EPIC Lawsuit to Suspend Deployment of Body Scanners at US Airports

What age? 11, 16, 18 ,21 ?

It depends on how you position the wedge. You start by asking officials why they want to take naked pictures of innocent children. Once they are sufficiently embarrassed about the notion of taking naked pictures of children, you ask why they want to take naked pictures of innocent adults. Every time a TSA or DHS official talks about how they don't store the pictures, bring up the US Marshals Service storing naked pictures of children and adults (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20012583-281.html) using the same technology, despite providing the /exact/ same assurances the TSA is providing now.

When the TSA officials talk about the opt-out process and the subsequent genital groping, ask about the TSA agent that was charged with raping a kid (http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100310child...) and wanting to keep that child as a sex slave. Do parents really want strangers feeling up the breasts and genitals of their underage children? What type of person applies for a job where they are allowed to grope children? Is it any better when those same agents want to grope adults?

It's not advanced screening technology, it's a machine that takes naked pictures of children and stores them.

It's not a thorough pat down, it's having your genitals groped by strangers.

Control the language and you control the discussion.

"They" aren't similarly so squeamish about waving fear and flags around to force body scans and invasive pat downs on us. This is an issue that is important and we must use tools that work to get it to stop.

Presumably because the airlines fund the priority lines.

In my experience this works every time at Dulles international (IAD) but never works at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL). At ATL you get sent to the back of the normal line.

I take from what you say as touching on something I've often thought, we're treating the symptoms of an example problem as though it was an epidemic. I think that there are two sides to the security theater, what they show, and what they don't. I think that these devices will catch people sure, and make a great number of people like yourself sort of a comfortable indifferent, but I do believe that there is indeed a total package of risk management, and these public faces of the effort is just the tip of the iceberg. The evidence I have of this is when I went to Mexico one time and my significant other bought some kind of pill with my card. They could care less about me at the border, they went for the exact pocket of her purse. It took a matter of minutes, and we were on our way. I have some theories about how they might have done it, and I'm sure it was simple, but it is by no means obvious (maybe my CC info? the way she carried herself?) exactly how it was done.

  >  people start screaming for someone in the government
  > to DO SOMETHING!!1, 

This may have been the case with 9/11, but I didn't see anyone screaming at governments to 'DO SOMETHING!!11' the last couple of times that things happened (underpants bomber, shoe bomber, liquid explosives conspiracy, etc). If anything politicians and officials have been proactive (in the sense of being reactive before their bosses -- the general public -- hound them to be reactive).

Those roadblocks clearly haven't been ruled unconstitutional (they happen in Illinois all the time), but it's worth noting that they're set up expressly in the service of criminal investigations, which is exactly what admin searches aren't supposed to be about.

For slightly more context, note that there is a scheme of "primary" and "secondary" moving violations, which is why technically you're not supposed to be able to get pulled over for not having your seatbelt on.

Mostly what they're doing at those checkpoints is racking up compliance tickets, which is obviously a load of BS.

Fortunately, this is a problem easily addressed by technology.

A few months back I went thru just such a 'safety check'. It was on the state line between Alabama and Georgia. Alabama had ~15 units and a portable command post stopping all the traffic east bound into Georgia, while Georgia had ~20-25 units stopping all the traffic west bound into Alabama.

They took my license, insurance, examined them carefully, then walked around and looked at my license plate, handed them back (with a smile) and said to have a nice evening. I've never seen so many blue lights in one place in my life.

A few days later I described this to a Florida Highway patrol trooper. He chuckled and said it sounded like someone wanted to look good for the 11 o'clock TV news.

(Oh, I get it. I read your comment and replied while waiting for someone for dinner; now, at home, it's apparent that you think I'm somehow in favor of full body scans. Read to the end of the comment. Note: I don't think you actually replied to any of my points.)

Not myself being a lawyer, I don't mind hearing this at all. What I mind slightly is not knowing why I'm wrong. Help me out!

This is a little long, so I am going to summarize at the top. I will show that:

1) The estimates are much higher than what you cite;

2) Typical exposure when flying is much lower than what you cite;

3) Dose per unit time DOES matter;

4) The HPS article references their own position paper which doesn't mention differences with short time intervals;

5) The regulations for low-dose exposure are extrapolated from high dose data, because of a lack of studies at low doses;

6) Because of this, the HPS recommends against quantitative risk estimates, because the precise risk is hard to quantify;

7) The lack of data means they are being disingenuous when they say no, as they lack the data to establish it. Note the phrasing: "we would not expect" -- this despite the data we DO have, which establishes that units of time matter;

8) Despite that one position paper, which tries to dismiss health risks below 5-10 rem, their own position paper on backscatter scanners recommends per-screening and per-year (time limit!) maximums far below that threshold;

9) Going by the contact information and president, the HPS may have turned into an industry front. Citing HPS might be as credible on these issues as citing Philip Morris spokespeople on the dangers of cigarettes.

In order:

---------

1) "According to the Health Physics Society (HPS), a person undergoing a backscatter scan receives approximately 0.005 millirems (mrem, a unit of absorbed radiation). American Science and Engineering, Inc., actually puts that number slightly higher, in the area of .009 mrem."

http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/backscatter.htm

That's .05-.09 uSv. Secondly, as previously mentioned, Brenner estimates the effective dose is 20 times as high due to factors like less volume for absorption.

That means the estimated dosage is in the range of 1-1.8 uSv, or 50 to 90 times what you mention. Not a trivial discrepancy.

2)40,000 feet is close to the altitude ceiling for most commercial aircraft. With a 30,000-foot cruising altitude, the exposure drops in half; at 20,000 feet, it drops to a sixth; at 10,000 feet, it's about 1/35th. According to your second reference.

Short business trips may even be below 10,000 feet. It takes too much time (and fuel) to reach riskier altitudes.

So "simply sitting in an airplane" is not the same as cruising at 40,000 feet on a transatlantic flight.

3) You say:

> Second, your emphasis on "dose per unit time" (or dose rate) isn't actually important.

Let me quote from your own source:

"There have been numerous biological experiments conducted, with nonhuman organisms, that demonstrate that the rate at which radiation dose is delivered can affect the extent of biological response. Thus a sufficiently high dose delivered over a period of a few minutes may be expected to have a greater biological impact than the same dose spread over a year."

The only question is what constitutes a "sufficiently high" dose, due to extrapolation. See 5).

4) Further, the terse "no" answer looked disingenuous. The cited position paper link was broken but I tracked it down.

It appears to be "Radiation Risk in Perspective", PS010-2 (which I assume is the updated version of PS010-1).

It has nothing to say about doses over short time periods.

http://www.hps.org/hpspublications/positionstatements.html

5) The issue seems to be that there is very little data about low-dose exposures, so regulations are based on extrapolation from high-dose exposures.

See http://www.ncrponline.org/PDFs/TST_NRC%20_04-08-08.pdf (third slide)

6) What it does say is this:

"the Health Physics Society recommends against quantitative estimation of health risks below an individual dose of 5 rem in one year or a lifetime dose of 10 rem above that received from natural sources."

7) The whole point of their objection was that we lack the empirical evidence to extrapolate from high doses to low doses. Then the article you cite does exactly that. They go from saying, "we lack proof that the answer is X" to saying, "the answer is ~X".

8) The recommended standard "limits the reference effective dose delivered to the subject to 0.25 microsieverts (25 microrem) per screening. Additionally, a screening facility should not expose any individual to more than 250 microsieverts (25 millirem) reference effective dose in a year."

"Use of Ionizing Radiation for Security Screening Individuals" PS017-1

http://www.hps.org/hpspublications/positionstatements.html

How they can go from saying in the first paper, "However, below 5–10 rem (which includes occupational and environmental exposures), risks of health effects are either too small to be observed or are nonexistent" to supporting a maximum of 0.025 rem per year is entirely unclear.

9) Doing some digging, PS010-2 lists a single reference:

"National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. Uncertainties in fatal cancer risk estimates used in radiation protection. Bethesda, MD: NCRP; NCRP Report No. 126; 1997."

PS010-2 seems to be merely opinion.

The contact for HPS.org is from a consultancy: HPS@BurkInc.com

The current president of HPS is Edward F. Maher.

"In early 1996, Dr. Maher accepted the position as Director of the Environmental Laboratory for Yankee Atomic Electric Company. The laboratory provided ongoing environmental laboratory, remediation and consultative health physics services for commercial nuclear power, Department of Energy and Department of Defense clients. [...] In 2004, Dr. Maher joined Dade Moeller & Associates"

http://hpschapters.org/crs/maher-bio.htm

Dade Moeller:

"Hirsch then zeroed in on Dade Moeller’s radiation plan and on the controversial company itself, whose namesake testified back in the 1990s that money spent on cleaning up Cold War-era nuclear facilities was being wasted since there would be a cure for cancer.

Hirsch also questioned the lab’s integrity and pointed out that it is a major Department of Energy (DOE) contractor. The area of Rocketdyne where most of the nuclear mishaps occurred was operated by the DOE, which is responsible for cleaning up the mess. It also borders Runkle Canyon, which leads Hirsch to believe that Dade Moeller shouldn’t be overseeing radiation sampling there.

Some of Hirsch’s harshest criticism was aimed at Dade Moeller’s plan to take a “tiny soil sample” every 19 acres based on the lab’s misconstruing of EPA standards regarding soil investigations of potentially polluted properties. The proximity of Runkle Canyon to Rocketdyne, and the fact that 58 soil samples in a previous test all read high for the leukemia-causing radionuclide strontium-90, were among several critical considerations that Dade Moeller ignored, according to Hirsch.

“If you want to hire someone to make your problem go away, you hire Dade Moeller,” Hirsch asserted. “That’s a generality, the reputation. If you read the actual report, I’m afraid it is completely reinforced. Every time you can manipulate an input, make a number go down, they do so.”

Dade Moeller was the go-to lab for a covert set of strontium-90 tests of Runkle Canyon’s soil in 2005, as this reporter previously uncovered. Those tests, which took just five soil samples, were later dismissed as useless by the California Department of Health Services, the very department that conducted the secret limited sampling with Dade Moeller."

http://www.vcreporter.com/cms/story/detail/simi_we_have_a_pr...

"Hirsch said the conclusions of the report should immediately raise suspicion since the developer hired the consultant who created the report, Dade Moeller & Associates. He called for DTSC to use an independent consultant.

“The city wanted an independent study,” Hirsch said. “You can’t hand that over to the advocate for the developer.”"

http://www.vcstar.com/news/2009/jan/30/developers-radiation-...

This seems to be in stark contrast to the activities of the founder of the Health Physics Society. He was the first president of HPS, from 1955-1957, and was apparently a real thorn in the side of the nuclear establishment.

http://www.gfstrahlenschutz.de/en/morganen.htm

Why do you think it isn't ?

There are over 800 million airline passengers in the US each year. If this radiation causes cancers in 1 in a million thats 800 people/year.

It doesn't matter if it's actually dangerous. All you need is a CNN headline to whip people into a frenzy: "Could Airport Body Scanners Give You [Cancer|AIDS|Herpes|Athletes Foot]?"

...which (if I'm not doing it wrong) is about about equivalent to eating 1/2 a banana:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

Also from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray#Health_effect...

"However, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have argued that the amount of radiation is higher than claimed by the TSA and body scanner manufacturers because the doses were calculated as if distributed throughout the whole body, but the radiation from backscatter x-ray scanners is focused on just the skin and surrounding tissues"

"Furthermore, other scientists claim the health effects are backscatter are well understood whereas those from millimeter wave scanners are not"

Some of the machines being deployed by the TSA are millimeter wave scanners, BTW.

> The radiation exposure with Backscatter X-Ray's is really a non-issue.

Unfortunately that's not the case.

"David Brenner, the head of Columbia University’s Centre for Radiological Research, says the concentration on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the body – means the radiation dose is actually 20 times higher than the official estimate."

The two issues are that 1) the energy is absorbed by the surface of the body instead of throughout the volume, so the effective dose to affected tissues is much higher, and 2) that the dose is received in seconds, instead of over a period of hours.

For a frequent traveler flying about once a week, ~100 departures per year, if scanned every time that adds a non-trivial 10-20 mrem.

And that's assuming that the cited dose is correct and not a significant under-estimate; where's the independent testing?

Here's a long post with numerous references regarding this general topic:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1854787

Your wife can probably make up her own mind.

Not really. If they arrest you, you still have to be arraigned within 24 hours and have to be given a speedy jury trial.

It's really only the search-and-seizure business that does not apply. They think.