Then apparently the lives of New Yorkers are protected by security through obscurity, with absolutely no evidence of efficacy and absolutely no auditable evaluation of safety.
I'm thinking that a strong education in science should be a requirement for anyone who touches these programs with a ten foot pole.
After the bomb (esp. after the Crossroads Baker and Castle Bravo test that introduced a lot of the world to the term "fallout") and the changes seen in medicine (x=ray, cancer treatments, fears about cancer in general) I would guess that most of the population is at least aware that ionizing radiation can be dangerous, even if they do not understand the specifics.
Radiophobia and the anti-nuclear movements have certainly amplified the fears about anything involving "radiation". The fact that "radiation" means "always very dangerous" to many people is evidence of this attitude.
So I suggest that trying to claim ignorance about the potential dangers of pointing an active x-ray emitter at someone should be handled the same way as we treat claims of being ignorant about guns. For most cases, claiming "I didn't know that guns were dangerous" is going to be dismissed as an obvious lie or gross negligence. Is there any reason a jury should treat "I didn't know that using an x-ray beam was dangerous" as a valid get-out-of-jail explanation?
Note: I understand that low-level operators may not have been told how the machine works (such things would be for a court to decide). Responsibility flows upwards, and if it was a commercial product, some Professional should have had to sign off on the design. In any case, someone had to authorize these scanners... which I call mens rea.
[edit] A valid defense, of course, would be to have the results of some very rigorous safety analysis that showed there was no danger. Preferably by a 3rd party. If this study existed, I suspect it would have already been shown to the public.
Ha, am i the only one that parsed that as "releasing the documents would hamper the department's ability to {conduct operations, endanger the lives of New Yorkers}"?
Should be rewritten as a movie review:
"releasing the documents would hamper the department's ability to ... endanger the lives of New Yorkers."
Computer nerds often don't understand Kerckhoffs's law this way. The security of a system should not be dependent on obscurity, but some amount of security will depend on secrecy, i.e. your private key / password.
So for example, the list of all confidential informants is kept secret. The release of that list of informants would "hamper the department's ability to conduct operations and endanger the lives of New Yorkers", in addition to endangering the lives of the informants themselves. Does that mean that it is dependent on "obscurity", or, secrecy? Yes, but that is the way it always is. There will be some information that if disclosed could result in bad things happening. "Education in science" won't help with this basic fact about the universe.
Of course, whether or not these vans genuinely represent information that should be kept secret, who knows. Often people believe that too much information should be kept secret, and when you're talking about information in a free society, we probably should accept some danger over granting someone power, but that seems to be a minority opinion...
If it was me doing it to them, it'd be assault.
Terrorism is the trendy thing.
Be careful. Expressing that opinion openly and convincing others of its truth is ThoughtCrime. And could lead to your being extraordinarily rendered to a country that would torture you; or to your being tortured by agencies allied to those named above.
My question is, how many bombs have been discovered? What's the success rate? Probably close to zero; otherwise they'd be trumpeting their successes all over the media to justify further expansion of this type of search.
It's funny how the TSA has had virtually zero success in catching terrorists, yet we still allow them to anally probe us in the cause of safety. I'd rather have a hijacking once per decade and go back to the pre 9-11 airport security system than go through a proverbial strip search every time I fly. 9-11 didn't happen because of a catastrophic failure of airport security: it was a failure on multiple levels -- from immigration enforcement, intelligence failures, etc. El Al screening methods are most effective, but TSA's political correctness has then treating an 85 year old black woman from Birmingham with the same level of scrutiny as a 23 year old from Egypt with Yemeni entry stamps in the passport.
Kyllo vs United States determined that thermal imaging without a warrant was a search and constituted a violation of a person's 4th amendment rights. "Off the wall" and "through the wall" surveillance are one and the same.
In Kyllo's case, a person's home has a much better expectation of privacy from invasive surveillance than one's person and property in public. If it becomes public that people's homes are being searched without warrants, then I'd assume that they'd rightly be challenged.
It would be interesting and probably frightening to see how invasive surveillance of a person and property, in what might be considered 'public' space, would be challenged in court.
A funny thing happened on my way to CES [1] this week. I showed my mobile boarding pass on my phone to the TSA greeter who said, "OK, sir, you can go down this other line on the right." That line was very short, and I wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.
I got to the head of that line right away and the next TSA agent said, "Welcome. You don't have to take off your shoes, and probably don't need to worry about your belt either. Just any heavier metal items. And you don't have to go through the scanner, just this metal detector."
I thought to myself, this is nice, what did I do to earn this?
Then I noticed there was a TSA Pre✓ logo on my boarding pass. I have no idea how that got there. I've never signed up for Pre✓ or anything like it.
I can only imagine that when our executive assistant got my tickets, she somehow got me signed up for it to make the trip smoother, just like she signed me up for Southwest's Early Bird check-in. She's very thoughtful about things like that, and I was certainly grateful. Especially since I didn't have to apply for Pre✓ in person or submit any documents like they talk about on the TSA site!
The trip back was a bit different. I showed my phone to the TSA greeter and she said, "I'm sorry, dear, you've got Pre✓ but we only accept it here on a paper boarding pass. If you want, you can go back to the Southwest kiosk and print one. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience." (Really, she was that friendly and apologetic - she could have been the kind of old-school waitress who calls everyone "honey" - probably the nicest TSA agent I've ever met.)
I guess each airport has its own rules for that? It didn't quite make sense, but at least she was nice about it. :-)
[1] I was at CES with AltspaceVR taking pictures of the activity in their booth: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/
I have Pre through the Global Entry program. Others get it day-of because they were "randomly" sent to that line at the airport. Some airports have touchscreens which decide which line to send passengers to (passenger taps the screen and is told which way to go).
Yeah, they don't catch terrorists because their presence stops terrorists from trying certain kinds of attacks. That's the whole point. Also I don't know why you think they don't screen the 23 year old arabs more thoroughly -- because by all reports, people that are more "terrorist-looking" do get screened more thoroughly and frequently find themselves subject to "random" inspection.
Perhaps you'd be interested in purchasing one of my patented elephant whistles. I haven't heard of a single customer who's been the victim of an elephant attack while carrying one. Keep yourself and your loved ones safe for a very low price!
The point is that the government is so worried about offending certain people that they instead subject everyone through theoretically similar treatment, thus reducing the odds of actually catching bad guys.
The only time El Al was hijacked was back in 1968, despite being the flag carrier for one of the most threat-filled countries in the world.
They certainly don't employ the Keystone Cops of the TSA and follow some politically correct screening criteria.
You also never hear of El Al screeners stealing iPads from passenger bags or wheelchair bound old ladies getting strip searched.
Seriously the TSA is bullshit, as it only applies to americans... I assume because the 9/11 attacks originated in the U.S.
I think in Iraq they use closely placed concrete barriers forcing cars to swerve, and they stick marines behind them. Maybe we should do that in front of all the buildings... everywhere.
I think the parent was saying just that. However, due to the TSA's "political correctness", they also pick other people who don't fit the profile and then subject them to the same level of obnoxious screening. (The idea being that it makes them look a little less prejudiced)
At least, that's how I interpreted what the parent said.
If any amount of your security depends on hiding how the system works, you have a broken system (according to said law).
Nobody is arguiung that the van passcodes or personnel files should be disclosed; those specifics are immaterial. We are asking that how the system works, and how that is evaluated, be made public, and be placed under scrutiny. Otherwise, there is no reason to believe this system does anything but provide a vector for corruption.
"These programs work" - they said. Except for when they were actually audited and the auditors found no evidence of the programs "working".
But whether they work or fail, they always seem to ask for more surveillance powers and bigger budgets. Mike Masnick also had a good article on this:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150109/06555029648/uk-in...
I think it's more a problem of following the leads they do have. 9/11 attackers were known to be planning an attack, the Charlie attackers were also known (not through their surveillance, but from a tip from another country). But they didn't follow through.