work," said Prokay, who spent two and a half years in Iraq working to detect improvised explosive devices as a member of a U.S. Special Forces team. He was flying out of San Jose as a pilot for a private airline, which he declined to identify, when word of the TSA advisory began to spread. "It could be set to go off at a certain altitude. If you get an altimeter implanted in your other breast though, maybe you would set off the metal detector."

Prokay sees it as a natural -- if horrifying -- progression from the Shoe Bomber and the Underwear Bomber. "This would be the Bosom Bomber," he said. "It's not funny. And yet it is kind of funny. The Bosom Bomber."

"If (terrorists) really want to attack, there is always a way," Renata Boudon, 47, said in French after arriving at San Francisco International for a two-week vacation in the western United States. "It doesn't scare me much." She and her two sons, 18-year-old Eric and 12-year-old Marc, live in Brazil and said they won't change anything about their travel habits because of the new information. "If it happens, it happens," she said. "There is nothing you can do."

Renata Boudon of France is a hell of a lot smarter than the idiots who populate this country, who will no doubt line up like sheep to have their breasts and buttocks grabbed by TSA agents in the name of national security.

It sure sounds like this is the TSA's way of justifying intrusive "pat-downs" that are often more like being groped by a creep on a crowded subway.

Who needs nuclear meltdowns when you have the TSA?

Remember when they told us that TSA x-ray scanners at airports were perfectly safe and that the radiation they exposed one to was practically undetectable?

WRONG:

The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that it would retest every full-body X-ray scanner that emits ionizing radiation — 247 machines at 38 airports — after maintenance records on some of the devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.

The TSA says that the records reflect math mistakes and that all the machines are safe. Indeed, even the highest readings listed on some of the records — the numbers that the TSA says were mistakes — appear to be many times less than what the agency says a person absorbs through one day of natural background radiation.

Even so, the TSA has ordered the new tests out of "an abundance of caution to reassure the public," spokesman Nicholas Kimball says. The tests will be finished by the end of the month, and the results will be released "as they are completed," the agency said on its website.

TSA officials have repeatedly assured the public and lawmakers that the machines have passed all inspections. The agency's review of maintenance reports, launched Dec. 10, came only after USA TODAY and lawmakers called for the release of the records late last year.

The agency posted reports Friday from 127 X-ray-emitting devices on its website and said it would continue to release results from maintenance tests for the approximately 4,500 X-ray devices at airports nationwide. Those devices include machines that examine checked luggage. Of the reports posted, about a third showed some sort of error, Kimball said.

More TSA follies

I can't help but wonder how long it's going to be before we have to be groped and scanned to get into department stores, shopping malls, sports events, movie theatres....

After all, who said that planes were the only terrorist targets? Maybe soon we'll have to be scanned before leaving the house.

UPDATE: And then there's this:

The pilot, whose name has not been released, uploaded a series of clips taken at San Francisco International Airport. His intent was to expose the insane double standard of TSA's airport employee screening policies: Although pilots and flight attendants are required to pass through the same concourse checkpoints as passengers, many ground workers, including baggage handlers, caterers and cabin cleaners, are exempt from these checks. The YouTube segments, which have since been taken down, showed ground employees passing through a simple turnstile on their way to work. You can see some highlights from the videos in this television news report by News10 in Sacramento, Calif., where the pilot lives.

This has been TSA policy from the beginning. It is also something I've been writing about in my columns, on and off, for the past eight years. Finally the issue is getting some attention -- if not entirely for the right reasons. This should be a story about farcical security practices; instead, as the media has been playing it, it's the story of a renegade pilot.

TSA says the pilot's actions are "under review," citing the possible release of what the agency calls, "sensitive security information."

That's a head-spinner if you ask me. The screening rules are public knowledge. It's not the pilot's fault that the rest of the country has been ignoring them.

What the pilot really did, of course, is throw a ring of well-deserved embarrassment around TSA's neck. And in typical fashion, the agency's response is not to review, revise or even acknowledge its foolish rules, but to harass and bully and threaten the person who drew attention to them.

[snip]

The pilot in question is also a participant in the Federal Flight Deck Officer program -- a voluntary anti-hijacking scheme that allows specially trained airline pilots to carry handguns in the cockpit. Strangely and perhaps most disturbing of all, agents from the TSA and Department of Homeland Security reportedly came to the pilot's home and confiscated his weapon.

I am hardly a firearms aficionado, and I have mixed feelings about the FFDO program in general. But this disturbs me. What grounds, exactly, did any federal agency have to visit the man's home for any reason, let alone to suspend or revoke this man's FFDO accreditation?

Yet somehow I'm not surprised. This is what happens when, in the throes of fear, you bestow a bureaucracy with lots of power and little accountability. TSA has scant respect for reason or rational policy; point out its foibles, meanwhile, and apparently you risk having agents being sent to your residence. Is this really the United States of America?

And while you receive radiation just to go visit grandma.....

GUNS are slipping by airport hand luggage scanners:

Last fall, as he had done hundreds of times, Iranian-American businessman Farid Seif passed through security at a Houston airport and boarded an international flight.

He didn't realize he had forgotten to remove the loaded snub nose "baby" Glock pistol from his computer bag. But TSA officers never noticed as his bag glided along the belt and was x-rayed. When he got to his hotel after the three-hour flight, he was shocked to discover the gun traveled unnoticed from Houston.

"It's just impossible to miss it, you know. I mean, this is not a small gun," Seif told ABC News. "How can you miss it? You cannot miss it."

But the TSA did miss it, and despite what most people believe about the painstaking effort to screen airline passengers and their luggage before they enter the terminal, it was not that unusual.

The issue is not that the guy is Iranian. The issue is that a loaded gun got through the security theatre that has YOU either getting x-rayed just to get on an airplane or groped by strangers -- or sometimes both.

Maybe Peter Griffin is right

Maybe a country that has institutionalized airport harassment of ANYONE guilty of "flying while swarthy" DOES deserve the Peter Griffin finger:

The paranoid environment created by the 9/11 attacks has allowed for a myriad of civil rights infringements under the guise of national security. Airport security especially ratcheted up racial profiling, marking any Middle Eastern sign or symbol a suspicious target, particularly the turban. Even turbaned individuals with no affiliation with Islam or the Middle East, such as Sikh men, have become “a superficial and accessible proxy for the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks” and a “target of discriminatory conduct,” including employment discrimimation, harrassment, and violence.

But now, this long-permitted prejudice is creating diplomatic tension between the U.S. and India. Today, the Indian press reported on an incident last month in which Houston, Texas airport security officials detained Indian’s UN envoy Hardeep Puri in a holding room for 30 minutes because he was wearing a turban. As a Sikh, Puri is obliged to keep all hair intact and his head covered in public at all times. The turban symbolizes self-respect and piety — “touching of the head dress in public is not allowed” and can only be removed “in the most intimate of circumstances.”

However, as officials present during the incident told Turtle Bay, airport security officials ignored Puri’s religious requirements and long-standing protocol exempting dignitaries from such treatment and demanded to physically check his Turban themselves until Puri informed them that TSA regulations allow him to check himself:

Airport security agents in Austin pulled Singh aside into an enclosed glass holding room for questioning after he refused a request to remove his turban or allow inspectors to touch it, an Indian official who witnessed the incident told Turtle Bay. “He said no, you cannot check my turban,” according to the Indian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I won’t allow you to touch my turban.”

The Indian official said Singh offered to touch the turban himself and to allow the security agents to run a check of his hands for traces of explosives, but he said that one security official refused. Singh insisted that the security official had no right to check his turban, citing TSA regulations for searches of foreign diplomats. “Obviously you don’t know your own rules. Please check your rules,” he told the security agent, according to the Indian official. “The person insisted that he had to do it. He said, ‘Don’t tell me the rules.’”

Who benefits? And where are the opportunities?

The story of terrorism, and the fight against terrorism in this country, always contains a question: Who Benefits?

9/11 "Truthers" speculate on who benefitted from the 9/11 attacks, but you don't have to be a "Truther" to wonder, when a presidency was deemed in the press to be over almost as soon as it began turned into a press darling over the corpses of nearly three thousand people. Dick Cheney has profited handsomely over contracts given to Halliburton in Iraq.

A year after the so-called "underwear bomber", whose own father notified the U.S.Embassy in Nigeria that his son was planning something, failed in his attempt to bring down an airliner, and weeks after CARGO PLANES were targeted, air passengers are being whipped into a frenzy of terrorism fear again by a TSA that works according to some strange alchemy in which ignoring cargo but x-raying and groping passengers somehow prevents explosives from being deployed on cargo planes.

Despite the potential risks to both passenger and TSA worker posed by radiation administered to travelers by low-wage workers without medical training, and despite the consensus among security experts without a financial stake in body scanners that their implementation simply is not effective, not only are more airports planning to deploy these monstrosities, but there is a very real possibility of Americans having to go through this security theatre nonsense if they want to take a cruise or a ferry, or get to work via train or subway.

If you have ever worked in New York City, or commuted to ANY major metropolitan area, or for that matter, ever been any place where people congregate -- shopping malls, ball games, concerts, ballets, operas, megachurches, you can imagine the chaos that would result from a requirement to be groped or strip-searched just to get to work, or watch the Yankees play, or go see Bruce Springsteen, or take your aunt from Dubuque on the Circle Line.

They're getting away with it for air travel because the images of the 9/11 attacks are etched into our minds. But taken to this logical extreme, as Janet Napolitano appears to be considering, I wonder if Americans will stand for it.

Images of government-money sugarplums are dancing in the heads of lobbyists for the x-ray scanner industry, who are the REAL beneficiaries of this insanity, as Cenk Uygur, who seems to be handling the anchor load on MSNBC during this holiday weekend all by himself, noted yesterday:

We already know that George W. Bush's head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, stands to profit handsomely from the indiscriminate deployment of these scanners. Chertoff has been a tireless advocate for this industry, advocating that the "administration must stand firm against privacy ideologues"in a Washington Post op-ed last January.

Who else benefits?

There's an opportunity here for the progressive netroots to find common cause with the Tea Party, if we only dare to take it. Granted, many Tea Party followers give lip service to the Constitution without knowing what's in it beyond the Second Amendment. But as I've often said, the political spectrum is sometimes less a continuum than a circle, in which left and right eventually meet at the top. All too often, civil liberties have been framed as a leftist issue, what with George H.W. Bush calling his opponent during the 1988 campaign a "card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union". But now that the right has been whipped into a frenzy about "big government", and Tea Partiers are subject to virtual strip searches and government-mandated groping along with the Dirty Fucking Hippies they loathe, perhaps there's some room here to find common cause. And once we find common cause there, are there other areas as well?

All Of Your Thanksgiving Plans Are Belong To Us

Don't want a low-wage TSA flack to zap you with x-rays of undetermined risk? Don't want to have your breasts and privates groped by TSA flacks?

Then stay home. Call grandma and tell her she'll have to live without you this year. Because once you enter the TSA Twilight Zone, you enter an existential nightmare from which there is no escape:

If you don't want to pass through an airport scanner that allows security agents to see an image of your naked body or to undergo the alternative, a thorough manual search, you may have to find another way to travel this holiday season.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport.

That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest.

"Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process," says Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, based in Miami.

Koshetz said such passengers would be questioned "until it is determined that they don't pose a threat" to the public.

Palm Beach Sheriff's Office spokesperson Teri Barbera said PBSO deputies stationed at the airport would become involved when requested by the TSA.

By the way, I don't for one minute believe that flacks from private companies will make this any less humiliating, or any less of a violation of the 4th Amendment. Private companies are no hedge against government-sanctioned sexual assault.

(via)

...and another one

Here’s what took place… minute by terrifying minute…

I had Jackson in his stroller, his diaper bag, and a duffle bag which contained my mac book as I entered security. I placed all of these items on the conveyor belt to go through the metal detector. Jackson was in my arms, and in the midst of getting all of our gear on the conveyor belt, my mistake was neglecting to take off my son’s pacifier clip that hangs from his shirt, which is metal.

The instant I walked through the metal detector with Jackson in my arms, we beeped. I knew exactly why.

I told the TSA agent, who asked me to back up and walk through again, “It’s my son’s pacifier clip, can I put it on the conveyor belt?”

“Ma’am turn around and come back please,” I was told.

Of course Jackson’s clip went off again. Both Jackson and I were then escorted to a 6 ft tall plastic holding box because I was forced to wait for a female TSA agent to search me.

At this point in time, all of my belongings were sitting at the opposite end of the conveyor belt, thereby backing up every other passengers belongings because I was not there to gather mine.

A woman out of the kindness of her heart (and if you are out there somewhere reading this, THANK YOU) saw me just standing and waiting in my 6 ft plastic box and gathered my belongings for me. She waited with my stroller, my diaper bag, my duffle bag and my mac book. This woman motioned to me that everything (including my flip flops) was all together and then she left.

She must be a mother.

She understood.

I was so grateful.

4 female TSA agents stood at the end of 2 conveyor belts, gloves on their hands, none of them searching anyone, none of them doing anything but watching luggage pass through the conveyor belts.

It was at this point in time that I realized my flight was leaving in less than 45 minutes. I had not even been searched yet. I began to panic.

Through the 6 holes in the plastic box that contained Jackson and I, I began asking for help. I waved to all 4 female TSA agents, each of them looked at me and then looked away. Then I started speaking through the 6 holes, and said, “Can someone please search me? My flight leaves in less than 45 minutes.”

Each of the 4 women answered me using the same exact phrase…

“Ma’am you need to wait. I don’t care about your departure time.”

Eventually one of the four female TSA agents opened the door and let Jackson and I out of our plastic containment box. We were escorted to a chair that was opposite from where my belongings were. I asked if I could bring my belongings over or take a seat closer to where they were. I was told no and to take my seat.

At this point in time, my heart began to race, thinking we would miss our flight and I would be stuck in the Atlanta airport with Jackson for who knows how long until there was another flight to Baltimore.

The female TSA agent stood in front of me while I sat with Jackson and she continued to watch luggage come through the conveyor belt.

“Ma’am, can someone please just search me so we can be on our way? We are going to miss our flight,” I said.

The female agent then called an older gentleman, also a TSA agent over. The male TSA agent stood in front of me and said “I’m going to have to pat down your son.”

With Jackson still sitting in my lap (he was being so good despite all of this chaos) I said ok and continued to hold on to my son, expecting the male TSA agent to start touching Jackson.

He then told me, “I’m going to have to pick him up to inspect him.”

I rolled my eyes and sternly told him “It’s his pacifier clip that went off, can’t you just run that back through the belt and let us go. We are going to miss our flight.”

The female TSA agent, who had been standing there the entire time said to me, “You need to adjust your attitude and do as you are told.”

The male TSA agent repeated, “I’m going to have to pick him up to inspect him.”

I handed him my son.

I handed him my son and he walked away with my child.

Read the rest here.

And check out this one too.

The only way this madness will stop is if we Just Stop Flying. Your family members out of state will just have to learn to use Skype. Because the Department of so-called Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Theatre Administration will not stop this madness until the money guys -- the airlines -- beg them to because no one is flying.

In other TSA news....

I went through Charlotte Douglas International just about a month ago, before the junk-o-scans were put into use. I may not fly into there ever again after reading this:

Cathy Bossi lives in south Charlotte and has been a flight attendant for the past 32 years, working the past 28 for U.S. Airways.

In early August Bossie was walking through security when she says she was asked to go through the new full body-scanners at Concourse "D" at Charlotte Douglas International.

She reluctantly agreed. As a 3-year breast cancer survivor she says she didn't want the added radiation through her body. But, Bossi says she did agree.

"The T.S.A. Agent told me to put my I.D. on my back," she said. "When I got out of there she said because my I.D. was on my back, I had to go to a personal screening area."

She says two female Charlotte T.S.A. agents took her to a private room and began what she calls an aggressive pat down. She says they stopped when they got around to feeling her right breast… the one where she'd had surgery.

"She put her full hand on my breast and said, 'What is this?'. And I said, 'It's my prosthesis because I've had breast cancer.' And she said, 'Well, you'll need to show me that'."

Cathy was asked to show her prosthetic breast, removing it from her bra.

"I did not take the name of the person at the time because it was just so horrific of an experience, I couldn't believe someone had done that to me. I'm a flight attendant. I was just trying to get to work."

And in case you're tempted to blame Barack Obama for all this, aggressive patdowns have been going on since the Bush years:

An Amarillo woman is suing the federal government for intentional infliction of emotional distress after Transportation Security Administration agents allegedly humiliated the woman when her breasts were publicly exposed during an "extended search" two years ago at a Corpus Christi airport.

The suit, filed earlier this year in Amarillo's U.S. District Court, alleges the woman was singled out for "extended search procedures" while preparing to board an aircraft destined for Amarillo on May 29, 2008.

The Amarillo Globe-News has declined to identify the woman for privacy reasons.

"As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff's blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs' breasts to everyone in the area," the lawsuit said. "As would be expected, plaintiff was extremely embarrassed and humiliated."

The suit said the woman filed an administrative claim against the TSA, but the agency never responded, sparking the lawsuit.

The suit also claims that other TSA employees continued to joke and laugh about the incident for an extended period of time. The woman was distraught over the incident and left the screening area so an acquaintance could console her, the suit said.

When the woman re-entered the boarding area, employees once again began joking about the matter, the suit said.

"One male TSA employee expressed to the plaintiff that he wished he would have been there when she came through the first time and that 'he would just have to watch the video,'" the suit said.

Don't expect Congress to do anything about the TSA

Why should they? THEY're exempt:

Representative John A. Boehner, soon to be the Speaker of the House, has pledged to fly commercial airlines back to his home district in Ohio. But that does not mean that he will be subjected to the hassles of ordinary passengers, including the controversial security pat-downs.

As he left Washington on Friday, Mr. Boehner headed across the Potomac River to Reagan National Airport, which was bustling with afternoon travelers. But there was no waiting in line for Mr. Boehner, who was escorted around the metal detectors and body scanners, and taken directly to the gate.

Mr. Boehner, who was wearing a casual yellow sweater and tan slacks, carried his own bags and smiled pleasantly at passengers who were leaving the security checkpoint inside the airport terminal. It was unclear whether any passengers waiting in the security line, including Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat who lost his re-election bid, saw Mr. Boehner.

At a Capitol Hill news conference after Election Day, as Mr. Boehner began laying out the changes he would make when he becomes House Speaker, he announced that he would continue to fly commercial airlines (usually Delta) back to Ohio. It was a not-so-subtle dig at the outgoing Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, who had been criticized by Republicans for flying military airplanes when she returned home to San Francisco.

“Over the last 20 years, I have flown back and forth to my district on a commercial aircraft,” Mr. Boehner said at the time, “and I am going to continue to do that.”

And so on Friday, he did. But not without the perquisites of office, including avoiding those security pat-downs that many travelers are bracing for as holiday travel season approaches.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for the Republican leader, said in a statement that Mr. Boehner was not receiving special treatment. And a law enforcement official said that any member of Congress or administration official with a security detail is allowed to bypass security.

And just like Andy Harris wanting HIS health insurance on day one upon taking office but campaigned on a platform of repealing acces to health insurance for "the little people", Congress isn't going to take on something that doesn't affect them personally.

And yet Ted Kennedy found himself on a no-fly list. Funny how these things work, isn't it?

Another TSA horror story

Just go read it.

Do YOU want to rely on TSA staff to deliver a "safe" dose of radiation to your body?

The so-called "safety" of the TSA scanners that are making Michael Chertoff rich, even if you want to believe it's there, is dependent on the same people who are pulling attractive young women out for extra pat-downs. Do YOU trust a $25,000-a-year, relatively unskilled flack with this:

"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," said Dr. Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, according to a Agence France Presse story.

Love's comments, reported Sunday on the AlterNet website, came amid calls for a national revolt on airport body scanners, with plans firming up for a "National Opt-Out Day" set for Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving, in which airline passengers are urged to refuse a body scan and opt instead for a pat down in airport security lines on the busiest travel day of the year.

Travel experts are predicting chaos in the terminals. But I'm hoping the added attention sheds more light on the cancer question, because Love is far from alone in venting his health concerns.

[snip]

Dr. David Brenner, head of the center for radiological research at Columbia University in New York, told the London Telegraph in a June 29 story that considering the large number of people who frequent the nation's airports, wide-ranging exposure, even to minimal amounts of radiation, could add up to one big concern.

"If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with X-rays, then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk," he said. "The population risk has the potential to be significant."

Scientists with the University of California at San Francisco were so worried that they wrote a letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology in April raising "a number of red flags" on the scanners' safety.

"While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high," the letter said in part, adding concerns that "independent safety data do not exist" and raising the potential for further harm if a high dosage was accidentally emitted.

"Any glitch in power at any point in the hardware (or more importantly in the software) that stops the device can cause an intense radiation dose to a single spot on the skin. Who will oversee problems with overall dose after repair or software problems?"

The Office of Science and Technology last month responded to the concerns with a nine-page letter assuring the UCSF scientists that the doses met safety standards and had been adequately tested.

"The potential health risks from a full-body screening with a general-use X-ray security system are miniscule," the government agency wrote. "Several groups of recognized experts have been assembled and have analyzed the radiation safety issues associated with this technology."

But one co-author of the UCSF letter, biochemist John Sedat, told AFP in Sunday's AlterNet story, that the government's explanation was "deeply flawed" and insufficient to ease scientists' concerns.

Germany knows what happens when people are obedient sheep

One of the things that impressed me about Germany when I was there for two weeks last summer for work is the way that country has been willing to stare itself in the face about the less-savory aspects of its history. The Holocaust museum, situated right by the Reichstag, is a moving reminder. The footprint of the Berlin Wall is etched into the pavement. The idea of "Never forget" is on display in Berlin every day. Yes, there are pockets of neo-Nazis, but at least so far, Germany has been far more willing to look at itself in the mirror and confront itself than we have. Here we have politicians who use code phrases like "original intent" and "return to the Constitution" and references to the Confederate flag to minimize the cruelty and viciousness of slavery. Here we have politicians who would be perfectly willing to round up Muslims and put them into camps and political "pundits" who still defend the internment of the Japanese during World War II. Museums and monuments to these less-savory aspects of our own history are hidden away where few people visit them.

One of the by-products of being constantly reminded of the peril of turning into obedient sheep is heightened awareness of when real threats to freedom start to rear their ugly head. So while Americans line up mindlessly to have radiation sprayed into their bodies just to get on an airplane, the young denizens of Berlin aren't going gently into that good scanner:

(via)

So much for "The scanned images are not stored"

Look, I really don't care if someone leaks TSA scanner images of my fat ass on the internet. What I do object to is the idea that in order to get on an airplane you have to go through more humiliating security checks than you do to move from place to place in a maximum-security prison. I object to the idea that making Michael Chertoff rich somehow trumps the reality espoused by people who actually DO face down the threat of terrorism every day that full-body scanners do not catch the kinds of explosives that a savvy would-be terrorist will be carrying. I object to a security system that sanctions the legalized groping of small children in the name of national defense. And I especially object to having my intelligence insulted by being told it's to "keep me safe" and that "the images are not stored or transmitted."

Especially when this happens:

At the heart of the controversy over "body scanners" is a promise: The images of our naked bodies will never be public. U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner. These are those images.

A Gizmodo investigation has revealed 100 of the photographs saved by the Gen 2 millimeter wave scanner from Brijot Imaging Systems, Inc., obtained by a FOIA request after it was recently revealed that U.S. Marshals operating the machine in the Orlando, Florida courthouse had improperly-perhaps illegally-saved images of the scans of public servants and private citizens.

We understand that it will be controversial to release these photographs. But identifying features have been eliminated. And fortunately for those who walked through the scanner in Florida last year, this mismanaged machine used the less embarrassing imaging technique.

Yet the leaking of these photographs demonstrates the security limitations of not just this particular machine, but millimeter wave and x-ray backscatter body scanners operated by federal employees in our courthouses and by TSA officers in airports across the country. That we can see these images today almost guarantees that others will be seeing similar images in the future. If you're lucky, it might even be a picture of you or your family.

While the fidelity of the scans from this machine are of surprisingly low resolution, especially compared to the higher resolution "naked scanners" using the potentially harmful x-ray backscatter technology, the TSA and other government agencies have repeatedly touted the quality of "Advanced Imaging Technology" while simultaneously assuring customers that operators "cannot store, print, transmit or save the image, and the image." According to the TSA—and of course other agencies—images from the scanners are "automatically deleted from the system after it is cleared by the remotely located security officer." Whatever the stated policy, it's clear that it is trivial for operators to save images and remove them for distribution if they choose not to follow guidelines or that other employees could remove images that are inappropriately if accidentally stored.

Or this:

Ah, the old "planting a fake bag of cocaine on a stressed traveler" trick—a classic! A recently released document reveals an idiotic TSA screener who, earlier this year, joked around with fake cocaine instead of doing his job.

The man, whose name has been redacted from the disclosed reports acquired by The Smoking Gun, was supposed to be testing expensive new screening gear from Northrop Grumman at Philadelphia International Airport. But that is totally boring! So the employee filled the time by harassing travelers passing through screening with a bags and vials of creatine—which looks a lot like cocaine.

Tell your friends...this is NOT about your safety.

Security Theatre Update

For those who haven't already read it, you can see my account of my recent experience with Air Security Theatre at the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood airport here.

A group of scientists NOT affiliated with either the government or the company that manufactures and distributes the backscatter scanners that are now being used in an increasing number of US airports, has sent a letter of concern to Dr. John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology about the safety of these scanners.

Money quote:

The X-ray dose from these devices has often been compared in the media to the cosmic ray exposure inherent to airplane travel or that of a chest X-ray. However, this comparison is very misleading: both the air travel cosmic ray exposure and chest X-rays have much higher X-ray energies and the health consequences are appropriately understood in terms of the whole body volume dose. In contrast, these new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol, possibly by one to two orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high.

In addition, it appears that real independent safety data do not exist. A search, ultimately finding top FDA radiation physics staff, suggests that the relevant radiation quantity, the Flux [photons per unit area and time (because this is a scanning device)] has not been characterized. Instead an indirect test (Air Kerma) was made that emphasized the whole body exposure value, and thus it appears that the danger is low when compared to cosmic rays during airplane travel and a chest X-ray dose.

Our colleagues at UCSF, dermatologists and cancer experts, raise specific important concerns:

• A) The large population of older travelers, >65 years of age, is particularly at risk from the mutagenic effects of the X-rays based on the known biology of melanocyte aging.
  
• B) A fraction of the female population is especially sensitive to utagenesis provoking radiation leading to breast cancer. Notably, because these women, who have defects in DNA repair mechanisms, are particularly prone to cancer, X-ray mammograms are not performed on them. The dose to breast tissue beneath the skin represents a similar risk.
  
• C) Blood (white blood cells) perfusing the skin is also at risk.
  
• D) The population of immunocompromised individuals--HIV and cancer patients (see above) is likely to be at risk for cancer induction by the high skin dose.
  
• E) The risk of radiation emission to children and adolescents does not appear to have been fully evaluated.
  
• F) The policy towards pregnant women needs to be defined once the theoretical risks to the fetus are determined.
  
• G) Because of the proximity of the testicles to skin, this tissue is at risk for sperm mutagenesis.
  
• H) Have the effects of the radiation on the cornea and thymus been determined?
  

Moreover, there are a number of ‘red flags’ related to the hardware itself. Because this device can scan a human in a few seconds, the X-ray beam is very intense. Any glitch in power at any point in the hardware (or more importantly in software) that stops the device could cause an intense radiation dose to a single spot on the skin. Who will oversee problems with overall dose after repair or software problems? The TSA is already complaining about resolution limitations; who will keep the manufacturers and/or TSA from just raising the dose, an easy way to improve signal-to-noise and get
higher resolution?

This is the technology that's supposed to be "keeping us safe."

The alternative is to be groped by TSA personnel. My experience at FLL, while not pleasant, was not as utterly humiliating as it could have been. Others' experience has differed:

We were flying from Nashville to Orlando to go to Disney for my son's birthday. My son is 9 years old. Nashville has installed the new backscatter scanners, aka "naked" scanners. Now I am not a modest person and for me myself I don't care. To be honest, I had not given it much thought. We were given no option to opt out of the scans that I could see, no signage or instructions. I later found out you can opt out and choose the pat down instead. Well, we all three went through the machine. Husband and I were fine. They scanned the kid and then informed us they had to pat him down. I asked why, they said he moved. So I am thinking run of the mill pat down, wand over his body and light touch. He is 9 years old for the love of Pete but that was not the case. Had anyone but a physician doing a necessary medical exam touched my child in the places the TSA agent put his hands, I would have filed charges. He groped the inside of his legs and touched his genitals. He put his hands around my son's neck in a choking position, felt all the way down his chest area and his buttocks. He placed his hands inside my son's pants waist band and felt around his waist. The agent was loud and intimidating even for me, a 36 year old women. He barked at him to "hold up your pants" and "spread your legs, shoulder width." All I could think was my son looked like he was being frisked and how humiliating this was for him to be stared at by everyone as they passed by us. Now, this whole scenario was out in the open, we were not given the option of privacy. My son was scared and humiliated. I am not a momma hen or a wacko and we fly regularly and have never minded the security measures needed but this was a shocking experience. Shocking enough for us to forgo air travel (which we have always loved) until these new security rules change and come closer to something akin to reason. (LINK)

Last week, one of my flying partners (Captain with Skywest) was going through security at DEN with his 18 year daughter. As his daughter approached the detector, the TSO working the NoS said on his headset, "heads up, got a cutie for you." He then confronted the TSA clerk with what he said and that neither of us are going through the NoS. The TSA clerk said you must have misunderstood me. (LINK)

Some lady came over and grabbed my arm and pulled me into another area and I pulled away from her and I said, “Woah, what’s going on here,” and she said, "If you opt out I have to give you a full patdown.”

They put me in this little area which is directly after the body scanner and the WTMD and so everyone who goes through that has to go around this area that I’m in. I’m just standing there and this lady is screaming at me about the procedures, and I said "Can I talk to your boss?”

And so I’m sitting there and she brings out her manager and the first thing she says to her manager is, "This girl has all kinds of opinions about how we’re doing our job wrong."

And that’s how she introduces the situation. I try to ask a question and I don’t get 30 seconds into talking with this woman and she runs away and she comes back with a dozen cops. I sat there and counted them. I asked at one point if I could grab my camera and they would not let me touch my stuff.

I’m just sitting there…and I’m trying to talk to the one officer and anytime I ask him a question that he did not have an answer to, he would get really upset and start yelling at me some more, and then they cuffed me in the chair. And then the original TSA lady who was going to give me the patdown just kind of quietly, so no one else can hear, she says, “I can tell you one thing,” and then she rips my boarding pass in half. (LINK)

Perhaps it's time to just stop flying until we are treated like human beings again. Wednesday, November 24 is opt-out day. If everyone who travels through an airport that day opts out of radiation exposure being administered by a government flack, and is instead treated like a prison inmate, it might wake us up to what we've lost in this pursuit of the illusion (not the reality) of "safety".

UPDATE:

Another account from someone who opted for "alternate screening":

After removing my shoes and making my way toward the metal detector, the person in front of me in line was pulled out to go through the backscatter machine. After asking what it was and being told, he opted out. This left the machine free, and before I could go through the metal detector, I was pulled out of line to go through the backscatter machine. When asked, I half-chuckled and said, "I don't think so." At this point, I was informed that I would be subject to a pat down, and I waited for another agent.

A male agent (it was a female who had directed me to the backscatter machine in the first place), came and waited for me to get my bags and then directed me over to the far corner of the area for screening. After setting my things on a table, he turned to me and began to explain that he was going to do a "standard" pat down. (I thought to myself, "great, not one of those gropings like I've been reading about".) After he described, the pat down, I realized that he intended to touch my groin. After he finished his description but before he started the pat down, I looked him straight in the eye and said, "if you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested." He, a bit taken aback, informed me that he would have to involve his supervisor because of my comment.

We both stood there for no more than probably two minutes before a female TSA agent (apparently, the supervisor) arrived. She described to me that because I had opted out of the backscatter screening, I would now be patted down, and that involved running hands up the inside of my legs until they felt my groin. I stated that I would not allow myself to be subject to a molestation as a condition of getting on my flight. The supervisor informed me that it was a standard administrative security check and that they were authorized to do it. I repeated that I felt what they were doing was a sexual assault, and that if they were anyone but the government, the act would be illegal. I believe that I was then informed that if I did not submit to the inspection, I would not be getting on my flight. I again stated that I thought the search was illegal. I told her that I would be willing to submit to a walk through the metal detector as over 80% of the rest of the people were doing, but I would not be groped. The supervisor, then offered to go get her supervisor.

I took a seat in a tiny metal chair next to the table with my belongings and waited. While waiting, I asked the original agent (who was supposed to do the pat down) if he had many people opt out to which he replied, none (or almost none, I don't remember exactly). He said that I gave up a lot of rights when I bought my ticket. I replied that the government took them away after September 11th. There was silence until the next supervisor arrived. A few minutes later, the female agent/supervisor arrived with a man in a suit (not a uniform). He gave me a business card identifying him as David Silva, Transportation Security Manager, San Diego International Airport. At this point, more TSA agents as well as what I assume was a local police officer arrived on the scene and surrounded the area where I was being detained. The female supervisor explained the situation to Mr. Silva. After some quick back and forth (that I didn't understand/hear), I could overhear Mr. Silva say something to the effect of, "then escort him from the airport." I again offered to submit to the metal detector, and my father-in-law, who was near by also tried to plead for some reasonableness on the TSA's part.

Read more here.

And just how do you think children make sense of the lessons they're told about not to let strangers touch them when if they travel with their parents they're put through this:

This is not about safety. I'm not sure what it is, but it isn't about safety. The chance of being a victim of in-flight terrorism is one in 10,408,947. As Ronald Bailey pointed out in Reason magazine in 2006:

Your lifetime odds of dying of a particular cause are calculated by dividing the one-year odds by the life expectancy of a person born in that year. For example, in 2003 about 45,000 Americans died in motor accidents out of population of 291,000,000. So, according to the National Safety Council this means your one-year odds of dying in a car accident is about one out of 6500. Therefore your lifetime probability (6500 ÷ 78 years life expectancy) of dying in a motor accident are about one in 83.

What about your chances of dying in an airplane crash? A one-year risk of one in 400,000 and one in 5,000 lifetime risk. What about walking across the street? A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625. Drowning? A one-year risk of one in 88,000 and a one in 1100 lifetime risk. In a fire? About the same risk as drowning. Murder? A one-year risk of one in 16,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 210. What about falling? Essentially the same as being murdered. And the proverbial being struck by lightning? A one-year risk of one in 6.2 million and a lifetime risk of one in 80,000. And what is the risk that you will die of a catastrophic asteroid strike? In 1994, astronomers calculated that the chance was one in 20,000. However, as they've gathered more data on the orbits of near earth objects, the lifetime risk has been reduced to one in 200,000 or more.

So how do these common risks compare to your risk of dying in a terrorist attack? To try to calculate those odds realistically, Michael Rothschild, a former business professor at the University of Wisconsin, worked out a couple of plausible scenarios. For example, he figured that if terrorists were to destroy entirely one of America's 40,000 shopping malls per week, your chances of being there at the wrong time would be about one in one million or more. Rothschild also estimated that if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000.

Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300. (300,000,000 ÷ 3,000 = 100,000 ÷ 78 years = 1282) In other words, your risk of dying in a plausible terrorist attack is much lower than your risk of dying in a car accident, by walking across the street, by drowning, in a fire, by falling, or by being murdered.

So why are we going through this?

The Israelis have had tight security at that country's airports for decades. Mr. Brilliant used to work for an Israeli company and went there twice. He was asked why he was there, what he was doing, when he was leaving, everyone he was supposed to have contact with. They don't do virtual strip searches or grope women's breasts or men's scrotal sacs in the name of security. And Israeli security experts regard the scanners as a waste of money:

"I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747," Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.

"That's why we haven't put them in our airport," Sela said, referring to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, which has some of the toughest security in the world.

Sela, former chief security officer of the Israel Airport Authority and a 30-year veteran in airport security and defence technology, helped design the security at Ben Gurion.

[snip]

Sela testified it makes more sense to create a "trusted traveller" system so pre-approved low-risk passengers can move through an expedited screening process. That would leave more resources in the screening areas, where automatic sniffing technology would detect any explosive residue on a person or their baggage.

Behavioural profiling also must be used instead of random checks, he said.

Scanners are expensive and dangerous. Groping is humiliating. Both turn every single traveler at an American airport into a suspected criminal. The professionalism of TSA employees varies even within the same airport. This is not security, this is performance art.

Again, I ask: Why are we putting ourselves through this?