|
snapcap
Phoenix
Joined: Oct 13, 2011
Age: 31
Posts: 2328
|
 Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:52 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| They were worthless even before this video. |
|
| Back to top |
|
Woodpecker
I am not a jigsaw ! I am a free man !
Joined: Oct 19, 2008
Age: 40
Posts: 2323
Location: Europe
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 4:57 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I have a question, how many microSv does a person get per scan ?
While joe public might only get scanned a few times a year, lets now think of an airport worker who gets scanned twice a day. How close will this person get in a year to 1 mSv which is the occupational radiation limit for a non-radiation worker.
_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity  I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man ! |
|
| Back to top |
|
pastafarian
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 20, 2011
Posts: 543
Location: London
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 5:30 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Asp-Z wrote: |
What are you talking about?
Weapons have gotten through the scanners over and over and experts and insiders have said that the scanners are useless for providing security against terrorists, that what those articles say. |
No its not actually what those articles say.
Half of your articles aren't even about the scanners, they are about other TSA procedures and the standard Xray machine missing guns. I was talking about the “nude” body scanners, not the whole of the TSAs competence.
I was talking about whether the OP video claim that the "nude" scanners dont work is true. (Given the person rotates, I can't see how the argument in that video can be true.)
In articles about guns getting on to planes are you assuming it was the "nude" scanners?
This Gizmodo article is about something that happened with a regular Xray carry on luggage scanner, a year before the "nude" scanners, yet still most journalism failed to mention that and simply linked it to the "nude" Terrahertz technology. Nearly all the comments and media I read linked the event to the "nude" scanners.
http://gizmodo.com/5714865/the-tsa-let-a-loaded-gun-get-on-an-airplane
This Gizmodo article is about taking your laptop out of your bag, it has nothing to do with nude scanners???
http://gizmodo.com/5674675/british-airways-slams-tsa-over-completely-redundant-airport-security
This Gizmodo one is just the same type of journalism again. This may be an worker missing the standard Xray image for carry-on.
http://gizmodo.com/5819940/how-did-a-stun-gun-get-onto-a-jetblue-flight
And Brandt doesn't say the technology don't work in his original paper.
The claims that the "nude" technology don't work, that it's worthless and junk seems to me to be more a reaction to the scanners seeing though clothes, and radiation health concerns (under 100 nanoGrey per view, and your articles do link to other Gizmodo articles about health concerns).
Weapons get through Xray machines, not because the Xray dont work, but because the staff looking at the screen get bored or don't care. There is a difference between saying the TSA overall are rubbish and making out the technology don't work. |
|
| Back to top |
|
Woodpecker
I am not a jigsaw ! I am a free man !
Joined: Oct 19, 2008
Age: 40
Posts: 2323
Location: Europe
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:08 pm Post subject: |
|
|
OK if we use a assumption that each scan is 100 nanoGray.
Then a person can get 10000 scans in one year. This might sound a lot but a worker who works 5 days a week at a air port, for 50 weeks a year can only get 40 scans a day before they reach the 1 mSv limit. I think a worker who has to keep going from ground side to air might make 40 trips in one day will be a very rare type of worker.
But I have seen reports that some of the machines were emitting 10 times as much radiation as they were susposed to, this would bring the number of scans needed per day to hit the limit to only 4 per day. I think it is quite possible for a worker to get scanned four times in a day.
_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man ! |
|
| Back to top |
|
jojobean
sacred clown
Joined: Aug 13, 2009
Posts: 3341
Location: In Georgia sipping a virgin pina' colada while the rest of the world is drunk
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:48 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I have not flown since they introduced the nudie scanners and random pat downs. I heard the abuse stories poring into the ACLU are really bad....like creepy TSA agents targeting attractive women for pat downs and being rather sexually abusive about it, TSA agents doing pat downs on young children and old ladies, and there are many stories on their website of uncalled for abusive behavior.
Jojo
_________________
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.
-James Baldwin |
|
| Back to top |
|
pastafarian
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 20, 2011
Posts: 543
Location: London
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:33 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Woodpecker wrote: | OK if we use a assumption that each scan is 100 nanoGray.
Then a person can get 10000 scans in one year. This might sound a lot but a worker who works 5 days a week at a air port, for 50 weeks a year can only get 40 scans a day before they reach the 1 mSv limit. I think a worker who has to keep going from ground side to air might make 40 trips in one day will be a very rare type of worker.
But I have seen reports that some of the machines were emitting 10 times as much radiation as they were susposed to, this would bring the number of scans needed per day to hit the limit to only 4 per day. I think it is quite possible for a worker to get scanned four times in a day. |
Yes, as you say 40 trips a day will be the extreme rare type of worker and the safe limit is set for them. The traveller will get:
- 1000 scans, if they fly 3 times a day?
- 10 scans, if they fly once a month?
So one thousandth of that. Noise in the variation of background radiation. Isn't that the point? |
|
| Back to top |
|
pastafarian
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 20, 2011
Posts: 543
Location: London
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:41 am Post subject: |
|
|
| jojobean wrote: | I have not flown since they introduced the nudie scanners and random pat downs. I heard the abuse stories poring into the ACLU are really bad....like creepy TSA agents targeting attractive women for pat downs and being rather sexually abusive about it, TSA agents doing pat downs on young children and old ladies, and there are many stories on their website of uncalled for abusive behavior.
Jojo |
Creepy stories sell papers and spread at lightning speed through the internet. Whats the ratio of "professional pat downs" to creepy ones? Do the professional ones get talked about? Does "groping" make a good headline?
Are people generally rational?
We have always had pat downs in Europe, I really dont get the fuss. If someone was going to strap explosives to their bodies to blow up hundreds of people, being an older person might make that easier to do. And if I was such terrorist I would also put explosives on children (as people seem to think they should be left out of pat downs).
If I'm going to blow up 300 people do you think I wouldn't? |
|
| Back to top |
|
Asp-Z
Clockwork Planet
Joined: Dec 07, 2009
Posts: 11016
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 9:36 am Post subject: |
|
|
Right, pastafarian (awesome username BTW, may you be touched by his noodly appendages), this is what I was really looking for:
| Quote: | "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.
He told MPs on the House of Commons transport committee via video conference from Kfar Vradim, Israel, that he wouldn't reveal how to get past the virtual strip-search scanners, but said he can provide briefings to officials with security clearance.
Canada this year bought 44 body scanners for major Canadian airports -- three of them for Vancouver International. Each machine cost $250,000 and is being used for secondary screening to detect non-metallic threats, unless the passenger prefers a physical pat-down. |
http://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/israeli-expert-tsa-full-body-scanners.html
Also check out the "Airport Security Measures" section of this article: http://www.cracked.com/article_18775_5-popular-safety-measures-that-dont-make-you-any-safer.html
It says of the body scanners (all backed up with reliable sources you can click through):
| Quote: | But that's OK, since said underwear bomber has prompted governments around the world to install full-body scanners in their airports. You know, the ones that let the operator see your genitals. In late 2009 the TSA ordered $165 million worth of full body scanners, and countries like Canada have followed suit. But it's worth it, to stop terrorists like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab! Only, they wouldn't have stopped him. Let's quote Rafi Sela, former chief security officer for the Israel Airport Authority:
"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,"
Presumably, Mr. Sela has now been added to the no fly list.
These scanners would also have done nothing to detect the failed 2006 liquid bomb plot or the 2005 London train bombing. They can't even detect objects stuffed inside the body. For a visual example, check out this video of a rotund German man besting a full-body scanner. The machine caught his pocket knife, cell phone and microphone...
...but it didn't notice the armload of chemical bomb components he was carrying. |
This was all back in 2010.
So, as I said, these stupid machines have always been useless. |
|
| Back to top |
|
Cornflake
Rattles when shaken
Joined: Oct 31, 2010
Posts: 30293
Location: Hertfordshire, UK
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 12:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
and when you do, you find this: | Quote: | | Admittedly, he only faced the scanner from the front and not from the side. |
Which sounds more like a failure of method than a failure of the machine.
I'm not unsympathetic to your argument - far from it - but all this particular case amounts to is an over-hyped and fundamentally flawed test. They should have been much more rigorous.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/german_tv_on_th.html
This is presented as (my emphasis): | Quote: | These scanners would also have done nothing to detect the failed 2006 liquid bomb plot or the 2005 London train bombing. They can't even detect objects stuffed inside the body. For a visual example, check out this video of a rotund German man besting a full-body scanner. The machine caught his pocket knife, cell phone and microphone...
...but it didn't notice the armload of chemical bomb components he was carrying. |
Well of course not: the test wasn't done correctly.
Mention of the 2005 London train bombing is also specious, because the explosives were bulky and carried openly in backpacks - which in an airport scenario would have been passed through an X-Ray scanner or more likely, hand-searched.
A nudie body scanner would not have been used, and I dislike the bias in the reporting where it inflates the seriousness by using something irrelevant to the story.
I'm suspicious of the (unsubstantiated) claim that the scanners would have failed for the 2006 attempted liquid bomb plot because that involved 500ml containers - about the size of a large bottle of mouthwash - which would surely be difficult to hide under any circumstances.
I am suspicious - about their effectiveness and even more so about the point of this fear-soaked "safety" scanning.
What I'd like to see is a proper test - not a sensational spot on a TV show.
_________________
Giraffe: a ruminant with a view. |
|
| Back to top |
|
Asp-Z
Clockwork Planet
Joined: Dec 07, 2009
Posts: 11016
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 1:16 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Good spot Cornflake, I missed that.
I think the fact that the ex head of security for one of the most secure airports in the world called the scanners useless holds a lot more weight, though. |
|
| Back to top |
|
Cornflake
Rattles when shaken
Joined: Oct 31, 2010
Posts: 30293
Location: Hertfordshire, UK
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 1:44 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Yep, there is that and TBH I'm inclined to believe him.
It's just that a superb opportunity to throughly examine these things was wasted and turned into a sideshow - far too easy for politicians seeking votes and those with vested financial interests in promoting them to brush aside.
_________________
Giraffe: a ruminant with a view. |
|
| Back to top |
|
Beauty_pact
Observer
Joined: Oct 15, 2010
Age: 132
Posts: 1249
Location: Svíþjoð
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| pastafarian wrote: | | We have always had pat downs in Europe, I really dont get the fuss. |
We have not always had the "extended" or "enhanced" patdowns in Europe - or in the whole of it, anyway - even regular, non-invasive patdowns still are rare, here in Sweden. So speak for your own country (the UK), instead of saying how it supposedly "always" has been in "Europe".
Also, YOU don't get what the "fuss" is about. That is very clear. But others do. Or I suppose that maybe just makes those who can't stand this to be "NT ants", or have "NT herd behaviour", like you proclaimed, earlier? |
|
| Back to top |
|
Asp-Z
Clockwork Planet
Joined: Dec 07, 2009
Posts: 11016
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I've flown to loads of places in and out of Europe and I live in the UK. I've never had a pat-down for airport security. I suspect pastafarian is either BSing or is on a watch list  |
|
| Back to top |
|
Dilbert
Will work for love
Joined: Mar 30, 2009
Age: 39
Posts: 1728
Location: 47°36'N 122°20'W
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:34 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I don't think so. The metal object the guy was concealing was probably observed and deemed not a threat. The agents might have thought it was a medical device or a piece of his clothes or something.
If it were a bomb or a gun or a blade they would have stopped him.
Incompetence and extreme competence look the same to a layman. Always remember that before criticizing someone or something. |
|
| Back to top |
|
pastafarian
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 20, 2011
Posts: 543
Location: London
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 2:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Asp-Z wrote: | Good spot Cornflake, I missed that.
I think the fact that the ex head of security for one of the most secure airports in the world called the scanners useless holds a lot more weight, though. |
Quote:
"Admittedly, he only faced the scanner from the front and not from the side.
Which sounds more like a failure of method than a failure of the machine. "
Hey pal, but thats MY point from my first post!
That video and your links and the hype weren't credible to me. It sounds like this new one might be more interesting and I will take a look.
Also Asp-Z - I have flown for work extensively around Europe since 1990, and have enjoyed a patdown regularly.
Not BS. I'm just a frequent enough traveller to have extensive personal experience. I have no reason to make this up, have I? (I simply do not get the fuss about patdowns, I've never heard anyone I know fuss as I am rather pleased to be searched cos it means that the dodgy guy behind me gets searched too, its a no brainer to me) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
|
