TSA Body Scan? Just Say 'No,' Leading Expert Says
forbes.com
forbes.com
The article indicates that this is likely an untenable legal position, but it seems like that's the opinion of the lawyer rather than a court injunction or retraction by the TSA. Likely there needs to be more lawsuits before the policy is forced to change.
"TSA can now force you to go through body scanners [pdf]" (166 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10779589
"TSA Sued Over New Policy to Refuse Opt-Outs" (77 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10788826
"TSA Announces It Will Decide Who Goes Through the Body Scanner, Thank You" (4 comments)
I rarely travel alone; it's usually with a wife, and soon it'll be with a wife and kid, so I'm not sure we'll get the option to just say no :/
Or, say, turn around and stay where you are instead of going home.
I do get the pat down pretty regularly, but I can't say for certain that I'd cancel an entire flight (and take the hit to either my professional reputation (outbound) or delay getting home to my family (return)) to stand up for this. That's not even considering the financial hit - I doubt the airlines would be sympathetic and waive the $100+ rebooking fee they've started charging.
I get the principled stand you're trying to make, but there's quite a few gray areas here.
edit: balancing parentheses, and context
We were each assigned, simultaneously, two employees (so four people, total): one to do a pat down and the other to just stare at us and lord over our stuff. We were then asked a barrage of questions about who we were, why we were in the area, who the other person was... great questions that were absolutely hilarious given my job and the two of us being a tiny tech company ("what is his job title?" "oh man, what does he call himself? I think it is Vice President of Business Development or something like that?").
I was asked about how I felt standing in line and then the interrogator used my answer (which I will state was extremely deferent; I actually can tell back most of the interaction pretty accurately, but I will save you that version of this ;P) to kind of chastise me (we were late for our flight, by the way, and knew we had no way of getting to it in time, but simply did not care as we had nowhere to be in life for days and we both seasoned and crazy travelers, so I wasn't at all rushed or bothered). I hate these people. I hate them so very very bad.
Ok, but so: in my experiences with them I think you will just fail. The TSA agent will be quite happy to have you sit there until you miss your flight, and they will probably love telling other TSA employees stories about the asshole in line who thought they would stand up and fight but who got no sympathy from anyone in the command hierarchy and got to sit there "as I smiled at them and shook my finger" as their flight took off :/. Or maybe I don't know what your goal is with "turn around and stay where you are" (actually, after typing all of this, I am wondering if your point was that you might get stranded when you are out and about?).
TSA agents run the gamut from fascist jerkwads to rando people working a crappy, thankless job. I'm sorry you got treated badly - I've also had bad experiences going through opt-outs.
As I've said elsewhere in this discussion: You can't win the war by losing battles on the ground. You have to take the fight to the top. If you want change, you have to approach it politically, as disgusting as that concept is. Unfortunately, I fear it will take an entire new generation of Congress to effect that change, and with no term limits that will never happen.
Another annoying thing is that invariably they have me wait sitting almost right next to the scanner. I've seen images showing that people behind scanners also get scanned. The best I can hope for is that the radiation dose is somewhat lower than when you're actually in the scanner itself.
A few times when I've flown out of PDX, there was a substantial line for opt-outs; sadly not every time.
I've also heard anecdotes that when DEFCON let out, the airport handling all the return flights ended up just sending everyone through the metal detectors rather than deal with thousands of people all opting out.
Oh please. You're not helping with that attitude.
The best numbers I can find seem to point to something in the 0.015 μSv to 0.88 μSv range. At cruising altitude, you get 0.04 μSv per minute from cosmic radiation.
I don't think the radiation from these machines should be the biggest concern.
Plus, this kind of radiation exposure hasn't been tested on humans for long. I'd feel better about being scanned had these scanners been in use for 20 years without many adverse effects reported. As it stands, the jury's still out. And I'd personally rather wait a little longer in line and get a pat down than take a chance with my health.
EDIT: Driving to the airport will expose you to far more risk than walking through the machine, however you define that risk.
All the more reason to minimize it every chance you get, wouldn't you say?
"Just a little higher chance of cancer" is not a comforting observation.
Fuck the TSA.
Quite frankly you sound like a petty, angry, and terrible person.
Quite frankly, TSA agents should be shamed and suffer for directly profiting from this bullshit.
Sure, there are a few TSA workers who inevitably derive pleasure (or simply don't feel anything, which may be worse) from having to do what they do. But for most, it's just a job, and certainly not their dream job. If you're going to piss down the throat of a random TSA worker, I can easily picture you as the self-important asshole who makes fun of the cashier at the grocery store to her face for being so poor, or who kicks a dog when it crosses your path a bit too slowly.
In other words, you come across as a sociopathic asshole. It's not all about you, dude, and it's not King Coldpie's world the rest of us grovel in. Grow the fuck up already.
One is actively making my day worse to no useful purpose, so I treat them like the dirt that they are. The other is performing a valuable service which I appreciate and thank accordingly.
[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-u...
You're making two mistakes here. One, you're assuming that all TSA agents are evil jerks who only took the job so they can fulfill their life's goal of fucking with coldpie. I'll counter that the vast majority of TSA employees are regular people like you'd find in any entry level position. Maybe they hate their job, or maybe they feel they are doing their part in keeping America safe (whether they believe the security theater bullshit they're fed, or not). Either way, they are human beings just like you. You are no better than they are, and vice versa. You are putting yourself on a pedestal and looking down on them as if they are subhuman. That is textbook sociopath.
Two, you are equating policy set by their superiors with the entry level agents themselves. They have absolutely no say in what they are forced to do, yet they are the ones you're taking it all out on. You're quite simply barking up the wrong tree.
If you want anyone to take you seriously rather than thinking you're a raving lunatic, you should direct your ire towards the policy makers. Work the political angle, because you're fighting a losing battle on the ground. Making one of thousands of employees feel like shit does absolutely nothing for your claimed cause, and only serves to feed your own selfish need to feel superior (which I strongly suspect is your actual motive, whether you realize it or not).
No. I am angry at people for mistreating me to no one's benefit.
> They have absolutely no say in what they are forced to do, yet they are the ones you're taking it all out on. You're quite simply barking up the wrong tree.
Do you believe that being paid removes all culpability for your actions? Suppose I found someone to pay me to break the windows in your house[1] every day. Would you treat me with kindness and thank me for my service, while writing a letter to my benefactor asking him politely to stop paying me to break your windows?
[1] Ignore the legality of this action. If that's a sticking point for you, replace it with some other legal-but-annoying behavior, whatever.
I'd say you're angry at the system (and rightfully so!), and taking it out on the ones who are just trying to feed their families. You're quite literally cutting off the nose to spite the face.
And I still maintain that you are yourself just as sadistic and hateful as the system you bemoan, if not more so.
Not at all, and you know very well I never said that. Since you're so keen on putting words in my mouth to reach an erroneous conclusion, I'm just going to stop here.
1) We agree that the TSA agents' actions should make me angry.
2) We agree that the TSA agents themselves are culpable for their actions.
3) Therefor, it makes sense for me to be angry at the TSA agents.
4) I think our disagreement lies here, where I think I am allowed to retaliate (within the bounds of the law, obviously) against those who upset me, while you think I'm not.
You were couching your argument in terms of "they're just doing their jobs; be angry at the policy makers, not at those who carry out the policy," which made me think the disagreement was in (2) above. But your reply here makes me think the disagreement is in (4).
I understand the viewpoint that one should always turn the other cheek to one's oppressors. I don't subscribe to it myself. If they're going to harass and anger me and waste my time, I really don't have any problems returning the favor.
Without peons, there are no effectors for the policies passed from above, and historically, we've seen the people at the top be terrified and manipulated by disorder in their bottom most ranks.
Besides, how do you know the TSA agent being spit on isn't trying to work their way up the chain so they can be a better manager and fix the way things work on the ground floor? Someone like coldpie could be ironically dragging down the spirit of the one person on his side.
The world isn't black and white, nor is it two-dimensional. Every single government employee is not a mindless drone, implicit in the shenanigans of their superiors.
See if you can puzzle out the difference between you and the TSA clowns that makes me treat you well and them like scum.
You have a laser focus on the effect, when you should be attacking the cause. If you can't or won't see that, I don't know what else to say.
I can understand feeling empathy for the people doing these jobs, but that doesn't make them less responsible for their moral decisions.
"I was just following orders" is not a legitimate excuse. (I won't finish the comment, out of respect for Godwin's Law)
Nor is there an excuse for treating another human being like a piece of shit because they have a job you don't like. How is one any better than the other?
My point is, neither you nor the TSA want to be there.
Making the TSA clowns miserable is just a bonus. Maybe they'll think their job sucks so much that they'll quit and find a real job. Maybe they'll tell their manager that people are complaining and it'll work its way up the chain.
At the end of the day, making the TSA clown's job harder makes me happier, which is something I desperately need after going through the rigmarole. So I'm going to keep being just on the ragged edge of polite to them and sneak in whatever jabs I can. Fuck them.
stooge sto͞oj/Submit noun 1. derogatory a person who serves merely to support or assist others, particularly in doing unpleasant work. "you fell for that helpless-female act and let her make you a stooge" synonyms: underling, minion, lackey, subordinate; More 2. a performer whose act involves being the butt of a comedian's jokes. synonyms: butt, foil, straight man "a comedian's stooge"
The less socially desirable the TSA jobs are, the fewer people will hang onto them and feel like they are rewarded for "good work".
EDIT: Flying at altitude probably exposes you to more radiation than the machines. A 7 hour flight is roughly the same as a chest x-ray, and that's way more than the machines.
Dan, if you have something to say, just say it. This rhetorical Q&A works in a conversation; here, it just looks petty.
In fact, I think I agree with what you're trying to say ("the flight itself exposes you to a lot more radiation"?), but if you don't actually say it, I can't be sure. And there's nothing to respond to, if I (or someone else) don't.
Not that I'm the boss of anyone; by all means, do what you want. Just that I dislike getting downvoted without explanation, so here's to being slightly less of a hypocrite than usual :)
For me, it's not a radiation thing. It's more about a kind of semi-philosophical objection to the idea that people should look at naked pictures of me in order to provide the illusion of safety. AIT (advanced imaging technology) seems to be the quintessence of snake oil - we're told we need it and any real research into its efficacy is discouraged (still though, there's indications that metal detectors were probably better at catching threats). [0] [1]
[0]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/tsa_not_detec... [1]: https://radsec.org/secure1000-sec14.pdf
At the end of the day, I have to travel - I have a job (yay) that lets me work remote (yay), but that means cross-country fights on a monthly basis. If I opt out of flying, I also opt out of working for a rad nonprofit developing software that helps teachers share artifacts of practice. Skipping flying is an option, sure (I could get a job in SF, it's not that hard probably for someone with my background), but I've prioritized keeping my existing job over that.
Like it or not, we've structured an economy that requires people to fly. People should just be more aware of what they're giving up to make that happen.
My objection to the scanners isn't actually about the government spying on my butt. It's about how the general public is willing to let the government look at naked pictures of them without really thinking about the trade-off they are making. Lots of people don't even realize that there is a naked picture at all - if you talk to them, they think all that happens is an outline and a yellow box. If every time you go through the scanner you're aware of the deep violation of your privacy that the scanner represents, I'm okay with that.
So yeah, precheck is a cop-out. Long form performance art is a pain in the spied-upon nethers, so I'm closing the show. I'm still aware of the sacrifice of privacy we've all made, and I'll still work to make other people aware of it as well.
The scans are less of a problem than the idea that the government can force people to go through them.
After US airports switched to millimeter wave scanners, I no longer opt out.
My understanding is that the new scanners emit far less radiation, and no TSA agent operator is viewing naked images.
The software presents a stylized body silhouette on a monitor that you and the TSA agent both view when you exit the scanner.
If my understanding is correct, then isn't this a reasonable approach?
I ended up chatting with the guy afterwards and he reported that I was also the only random person he'd ever seen waiting in the opt-out line. He was wearing a deliciously nerdy "Affordable Cleric Act" T-shirt.
Edit: to add, the TSA does not even need to be aware of this going on, the clerks on spot even less so.
Sure, they claim that the new machines only show the agents a generic body outline - but again, given that nobody's seen the source code, I have no idea what the machine actually sees or stores.
I'm worried about the lack of transparency.
You don't have your ID checked and boarding pass scanned moments before entering the scanner? Sure, you wouldn't know exactly the order folks entered the scanner after being identified, but assuming you couldn't correlate the scan to the ID based on other publically available information, all it would take is for you fly twice to correlate the scan to the ID (say... both legs of a round trip flight?).
It will have value to someone, most likely intelligence, law enforcement and private security agencies.
I'd say it's safe to assume it's been stored.
Many times you have to have your photo ID scanned before entering security and you have cameras pointed at you from multiple angles while queued. The task of matching scans with their owners becomes much more trivial.
I am pointing out the ease at which the government has operated and will operate when given the opportunity to collect such data. The government will see no repercussions for storing data the Stasi and KGB couldn't even dream of collecting and analyzing.
I am well aware of the abuses and rights violations that storing that information can enable. The OP was made to illustrate how easily we will find ourselves heading down that path.
I don't care if some dude with a high school degree sees me naked. It's just that, as a matter of principle, the entire thing is a sham, and the TSA knows it.
I thought it was tastefully done. They even mentioned they were running a "light ads" site.
Why would they want to serve their pages to people using ad-blockers anyway?
What would you prefer they have done?
They want to lose visitors, fine.
What they're forgetting is that people who have ad blockers also share and post links to various networks... they aren't just shutting out the ad-blockers, they're shutting out anyone the ad-blockers may be friends with. It's retarded, but it's their prerogative.
Incidentally, here's a great host file blocker for programs that run ads but don't support ad-block plugins.
I'm not actually running an adblocker, I'm running RequestPolicy and NoScript. Forbes.com and forbesimg.com are allowed as are requests between them, but I'm not going to go through and individually allow requests out to multiple other sites just to see which one is serving ads (though I suspect it's the permanently-marked-untrusted doubleclick.net).
They really earned it by having one of the most consistently obnoxious web surfacing experiences for many years. Their ad interstitials are so insulting that I'd rather just give my eyeballs to some other publications.
URL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisabrownlee/2015/12/24/tsa-body-scan-just-say-no-leading-expert-says/
ruby -e 'require "json";require "net/http";
puts JSON.parse(Net::HTTP.get(URI(ENV["URL"])).lines.map {
|line| line.match(/fbs_settings.content = ({.+})/) }.compact.first[1])["body"]'
> tmp.html; firefox tmp.html; rm tmp.html
Can anyone give a good reason why they don't send you through the metal detector before the pat down? If security were the objective, that seems far better to combine the two.
Sadly as we all know at this point, their mission seems to be security theater, not actual security.
I know you asked for a good reason, and I feel embarrassed to propose this as one. But it appears to be the actual reason.
We were in a foreign country, on a pretty tight schedule (missing this flight wasn't an option), and I wasn't exactly well versed on the legality of these things in Europe to make the argument.
Having seen the photos these things generate, it seems like they're pretty much useless unless someone is carrying something on them that would probably be pretty apparent anyway. Is there any cases where these machines have caught someone?
If you have both breasts and a penis, you will be treated as a terrorist, detained, and humiliated.
This is why, as a trans person myself, I refuse to fly until the TSA is abolished.
If you want things to change in your favor, you need to howl from the rooftops and make people understand the trouble the TSA puts you through. Personal accounts are the most compelling. Write your congressman!
I'm sure everyone's body has unique features.
Is it due to the downvotes for the forbes link?
If the situation were reversed, I'd opt out of the pat down.
I think the pat downs are more effective security wise.
I wish it were true.
Maybe the 14th amendment could be used to say that the not immediately servicing your opt-out is unequal treatment?