Airport Porno Scanners

I’ve been watching with interest, for some weeks, the ongoing saga of the TSA and their airport porno scanners.

What happened when one pilot refused backscatter

Australian pilots monitor US boycott advice

Unions advise pilots to avoid scans

Question the TSA at your own Risk

Don't touch my junk

TSA asks flight attendant to remove her breast

I must be becoming desensitised in my old age because none of this got me overly angry, not until I saw this ABC news article.

President Obama Re: public concern about porno scanners

The ABC reports:

Mr Obama said he "understands people's frustrations" over the measures.

He said that following the attempted Christmas bombing, "TSA personnel are, properly, under enormous pressure to make sure that you don't have somebody slipping on a plane with some sort of explosive device on their persons."

Since the explosive on Nigerian "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab "was not detected by ordinary metal detectors, it has meant that TSA has had to try to adapt to make sure that passengers on planes are safe."

"One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us. And I understand people's frustrations."

He said he has asked the TSA to "constantly refine and measure whether what we're doing is the only way to assure the American people's safety."

But TSA and US counter-terrorism experts say that the procedures are the only ones they believe are "effective against the kind of threat that we saw in the Christmas Day bombing."

Liar, liar, f*cking pants on fire!


Schiphol Amsterdam, the undies bomber’s departure airport, has had the ‘naked’ scanners in operation since 2007.

Although that's irrelevant in Abdulmutallab's case, because he was escorted around normal security procedures.

Abdulmutallab who was on a terrorism watch list in the US, didn’t have his visa revoked by the US State Department, because they said, they had been begged not to revoke it by federal counter-terrorism officials.


http://www.sott.net/

"Surely if US intelligence was aware that Mutallab was a terrorist threat they would have at least taken the precaution of making very sure that the flight onto which he was to be escorted was not a target.

Surely a thorough rub down or a strip search would not have been out of the question for such a threat to US national security?

Take your pick; either US intelligence is so incompetent that they did not first check if this known terrorist was carrying a bomb onto the plane, or they staged the entire operation themselves in order to keep the Islamic terrorism bandwagon rolling."

Johns Hopkins University Safety Assessment of the Rapiscan 1000 backscatter, prepared for TSA and Dept Homeland Security, 30th October 2009.

"An area exists above each of the units, due to primary beam overshoot, where the 100 mrem per year general public dose limit could potentially be exceeded. This area extends up to a height of about 14 ft and 4.6 ft behind each of the units.

A second area exists at the entry and exit locations of the scan area, where the 100 mrem per year general public dose limit could potentially be exceeded. This area extends approximately 1.7 ft from the side of the units at the entry and exit locations."

download Safety Assessment zip file