PhoneBoy Says

Essentially, it appears that an X-ray beam is rastered across the body, which highlights the importance of one of the specific concerns raised by the UCSF scientists… what happens if the machine fails, or gets stuck, during a raster. How much radiation would a person's eye, hand, testicle, stomach, etc be exposed to during such a failure. What is the failure rate of these machines? What is the failure rate in an operational environment? Who services the machine? What is the decay rate of the filter? What is the decay rate of the shielding material? What is the variability in the power of the X-ray source during the manufacturing process? This last question may seem trivial; however, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory noted significant differences in their test models, which were supposed to be precisely up to spec. Its also interesting to note that the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory criticized other reports from NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) and a group called Medical and Health Physics Consulting for testing the machine while one of the two X-ray sources was disabled (citations at the bottom of the page).

These questions have not been answered to any satisfaction and the UCSF scientists, all esteemed in their fields and members of the National Academy of Sciences have been dismissed based on a couple of reports seemingly hastily put together by mid-level government lab technicians. The documents that I have reviewed thus far either have NO AUTHOR CREDITS or are NOT authored by anyone with either a Ph.D. or a M.D., raising serious concerns of the extent of the expertise of the individuals and organizations evaluating these machines. Yet, the FDA and TSA continue to dismiss some of the most talented scientists in the country

via myhelicaltryst.blogspot.com

You can read his post for the gory details, but he echoes the same conclusion that I've come to:

As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on whether these machines are safe or even could be made safe for this application. Until then, I suggest keeping your family out of these machines and as vile as it is, either submit to a physical search or just don't fly.

Ron Paul had to go through his first invasive pat-down at the airport the other day, since his knee replacements bar him from the naked x-ray machine. This is one of the kindest, most well-mannered men I know, but after four very hard jabs to his genitals, he asked the federal agent: "How can you live with yourself, feeling up strange men all day long?"

"I love my job," sneered the goon.

via lewrockwell.com

You can bet that Ron Paul will be figuring out how to make these searches illegal. Oh wait, he is. It's called H.R. 6416.

Yesterday we received a letter from a customer who wore her GladRags Pantyliner through a security scanner and was so traumatized by her resulting TSA genital search that she wanted to warn other women. (Read her letter below). Her past history of sexual assault made this experience a nightmare for her. At first we thought yes, we will warn people not to put themselves through this risk.

But on second thought, we want to ask every willing woman, menstruating or not, to put a GladRags in her pants and go through the scanner. Let the TSA learn to recognize that a menstruating woman is probably not a terrorist! (And, yes, we know myriad jokes can be made be about that statement).

The fact of the matter is, everyone is subject to an invasive search. For some women and men it causes great stress and perceived violation. If you can handle the experience fairly stress free, help clear the way for our menstruating sisters for whom a genital search by a group of strangers is a truly traumatizing experience.

via blog.gladrags.com

So let met get this straight. A maker of menstruation products is suggesting that menstruating women go through the naked body scanners wearing their products so that they'll get singled out for a "genital search?" Oh, brother.

"Many people will approach [the controversial advanced imaging scanners now used in US airports] as, 'Oh, it must be safe, the government has thought about this and I'll just submit to it,'" says David Agard, a biochemist and biophysicist at the University of California, San Francisco. "But there really is no threshold of low dose being OK. Any dose of X-rays produces some potential risk."

Agard and several of his UCSF colleagues recently wrote a letter to John Holdren the president's science adviser, asking for a more thorough look at the risks of exposing all those airline passengers to X-rays. The other signers are John Sedat, a molecular biologist and the group's leader; Marc Shuman, a cancer specialist; and Robert Stroud, a biochemist and biophysicist.

"Ionizing radiation such as the X-rays used in these scanners have the potential to induce chromosome damage, and that can lead to cancer," Agard says.

The San Francisco group thinks both the machine's manufacturer, Rapiscan, and government officials have miscalculated the dose that the X-ray scanners deliver to the skin — where nearly all the radiation is concentrated.

The stated dose — about .02 microsieverts, a medical unit of radiation — is averaged over the whole body, members of the UCSF group said in interviews. But they maintain that if the dose is calculated as what gets deposited in the skin, the number would be higher, though how much higher is unclear.

via npr.org

This is actually a relatively old story that references the now infamous letter sent by researches at UC San Francisco about the safety of these scanners. The main problem: nobody has done any research on how safe the machines that travelers are being asked to step through really are.

Though volume was around expected levels, our preparations for today kept wait times at such a minimum that some airports are closing screening lanes due to a lack of passenger throughput.

via blog.tsa.gov

In other words, the TSA did exactly what I said in the last post: shut down the scanners and sent people on their way. And yet, due to the less invasive screening, nobody blew up a plane. Or, the real reason they shut down screening lanes: fewer people were flying so they didn't have to get scanned or opt-out. Either way, food for thought.

According to tweeting travelers, many backscatter and millimeter-wave AIT scanning machines at airports are not in use at all, making opting out impossible. We've asked DHS/TSA for comment, but you can help us confirm.

via gizmodo.com

Sounds about right. Fizzle the whole opt-out movement by doing less naked body scans and invasive pat-downs than normal. The fact they did that at all suggests the opt-opt movement had an impact. Or maybe they did it just to speed people along.

Of course, the best way to opt out: not fly in the first place.

Do not launch bogus wars that cannot be won. Do not tell them lies about a major health care reform package that actually helps millions. Do not invade their dreams with thoughts of happy gay people holding hands in a wedding chapel. Do not rip their retirement accounts to shreds, sell them bad home loans with a grunt and a slippery Wall Street grin. What are you, an amateur?

What you do is, you go direct. You grope them right on their tingly 'n forbidden genital regions, AKA God's country, AKA Father O'Malley's special secret, real and true and WTF-do-you-think-you're-doing. Works every time. Just ask the Vatican.

Either that, or you demand they submit to a full-body scan of their copious, world-famously overweight American flesh, those bits and parts they don't even share with a mirror much less a giant camera the size of a refrigerator, and then stifle a laugh as you secretly post said photos to a creepy anonymous blog run by the Russian mafia (Note: possible exaggeration).

Basically, you shame and humiliate them, over and over again, in a giant public space, in front of their families, herding them like confused bison through an increasingly absurd, demeaning series of tests and checkpoints. And you do it all under the auspices of protecting them from a few extremist imbeciles who (we are told) want to blow them up and kill their dog and steal their Kim Kardashian pre-paid debit cards.

This is the real way to provoke a revolution. This is a wonderful way to rally the nation, get our values in order and set both political parties scrambling for a tolerable response. In the age of wild transparency, direct genital invasion is pretty much all we have left.

via sfgate.com

Surrendering my 4th amendment rights should not be a condition of travel within the United States.

With strengthening of cockpit doors and revised flight procedures to restrict cockpit access, the likelihood of a hijacking being leveraged to use an aircraft as a weapon has been drastically reduced. Couple that with passengers' realization that compliance with terrorists is not in their best interest, the probability of any future airline attack causing more casualties than the passengers and crew on board is near nil.

This means that airplanes are not unique from sports stadiums, shopping malls, trains, buses, subways, cinemas, or hundreds of other kinds venues where inflicting hundreds of casualties is possible.

We cannot create a police state where every citizen must be viewed naked or sexually groped in order to venture into public places. Stop the Security Theater with airplanes and the inconvenience to millions of people who must fly for their jobs every week.

Sincerely,
Brian Keefer

via rants.smtps.net

You can give your feedback to the TSA, too. I did.

John Drake, 36, of York, Maine, flying yesterday with his family to San Jose, Calif., for Thanksgiving, had no complaints: "Travel is not a birth-given right. It's a choice. And it's up to our government to make sure we're safe while we do it." He called [the national Opt Out Day on the day before Thanksgiving] "the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.

via bostonherald.com

The TSA is missing the point. It's not just the fact these scanners are taking naked pictures of us. It's the fact there is no direct evidence saying the scanners are actually safe. Especially for people like me who fly all the time.

People like John Drake are missing the point as well. The scanners and the pat-downs are just another example of the erosion of our civil liberties. Some of us have had enough. The National Opt-Out Day is an act of civil disobedience.