

Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans - tux1968
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/08/24/full-body-scan-technology-deployed-in-street-roving-vans/

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noonespecial
We need an app that makes smartphones screech loudly whenever this kind of
radiation is detected. If there was a cacophony of annoying noise drawing
attention to their actions whenever this is used, they wouldn't use it much. I
have little doubt that these are already being secretly used in places that
would elicit a WTF from your average citizen.

Are there any sensors on a smartphone that might go detectably wonky when hit
with this?

~~~
regularfry
The CCD in the camera ought to go bananas, I'd have thought.

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narkee
This made me wonder if it was illegal to bombard people with x-rays?

If I had an x-ray emitter gun of some sort, and I walked around blasting
people with unhealthy doses of ionizing radiation without their knowledge (it
would be silent and unnoticeable), how would I get caught and what would I be
prosecuted with?

I feel like it's not too difficult for someone today to build something like
that and walk around terrorizing people...

~~~
Cushman
Well, assuming you can afford competent representation... It would be next to
impossible to link any particular case of injury to any particular action on
your part, so you would quite likely avoid arrest forever and probably be
acquitted if it came to trial. You would technically expose yourself to a
massive amount of civil liability, but if you could make the argument that
many other people are going around doing the same thing, you would wind up
paying for a very small share of the damage that you caused. Outside of
specific laws passed to punish your specific behavior, you probably get off
more or less scott free.

Of course, it has never been difficult to terrorize people like this, and what
you're imagining is small potatoes. Just build a big building which does this
on a daily basis for decades. We call it "pollution", and mostly shrug it off
as the cost of progress.

~~~
drewcrawford
This is an absurd reply. Just for starters, it has actually happened, the
actor has been convicted, and it was held up on appeal.

[http://www.uscg.mil/legal/cca/court_of_criminal_appeals_opin...](http://www.uscg.mil/legal/cca/court_of_criminal_appeals_opinions/CalendarYears1997through1999/19970605%20United%20States%20v.%20Madigar,%2046%20M.J.%20802.pdf)

~~~
Cushman
Eh, I appreciate the link, but I don't really see the connection. Aside from
the common theme of radiation exposure, what you posted involves a medical
technician performing unnecessary procedures on people. This makes it easy to
demonstrate a) that the exposure occurred, b) that the tech knew the effect of
the machine and that the procedure was unwarranted, and subsequently c)that
his intention in doing this was to harm the victims, or something similarly
sinister. It wasn't part of that appeal, but there's also the issue that he
did this by taking x-ray images of women's bodies, and I'd imagine a large
part of the conviction came from we really don't want a weirdo in the hospital
getting off on x-raying female patients.

Never mind that it was a court-martial, and that he was convicted of multiple
counts of drug use and dereliction of duty at the same time.

All in all, it has very little in common with our hypothetical, in which one
invisibly, untraceably exposes members of the public at large to some unknown
dose of ionizing radiation over a period of time. And you've really done
nothing to address my observation that, in reality, people get away with that
all the time in the form of environmental contamination. We can prove he ate
the fish, we can prove he died of cancer, we can prove you're putting cancer
in the water. That's just not enough to convict you for his death-- the worst
you'll face is a stiff fine under a law that exists only to impose a stiff
fine if you put cancer in the water and somebody dies.

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rdl
If these are the same trucks used at entry control points by the DoD, they
don't randomly drive around and scan vehicles; they're set up at gates, and
you park a line of trucks, then drive the scanner down the line to view all
the stuff inside. The radiation levels are high enough that all the drivers
are removed to a safe waiting area nearby during the scanning process.

~~~
westbywest
The article seems to suggest that yes, the vans _will_ be driven around
randomly.

"American Science & Engineering ... has sold U.S. and foreign government
agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be
driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, ...."

Likewise the image on the 2nd page of the article of an SUV with the driver
still inside.

~~~
rdl
According to as-e.com (the manufacturer), the backscatter vans are safe to use
with occupants in the vehicle; transmissive search are not. Transmissive gets
used for cargo search, since it's better at penetrating. The transmissive
scanners have a big boom which arches over the suspect vehicle, emitting, with
the receiver mounted in the body of the vehicle.

Some of AS-E's trucks do both, apparently.

I agree, these vans could probably be used in occupants-still-in-vehicle mode,
but there are a lot of reasons why taking the occupants out will probably
still be done. In a bomb situation, you want them under your control and not
able to trigger it as readily. You also get a cleaner scan with less human
obstruction in the vehicle; humans are going to show up as solid objects in
the scan, so hiding other stuff in the middle would be a threat.

~~~
Bud
I trust the manufacturer of these rolling privacy violations to be honest
about their health risks about as much as I'd trust Dick Cheney to
demilitarize the US government.

Which is to say, negative quantities of trust.

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taylorbuley
The author, Andy Greenberg, has been covering backscatter and it's legal and
health implications for a while. For what it's worth, this is a very old
story.

Andy is either currently on book leave (writing about Wikileaks) or just
recently back. I believe this is his latest on the topic, from last March:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/02/docs-
re...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/02/docs-reveal-tsa-
plan-to-body-scan-pedestrians-train-passengers/)

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reustle
"Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for
vehicle-based bombs in the U.S."

Is this even a problem? How often do we have vehicle bombs in the US?

~~~
ibejoeb
Both the 2003^W1993 attack on the WTC and the Oklahoma City bombing attacks
were delivered via truck. It's practically the only way to deliver a big
explosive device.

~~~
philwelch
Ahmed Ressam's 2000 plot to bomb LAX involved transporting large amounts of
explosives across the US border from Canada by car.

~~~
philwelch
Why the hell is this being downvoted?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Ressam#Plot_to_bomb_LAX>

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omouse
That's fucked up. This is precisely why, if you have any ounce of morality or
ethics left in your body, you shouldn't develop any technology for use by
governments or law enforcement. The potential for abuse is large and x-raying
like this is a clear invasion of privacy.

~~~
mahyarm
Then we shouldn't work in voip because governments can spy on peoples
conversations, or many other things that are abusable?

~~~
omouse
No I was talking about making software and giving access to spies such as the
government. I think programmers should consider the privacy and ethical
implications of whatever they create.

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guard-of-terra
Obligatory Wulff/Morgenthaler
<http://wulffmorgenthaler.com/strip/2011/02/22/google>

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nodata
So where is the consent to search on this one?

~~~
sage_joch
Where is the right to a speedy and public trial in the latest NDAA passed in
the Senate? I would argue that _the_ most important issue of our time is the
accelerating theft of freedoms by the federal government. To put it more
quantitatively: the trend of our incarceration rates over the last few decades
should be enough to give anyone pause.

~~~
nodata
Well for that to happen we'd need to

i) make the erosion more visible

ii) have a better sense of perspective.

Sadly this list is no longer maintained:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6r09d/fisa_passed_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6r09d/fisa_passed_in_congress_6928_congress_the/c04n96n)

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seanp2k2
This article is factually incorrect on a big point: airports are NOT using
millimeter wave scans (X-ray) as a secondary scanning measure like the article
indictes; they are used as the primary security scanning measure, at leat at
SFO and DTW (I know because I've opted out of both).

~~~
sukuriant
The article is a year old

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billpatrianakos

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

Really?! You're looking inside my fucking car! Without a warrant! That's what
the objection is. Do these people hear themselves speak? First you put cameras
everywhere I exist, then I go through your metal detector, get patted down,
submit to a body scan, have my conversations recorded (sometimes), my cell
sends all my keystrokes, Facebook advertises my phone number, bots crawl to
get my email, and I'm basically reachable 24/7 even if I turn my electronics
off. Then you roll out the roving x-ray machines on wheels and tell me I
shouldn't object? Nuh uh. Enough's enough. I basically have to live in a cave
to avoid being tracked but even caves barely cut it these days.

Living in the US you get used to having no privacy and for the most part I've
never really cared. I always figured that if you're doing nothing wrong
there's no problem. But then I notice that every time I shrug something like
this off they come out with something just tad more invasive. Maybe this is my
personal epiphany, the point where I turn and say "hey, this stuff isn't cool
anymore". I now see that if you give an inch they take a mile. I'm switching
sides. I'm on the privacy nut side now.

~~~
fluidcruft
Here's the thing... it would be one thing if privacy was gone. i.e. EVERYONE
had access to the cameras, data etc. That's really the only way to avoid the
panopticon.

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tkahn6
This article is more than a year old. A follow up would be interesting.

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georgieporgie
The embedded video is dead, but I assume this is the same one:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHRlXzRfvpA>

Edit: the video claims radiation exposure is equivalent to a 15 minute
airplane ride.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Thanks for the link. I wonder how hard it would be to make a wave guide for
this band. Or of course a cloaking device which obscures THz frequencies.

On the one hand I'm all in favor of driving these around where there may be
active IED activity but less thrilled about having them randomly running
through traffic, only to suddenly pull me over because I've got 3 bags of
fertilizer for my new grass sod lawn.

The older I get the more I realize I haven't thought too hard about the
downside of living in the kind of places one reads about in science fiction.

~~~
dmoney
> _On the one hand I'm all in favor of driving these around where there may be
> active IED activity_

That would stop being a good idea once "insurgents" learn what X-rays are.

~~~
einhverfr
I wonder how hard it is to make a device which homes in on X-ray devices....
you know... to guide some sort of thing to an x-ray source.....

yeah, I agree. That's a bad idea.

