In June the U.S. House passed bill to ban full-body scanners as primary method | Hacker News Reader

In June the U.S. House passed bill to ban full-body scanners as primary method

opencongress.org

56 pointsjlujan10 comments

The vote was overwhelming 310-118 against the scanners. Here's the Roll Call vote: (June '09)

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll305.xml

Unfortunately, the Senate didn't take up the bill. Still it is stunning that the Obama Administration and TSA would disregard the clear will of Congress on this issue. Here's the text of the amendment from THOMAS (no permanent link):

H.AMDT.172 (A010) Amends: H.R.2200 Sponsor: Rep Chaffetz, Jason [UT-3] (offered 6/4/2009)

AMENDMENT DESCRIPTION: Amendment prohibits the TSA from using Whole Body-Imaging machines for primary screening at airports; and would require the TSA to give passengers the option of a pat-down search in lieu of going through a WBI machine. The amendment also prohibits the TSA from storing, transferring, or copying any images resulting from going through a WBI machine.

AMENDMENT PURPOSE: An amendment numbered 10 printed in House Report 111-127 to prohibit the TSA from using Whole Body-Imaging machines for primary screening at airports, and would require the TSA to give passengers the option of a pat-down search in place of going through a WBI machine, information on the images generated by the WBI, the privacy policies in place, and the right to request a pat-down search, and would prohibit the TSA from storing, transferring, or copying the images.

The public doesn't know very much about these scanners. There are only one or two public images allegedly taken in a scanner, but not with the “arms in the air” pose required for actual air travelers.

To correct this, in every airport a collection of volunteers who don’t mind people seeing them “xray-naked” should be sent through the scanner, just like normal operation, and the pictures should be displayed next to the security line so everyone in line can make up their own mind if they want to be scanned or would prefer to opt out for manual screening.

You mean prefer to have their balls touched?

I'd just like to point out that the "In June" mentioned to in the title actually refers to June 2009.

What a great website. I'm probably not politically active enough, but I hadn't seen it before.

For civically-minded hackers, OpenCongress has a great API:

API Documentation: http://www.opencongress.org/api My Python bindings: https://github.com/cpharmston/python-opencongress Ruby bindings: https://github.com/hoverbird/opencongress-ruby

Just another example of how private business and hackers are more effective at creating open and accessible government data.

I work for PPF on OpenCongress and other projects. Just FYI, our Ruby bindings have been rolled into a gem called GovKit, which includes Ruby bindings for other big OpenGov services around the web.

https://github.com/opengovernment/govkit/

Permalink directly to relevant section: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2200/text?version=rfs&...

Refer to Sec 215 of bill.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com