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Opt Out of a Body Scan? Then Brace Yourself
- petrilli 16y agoWe have always been at war with Eastasia.
- binarymax 16y agoThe repeated "Opt out!" yelling tactic is obviously a way to intimidate and humiliate the participant, and dissuade anyone else who would otherwise choose to opt out. I have not had the opportunity to opt out yet. But when I do, I will gladly join in the opt out screaming session, and add some other choice words of my own. I refuse to quietly be a part of some absurd bureaucratic plot that slowly and steadily strips away my civil rights.
- StavrosK 16y ago"Opt out over here! I'm not going through the strip search!"
- phpnode 16y agoand then make a point of loudly enjoying the pat down.
- StavrosK 16y ago"Oh yes... A bit to the left, that's it!"
- rdtsc 16y agoBut I wonder if some TSA employee who doesn't like can just "randomly" pick you for additional questioning and delay you just enough to miss your flight then let you go. Would they just retaliate against you just for making a fuss?
- alanh 16y agoIf you're thinking along those lines, they already won.
- roc 16y agoThe whole invasive pat-down is just a way to intimidate and humiliate people away from that choice. This is the last straw for me, personally. I'll just be vacationing closer to home now or working old-school road trips into my plans. Maybe if the outraged take a few less flights a year, the vacation, airline and union lobbies will take up the cause.
- jules 16y agoFor whom on HN are pat downs intimidating and/or humiliating? I personally don't mind it at all, but I can understand that they could be a problem for somebody. I'm much more worried about CCTV's everywhere, cell phone tracking, internet usage tracking, tracking cars with cameras on highways that read number plates, etc. All these tools are extremely well suited for keeping a dictator in place. I'm afraid that if we get one, then we're not getting rid of him any time soon.
- steveklabnik 16y agoMe. It's insane. It serves no purpose other than to intimidate and harasses normal citizens just trying to get from point A to point B. The fact that I'm assumed to be that stupid, plus the 1984-esqe overtones really, really gets to me.
- jules 16y agoRight. So it's not so much the physical aspects of pat downs, but the reasons behind the pat downs?
- steveklabnik 16y agoI mean, I was raised Catholic, so I'm not exactly the model of immodesty, but yes, its not the 'omg they'll touch my junk' part as it is the infringement on basic human rights part. And being reminded that some people think this is okay. And that most people accept it. I have slightly unusual polititcal views, so such a visible reminder that I'm 'the only person who cares' really riles me up.
- yardie 16y agoJust got through the airport lastweek and didn't have to deal with this silliness. But I can't wait to go back to the US so I can opt-out. I'm not a perv, but can't wait to see the look on the screener's face while s/he's forced to touch my johnson. "That's not a roll of quarters my friend" :-)
- shasta 16y ago"I was going to guess nickels."
- teilo 16y agoI am seriously tempted to find some metal tape for the next time I have to fly, "mark up" my t-shirt with a suggestion as to where the TSA can shove their body-scan machine, and walk through side-ways.
- gjm11 16y agoSounds like a great way to get a real strip-search as well as a virtual one. Of course, you may be willing to accept that to make your point.
- daten 16y agoYour idea reminds me of this story from 2006. Milwaukee resident Ryan Bird wrote "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on a plastic bag given to passengers by airport security. As a result he claims he was detained and told that the First Amendment did not apply to security checkpoints. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/606142-i-detained-tsa-checkpoint-about-25-minutes-today.html http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/606142... Kip Hawley was the head of TSA at the time.
- corin_ 16y agoAll it reminds me of is the person who actually had that idea, on this site, five days ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1849311 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1849311
- teilo 16y agoIt is a rather obvious hack, isn't it?
- yread 16y agoHey thats not that bad - 25 minutes is well worth the fun.
- mcantelon 16y agoFor women, there are http://www.flyingpasties.com http://www.flyingpasties.com
- daten 16y agoBaltimore Washington Intl. airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport both recently got body scanners. They both changed their process to close all lanes not equipped with a body-scanner and funnel everyone through the one or two scanners they had. At BWI they would make every 15th or so person go through the scanner, or anyone who volunteered by walking up to it instead of the metal detector. At Atlanta the scanners weren't even operational yet and they still only opened the metal detectors with scanners beside them and had an army of TSA screeners standing around doing nothing while a huge crowd of travelers waited in a very long line. The processes have indeed changed.
- daten 16y agoAdditionally I would feel perfectly safe flying without any security screening at the airports. No "terrorists" have been attacking schools, churches, malls, buses, trains, bridges, theaters, libraries, office buildings, etc. Either they only attack planes (not even the airports themselves) or there aren't enough terrorists to justify this amount of "security".
- ceejayoz 16y agoI've always been baffled by the lack of those sorts of attacks. One can imagine the economic damage if everyone was terrified to go to malls, grocery stores, schools, etc. Amazon.com would be about the only company to come out okay.
- roc 16y agoDespite what the security and media apparatus would have us believe, it simply isn't easy to convince people to go on murderous rampages. Most people are not monsters. Let alone suicidal ones. When you realize the inhumanity required to follow through on a terror plot is the limiting resource, their targeting and methods make more sense.
- mcantelon 16y agoForest fires seem, to me, the low hanging fruit. Lots of economic damage for little effort so the fact they're not being done make me doubt the omnipresence of Emmanuel Goldstein.
- yequalsx 16y agoEvery story about the TSA always seems to end with something like this article did: "Mr. Delahorne said he was perfectly willing to comply with all procedures to ensure good security." There's always a quote about how someone is willing to do what must be done to ensure our safety. It makes me think that news agencies are required to do this or get paid to do this.
- percept 16y agoI just view it as a sort of standard disclaimer to preempt the usual criticism that dissenters are somehow ignorant, unreasonable, or un-American. Basically: "I'm an otherwise reasonable person in full possession of my faculties."
- yequalsx 16y agoThat's possible but the impression that I have is that by always including such remarks it has the effect of making people who disagree with security measures as wanting something bad to happen. It's sort like the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Instead of focusing on whether or not the measures are appropriate the debate is about whether or not you want to be safe. I think it makes dissenters look bad by making them against being safe.
- steveklabnik 16y agoYep, this is an old PR trick. It's why you'll see organizations that are preparing to be involved in a political demonstration agree to a 'points of unity' that always have a clause about 'respecting a diversity of tactics.' If you start asking one group, "What do you think of those guys smashing windows?", it changes the dialogue from "What's your message," to "Aren't those guys bad?" And it's not like you're able to properly discuss such a subtle point as "this is a false dichotomy," when talking to news outlets.
- recampbell 16y agoWho is responsible for crafting these procedures, I.E., requiring the body scans or alternative opt-out procedures? Do they have a name besides "Homeland Security"?
- epochwolf 16y agoPerhaps you're thinking of the Transportation Security Administration? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Administration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Adminis...
- ajaxian 16y agoSerious question for the physicists: How feasible would it be to put a faraday cage in one's underpants that wouldn't trigger a metal detector but would mess up the body scanner?
- Construct 16y agoA Faraday cage is, by definition, a conductive cage. You'll have a hard time getting a conductive material through a metal detector. Your best bet would be to construct a garment from a material which is significantly absorbs/attenuates the extremely high frequencies (30GHz to 300GHz) used by these millimeter-wave imaging scanners. Normal clothing passes these waves with minimal attenuation, where they bounce off of your skin and return to the scanner. The scanner then uses these returned signals to reconstruct an image of your naked body for the TSA to examine. If your clothing instead absorbs most of this signal, or at least attenuates it significantly enough to fall below the dynamic range of the imager, the TSA won't be able to see much. Absorbing millimeter-wave signals to a significant enough degree will require a relatively thick material. I typically use RF foam in the lab when I'm working on EMI compliance issues because it is cheap and easy to cut to size. Attenuation data is scarce for the EHF band, but ARC Technologies has a lossy flexible foam that has 25dB of attenuation at 40GHz ( http://www.arc-tech.com/lossyflexiblefoam.php http://www.arc-tech.com/lossyflexiblefoam.php ), which amounts to 50dB of round-trip attenuation from the imager to your skin back to the imager. 50dB loss means only 0.001% of the original signal will bounce back to the scanner. Even more absorption can be had if you use pyramidal foam, much like you see in a typical antenna chamber. ( http://www.ets-lindgren.com/pdf/absorber.pdf http://www.ets-lindgren.com/pdf/absorber.pdf ) Of course, this probably won't be the most comfortable garment you've ever worn. Still, I would imagine wearing such a garment would immediately raise red flags and you would quickly find yourself in a back room with some unfriendly TSA agents. You're much better off opting out.
- smountcastle 16y agoWhat happens when a parent has their children opt-out of the full-body scanner? Can the TSA be sued for child abuse or can the parent press for criminal charges for touching?
- DifE-Q 16y agoI have curtailed my domestic flying personally or with my family due to these asinine security theater exhibitions. In all it amounts to about $5000.00 in lost revenue to the airline industry every year. So if enough people do this then hopefully that will send a message to these people. Now there may be a time when I or my family have to fly and for sure I will be opting out my entire family. When they go to feel-up my children I will ask the person doing it if he/she has a history of child molestation...since they are getting all personal with me and my children I plan on getting personal with them. I will try and remember to report back when with the results...
- jonnathanson 16y agoI went through O'Hare recently, where they've installed a battery of these devices. The way they had it set up, it was used as the secondary screener for people who got called out for random searches. Guess who got called for "random" searches in the machine? Pretty much every hot chick in line. Now, this observation was purely anecdotal, so take it for what it is. But the coincidence was not lost on me, or on anyone else in the line. It was disgusting behavior on the TSA workers' part.
- mike-cardwell 16y agoI thought only women operated the machinery where women were scanned and only men, where the men are scanned?
- biafra 16y agoMaybe they save the pictures and share later?
- jonnathanson 16y agoSupposedly they're not capable of saving or transmitting the pictures. I mean, obviously the machines are capable. But they're nerfed for TSA use. Supposedly.
- steveklabnik 16y agoSupposedly, but they've already admitted it's not true: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20012583-281.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20012583-281.html
- pak 16y agoThis is the most ridiculous concept in the digital age. If it's being recorded by a computer, it can be copied. Hell, if it can be seen, it can be illicitly recorded. When you can buy tiny cameras from ThinkGeek that fit in the bridge of your glasses and can record VGA video for hours on a single battery charge, you can forget about pictures not being "saved". And when the job is looking at naked pictures all day, what do you expect? I mean, who do you think seriously is seeking that sort of job in the first place?
- percept 16y agoI just returned from an international trip a couple of weeks ago and am glad I missed this. However the snap on my pants (!) must have set off the metal detector so I was still patted down. In what other business is a normal, paying customer treated this way? Not quite the golden age of commercial aviation . . .
- mcantelon 16y agoMy guess is the option of opting out is likely going to be removed in a year or so. The most effective way to remove freedom and privacy is incrementally.
- palewery 16y agoI heard those body scanners can cause cancer
- jasongullickson 16y agoTo me this is just another reason (of many) that travelers should consider general aviation (charter, etc.) as an alternative to commercial airline travel. The straight financial cost may be higher but avoiding all of this sort of nonsense has its rewards, and remember that most GA operators are locally-owned smallish businesses that appreciate your support and treat their passengers like customers and not like prisoners (or worse).
- tocomment 16y agoTell us more. How would I get to cancun for example?
- pchristensen 16y agoI echo tocomment - for someone who has only ever flown commercial, how would one go about finding and hiring a GA operator? What's kind of premium would you expect pay for a regional (eg Chicago to Detroit) flight or a longer flight (eg Chicago to LA)?
- Flemlord 16y agoI'm also curious. Do you use a national charter company or do you have to contract directly with owner/pilots? How much does it cost? How fast is it compared to regular commercial travel?
- jtbigwoo 16y agoA little over a decade ago, my company used a local charter company when Northwest's pilots went on strike. We were able to get a five-seat turboprop with two pilots for $2000 for 70 minute flight (about 400 miles.) A full-fare ticket on Northwest cost about $540 at the time. Our total travel time was cut in half--no ticketing, no security screening, no baggage claim. We even convinced the rental car companies to run our cars over to the charter office. All we had to do was say hello at the charter office and head on to the plane. This particular company also had seven- and ten-seaters which were slightly cheaper per person per hour. I assume the prices would be more expensive now. Anybody have experience with netjet or similar fractional ownership? EDIT: Forgot to mention that the same flight on Northwest was 50 minutes in the air.
- jlujan 16y agoI just passed through the airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The back-scatter scanner is right next to the metal detector and the procedure was that they would "offer" you the choice to walk through the new scanner and said if you turned it down that they would have to perform a physical search. I told them I did not wish to go through the scanner, at which point they walked me past the metal detector (not through) to the pat-down area. While standing there for a few moments for the TSA personel, several people went through the metal detector with no further search. Further, the notification that the machine is still in testing phase is posted after you have already passed through it. It was abundantly clear at that point, the new policy of intimidation and humiliation has nothing to do with my personal safety. The unilateral and unpublished changes in screening procedure are blatant abuses of authority and undermine the principles of our society. The argument that I have given implicit consent to being searched just by buying an airplane ticket is completely voided when the search procedures are constantly changing without detailed public knowledge or immediate explanation. I have no fears about flying in general or those caused by the threat of terrorism. I am much more likely to die in a small plane crash with one of my pilot friends at the controls. What terrifies me the most is this blatant disregard of civil liberties and the apparent complacency with which the public submits to the draconian policies being put in place without consent of the people.
- AgentConundrum 16y ago"No, no. The process has always been the same, at every airport." We've always been at war with Eastasia.
- tomjen3 16y agoIt seems that the best way to get around this would be to make life unbearable for the TSA agents. The politicians can't be reached. While physically assaulting them would be very satisfying, simply freezing them out socially would properly be a better tactic, since it is impossible to arrest people for.
- CapitalistCartr 16y ago"The politicians can't be reached." Of course they can! Mail, email, they can certainly be reached, and right now they're extra sensitive to issues that upset their constituents.
- CWuestefeld 16y agoright now they're extra sensitive to issues that upset their constituents Quite the opposite. Right now is the maximum time before the next election. That means they've got the longest time possible for you to forget. Any shenanigans they'd like to engage in would be safest now.
- CapitalistCartr 16y agoIt is the maximum time, but issues are not that simple. The long-term members of Congress know the electorate are upset, and want to make nice; the new members are spoiling for a fight; the Dems are in disarray and retreat (I haven't a clue as to why), and the GOP is eagerly taking ground. It's a perfect time to push an issue with your Congress members.
- joshwa 16y agoOriginal article (not framed by Yahoo): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/business/02road.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/business/02road.html
- verdant 16y agoIf enough would choose opt out (despite the obvious intimidation tactics), then the entire process would become so inefficient that an easy, efficient alternate would be provided (or the scanners removed altogether). It would likely take a majority of people opting out though.
- j053003 16y agoWhy the hell wasn't this an election issue? I would have gladly voted against any candidate who supported this.
- roboneal 16y agoAn organization, say like the EFF, should coordinate mass "opt-out" travel at peak travel times. A little "gridlock" might highlight the absurdity of the situation.
- bartman 16y agoI've been through Cleveland Hopkins Intl' and San Jose Intl' in the last days and there were "opt-out lanes" in which no body scanners were used and you went through the normal metal detectors. No pat down either. Nobody told you into which lane you have to go, so there was absolutely no pressure.
- preek 16y ago‘No, no. The process has always been the same, at every airport.’ INGSOC! We should have known, 1984 is long due.
- ChristianMarks 16y agoThey can pat me down in the crotch until they're blue in the face: they'll never find anything.
- SkyMarshal 16y agoI'm not sure what that means, or if I want to know, or if I'm seeing innuendos where there aren't any, but it made me lol anyway. Have an upvote.
- SkyMarshal 16y agoTo the frequent business travelers, might this increase the growing trend of working remotely? Now that it's trivial to set up video-conferencing on your home workstation, and collaborate via online tools that range the gamut from github to office docs to just about anything you can imagine, might this drive even more people to shift business travel to remote work instead?
- gonk 16y agoThese machines and the whole security theatre is simply this: a psy-op designed to produce more malleable citizens in the years to come. 5 years from now there will be grown adults, who once were teens, who won't think anything of it because "thats how its been our whole lives, so whats the big deal?". Never forget this fact: you are going to be replaced, citizen, in just a few short years.