Full body scanners may break child pornography laws | Hacker News Reader

Full body scanners may break child pornography laws

telegraph.co.uk

17 pointsjacquesm28 comments

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Watching the TSA squirm over these millimeter scanners is almost entertaining.

They want to do a full body scan, but...err..they have to blur genitals, so you could hide something in your groin region.

They want to scan everybody, but...err...not people under 18, so you could hide something on a kid.

So what do we end up with? We end up with what is, in my opinion, one of the most disgusting invasions of my privacy I could have even imagined and we're not even really benefiting from it because we're so concerned about being immoral (while taking what equates to naked photos of everyone) that we cut some huge massive holes in our security wall.

Awesome.

To me, this feels like a boss that screams up and down about security, then insists that his workstation be able to bypass all of it.

To me, this feels like a boss that screams up and down about security, then insists that his workstation be able to bypass all of it.

That actually is literally true - according to the leaked TSA documents heads of state are completely exempt.

There are less than two hundred heads of state in the world, so that by itself doesn't worry me. Imagine, though, how quickly this might drift to immediate family of heads of state... top diplomatic corps officials... people travelling on diplomatic passports....

I don't understand the outrage over full body scans. A doctor or nurse often conducts routine private examinations for the benefit of your health and well being. An airport screener does a fully body scan for the benefit of your health and well being -- and the well being of others. I don't really see any difference. Most of the time the doctor or nurse do their examination and there's no problem. We don't view this as being too invasive because we understand it's a wise precaution to get regular checkups -- just in case.

I feel like at least the following might bother people:

1. Doctors and nurses are educated. I will leave it at that for TSA agents.

2. A doctor's office is much more private than an airport (even though you are not really naked in the airport, you're not really sure of who is seeing the scan)

3. At the doctor's office, your main goal is to have your health checked. At the airport, your main goal is to travel.

"... you're not really sure of who is seeing the scan."

Sure you are. Everyone.

This is data, like any other, and when you give your data to anyone, you can assume it's going to be seen by someone who shouldn't see it.

Actually, I predict a new genre of porn to emerge from this.

A doctor is a professional bound by a code of ethics, with whom you might have a decades long relationship of trust. A TSA screener is a random dude who was flipping burgers last week. That's the difference.

I think the outrage is mostly because of the fact that we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our lives and because we think our nudity is part of our privacy.

A nudist wouldn't care one way or the other, a 15 year old girl or boy might be very upset about some random guy looking at their privates, as would old ladies.

You can't make exemptions on those grounds so that is a bit of a problem.

Think of this as a virtual strip search, if everybody would be strip searched on flying I assure you there would be a lot less people traveling by air.

At some point the nuisance starts to outweigh the benefits, for some people that has already happened.

Personally I'll take my chances with the terrorists, I avoid high risk destinations and high risk carriers.

If the 'terrorists' start blowing up Air France planes from Paris to Greece I'll re-evaluate that position.

There are some differences -- we generally choose the doctor and doctor's office we go to, and can relatively easily say no if we find we are uncomfortable with the particular person.

Doctors and nurses are fairly highly trained and have a lot more to lose if they violate professional ethics. On the other hand TSA-trained people have often been involved in drug smuggling, luggage stealing, and more.

A doctor's exam is usually at least somewhat effective or necessary. There's not a lot of evidence that says this will do anything to keep us safer.

Does anyone actually think that this will help prevent terrorism ?

Its quite astonishing that we seem to be willing to submit ourselves to every kind of invasion of privacy as long as it "protects" us from terrorism.

It will make people feel safer, which is the only real problem here anyway.

No. The image wouldn't class as indecent.

They need better researchers :-)

Have you worked in the porn industry?

Edit: This was a sincere question, not sure why it was voted down.

No, computer forensics (so, yes, that is a relatively expert opinion)

Why does an on-topic question that gets answered deserve two downvotes?

(I can only fix the one...)

It's not like he's insulting anyone by asking a valid question, there are not that many professions where you get information on the kind of images that are and are not legit, the porn industry is probably the major one.

I was intentionally vague too to provoke such a question (in the hope a discussion would evolve)

In which country? In the US, that's my understanding of the law, but this is in the UK.

ErrantX is from the UK and probably has more expertise in this area than anybody else here.

Thanks Jacques :)

To add some more. Here in the UK such images would officially be graded using the Copine Scale[1]. BUt this is not a cut and dried thing; you could technically speaking rate the image as "level 1" (the lowest level) purely for being a nude shot. Family pictures of your kid in the bath, or a nudist holiday (for example) would fall into this categary - officially.

What's crucial is context: which is why this is highly subjective. A family bath pic amongst a whole load of family pics is not something you would, clearly, get in trouble for. Amongst a set of other indecent images then yes.

Because of the context of the image and the fact it is deleted (one hopes securely) after viewing I personally dont think it would be classed indecent.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copine_scale

What a sad world we live in where something like the Copine scale has a reason to exist.

I'd suggest trying to use computer vision, exclusively. It seems to me that removing the person (and the display) and not recording images would help dealing with the legal and moral problems.

even if that works, i feel like you kinda need a person to fire when the system misses something.

You fire the developer of the vision software

Are those red box areas auto-classified as potentially dangerous? I wonder what kind of algorithms they're using to do that.

Fight the Terrorists vs. Protect the Children.

Aliens vs. Predator.

We're lucky we don't get half the government we pay for.

"It detects big bruises too?" My thoughts on seeing the images.

It's interesting how the people seem to agree it's immoral to take nude "pictures" of people in non-erotic positions, but seem perfectly content with shifting all the immorality of actually looking at the pictures (surely the stuff doing the imaging can't be considered immoral) to one person in "a remote location". (And if it's really one person, who bets they'll just start clicking the "Okay" button after getting bored?)

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