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Your consent is not needed even for unnecessary radiation. If I shine my high beams on your car, or have a cellular phone call next to well - too bad. I'm entit
by randyrand 11y ago
Your consent is not needed even for unnecessary radiation. If I shine my high beams on your car, or have a cellular phone call next to well - too bad. I'm entitled to bombard you with radiation if I want to.
But for the sake of argument Ill assume you just care about ionizing radiation (UV, Xray, Gamma, Neutron, etc). In that case I agree consent should be needed for medium to high dose. It's unfeasible to get the consent of everyone for low doses (x-ray machine x-rays can travel for miles and theoretically infinitely far).
In this case it appears the dose is only about that of eating a banana. Hard to argue you need to consent to that for radiation concerns unless you also agree that everyone should consent to every xray scan that every hospital executes, or every time your colleague brings in bananas to work. Privacy concern is valid though. Radiation one is just fear mongering if OP is correct.
- rnovak 11y agoThat's PER SCAN. Do you think the Police roll up, do a scan, and then take off? No. They're sitting there scanning constantly (most likely), so to use your analogy, that's a lot of banana eating.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoEven more banana eating for the cops running the thing...
- rnovak 11y agoDid you even read the article? can be operated remotely from more than 1,500 feet Yeah, totally dangerous for the cop </sarcasm>
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoCan be, yes. How often will it be? How often will it be operated remotely, and there's no other police in the immediate vicinity doing traffic control or some such? [Edit: the article also talks about scanning the inside of a house in 15 seconds. That's not going to happen if they drive up the van, park it, get out, walk 1500 feet away, scan the house, walk back... (Yes, I know, they can drive away and back in another vehicle. It's still not likely to be operated remotely in that usage - all the activity makes it too conspicuous.)]
- coldtea 11y ago>Can be, yes. How often will it be? The answer can even be ALWAYS, if remote controlling it is mandated by protocol. >How often will it be operated remotely, and there's no other police in the immediate vicinity doing traffic control or some such? That doesn't come into play at all. Do you think those kind of surveillance happens in busy streets with traffic control cops dancing around?
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoTop-level comment by sandworm101: > They are not hard to spot. Watch the media entrances of events, where the on-location vans drive through. Look for where traffic is routed through a single lane. Inevitably they will route traffic past an unmarked van. Or, look for an unmarked van trolling any parking lots within any security cordon. That "look for where traffic is routed through a single lane" makes me strongly suspect there's going to be traffic officers in the very near vicinity.
- coldtea 11y ago>That "look for where traffic is routed through a single lane" makes me strongly suspect there's going to be traffic officers in the very near vicinity. In that case those "traffic officers" will be further down directing traffic to the van, not in the van's target.
- pohl 11y ago...assuming there's no shielding between the equipment and the cabin, right? Turns out there is shielding: "Law enforcement officers operate the system in conditions of complete safety from inside shielded cabins." (Source: http://www.nethun.it/index_en.php?sez=security_en&sec=rm http://www.nethun.it/index_en.php?sez=security_en&sec=rm ) Don't miss this delicious advertisement video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jsprogrammer 11y agoYep, let's see the actual discharge history of the vans.
- jostmey 11y agoAnd are we assuming that the person is inside a metal vehicle? What if someone is outdoors? How much radiation does this scanner actually emit? The numbers are meaninglessness without more information. Why doesn't the manufacturer just publish the hard numbers?
- mattkopecki 11y ago> If I shine my high beams on your car, or have a cellular phone call next to well - too bad. I'm entitled to bombard you with radiation if I want to. I think this is a really good point, actually. Do all these electronic devices need to be FCC approved? And if so, how do these vans' dosage gybe with any FCC regulations?
- randyrand 11y agoAll electronics yes. But (nearly?) everything emits radiation. Candles, fire, your body. and those things are not FCC approved.
- bediger4000 11y agoThat's equivocation at its best. Candles do not emit ionizing radiation in measurable quantities. X-Ray machines do. There's a huge distinction, similar to the distinction we make between shining an incandescent bulb up at a helicopter or passenger plane, and shining a laser pointer.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoSo we regulate X-Ray machines keep the radiation leak below the level that would oblige to ask people in the area for consent. GP has a point. The concern in this thread is based entirely on the notion that "radiation" is a scary-sounding thing.
- CydeWeys 11y agoNo, the concern in this thread is based entirely on the notion that innocent people are potentially being exposed to X-rays, without their knowledge or consent. You're arguing against a strawman. HN commenters aren't idiots. The technology in question is using ionizing X-rays, which can have harmful health effects.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
- jegutman 11y agoAn airport security screen is about equivalent to eating 2.5 bananas, don't tell OP that bananas are so scary.
- wavefunction 11y agoDo bananas do this? http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416066/how-terahertz-waves-tear-apart-dna/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416066/how-terahertz-wa... Tell us more about bananas...
- jryan49 11y agohttp://arxiv.org/abs/1012.4153 http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.4153 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_radiation#Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_radiation#Safety
- Gibbon1 11y agoSomeone doesn't understand the difference between ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation.
- wavefunction 11y agoPerhaps the issue isn't as settled as you might think. Please refer to the link I posted just above this for a study from MIT linking non-ionizing radiation to permanent damage to cellular DNA.
- Gibbon1 11y agoThe effects of ionizing radiation are pretty well settled. Non-ionizing, people have been unsuccessfully chasing that ghost for decades.
- YeGoblynQueenne 11y agoI'm not really sure about that. UV rays from the sun are not ionising radiation, are they? I mean the ones that are known to cause skin cancer.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hamiltonkibbe 11y ago"Don't worry, the spec'd dose rate from this Therac-25 is way below Denver background levels... No need for a dosimeter here..."
- TrevorJ 11y agoThe difference is it's invasive. You couldn't shine a flashlight up people's skirts.
- digler999 11y ago> It's unfeasible to get the consent of everyone then don't do it.
- YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago>> It's unfeasible to get the consent of everyone a.k.a. "I didn't ask because I knew you would say no".