Opt Out of a Body Scan? Then Brace Yourself
finance.yahoo.com
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I have not had the opportunity to opt out yet. But when I do, I will gladly join in the opt out screaming session, and add some other choice words of my own.
I refuse to quietly be a part of some absurd bureaucratic plot that slowly and steadily strips away my civil rights.
This is the last straw for me, personally. I'll just be vacationing closer to home now or working old-school road trips into my plans. Maybe if the outraged take a few less flights a year, the vacation, airline and union lobbies will take up the cause.
I'm much more worried about CCTV's everywhere, cell phone tracking, internet usage tracking, tracking cars with cameras on highways that read number plates, etc. All these tools are extremely well suited for keeping a dictator in place. I'm afraid that if we get one, then we're not getting rid of him any time soon.
And being reminded that some people think this is okay. And that most people accept it.
I have slightly unusual polititcal views, so such a visible reminder that I'm 'the only person who cares' really riles me up.
So, it's humiliating. But I'm not going to stop opting out. The difference between the pat down and the machine for me is this -- the pat down happens in the moment, between two people. There's no record. It exists only in the time it takes. It can't be stored, it can't be transmitted, it can't be tied to a flight record or anything else at some future date. It forces TSA to confront what they're doing, and it's one small way I can say at the airport, I am human, I'm not an abstraction. I have rights, respect them.
The choice for airline passengers in the US is now: be photographed nude, or have the TSA jostle your luggage. Reasonableness has been left at the door.
Raising data tracking concerns is a false dichotomy; I can hate and distrust the expansion of both.
Agreed that the photographing and pat downs are unreasonable. One time I got selected for a pat down because the metal detector went off of my belt. They checked me thoroughly, but they didn't even bother to open my bag even though it contained a cooking set in a 30x30x30cm metal container...I could have put three guns and a kg TNT in there and they wouldn't have noticed it on their screen.
I think they have an override under the desk that they can push - I get stopped every time (internal UK flights, not many). I've always found I'm stopped often, I'm bearded and usually have a backpack.
Good thing I'm too poor to fly these days.
Would they just retaliate against you just for making a fuss?
Guess who got called for "random" searches in the machine? Pretty much every hot chick in line. Now, this observation was purely anecdotal, so take it for what it is. But the coincidence was not lost on me, or on anyone else in the line. It was disgusting behavior on the TSA workers' part.
Then I got really upset when I saw them selecting a young teenage girl to go through the scanner as well - perverts.
It would be very interesting to take data on male/female ratio over course of a few hours.
- Total male/female ratio among the group processed that day (obviously).
- Average male/female ratio involved in terrorist threats and incidents.
I bet the numbers would tell quite a story.
TSA is ridiculous.
The implication of the comment I was replying to was that it was a bunch of men wanting to look at naked women. I just didn't see how that could be if you were only allowed to observe someone of the same sex...
And when the job is looking at naked pictures all day, what do you expect? I mean, who do you think seriously is seeking that sort of job in the first place?
The unilateral and unpublished changes in screening procedure are blatant abuses of authority and undermine the principles of our society. The argument that I have given implicit consent to being searched just by buying an airplane ticket is completely voided when the search procedures are constantly changing without detailed public knowledge or immediate explanation.
I have no fears about flying in general or those caused by the threat of terrorism. I am much more likely to die in a small plane crash with one of my pilot friends at the controls. What terrifies me the most is this blatant disregard of civil liberties and the apparent complacency with which the public submits to the draconian policies being put in place without consent of the people.
"Mr. Delahorne said he was perfectly willing to comply with all procedures to ensure good security."
There's always a quote about how someone is willing to do what must be done to ensure our safety. It makes me think that news agencies are required to do this or get paid to do this.
Basically: "I'm an otherwise reasonable person in full possession of my faculties."
If you start asking one group, "What do you think of those guys smashing windows?", it changes the dialogue from "What's your message," to "Aren't those guys bad?" And it's not like you're able to properly discuss such a subtle point as "this is a false dichotomy," when talking to news outlets.
Now there may be a time when I or my family have to fly and for sure I will be opting out my entire family. When they go to feel-up my children I will ask the person doing it if he/she has a history of child molestation...since they are getting all personal with me and my children I plan on getting personal with them.
I will try and remember to report back when with the results...
The straight financial cost may be higher but avoiding all of this sort of nonsense has its rewards, and remember that most GA operators are locally-owned smallish businesses that appreciate your support and treat their passengers like customers and not like prisoners (or worse).
EDIT: Forgot to mention that the same flight on Northwest was 50 minutes in the air.
Scheduled airlines are operated under FAA Part 121 rules, charter operators work under Part 135 rules, and everything below that is under Part 91 rules. Part 135 operations are much safer than for all GA. It's safer than driving, though not quite as safe as flying a scheduled air carrier.
From the NTSB (http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/table1.htm), in 2009 scheduled air carriers had 0.006 fatalities per 100,000 flight hours, on-demand carriers 0.07 per 100,000, and all GA 1.33 fatalities per 100,000 hours.
Regardless, the debate is pointless--GA is not a realistic solution for 95% of air travelers.
Only when presented in an alarming but meaningless manner like that.
Assuming that what I flew was "GA," then no, it doesn't seem like the TSA applies there.
As for how you get these sorts of flights and how much they cost, I can't help. I was just the passenger, and haven't done it since.
[ http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/tsnm/general_aviation/programs... ]
( which I found via http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/tsnm/general_aviation/index.sh... )
At BWI they would make every 15th or so person go through the scanner, or anyone who volunteered by walking up to it instead of the metal detector.
At Atlanta the scanners weren't even operational yet and they still only opened the metal detectors with scanners beside them and had an army of TSA screeners standing around doing nothing while a huge crowd of travelers waited in a very long line.
The processes have indeed changed.
No "terrorists" have been attacking schools, churches, malls, buses, trains, bridges, theaters, libraries, office buildings, etc. Either they only attack planes (not even the airports themselves) or there aren't enough terrorists to justify this amount of "security".
Amazon.com would be about the only company to come out okay.
The Troubles' impact on the ordinary people of Northern Ireland produced such psychological trauma that the city of Belfast had been compared to London during the Blitz. [104] The stress resulting from bomb attacks, street disturbances, security checkpoints, and the constant military presence had the strongest effect on children and young adults. [105] In addition to the violence and intimidation, there was chronic unemployment and a severe housing shortage. Vandalism was also a major problem. In the 1970s there were 10,000 vandalised empty houses in Belfast alone. Most of the vandals were aged between eight and thirteen. [106] Activities for young people were limited, with pubs fortified and cinemas closed. Just to go shopping in the city centre required passing through security gates and being subjected to body searches.
In addition, some statistics from the same page:
Injuries 47,541
Shootings 36,923
Armed robberies 22,539
People charged with paramilitary offences 19,605
Bombings and attempted bombings 16,209
Arson 2,225 [citation needed]
I'm constantly amazed that after surviving the Troubles we over-react so massively to a couple of nutjobs lighting their crotches. Al Qaeda are incompetent morons. PIRA were fucking scary.
They weren't asking agents to directly murder random individuals or property. They had the tacit support of (or were at least politely ignored by) much of the surrounding populace and social institutions. They didn't stick out in a crowd. They were born and raised there, had history, jobs, families.
Al Qaeda enjoys none of those advantages for planning attacks in the US. Until and unless they can successfully recruit within the US and garner support within the US, an IRA-style campaign is implausible.
That Al Qaeda has to rely on people who consistently can't light a fuse under stress, or keep a bomb-factory under wraps highlights how much harder it is to find people to perform wanton murder, even as compared to finding people willing to destroy property or carry out targeted murders.
> They weren't asking agents to directly murder random individuals or property.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles
"In 1972, the Provisional IRA killed approximately 100 soldiers, wounded 500 more and carried out approximately 1,300 bombings,[66] mostly against commercial targets which they considered "the artificial economy".[67][68] The bombing campaign killed many civilians, notably on Bloody Friday on 21 July, when 22 bombs were set off in the centre of Belfast killing seven civilians and two soldiers. "
But otherwise I agree. The level of competence of Al Qaeda recruits is laughable in comparison to PIRA. Which is exactly my point - we've survived far worse, why are we giving up so much of what we stand for for protection from such incompetent terrorists?
e.g. Attacking a shopping mall or hotel isn't difficult and all but impossible to prevent, I absolutely agree. The difference is, the al qaeda agent won't find refuge a few blocks away. He won't melt into any crowd. He won't have trusted people from the community who will keep quiet or lie to the authorities for him. He won't have a weapon supplier who continues to supply him. And the resource that he does have are far more likely to melt away as it becomes clear that he is out to indiscriminately murder. Ergo the ability of any foreign agent to make subsequent strikes is drastically reduced.
And, unless I'm mistaken, the IRA never set out to murder non-uniformed, uninvolved civilians. Those that were killed, such as on Bloody Friday, were considered among the IRA wholly undesirable collateral damage. While it takes a certain kind of person to be convinced to drop off a bomb designed to strike a military target, or property target of a collaborator, that might kill innocent people, it's far, far more difficult to find people who will execute an attack designed to kill people going about their day.
And I absolutely agree that our response is laughable. But that's how it goes. Authority has no vested interest in proportional or rational response. Its rewards are aligned with over-reaction. If its masters (ostensibly the voters) don't choose to curtail that response or correct the reward structure, we'll only see continued escalation.
Sure, you wouldn't be as successful as the IRA, but it would still be a damn sight easier than attacking planes. Consider the hotel attacks in India for an example of how poorly defended most locations are.
> the IRA never set out to murder non-uniformed, uninvolved civilians
They bombed shops and factories that they considered to be part of the 'artificial'' economy of the British rulers. Non-uniformed, uninvolved civilians tend to work in shops and factories, hence the huge number of civilian injuries and casualties.
More stats:
Deaths by status of victim[2]
Status No.
Civilian 1855
Members of security forces (and reserves) 1123
of whom:
British Army (excluding Northern Ireland regiments) 502
Royal Ulster Constabulary 301
Ulster Defence Regiment 196
Northern Ireland Prison Service 24
Garda Síochána 9
Royal Irish Regiment 7
Territorial Army 7
English police forces 6
Royal Air Force 4
Royal Navy 2
Irish Army 1
Members of Republican Paramilitary Groups 394
Members of loyalist Paramilitary Groups 151
> .... property target of a collaborator ...
Whilst the Troubles was nominally a political conflict the lines were drawn across ethnic/religious grounds. Being a Protestant was sufficient to draw fire from PIRA (similary Catholics were persecuted by the loyalists).
It's a lot easier to talk someone into leaving a bomb next to a boiler than to pick up an assault rifle and fire indiscriminately into a crowd of civilians.
I kinda-sorta agree: suicide bombing's a pretty stupid way to go about things, as it means you wipe out all your capable terrorists after only one go. The IRA didn't have that problem - well, intentionally at least.
One of my earliest memories is helping to check under the car for bombs before driving to school.
I still hope that with enough tea and scones one can get some sensibility back into that country.
Perhaps if more people were to study modern history it would be a bigger issue. Outside of my immediate friendship group, most of the people I've talked about it don't seem to view it as an issue. If you don't explicitly value civil liberty then it seems like a fair exchange for the chance to catch a terrorist before they act. Not many people think it through further than that.
A potent reminder of the kind of glaringly painful inefficiencies that come out of this kind of thing.
"Another feature of the political violence was the involuntary or forced displacement of both Catholics and Protestants from formerly mixed residential areas. For example, in Belfast, Protestants were forced out of Lenadoon, and Catholics were driven out of the Rathcoole estate and the Westvale neighbourhood. In Derry city, almost all the Protestants fled to the predominantly loyalist Fountain Estate and Waterside areas."
When you realize the inhumanity required to follow through on a terror plot is the limiting resource, their targeting and methods make more sense.
And TSA would start swiping your hands at the airport to see if you had recently fired a gun.
Add in some random rural targets and the entire country comes to a standstill. That this hasn't happened yet indicates to me either that Al Qaeda is far more neutered than we generally think, or they utterly lack any amount of imagination.
It's rather terrifying how close our society is to total panic and shutdown.
Or perhaps Al Quaeda isn't quite what you've been told. For some reason that is considered impossible by almost all normally open minded people.
"That's not a roll of quarters my friend" :-)
Your best bet would be to construct a garment from a material which is significantly absorbs/attenuates the extremely high frequencies (30GHz to 300GHz) used by these millimeter-wave imaging scanners. Normal clothing passes these waves with minimal attenuation, where they bounce off of your skin and return to the scanner. The scanner then uses these returned signals to reconstruct an image of your naked body for the TSA to examine. If your clothing instead absorbs most of this signal, or at least attenuates it significantly enough to fall below the dynamic range of the imager, the TSA won't be able to see much.
Absorbing millimeter-wave signals to a significant enough degree will require a relatively thick material. I typically use RF foam in the lab when I'm working on EMI compliance issues because it is cheap and easy to cut to size. Attenuation data is scarce for the EHF band, but ARC Technologies has a lossy flexible foam that has 25dB of attenuation at 40GHz ( http://www.arc-tech.com/lossyflexiblefoam.php ), which amounts to 50dB of round-trip attenuation from the imager to your skin back to the imager. 50dB loss means only 0.001% of the original signal will bounce back to the scanner.
Even more absorption can be had if you use pyramidal foam, much like you see in a typical antenna chamber. ( http://www.ets-lindgren.com/pdf/absorber.pdf ) Of course, this probably won't be the most comfortable garment you've ever worn.
Still, I would imagine wearing such a garment would immediately raise red flags and you would quickly find yourself in a back room with some unfriendly TSA agents. You're much better off opting out.
Hell, it would also make the pat-down a lot more interesting!
Thanks for the detailed answer.
Of course my original question was somewhat facetious, but I do think it's farcical that, nine years after 9/11, in order to fly within the "land of the free and home of the brave" one has to be subjected to these humiliating so-called security measures. Military-industrial complex indeed! It would be interesting to trace the political donations given by the companies that make these machines...
In what other business is a normal, paying customer treated this way? Not quite the golden age of commercial aviation . . .
A little "gridlock" might highlight the absurdity of the situation.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
INGSOC! We should have known, 1984 is long due.
Milwaukee resident Ryan Bird wrote "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on a plastic bag given to passengers by airport security. As a result he claims he was detained and told that the First Amendment did not apply to security checkpoints.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/606142...
Kip Hawley was the head of TSA at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Adminis...
Now that it's trivial to set up video-conferencing on your home workstation, and collaborate via online tools that range the gamut from github to office docs to just about anything you can imagine, might this drive even more people to shift business travel to remote work instead?
While physically assaulting them would be very satisfying, simply freezing them out socially would properly be a better tactic, since it is impossible to arrest people for.
Of course they can! Mail, email, they can certainly be reached, and right now they're extra sensitive to issues that upset their constituents.
Quite the opposite. Right now is the maximum time before the next election. That means they've got the longest time possible for you to forget. Any shenanigans they'd like to engage in would be safest now.