Posted on 11/17/2010 7:17:58 AM PST by a fool in paradise
A screenshot of one of the images obtained by Gizmodo.
The website Gizmodo has published 100 pictures of body scans taken at an Orlando Federal Courthouse. The scans are not from the "naked scan" machines that the Department of Homeland Security announced were going into 28 airports in the country, earlier this year. Instead, they are much more pixelated and less embarrassing.
Still Gizmodo points to TSA's Advanced Imaging Technology's privacy policy, which states that the machines "cannot store, print, transmit or save the" images and that they are "automatically deleted from the system after it is cleared by the remotely located security officer."
Gizmodo attained the images by filing a Freedom of Information Act request. The images were among the 35,000 that U.S. Marshals at the Orlando courthouse admitted to saving.
Gizmodo, which blurred the faces in the photographs, explains their reasoning for publishing them:
The leaking of these photographs demonstrates the security limitations of not just this particular machine, but millimeter wave and x-ray backscatter body scanners operated by federal employees in our courthouses and by TSA officers in airports across the country. That we can see these images today almost guarantees that others will be seeing similar images in the future. If you're lucky, it might even be a picture of you or your family.
A poll released by CBS, yesterday, asked Americans if airports should use full-body x-rays. A whopping 81 percent of them said yes and it didn't matter their gender, age or political persuasion.
Earlier, today, Nate Silver of the New York Times' Five Thirty Eight analyzed how accurate those polls might be, considering that a wide range of them were conducted after terror threats and that most of them polled Americans who had never been through the machines. He found the numbers are pretty accurate:
My guess is that a majority of such passengers will still approve of them: Americans are willing to tolerate a great number of things at the airport that they would never stand for in other parts of their lives.
How about you? Where do you stand on the debate after seeing the published pictures?
The government is *gasp* LYING to its citizens!! Ping!
D’oh.
How about you? Where do you stand on the debate after seeing the published pictures?
Not exactly the pornography that some were *itching about, are they?
The scans are not from the “naked scan” machines that the Department of Homeland Security announced were going into 28 airports in the country, earlier this year. Instead, they are much more pixelated and less embarrassing.
Never mind my last post, I should read the article before opening my fat mouth.
And anyway, why did they bother? Those scanner images are hardly exciting.
The scans are not from the “naked scan” machines that the Department of Homeland Security announced were going into 28 airports
They’re so fuzzy/blurry/sketchy how can anything be learned from them?
That just makes the case for the even higher definition (naked) scanners.
On the other hand, how many smugglers have been caught by the naked scanners? Do they even yield results?
Just because they “see more” doesn’t mean that they are stopping people”.
Terrorists ARE being convicted stateside. We know they walk among us. But they don’t have ONE example of an attacker being thwarted by these machines? Not just “turned away”, but caught red handed, so to speak?
Did you see the fellow who took a stand is now going to be investigated?
TSA to investigate body scan resister
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/nov/15/tsa-probe-scan-resistor/
Here’s the Gizmodo link they have a video on site
http://gizmodo.com/5690749/these-are-the-first-100-leaked-body-scans
I am not so much concerned with the images.....but VERY concerned about the radiation. I opt out...
We're seeing another version of the "gun control" mentality. Take away guns from everyone, in the hope of keeping guns from criminals. Here, it's violate everyone's liberties, in the hope of keeping a bomb off the plane. Just as in the case of "gun control," where it would be better to control criminals than disarm honest people, at airports it would be better to look for bombers than for bombs.
When was the last time an Amish grandmother took a bomb on an airplane?
Thanks. It is the gun control mentality to a T. The gun grabbers disarm law abiding citizens, leaving armed criminals who don’t obey laws to wreak havoc. Here, we force innocent citizens to preen in front of Nazis, while the potential terrorist population is exempted.
This is madness, and you called it.
Don’t forget with the “background checks” for guns, they assured the public that the paperwork would be reviewed then destroyed after a few days. It was being stockpiled along with everything else.
When corrupt figures lie to the public on matters of privacy rights, they have violated the oaths of their offices. We are now seeing it from unelected officials who often take no oath. But it is corruption all the same.
Get them under oath before Congress so if they lie about “not saving images” or “about telling anyone images would not be saved”, they can be prosecuted.
What a choice radiation or groping, screw your Constitutional Rights and the right to travel!
The Right To Travel
As the Supreme Court notes in Saenz v Roe, 98-97 (1999), the Constitution does not contain the word "travel" in any context, let alone an explicit right to travel (except for members of Congress, who are guaranteed the right to travel to and from Congress). The presumed right to travel, however, is firmly established in U.S. law and precedent. In U.S. v Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966), the Court noted, "It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized." In fact, in Shapiro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), Justice Stewart noted in a concurring opinion that "it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, ... it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all." It is interesting to note that the Articles of Confederation had an explicit right to travel; it is now thought that the right is so fundamental that the Framers may have thought it unnecessary to include it in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
http://www.usconstitution.net/constnot.html#travel
I don’t care what they report. Defund NPR! A turd wrapped in classical music.
“...The government is lying to its citizens...”
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Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.
The government seizes every opportunity to take away our freedoms. Any excuse will do. 9/11 provided an excuse to search passengers to find drugs or contraband. It was not done primarily to prevent hijacking.
PBS is Pure BS and ABC is All Bull S-— And if you watch NBC you’ll CBS.
Does TSA have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy? If homosexuals are going to be permitted to serve as TSA agents groping passengers hands down pants, I’d perfer it to be frisked by a female (no post-op either).
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