Airport Body Scanners (NSFW?)

[MotF Bane]

no, i love constitutional rights. this is completely different. yes, people have the right to privacy, but

No, no buts. All stop right there. People have a right to privacy. You are willing to surrender a right for the illusion of security.

 

[Zebo]

Anyone know how much TSA pays? I bet they won't all look like this though. Probably one of those "artist renditions" things, like the good looking food on McDonalds billboards then when you get there it sucks

 

[bob4432]

Anyone know how much TSA pays? I bet they won't all look like this though. Probably one of those "artist renditions" things, like the good looking food on McDonalds billboards then when you get there it sucks

or since it is gov it may be that much better - like the sr71 only went mach3 and current aircraft carriers only go ~40knots and all nuclear weapons are large? come on zebo, you are losing your edge man

 

[Zorba]

the most primary of constitutional rights is the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

You do know that phrase is no where in the constitution right? You are thinking of the wrong document.

What is really stupid about this is airline mechanics never get scanned when they show up for work, same with caters, cabin services people, etc. They just pass an FAA background check and that's it.

 

[Cstefan]

Fapworthy.

 

[Kirby]

I just know it's absolutely depressing going from Incheon Airport and Korea Air to the Atlanta airport and Delta. The amount of courtesy, professionalism, and general experience is like night and day. That goes for security, immigration and any other airport staff. You go from being a valued customer to inconvenience and annoyance.

 

[bl4ckfl4g]

Nice vag

 

[WelshBloke]

No, no buts. All stop right there. People have a right to privacy. You are willing to surrender a right for the illusion of security.

Do you have a right to privacy in public?

 

[eits]

No, no buts. All stop right there. People have a right to privacy. You are willing to surrender a right for the illusion of security.

you need to learn how to read

 

[eits]

You do know that phrase is no where in the constitution right? You are thinking of the wrong document.

What is really stupid about this is airline mechanics never get scanned when they show up for work, same with caters, cabin services people, etc. They just pass an FAA background check and that's it.

my mistake... declaration of independence.

 

[zephyrprime]

This image is an internet hoax. Notice how the image captures her hair? Radiation from a scanner would go right through hair so hair would not show well in the image. This image is an ordinary photograph that has been shopped.

 

[Mike Gayner]

How stupid are the users of this forum? Even if the detail in that image is legitimate, obviously any colouring is totally artificial. The scanner can't actually see through clothing using visible light, geniuses.

 

[TruePaige]

How stupid are the users of this forum? Even if the detail in that image is legitimate, obviously any colouring is totally artificial. The scanner can't actually see through clothing using visible light, geniuses.

How stupid are you? The color part was added after the fact, as clearly stated.

See, they used computers. Figure those out yet?

 

[sao123]

No, no buts. All stop right there. People have a right to privacy. You are willing to surrender a right for the illusion of security.

there is no constitutional right to privacy. the word privacy doesnt appear in the constitution anywhere.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Where do I sign up to be a TSA agent? Hopefully there's a hot people line and a fat people line so I can avoid the latter.

The TSA agents who look at the scans do not see the person at all. I read the TSA site extensively, and they use an officer who escorts you to the scanner, and he/she radios someone looking at a computer screen in some isolated room. The images are not saved/stored either. So you'd have to do some imagining.

 

[TruePaige]

there is no constitutional right to privacy. the word privacy doesnt appear in the constitution anywhere.

The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information. In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.

The question of whether the Constitution protects privacy in ways not expressly provided in the Bill of Rights is controversial. Many originalists, including most famously Judge Robert Bork in his ill-fated Supreme Court confirmation hearings, have argued that no such general right of privacy exists. The Supreme Court, however, beginning as early as 1923 and continuing through its recent decisions, has broadly read the "liberty" guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee a fairly broad right of privacy that has come to encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, and termination of medical treatment. Polls show most Americans support this broader reading of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court, in two decisions in the 1920s, read the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause to prohibit states from interfering with the private decisions of educators and parents to shape the education of children. In Meyer v Nebraska (1923), the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited the teaching of German and other foreign languages to children until the ninth grade. The state argued that foreign languages could lead to inculcating in students "ideas and sentiments foreign to the best interests of this country." The Court, however, in a 7 to 2 decision written by Justice McReynolds concluded that the state failed to show a compelling need to infringe upon the rights of parents and teachers to decide what course of education is best for young students. Justice McReynolds wrote:

"While this court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

Two years late, in Pierce v Society of Sisters, the Court applied the principles of Meyer to strike down an Oregon law that compelled all children to attend public schools, a law that would have effectively closed all parochial schools in the state.

The privacy doctrine of the 1920s gained renewed life in the Warren Court of the 1960s when, in Griswold v Connecticut (1965), the Court struck down a state law prohibiting the possession, sale, and distribution of contraceptives to married couples. Different justifications were offered for the conclusion, ranging from Court's opinion by Justice Douglas that saw the "penumbras" and "emanations" of various Bill of Rights guarantees as creating "a zone of privacy," to Justice Goldberg's partial reliance on the Ninth Amendment's reference to "other rights retained by the people," to Justice Harlan's decision arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause forbade the state from engaging in conduct (such as search of marital bedrooms for evidence of illicit contraceptives) that was inconsistent with a government based "on the concept of ordered liberty."

In 1969, the Court unanimously concluded that the right of privacy protected an individual's right to possess and view pornography (including pornography that might be the basis for a criminal prosecution against its manufacturer or distributor) in his own home. Drawing support for the Court's decision from both the First and Fourth Amendments, Justice Marshall wrote in Stanley v Georgia:

"Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulating obscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one's own home. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds."

The Burger Court extended the right of privacy to include a woman's right to have an abortion in Roe v Wade (1972), but thereafter resisted several invitations to expand the right. Kelley v Johnson (1976), in which the Court upheld a grooming regulation for police officers, illustrates the trend toward limiting the scope of the "zone of privacy." (The Court left open, however, the question of whether government could apply a grooming law to members of the general public, who it assumed would have some sort of liberty interest in matters of personal appearance.) Some state courts, however, were not so reluctant about pushing the zone of privacy to new frontiers. The Alaska Supreme Court went as far in the direction of protecting privacy rights as any state. In Ravin v State (1975), drawing on cases such as Stanley and Griswold but also basing its decision on the more generous protection of the Alaska Constitution's privacy protections, the Alaska Supreme Court found constitutional protection for the right of a citizen to possess and use small quantities of marijuana in his own home.

In more recent decades, the Court recognized in Cruzan v Missouri Department of Health (1990) that individuals have a liberty interest that includes the right to make decisions to terminate life-prolonging medical treatments (although the Court accepted that states can impose certain conditions on the exercise of that right). In 2003, in Lawrence v Texas, the Supreme Court, overruling an earlier decision, found that Texas violated the liberty clause of two gay men when it enforced against them a state law prohibiting homosexual sodomy. Writing for the Court in Lawrence, Justice Kennedy reaffirmed in broad terms the Constitution's protection for privacy:

"These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life....The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. 'It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.'”

One question that the Court has wrestled with through its privacy decisions is how strong of an interest states must demonstrate to overcome claims by individuals that they have invaded a protected liberty interest. Earlier decisions such as Griswold and Roe suggested that states must show a compelling interest and narrowly tailored means when they have burdened fundamental privacy rights, but later cases such as Cruzan and Lawrence have suggested the burden on states is not so high.

The future of privacy protection remains an open question. Justices Scalia and Thomas, for example, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on specific Bill of Rights guarantees. The public, however, wants a Constitution that fills privacy gaps and prevents an overreaching Congress from telling the American people who they must marry, how many children they can have, or when they must go to bed. The best bet is that the Court will continue to recognize protection for a general right of privacy.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html

Bill of rights, case law, etc...

Sorry, you are a moron.

 

[werepossum]

After seeing those images I've changed my mind about these scanners. I now think that for complete safety all airports should use these scanners and display the scans for the other passengers real time on 100" plasma screens so that we can all see just how safe we really are. I also think the scanners should use really tight gaps so that fat people have to be searched by hand, including a BCS. This will produce the dual benefits of reducing the number of passengers who inflict side fat into my space and preventing me from wandering the airport blinded by monochrome fugliness.

 

[OutHouse]

Anyone know how much TSA pays? I bet they won't all look like this though. Probably one of those "artist renditions" things, like the good looking food on McDonalds billboards then when you get there it sucks

http://www.tsa.gov/join/careers/pay_scales.shtm

screeners are pay band F

Pay Band Minimum Maximum
A $16,831 $24,608
B $19,281 $28,124
C $21,839 $32,811
D $25,141 $37,711
E $28,869 $43,357
F $33,130 $49,748
G $38,776 $60,081
H $47,298 $73,291
I $57,631 $89,376
J $70,309 $108,977
K $84,050 $130,283
L $100,455 $153,200
M $118,459 $153,200

 

[lord_emperor]

How long until it's more worthwhile to blow up the crowds waiting to be scanned & searched?

 

[OutHouse]

How long until it's more worthwhile to blow up the crowds waiting to be scanned & searched?

i have been wondering that myself.

 

[ultimatebob]

The TSA agents who look at the scans do not see the person at all. I read the TSA site extensively, and they use an officer who escorts you to the scanner, and he/she radios someone looking at a computer screen in some isolated room. The images are not saved/stored either. So you'd have to do some imagining.

Come on.. you honestly don't think that they won't be keeping a camera phone in their pocket for the day when a famous actress or supermodel walks through one of those scanners?

Remember... The TSA doesn't pay well, but celebrity gossip and porn sites do!

Edit: And celebbodyscans.com is available... better grab it quick!

 

[reallyscrued]

I'm pretty surprised this being a tech forum that the majority of the people who have replied in this thread actually believe this obvious attempt at a meme parody is really how the scans will show up on TSA's monitors.

The image in the middle is just an invert of the girl's nude body to the right. (Take it to paint or photoshop to test). It's definitely not an image that can be derived from airport body scanners.

If somehow scanners were able to produce images of people, clean with all the details of the foremost layer of their skin, complete with nipples and tan line discolorations, perfectly devoid of all of their clothing (...including the metal that this woman had on her jeans belt buckle or zipper/bra clasp/fillings/earrings), minus all their internal organs and teeth, we would've had real X-Ray specs a long time ago.

 

[MotF Bane]

I'm pretty surprised this being a tech forum that the majority of the people who have replied in this thread actually believe this obvious attempt at a meme parody is really how the scans will show up on TSA's monitors.

The image in the middle is just an invert of the girl's nude body to the right. (Take it to paint or photoshop to test). It's definitely not an image that can be derived from airport body scanners.

If somehow scanners were able to produce images of people, clean with all the details of the foremost layer of their skin, complete with nipples and tan line discolorations, perfectly devoid of all of their clothing (...including the metal that this woman had on her jeans belt buckle or zipper/bra clasp/fillings/earrings), minus all their internal organs and teeth, we would've had real X-Ray specs a long time ago.

Really? I had no idea it was inverted. The text above the image doesn't say "simple invert" or anything of the sort. Nope, not at all.

 

[reallyscrued]

Really? I had no idea it was inverted. The text above the image doesn't say "simple invert" or anything of the sort. Nope, not at all.

Yeah...thanks...I totally didn't notice the part where it explains it......

I think I worded my response badly. If the image that is shown on airport scanners are simple inverts of the outsides of naked bodies...how does that give them a look to inside the body?

I meant its obviously an invert and not an X-ray.

 

[wiretap]

The scanners aren't designed to look inside the body, they are meant to look underneath the clothing but not past the skin.