
Documents Reveal TSA Proposal To Body-Scan Pedestrians, Train Passengers - georgecmu
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/02/docs-reveal-tsa-plan-to-body-scan-pedestrians-train-passengers/
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danilocampos
You know how country musicians remind us that "freedom ain't free?"

Well, it ain't. But it's not under assault by people with different-colored
skin in foreign lands.

The people who want to fuck us out of our freedom are people _we keep
electing_ , or are appointed by the same. Can't believe no one's ever written
a country song about _that_.

People want to rag on OWS for being unfocused or whatever. But you know what?
I'm glad to see a few comfortable first worlders step up and provide a
sustained cry that they're _not comfortable_ with the status quo.

I don't know what the long-term solution is for this power- (and genital-)
grabbing nonsense. But I'm pretty sure it starts by getting pissed off and is
continued by saying so, out loud, in public, in numbers.

~~~
T-hawk
> The people who want to fuck us out of our freedom are people _we keep
> electing_

A big part of the problem is that, no, they aren't elected. Not a single
position in the TSA is elected. Nor the EPA, or OSHA, or IRS, or any of twelve
dozen other agencies who heap mounds and mounds of their own productivity-
sapping laws on everybody. Who votes for that garbage? I didn't and nobody
else did.

Electing Congressional representatives is too far indirectly removed from this
process. Each vote for a representative is the amalgamation of dozens or
hundreds of other issues. Congress functionally has free rein to do anything
it wants with the TSA and all the other bureaucracies, because they just
aren't important enough to cast your precious single vote compared to hotter-
button and directly life-relevant issues (abortion, Social Security,
immigration, take your pick.)

How can we vote down a TSA action like this with such an indirectly removed
vote? What if I like the rest of my representative's opinions but abhor the
TSA, how can that be expressed in a single vote? It's a frickin year until the
next election, do you think even 1%, never mind 50%, of voters in my district
will remember and care about this then?

In some sense, representatives are obsolete. The technology certainly exists
now for a much more direct form of interactive democratic government, where we
could individually vote on things like the TSA. But how would the current
system of elected representatives ever yield to direct democracy? How would
even one, never mind 220, representatives ever be in favor of eliminating
their own power and positions? Remember that the districts themselves are
drawn by the two parties in power (there's no difference) to keep those two
parties in power. It's 1984, the governmental structure has created and warped
the system to keep itself in power for perpetuity. Overturning it is literally
not possible. The system itself, like Newspeak, prevents even the expression
of doing so: How do I vote to not have a Congress anymore?

(Dang, I hope this isn't one of pg's honeypot karma-eating politics threads.)

(Edited a few times to phrase myself better, especially about those indirect
votes.)

~~~
brc
I think you don't need to go to the level of individually voted items - even
though the technology would actually make it reasonably simple.

Just having recall elections on all elected representatives and recall
referendums on specific issue should be enough. I realise some states like
California have something like this.

Case in point : my local representative just switched political sides because
the current government threw them some inducements to do so. This ends up so I
voted for a person who now supports the people I explicitly didn't want in
power. There is nothing I can do about this except wait for the next election.
If I had a recall vote I could organise a recall election - but, more
importantly, it's unlikely they would have even contemplated the move if they
knew a recall was a possibility.

Similarly for the TSA if sufficient opposition was found via petition (say,
10% of registered voters) then an online referendum could be undertaken - ie
Disband TSA, yes/no.

This type of thing is dangerous because you could easily end up with deadlock
and inertia, but hopefully the mere threat of being overridden or recalled
would prompt more representatives to think about representing and listen more.

But I think the key is to lower the cost of voting. But then I'm also very
wary of electronic voting systems, so it would have to be extremely secure.
Probably two-factor authentication secure.

------
hammock
_Update: A TSA official responds in a statement that the “TSA has not tested
the advanced imaging technology that is currently used at airports in mass
transit environments and does not have plans to do so.”_

This is false and I have photo evidence.

One year ago I noted that the TSA was doing naked scans (looked like mm wave)
on everyone in the tunnel between the Chicago subway and the O'Hare airport,
just outside the train platform in a non-sterile area and hundreds of yards
away from any actual airport terminal (if you have ever gone to O'hare via the
train, you will know once you get off the train it's about another quarter
mile walk through a tunnel to get to the airport). I spoke to an agent that
was there on site and he confirmed they were "doing tests." Told me they were
not stopping anyone that day based on what they saw in the scans, but I would
have guessed they would radio intelligence to the airport personnel if they
saw anything suspicious.

Here's the photo[1] I took of the scanning station- there were two set up on
either side in the tunnel such that you could not exit or enter the subway
station without passing in front of it.

[1]<http://twitpic.com/35njtt>

~~~
lurchpop
Here's another story about the vans from the year before:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/08/24/full-
bo...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/08/24/full-body-scan-
technology-deployed-in-street-roving-vans/)

~~~
Ryanmf
_On the topic of roving backscatter vans:_

“From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or
objection could be,”…says [Joe Reiss, Vice President of Marketing at
backscatter developer American Science and Engineering, Rensselaer '85,
Northeastern MBA '91].

In that case, Joe, it sounds as if you're a bit too ignorant and/or selfish to
be making that call.

~~~
electromagnetic
> “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or
> objection could be,”

I'm sure thousands of peeping toms have said the same thing to a judge and got
a jail sentence anyway.

IMO if a "vice president of marketing" says _anything_ about a product, then
the opposite is the truth. It's very easy to claim there's not a problem when
you have a six figure paycheck and will never have to walk through one of
these machines in your life.

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agreenberg
Just discovering this thread...I'm the author of the article linked above, and
I actually wrote a follow-up to the story a couple of days later.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/09/tsa-
nev...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/09/tsa-never-tested-
full-body-scans-for-mass-transit-except-when-it-did/)

The DHS was totally dishonest with me in their comments on the initially
story, and less than fully honest even in their subsequent follow-up response
to my questions. I was disappointed that only a fraction of the readers who
read the first post noticed the second, so I'm glad hammock below was able to
point out the DHS's contradictions.

Thanks to everyone for reading.

~~~
zacharycohn
Thanks for updating us. Can't you update this article?

~~~
agreenberg
Done.

------
Bud
This is what we get, as a society, for not insisting that "Homeland Security"
be shut down back in, say, late 2001, once it became clear that it could do
absolutely no good for society, and would certainly cause great harm to
Constitutional rights.

The permanent fear culture of security theater is now far too entrenched among
moneyed interests. It will take a massive effort by the public and by Congress
to even begin to uproot it.

~~~
narrator
The rule in American government is that only solutions that will be considered
to any political problem must involve spending more money. If you want to shut
down Homeland Security, I would suggest proposing replacing it with a new
agency that can spend more money than Homeland Security is currently spending.

~~~
rhizome
Wouldn't that be the same as just renaming the agency? It's going to be
comprised of the same career people and contracting companies anyway. There
needs to be hard restrictions on their powers.

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marchdown
Hey, Americans. This whole mess is truly unbelievable from over the pond.
Aren't there legal procedures in place to stop this unconstitutional,
incredibly annoying, intrusive and expensive fearmongering campaign? Yeah, it
was introduced at precisely the right moment by people in positions of trust
and power, but haven't you had quite enough already? The head honcho, Pistole,
is a deranged veteran of War on Terror. There isn't a yota of evidence in
support of their paranoid fantasies. No one is out to get you. Just back down
before you've found yourselves living in a police state without a legal
recourse.

I know, this has been said time and again already, but venting your
frustration on the internet is counterproductive — it assuages an urge to
actually _do something_ — and do something you should, because TSA won't
dissolve by itself. But there's another side to the endless discussions on the
Internet — by illuminating legal specifics of the situation you could effect a
slow, incremental progress in public awareness.

~~~
potatolicious
I once made the mistake of expressing this opinion (i.e., that airport
security is pure theatre, completely irrelevant, and isn't making anyone
safer) on a shuttle for a high-tech software company.

I guess I kind of assumed that software engineers would be natural skeptics,
and predominantly liberal to boot.

Well, nope, that wasn't a safe assumption at all. I had 2-3 people agree with
me enthusiastically, 4-5 argue passionately about how the terrorists would win
if we let up, and the rest of the bus just stared like me like I just
transmogrified into Osama himself for daring to suggest such a thing.

So yeah, if the a supposedly scientific, data-driven, skeptical population
broke down like that, I'm not surprised that this sort of thing is happening
without much resistance. And it's for this reason I hold nearly no hope that
any of these abuses will ever be curbed.

The only question I really want answered is: when did America turn from being
such a badass, never running away from a fight, to such cowards, willing to do
anything, give up anything, for one iota of perceived safety?

This was in 2009 FWIW...

~~~
tptacek
I want to move to your dimension. In my dimension, the bad-ass America of yore
imprisoned the entire Japanese population of the west coast during WWII.
Compared to HUAC, the TSA is positively rational.

It is not remotely hard to see why we have the TSA and it has nothing to do
with cowardice; it has to do with rational actors and their incentives. To
wit: there is no incentive whatsoever for anyone in authority to dial _back_
airport security. It's the same reason you have to "turn" "off" your iPod at
takeoff and landing.

This isn't some scary new trend. Our whole system of government is designed
with the assumption that stuff like this is going to happen. The Constitution
isn't an electric fence. It is the constraints provided to a stochastic and
inefficient algorithm to get it to _eventually_ converge on an answer John
Locke might have approved. 10 years is the blink of an eye in historical
terms. Give it another few decades.

Meanwhile, it is simply people's job to hypothesize about "harmlessly"
"scanning" mass transit passengers. I guess it's good that we freak out about
it, to quash it earlier in the process than later. But nationwide deployment
of strip search scanners at train stations isn't imminent.

------
brc
But the TSA (and Homeland Security) is now a full-fledged government
bureaucracy, complete with a power structure, employeees with statutory
rights, and inter-agency links, and no doubt pocket congress members with 'TSA
creates jobs' talking points.

The job of the people at the TSA will always to be to ensure the TSA not only
continues to exist, that it continues to grow and become more important. Any
actual security outcomes will be a side effect, not the primary goal. At no
point will the management say 'know what? We're actually wasting money here,
let's recommend to congress that we be disbanded'.

It's madness when creating these institutions not to put a self-destruct
clause in them. Ie, In when created in 2001, it would be decreed that in 2011,
a review will be organised to see if the TSA has actually materially affected
terrorism activities.

Of course, the review would be a whitewash, but at least it would keep people
remembering that this was a temporary solution to a temporary problem.

~~~
SkyMarshal
_> It's madness when creating these institutions not to put a self-destruct
clause in them. Ie, In when created in 2001, it would be decreed that in 2011,
a review will be organised to see if the TSA has actually materially affected
terrorism activities._

Better yet, a sunset clause, where the agency is automatically disbanded 10
years later unless explicitly renewed by Congress for another ten years.
Slightly better chance of it getting disbanded then.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The Post Office seems to keep getting funded...

------
nextparadigms
As long as people will irrationally fear "terrorism" and will be willing to
let anything pass in the name of fighting terrorism, this will go even
further. They'll let them even do random check-ups in your home. TSA wants to
go much further, just like any Governemnt agency would. By going further and
expanding their territory, they will get more funds.

------
sixtofour
I wonder if North Korea is open to sister city treaties?

------
tomkinstinch
Imagine if scanners were everywhere, but rather than scanning for weapons they
were scanning for tumors and other health problems (and since this is fiction,
also imagine that the ionizing radiation dose is negligible).

~~~
DannoHung
Given that this is fiction, can we imagine that the scanners also find
malfeasance by businessmen, government officials, and all other echelons of
the powerful?

------
LeafStorm
I don't know whether they were referring to intercity passenger rail (Amtrak)
with this, but what's rather surprising is that now Amtrak, at least in North
Carolina, has just about zero security. You line up on the platform, you show
the conductor your ticket when you get on the train (or say that you need to
buy one), and then there's a random chance that your ID will be checked after
you sit down and the train gets underway (mine never has been). Checked
baggage is probably checked (not sure), but they don't even run your carry-ons
through an X-ray scanner or ask you to walk through a metal detector.

At most stations the platform is at least locked most of the time (even if
it's only with a gate and a chain-link fence), but at some (like Raleigh)
anyone can walk up to the platform at any time. Yet despite all this I can't
recall ever hearing of a violent act of terrorism being committed on a train.

------
yock
Side-stepping the obvious civil liberty issues, where exactly does the
"Transportation" Safety Administration derive its authority to screen people
who aren't using public transport?

------
eli
Greyhound buses too.

------
kevin_jacobs
This is from March 2011, I haven't found any newer articles on the same
subject. It seems no new news on this front since then?

------
aantthony
It should say "Documents CONFIRM TSA Proposal To Body-Scan Pedestrians, Train
Passengers". I mean, it's not like it's a secret.

------
VladRussian
Seems like tin foil hats, jackets and pants are going to be in fashion

------
suking
Pretty soon they'll be scanning us to get onto freeways...

