[Photo “evidence” retracted; see below.]
Congratulations to the press unit of the Transportation Services Administration for getting the Boston Herald to pretty much print a PR handout in place of a news story about the introduction of full body scanning at Logan Airport.
Privacy issues? What privacy issues?
The staffer viewing the image is at another location, the images cannot be stored, the security officer at the checkpoint never sees the image, and the image is deleted immediately. The picture itself, shown to reporters on a computer monitor, is chalky and does not reveal “private parts.â€
And of course the one passenger quoted says that he’s “willing to give up a little of my liberties to fly safely.†Ben Franklin would, no doubt, be pleased.
My sister Kelly, in the Huffington Post article that brought the Herald story to my attention, argues that, for women in particular, routine body-scanning is an intolerable invasion of privacy:
Being looked at naked by guards is bad enough when it’s done to prisoners of war. I’m not an enemy combatant – not a combatant of any kind, not an enemy of any kind – and I won’t allow myself to be treated like a prisoner in my own country.
As to the “chalky” images that do not “reveal private parts,” someone at News Cast Daily took the color negative a body-scanner produces and inverted it (which he claims to be a one-click process) to produce this:
[Hoax. See below.]
The News Cast Daily poster adds, “Airport screeners will have access to larger high definition images that, once inverted, will allow them to see every minute detail of your body.” Of course, if the images aren’t stored, they can’t be PhotoShopped, and policy is not to store them. But how hard is that policy to evade?
Houston, we [may] have a problem.
I’m not as certain as Kelly is that the scanners have no security value; a system doesn’t have be perfect to be useful. It’s worth something to impose some additional risk of getting caught and some additional burden of concealment on a would-be plane-bomber. But how much?
Update Two commenters point out that the supposed inversion of a body-scan image was a hoax. My bad.
The original source of the hoax seems to have been Drudge, which apparently has never retracted; the link, with a photo, is still up on the original date but the link goes nowhere. (Or maybe Drudge stole it, unsourced, from News Cast Daily; NCD claims originality, and has never retracted. It was then reposted on Gizmodo; one of the commenters there caught it, but the item itself is still up, unchanged. Of course I already knew never to believe Drudge; too bad to have to add Gizmodo to the same list.
That leaves the question whether the actual, lower-res images are still a problem. I think Kelly has that one right; for most men, they aren’t, but for some (many? most?) women they are.
You're really going down the rabbit hole here. The pictures you post are *nothing* like actual scanner pics. They're a hoax.
Yeah, those pics are a hoax that was debunked pretty quickly after they first appeared, though Gizmodo failed to update its post to reflect that. See http://trueslant.com/KashmirHill/2010/01/27/tsa-s…
How reassuring is the fact that "the staffer viewing the image is at another location" meant to be? There are occasionally news stories of people who've been arrested for installing hidden cameras in a women's restroom; they're also "at another location." Would it be better, less peepy, if they'd installed hidden body-scanning machines instead of hidden cameras? But TSA aren't degenerates, & they tell us they're looking, so never mind.
I inverted a few of the other popular scans and I have to agree with Hans. They're nowhere near as revealing. News Cast Daily doesn't seem to give the source of its original scan.
Folks, the Benjamin Franklin quote that Mark is referring to ("those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety…") is a popular quote that liberals liked to use during the Bush administration to respond to Bush politics and the surveillance provisions under the Patriot Act. One problem, it is now widely recognized that Ben Franklin did not say this. In fact, this was a quote by Richard Jackson in the 1759 pamphlet entitled "An Historic Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania". Ben Franklin was a contributor to this pamphlet, but literary critics have more or less resolved that Jackson was actually the author of the quote. Further, this quote was in the context of mocking pacifist Quakers for their failure to raise an army. And anyone who has studied Ben Franklin knows that he had no problem supporting spying during the war. So no Mark, Ben Franklin would not be pleased.
Steve Clay, the source of the "original scan" was actually this photo shoot of a German model: http://www.f1online.de/f1online/index.cfm?locatio… (NSFW, but not any more than the pics Mark posted).
Security theater and privacy invasion. Same handout got reported in the San Jose Mercury news today. Which works for CYA.
This is a better approach.
The best information that I’ve been able to gather suggests that the full-body scanners will add little and possibly nothing to existing security screening. Full-body scanners will not addresses the threat of terrorists smuggling PETN onto airplanes because they cannot detect "putty explosives" such as PETN itself or other forms of "plastique" in which PETN is used, such as Semtex. The Obama administration’s deployment of the full-body is just more "magical thinking" and "security theater" in response to terrorist plots and also another aspect of its continuity with the Bush administration.
Good analysis of the problem by Bruce Schneier at his blog http://www.schneier.com/blog/
"[T]he images cannot be stored . . . and the image is deleted immediately." Isn't this a contradiction? If it can't be stored, what's to delete? It is hard to imagine an electronic image that "can't be stored." The most they can see is that their proclaimed policy, and possibly even their actual policy, is not to retain the images.
I'm wondering about the health effects, especially for very frequent fliers. And embryos and fetuses (you're supposed to avoid x-rays when you're pregnant).
I would like to raise a slightly off topic point. In thinking about the question of whether the full-body scanners should be deployed, two rather strange things occurred to me:
(1) Neither the TSA nor any of its foreign counterparts has ever been successful at detecting an attempt by an actual terrorist to penetrate their security.
(2) From 9/11 to date, Al-Qaeda has made no attempts to hijack an aircraft and only two attempts to smuggle bombs onto airplanes. Both of these efforts were arguably successful since bombs were smuggled onto aircraft without being detected by TSA or its foreign counterparts. They therefore have a 100% success rate in terms of smuggling bombs onto planes.
It would seem that Al Qaeda has an almost perfect ability to penetrate TSA-style security. Yet, they have chosen to use it only very sparingly, only twice in roughly eight years. Why?
Mitch Guthman
What you say about TSA and foreign counterparts never successfully intercepting explosives is probably true but if it wasn't how would we know? It may be deemed more disruptive to terrorists if their opperatives disapear into an information black hole.
The two cases of would be bombers getting on planes undetected are known because those guys were caught in the act by civilians. Anyone intercepted at a security gate could be walked into a room and never heard from again.
It is hard to imagine the Bushies not trumpeting any such success from the roof tops but on more than one front their incompetence often seemed a ruse. They certainly seemed capable of getting everything done they really wanted to: staying in office, tax cuts, controlling the press, installing fellow travelers into permanent government positions, enriching friends…. and their message control has never been in question.
At any rate, who can say whether or not bombers are intercepted every day without anyone being the wiser?
"At any rate, who can say whether or not bombers are intercepted every day without anyone being the wiser?"
Well, if they were routinely NOT being intercepted, we'd have a lot of planes blowing up. OTOH, it seems implausible that they're routinely being intercepted, and we don't hear of it; What are you suggesting, some kind of "catch and release" program for attempted airplane bombings? Doesn't seem very likely.
I'd suggest that airplane suicide bombings require a higher class of suicide bomber than daycare suicide bombings. And there's evidence that the supply of even lower quality suicide bombers is far from unlimited. I would venture to say that either they're expending their airplane quality suicide bombers as fast as they're obtaining them, which just isn't very often. OR, they only expend them when they find a good security hole, because they don't want them intercepted before they get on the plane.
As far as the quality of the image, yeah, it was a fake, but technology progresses. At some point teraherz imaging will be up to that standard.
That last bit about how men and women differ – just where does that study come from?
Not that there's anything to disagree with in the notion that the whole TSA system is an elaborate charade, as Kelly Klieman says, but I'm not so sure about the "stupid" part – if the point of the exercise is to help remind people that they should always be officially worried about potential terrorists, then it's probably accomplishing that to some extent.
Since reinforcing the cockpit doors has pretty much eliminated the possibility of using commercial airliners as weapons, the only serious remaining threat is that someone could bring down a place with an explosive. Hardly the same thing as flying directly into tall buildings, and certainly not something scary enough to justify the degree of wasted time and sheer inconvenience imposed by the current airport security arrangements. A bomb in a crowded restaurant or movie theater could cause as much harm. Yet we deploy no Israeli-style purse inspectors.
The argument that airport security hasn't successfully detected attempted terrorist attacks doesn't convince me of anything. There's a spectrum of effort and skill required in putting together an attack on an airplane and barriers that might not prevent the most highly trained and dedicated terrorists from succeeding might nevertheless be very valuable in deterring a much larger number of less skilled terrorist wannabees from even trying.
On the specific subject at hand, any system with humans in the loop is going to be abused. We can put safeguards in place as best we can — females look at females and children, males look at males, there are always two randomly-paired people co-located and looking at an image so they can watch each other as well, there's no correlation between an image and an identity until and unless something is spotted, etc. At that point we'll have to measure the intrusion into privacy against the potential value. If it's just "security theater" we shouldn't do it. But if there's some reasonable value, my feeling is, if you don't want to go through it, don't fly.
"If you don't want to go through it, don't fly."–Why shouldn't it be, "If you don't want to accept the infinitesimal risk that your plane will be bombed, then don't fly"? We don't take away the drivers' licenses of entire states because some people who hold those permits drive drunk; and the odds of being injured by one of those are much greater than the odds of having your airplane attacked by a terrorist.
The first casualty of the war on terror may have been truth, but the second was any sense of proportionality.
Larry,
Your answer is internally contradictory in the sense that you seem to both reject and endorse the the concept of balancing (risk v. expense; privacy v. safety; civil liberties v. safety). Many of the commentators here and also Kelly Kleiman feel that very small increases in safety do not justify what they feel are significant infringements on their privacy. Kelly Kleiman, in particular, has explained her reasons in some detail. She balances a small amount of additional detection capability against what she believes is a significant invasion of her privacy and so comes down on the side of privacy. Others have cited religious reasons for objecting to fully body scanners. It seems to me that to meaningful engage these people (and me) you need to say the extent to which deployment of full-body scanners makes us safer and then explain why you believe that amount of safety overrides objections on privacy or religious grounds.
As a part of that analysis, I think you also should address the way in which the two points which I have added to the debate here might alter the balancing of risks. It seems clear that the technological fixes applied after 9/11 (stricter screening for firearms and secure cockpit doors)are more than adequate to prevent hijackings. One may infer that the terrorists also believe this since it would appear that they have not even attempted a hijacking since 2001. Any money spent on full-body scanners would thus appear to be wasted because the present system is working just fine.
Similarly, my research has strongly indicated that the full-body scanner does not appreciably add to the existing systems’ ability to prevent bombers from smuggling bombs onto airplanes since it is not capable of detecting plastic explosives unless they are shaped in a suspicious form (something which existing X-ray scanners will also do). The scanners were not designed to detect plastic explosives, they can’t detect plastic explosives and the money spent on them is almost entirely wasted. This is publicly available information and so it’s likely that the politicians and TSA officials who rushed to embrace full-body scanners following the attempted “underpants bombing” knew full well that this was little more than “security theater”.
Because I conclude that full-body scanners will not materially add in the TSA’s primary mission of preventing hijacking and bombings, I must also agree with Kelly Kleiman that, given the significant infringements on the sensibilities of so many people, the use of full-body scanners is not every remotely justified on grounds of public safety.
But I would go further. The fixation on “Security theater” by our political class and the TSA does not simply result in increased inconvenience. TSA personnel will be diverted from the from more important work as they waste time studying the pictures produced by this electronic “divining rod”. Moreover, there is a finite pot of money which we are prepared or able to spend on security. The billions of dollars wasted on full-body scanners therefore will tend to divert resources from other uses such as increased police efforts and intelligence gathering which we know, from past experience, are the most effective means of preventing terrorism.
Money spent on full-body scanners and other types of “security theater” is not simply wasted. By diverting money from proven anti-terrorism measures, the TSA is actually making us less save. No matter whether you are balancing risk against privacy/civil liberties or against other things on which the money could be better spent, the deployment of the full-body scanners is wasteful and makes us less safe.
Larry,
Your answer is internally contradictory in the sense that you seem to both reject and endorse the the concept of balancing (risk v. expense; privacy v. safety; civil liberties v. safety). Many of the commentators here and also Kelly Kleiman feel that very small increases in safety do not justify what they feel are significant infringements on their privacy. Kelly Kleiman, in particular, has explained her reasons in some detail. She balances a small amount of additional detection capability against what she believes is a significant invasion of her privacy and so comes down on the side of privacy. Others have cited religious reasons for objecting to fully body scanners. It seems to me that to meaningful engage these people (and me) you need to say the extent to which deployment of full-body scanners makes us safer and then explain why you believe that amount of safety overrides objections on privacy or religious grounds.
As a part of that analysis, I think you also should address the way in which the two points which I have added to the debate here might alter the balancing of risks. It seems clear that the technological fixes applied after 9/11 (stricter screening for firearms and secure cockpit doors)are more than adequate to prevent hijackings. One may infer that the terrorists also believe this since it would appear that they have not even attempted a hijacking since 2001. Any money spent on full-body scanners would thus appear to be wasted because the present system is working just fine.
Similarly, my research has strongly indicated that the full-body scanner does not appreciably add to the existing systems’ ability to prevent bombers from smuggling bombs onto airplanes since it is not capable of detecting plastic explosives unless they are shaped in a suspicious form (something which existing X-ray scanners will also do). The scanners were not designed to detect plastic explosives, they can’t detect plastic explosives and the money spent on them is almost entirely wasted. This is publicly available information and so it’s likely that the politicians and TSA officials who rushed to embrace full-body scanners following the attempted “underpants bombing” knew full well that this was little more than “security theater”.
Because I conclude that full-body scanners will not materially add in the TSA’s primary mission of preventing hijacking and bombings, I must also agree with Kelly Kleiman that, given the significant infringements on the sensibilities of so many people, the use of full-body scanners is not every remotely justified on grounds of public safety.
But I would go further. The fixation on “Security theater” by our political class and the TSA does not simply result in increased inconvenience. TSA personnel will be diverted from the from more important work as they waste time studying the pictures produced by this electronic “divining rod”. Moreover, there is a finite pot of money which we are prepared or able to spend on security. The billions of dollars wasted on full-body scanners therefore will tend to divert resources from other uses such as increased police efforts and intelligence gathering which we know, from past experience, are the most effective means of preventing terrorism.
Money spent on full-body scanners and other types of “security theater” is not simply wasted. By diverting money from proven anti-terrorism measures, the TSA is actually making us less save. No matter whether you are balancing risk against privacy/civil liberties or against other things on which the money could be better spent, the deployment of the full-body scanners is wasteful and makes us less safe
I find it hard to believe that scanned images would not be stored at least for a designated amount of time, eg, 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, if only to improve the scanning system and procedures should a terrorist manage to "fool" the scanner and board a plane. It's insane to destroy what may be a critical piece of evidence virtually the instant you obtain it. Does anyone really believe that Homeland Security and the NTSB don't want to have a chance to review scans in the event of an explosion or otherwise inexplicable crash?
I feel much safer now that the TSA has confiscated my four-ounce bottle of personal lubricant.
I've noticed that very few women are interviewed about whether they mind being viewed naked by strangers. And I have yet to hear anyone even ask if they mind their wives and daughters being seen naked by strangers.
And precious few in this comments thread have even addressed the fact that women are concerned about their privacy, usually more so than men.
Men don't worry much about being seen naked. With us, the trick is get us to keep our clothes on.
I believe there are much cheaper ways to prevent undewear bombers. Full body scanners are just more Security Theater.
I don't believe for a minute that there would be adequate privacy safeguards. That's a joke. The only way it could be done would be to build the machine so that it wasn't capable of creating detailed pictures to begin with, and then there would be much less point in having them at all.
In fact, I'm not sure there is any point to this.