Naked-Image Scanners to Be Removed From U.S. Airports

[NoStateofMind]

Naked-Image Scanners to Be Removed From U.S. Airports

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration will remove airport body scanners that privacy advocates likened to strip searches after OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS) couldn’t write software to make passenger images less revealing.
TSA will end a $5 million contract with OSI’s Rapiscan unit for the software after Administrator John Pistole concluded the company couldn’t meet a congressional deadline to produce generic passenger images, agency officials said in interviews.

The agency removed 76 of the machines from busier U.S. airports last year. It will now get rid of the remaining 174 Rapiscan machines, with the company absorbing the cost, said Karen Shelton Waters, the agency’s assistant administrator for acquisitions. The TSA will use 60 machines manufactured by L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (LLL), the agency’s other supplier of body scanners, and will move some scanners to busier airports to reduce waiting times.

So a failed experiment wasting taxpayer dollars. How many lives did this save compared to invade? Anyways, a longstanding TSA intrusion comes to an abrupt and relatively quiet end.

 

[Raizinman]

Our tax dollars at work. Don't forget to get your government approved flu shot too.

 

[randomrogue]

I find it silly that some people are so worried about being seen naked. As long as they didn't record the images and upload them to a website...

 

[Doppel]

I find it silly that some people are so worried about being seen naked. As long as they didn't record the images and upload them to a website...

Me I HATED these. I never used one, nor would have. I thought they were a massive privacy violation and it has nothing to do with whether images were saved (though that would have made it worse). These things were functionally exactly the same as having to go through a private booth and stripping down buck naked for somebody to look at you, except to save you the hassle of undressing a machine undresses you and then dresses you again quickly.

They were God-awful examples of stupidity on the part of the TSA and also the spinelessness of the American people for putting up with them.

I'm happy as a fucking lark that these are being taken out. What they will be replaced with sound vastly better (a computer, not a person, does the virtual strip search and if it finds anything it displays the area on a manequin-type image).

 

[randomrogue]

The thing is...there was no stripping and there was no nudity. It's just imaging. You could opt out if it bothered you. I don't see the problem.

I was more concerned with actual effectiveness. How effective where they? Did they save time? It was very hard to tell since the airports I saw them at never had enough of them so you would have some people going through them and some not or worse yet they would only be used in the express line that you had to pay that annual fee for.

 

[Murloc]

yeah I wouldn't mind the nudity part but it's just a waste of money, in the rest of the world this stuff never existed and it's not we have more terrorism.

 

[Doppel]

Nudity is a simple concept until it became possible to see one naked with clothes on; it's a word invented before this was possible.

As recently as a few weeks ago I showed a person how much could actually been seen on these and they had no idea the level of detail. And even a guy at work recently when I told him these were being removed he didn't even realize he'd been in one.

I'm confident that if people were more aware of what they were the outcry would have been much stronger. Unfortunately, the apathy of the most rules, as always.

 

[randomrogue]

I don't know. Call it a cultural difference if you will. I don't mind nudity. Especially by a machine. Especially when thousands upon thousands of people are going through it. It's not like the operators are sitting there with their buddies, drinking a beer, checking out your junk, and snickering. I thought they could invert the image to make it less invasive.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I don't know. Call it a cultural difference if you will. I don't mind nudity. Especially by a machine. Especially when thousands upon thousands of people are going through it. It's not like the operators are sitting there with their buddies, drinking a beer, checking out your junk, and snickering. I thought they could invert the image to make it less invasive.

They're doing that, minus the beer. And probably critiquing women more than men.

The scanners are an invasion of privacy, and it's easy to say "no big deal", but to many people...it's just that.

 

[Doppel]

I don't know. Call it a cultural difference if you will. I don't mind nudity. Especially by a machine. Especially when thousands upon thousands of people are going through it. It's not like the operators are sitting there with their buddies, drinking a beer, checking out your junk, and snickering. I thought they could invert the image to make it less invasive.

Having somebody see one nude is one of the most essential privacies. The machine was only a tool, but the nudity was viewed by people. Minus the beer there's no way to know if TSA agents snickered, but absolutely every reason to think so--they are human. The fact that it happened to many thousands certainly doesn't make it less objectionable in my view. Lastly, whether these machines could "invert" the images or not, they in general weren't (if ever?).

What you describe as not objectionable is actually exactly as it will be: a machine, not a person is evaluating you, and if a person looks at the image it will be "inverted". This doesn't bother me, either. Although it uses optics, in a way it's no more a violation than a metal detector since no human is going to view one nude.

 

[Demo24]

Its not really nudity when it just shows an outline of your body. Besides, it was quick, effective, and less intrusive than getting a full body pat down. I preferred going through them.

 

[Matt1970]

They can sit right next to the all the explosive/chemical sniffing machines the TSA bought that didn't work.

 

[IronWing]

Where do we buy the surplus machines? We goin' clubbin'!

 

[ShintaiDK]

TSA and security doesnt mix either. The only good TSA does is to make sure people dont visit the US again. It got to be some of the dumbest americans that got those jobs. And that says quite abit on its own.

 

[Doppel]

Its not really nudity when it just shows an outline of your body. Besides, it was quick, effective, and less intrusive than getting a full body pat down. I preferred going through them.

the back scanner machines in use until now did not just "shows an outline of your body".

 

[PottedMeat]

Where do we buy the surplus machines? We goin' clubbin'!

saw one on ebay for $50k. dated 2005+. comes with a 17" CRT and win98.

 

[Jaskalas]

I find it silly that some people are so worried about being seen naked. As long as they didn't record the images and upload them to a website...

I suggest you live in North Korea. Their security is top priority, just don't bother asking for food.

Though I'll give you credit, we're not talking about the worst thing TSA has done. The physical molestation is quite another.

 

[Bowfinger]

Its not really nudity when it just shows an outline of your body. Besides, it was quick, effective, and less intrusive than getting a full body pat down. I preferred going through them.

That's the point. These backscatter x-ray scanners didn't just show an outline of the body. They showed an actual monochrome, photo-quality image, fully detailed. That's purportedly why they're being removed, because they lacked the software to present the nude image as an impersonal outline (unlike the competing millimeter wave scanners).

There are rumors that this isn't why these machines are being removed at all. There have been questions about the safety of the x-ray scanners from the beginning. While the TSA insists the machines are designed to be safe for travelers (a claim some experts have challenged), there are greater concerns about the safety of the TSA officers who work around them for 8+ hours per day. There are also conerns about traveler safety when the machines aren't working optimally due to malfunction or damage. Converting to the competing millimeter-wave scanners mutes these health concerns since millimeter radiation is non-ionizing and is presumed safer than x-rays.

Another major issue with the scanners in general, and the x-ray scanners in particular, are questions about whether they're actually effective in stopping terrorists. Backscatter x-ray machines were found to be trivially easy to circumvent, through a widely publicized flaw. Several European countries declined to purchase them after large-scale studies determined they were not effective. In my opinion, much as we see with the rush to restrict guns today, the body scanners were theater, an emotional overreaction to a tragedy, a feel-good measure that created the appearance of action while accomplishing very, very little (other than enriching a select few at the expense of taxpayers, of course).

I'd say good riddance, but I'm sure we're already moving on to the next act in American Security Theater. We no doubt have another set of political patrons lined up to get their payoffs in billions of dollars of new orders for some equally ineffectual gadgets.

 

[Wreckem]

Naked-Image Scanners to Be Removed From U.S. Airports



So a failed experiment wasting taxpayer dollars. How many lives did this save compared to invade? Anyways, a longstanding TSA intrusion comes to an abrupt and relatively quiet end.

You failed to read the part in your own post about the company eating the costs for the scanners for their failure to live up to their contract.

 

[Wreckem]

the back scanner machines in use until now did not just "shows an outline of your body".

They stopped rolling out this type of back scatter machines a while ago. They were hoping to update the ones they had to be able to do the above but the company failed to do it(technically impossible apparently).

Full body scanners aren't going away, just ones that don't have any privacy settings.

 

[Bowfinger]

You failed to read the part in your own post about the company eating the costs for the scanners for their failure to live up to their contract.

They're eating the cost of removing the scanners from airports. We've already paid for those scanners, however, and Uncle Sugar still owns them. We're NOT getting a refund.

 

[Bowfinger]

They stopped rolling out this type of back scatter machines a while ago. They were hoping to update the ones they had to be able to do the above but the company failed to do it(technically impossible apparently).

Full body scanners aren't going away, just ones that don't have any privacy settings.

Exactly. The L-3 millimeter wave scanners have functional privacy software. We're now buying their systems instead to replace the backscatter x-ray scanners.

 

[Wreckem]

They're eating the cost of removing the scanners from airports. We've already paid for those scanners, however, and Uncle Sugar still owns them. We're NOT getting a refund.

Yes they are eating the costs of the removal, not the entire costs of the machines, but the machines are still going to be used by other agencies.

 

[Pedroc1999]

Well... Now we know that there wont be a guy jerking of infront of a airpory scanner

 

[Bowfinger]

Yes they are eating the costs of the removal, not the entire costs of the machines, but the machines are still going to be used by other agencies.

Yes. Of course we can only wonder where and why, given the issues with privacy, safety, and lack of effectiveness. Apparently there are places where we still need ineffectual security theater, but don't have to worry about privacy and safety.