10 ms·

Chance of Dying From Backscatter Radiation Same as Chance of Terrorism

252 points by mcantelon 16y ago

wnoise 16y ago
Oh, well if they're equal, then that means this is a perfectly proportional and appropriate response.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  That only holds if being sexually molested and having naked pictures of yourself taken is weighted at zero. Furthermore, this statistic in no way indicates that these screenings reduce the risk of dying in a terrorist attack. 1 plus 1 does not equal 0. You've allegedly doubled your risk of dying, not reduced it.
  - shasta 16y ago
    Well, you're right to question what the reduction in risk these scanners produce, but your first point is way off. The cost of terrorist attacks is hardly limited to death. Those planes and buildings aren't free. Not that cancer treatments are, either, but if you weigh in the psychological damage to the public (you know, why they call it "terrorism"), terrorist attacks are far more costly.
    - burgerbrain 16y ago
      The real cost of terrorism is having to deal with all the people talking about "the real cost of terrorism", and instituting retarded policies like these scanners/molestation sessions. Planes and buildings are cheap as shit in comparison.
    - smokeyj 16y ago
      A "terrorist" would just find another way to terrorize.. duh. Real terrorism is a drama, as orchestrated by our overlords, to polarize the public in attempt to deprive them of their liberty. That is all.
    - wiredfool 16y ago
      1 unsuccessful underwear bomber => $500 million in contracts for scanners. There's your cost of terrorism right there.
  - ax0n 16y ago
    The second paragraph is almost verbatim to the statement I was about to say in response to the OP. Blacklists do not work. Antivirus software checks for a hundred thousand individual known problems, yet viruses and malware continue to evolve and bypass the blacklist. So do explosives hiding in containers that the TSA doesn't expect to find explosives in.
- eru 16y ago
  Judging by the other replies, I guess you should put explicit sarcasm tags around your comment.
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    Yes. And then it still won't be very funny. It's too similar to something an actual TSA flack would say.
    - wnoise 16y ago
      If it weren't similar at all it wouldn't be funny either. It's a hard balance to set.
- gojomo 16y ago
  Only if: • the scan completely offsets the risk of terror death. I suspect not; someday someone will tell the TSA and/or terrorists about drug mules. • the economic cost of the scanning infrastructure/training/delays etc. is equal or less than the economic cost of the terror deaths offset.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  as if they are delivering total immunity from terrorist attacks in exchange.
- Eliezer 16y ago
  I don't even know the name of that fallacy, but it ought to have one. (Yes I know parent is sarcastic.)
  - eru 16y ago
    Something like `false proportionality'?
zipdog 16y ago
> Peter Rez ... calculated the risk of getting cancer from a single scan at about 1 in 30 million His odds were for a single flight, but I wonder if the scanner radiation has a cumulative effect? Surviving a plane flight has no impact on the likelihood of the next one, so taking a lot of flights would edge the odds in favour of dying from the scanner cancer. But then there`s the wide difference in the type of death.
- alanh 16y ago
  > But then there’s the wide difference in the type of death. Good point, I would rather die in a terrorist attack than after months of chemo and hospital food… that said, one is a lot more premature! (Edit: Actually, if you got cancer from the scanner, it would probably kill you within a few years.)
zbanks 16y ago
More tellingly, on an average two-hour flight, you'd receive about 100 times the radiation from a single scan. But, by using the transitive property, you're more likely to die from radiation at flying altitudes than from a terrorist attack on said airplane. EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to include the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray#Health_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray#Health_effect... Which comes from: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/radexp.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/radexp.htm... Which explicitly states its references.
- deleted 16y ago
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- maninthemirror 16y ago
  You are understating the risk from backscatter radiation. Because the radiation is sent in a burst, and targets skin tissue, the DNA damage may be far greater than a similar dose of cosmic radiation. You are also assuming that the backscatter machines are functioning properly and aren't overdosing people.
  - naz 16y ago
    A single backscatter X-ray scan gives a radiation dose of 0.009 mrems, about the same as eating a banana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose Don't get me wrong, I'm opposed to the scanners as much as anyone for privacy reasons and general pointlessness. But I'm seeing a lot of bad science thrown around here.
    - daten 16y ago
      You're not comparing bananas to bananas. As I understand, the limited information that has been publicly released about the backscatter machines is a useless measurement when you take into account how they actually work. You can't apply a standard measurement from a medical x-ray machine that targets a small part of your body using one technique to a different machine that targets your entire body using a different technique. So the two problems are: 1. You don't have good numbers to even evaluate how dangerous they are, many evaluations, including possibly the article above, are useless because they don't have the real data to compare to. 2. The radiation exposure from a banana also effects your body differently than a medical x-ray machine which is in turn different from a backscatter machine targeting your entire body. I'm not saying people aren't trying to evaluate the actual risk in good faith. I'm saying they're skipping the step where we get useful numbers from the manufacturer of the machine to even apply good science to. Edit: by "whole body" I mean "whole surface of your body" since it's concentrated on your skin
jdp23 16y ago
This article from NPR a few days ago has a lot more details, and gives context for the estimates: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/11/12/131275949/protests-mount-over-safety-and-privacy-of-airport-scanners http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/11/12/131275949/protest...
cj 16y ago
Direct link to article: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-airport-x-ray-scanners-harmful http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-...
deleted 16y ago
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noonespecial 16y ago
I'm going to go ahead and take this to mean that the TSA just doubled my chances of death. Seems appropriate in the current climate of hysteria, and makes an excellent sound bite.
- eleusive 16y ago
  I'll take it to mean that (given the 1 in 30 million estimate and that there are well over 250 million outgoing airplane seats filled per year by U.S. airlines), the expected number of scans which will cause cancer is nearly 10. That's 10 people who's lives may be put in very real danger. It doesn't make a very good soundbite, but it plays well to the climate of hysteria!
  - roc 16y ago
    According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there were 617,977,711 passengers on domestic flights in 2009 [1]. At the (incredibly optimistic) risk rate of 1 in 30 million, that's about 20 people given cancer, each year, if this policy goes forward and these devices become standard procedure. [1] http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Data_Elements.aspx?Data=1 http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Data_Elements.aspx?Data=1
    - drawkbox 16y ago
      The TSA kills 20 people per year. Keep the hysteria simple. Are you willing to kill 20 people per year to keep safe?
      - OneWhoFrogs 16y ago
        > Are you willing to kill 20 people per year to keep safe? Unfortunately, the answer for most is yes. That's more or less the definition of war. Edit: Yikes! I'm really getting downvoted here, but no one's saying why. I didn't say I agreed with it! I just said that most people would probably say yes.
      - KiwiNige 16y ago
goldenthunder 16y ago
Maybe I suck at basic prob/stats but if you remove the scanners, I bet the chance of a plane getting blown up by a terrorist is significantly increased. ;)
- tibbon 16y ago
  Two things have made the US safer 1- Pilots with guns & keeping the doors closed for the full flight 2- Passengers not willing to allow others on the plane do harm to the plane. If passengers see things happen now, they will stand up and makes attempts to stop them. We won't have a 9/11 style hijacking. Even if someone gets a box cutter in, people will take them down before they'll let them take the plane. I can't imagine how these body scanners would make us significantly safer.
  - BCM43 16y ago
    What we are trying to stop has shifted from someone hijacking the plane to someone trying to blow it up. However, this is not a new threat at all, and there are always more ways of getting a bomb on the plane as well as more targets.
    - tibbon 16y ago
      Perhaps, but why do we still focus then so much on 'hijacking' items, like knitting needles that would do little good in making bombs? We haven't reverted to pre 9/11 search coverage of hijack items. Actually, we haven't backed down at all on anything. It seems that once something is identified a threat, it will always now be seen as a threat.
  - davidj 16y ago
    won't work. Flight 93 was taken back by the passengers and Bush ordered it to be shot down anyway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9MD15qs5s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9MD15qs5s http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread624915/pg1 http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread624915/pg1
    - 16y ago
aphyr 16y ago
Actual web page: http://www.public.asu.edu/~atppr/bodyscan.html http://www.public.asu.edu/~atppr/bodyscan.html Actual article: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.public.asu.edu/~atppr/RPD-Final-Form.pdf&pli=1 https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.public.asu.edu... The first thing you'll learn in radiation safety is that the nature of the dose matters a lot. Sometimes you're A-OK if you can survive the initial dose. Other doses are accumulative. It depends on the energy of the radiation, the tissue's scattering cross-section, the time, and the flux, among other things. This means that the Sievert (a unit of biological impact due to radiation) is only meaningful in the context of the dose geometry. It's great for talking about a chest X-ray, where the dose is spread out over a big volume of tissue. Where it's unclear is in the case of rapidly-thermalizing or compton-scattered particles: like backscatter. Look at the graph in that article. Something like half of the energy is deposited in the first couple centimeters of tissue. We haven't done this before, and don't have a good model for the long-term effects. My guess? This kind of exposure is a hell of a lot worse for melanomas than a chest X-ray delivering the same energy. Claiming compliance to a metric like the ANSI limits is meaningless. Edit: Oh, and the concern raised over the beam stopping and delivering a couple Sv to a quarter-sized patch of skin is definitely scary. We did exactly that to several people with medical cyclotrons. Edit: I should also mention that tissues have varying tolerance to radiation. Rapidly-dividing cells tend to be hit the hardest, which is why your stomach lining, skin, and hair slough off after acute ionizing rad exposure. Your skin, stomach, lungs, breast and thyroid are also the most frequent to undergo cancer in radiation-linked longitudinal studies. See, for example, http://pats.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/full/5/9/934 http://pats.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/full/5/9/934
- jdp23 16y ago
  And according to David Brenner of Columbia University: Recent research ... indicates that about 5 percent of the population — one person in 20 — is especially sensitive to radiation. These people have gene mutations that make them less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA. Two examples are the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 mutations associated with breast and ovarian cancer, but scientists believe many more such defects are unknown. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833083 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1268330...
stretchwithme 16y ago
Yes, but the peace of mind one experiences while being groped or ionized makes it all worth while. Regarding how much radiation you receive on the plane itself, I always try to sit away from the window and on the north side of the plane if possible.
- jcl 16y ago
  My impression was that the increased radiation experienced on a flight was due to cosmic radiation, not radiation from the sun. So it shouldn't matter where you sit on the plane, right?
Xipe 16y ago
Chance of securing flights against terrorism with backcatter radiation same chance as dying from backscatter radiation.
butterfi 16y ago
With all due respect to Dr. Reiz, and the Dept. of Physics at ASU, I think I'll be taking my advice from the group of doctors from UCSF (a school well known and respected for its medical research) who wrote a formal letter to the president's science advisor. The letter is worth reading. "Agard and several of his UCSF colleagues recently wrote a letter to John Holdren the president's science adviser, asking for a more thorough look at the risks of exposing all those airline passengers to X-rays. The other signers are John Sedat, a molecular biologist and the group's leader; Marc Shuman, a cancer specialist; and Robert Stroud, a biochemist and biophysicist." Story here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833083 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1268330... Letter here: http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  I'll go with the physics prof. He did some calculations, admittedly imperfect, based on generally known principles of dosimetry, and got what seems like a reasonable order of magnitude result. All the MD's at UCSF said was "oh noes, the possibility of radiation danger isn't ruled out precisely by a previously done study, it might be dangerous." I'd be very curious to know whether they would use this same logic on a less politically charged topic.
  - butterfi 16y ago
    Reasonable doesn't necessarily mean correct. In the face of specific questions raised by doctors with expertise in this specific field, is reasonable is good enough? From the NPR article: "The stated dose — about .02 microsieverts, a medical unit of radiation — is averaged over the whole body, members of the UCSF group said in interviews. But they maintain that if the dose is calculated as what gets deposited in the skin, the number would be higher, though how much higher is unclear." The observation about how high a dose gets deposited is a very specific observation made by people who actively apply radiation to people on a daily basis.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
cedsav 16y ago
1 in 30M? so, with over 600M passengers per year, that's roughly 20 people a year who would get cancer (and die?) because of those machines. I'm not sure how credible are those stats, but I wouldn't want to be making decisions at the TSA right now...
- wvenable 16y ago
  Not everyone gets screened. So only a fraction of those 600M passengers are getting a dose.
  - ljf 16y ago
    at the moment... not long ago not everyone went through the metal detectors...
    - borism 16y ago
      seriously? when was that? was it not so long ago we had armed plane hijackings almost every month?
      - kscaldef 16y ago
        well, since you asked: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/airplane_terror.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/airplane_terro...
        ljf 16y ago
        thanks for that, excellent read. many forget that guns were allowed on flights until relatively recently, not everyone was xrayed and hijacking was common. also like the point raised in the comments that the main thing that killed off the IRA as a major terrorist movement in Europe, was when their American supporters finally remembered what terrorism was in 2001.
  - machrider 16y ago
    The plan is that all 2200 checkpoints in the USA will have backscatter or millimeter wave scanners within 2 years.
sequoia 16y ago
My takeaway: -I don't like the privacy ramifications of these scans. -I don't like being bombarded with additional radiation for no good reason, regardless of whether people think it will harm you. Just as I will get an x-ray for a good reason, but decline getting one for a silly reason, I would decline this if able. Maybe taking an aspirin a day is bad for you, maybe it's not, but I'm not going to start doing it for no reason. So one more reason I don't like the scan.
jerf 16y ago
So, the risk from a backscatter radiation machine is roughly equal to the risk from terrorism. The Federal Government, via the FDA, tells us that the risk of the backscatter machine is "minuscule". Therefore, in the Federal government's own risk terminology, the risk from terrorism is "miniscule". Why are we spending all this money on a "miniscule" threat? Why are sexually molesting the population over a "miniscule" threat? (Rhetorical.) (I say "sexually molesting" on the grounds that if I personally performed those same actions on a stranger, that is what it would be called. It would continue to be called that if I tricked this person into giving "consent" for false reasons. A doctor has a compelling reason. I do not grant that excuse to the TSA. I also do not think I am being unduly inflammatory, I think it's just plain fair.)
- josefresco 16y ago
  Terrorism can in both small and very large ways effect entire nations. backscatter radiation? Not so much. It's illogical to compare the two and make judgments on based solely on the death rate. You don't need to kill people (all of them) to influence them.
  - nickpinkston 16y ago
    Isn't this the same utilitarian argument that would restrict all of diets for the sake of healthy, roads for the sake of safety, and civil rights for the sake of efficiency?
    - deleted 16y ago
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  - rbarooah 16y ago
    So then perhaps the best way to protect a nation from terrorism is not to be influenced by it.
    - yeahsure 16y ago
      I completely agree with this statement.
marze 16y ago
This discussion is properly focused at the core of the matter, the cost benefit analysis. Some of the costs are easy to see, like the acute embarrassment some experience from an intimate "pat down" if they elect to avoid any risk from x-ray radiation. Others are much more difficult, such as potential health consequences of the x-ray radiation exposure. Since the TSA has refused to disclose the x-ray flux, it is hard to even get started. The comparisons the TSA makes with other radiation sources are flawed because they assume the dose is uniform throughout your body when it is actually highest at the surface. But even if an outside evaluator did have good numbers to start with, in the end the best you can expect are extrapolations using data from dramatically different radiation exposure, which is the nature of calculating radiation risks. The only way to have a non-extrapolated number is to expose half of a sample population to the scanner radiation and measure outcomes for 50 years. Avoided consequences are easier to calculate. Of the 8,000,000,000 or so US domestic air travelers of the past ten years, zero have smuggled a bomb on board, and zero have attempted to. Zero out of billions of passengers. The worst consequences are the loss of an aircraft. A terrorist cannot take control of an aircraft using a bomb, only destroy it. An X-ray scanner will not stop someone from bringing a knife onboard (even if it could, it is probably not possible to take control of an aircraft with a knife due to cockpit doors, passenger awareness, etc.) So, cost benefit sum-up: zero attempts to smuggle bomb onto domestic flight over past 10 years, unknown but likely low health risk, consequences limited to loss of one aircraft due to screening failure.
- fluidcruft 16y ago
  > Of the 100,000,000,000 or so US domestic air travelers of the past ten years, zero have smuggled a bomb on board, and zero have attempted to. At least two have succeeded in smuggling a bomb on board, but failed to detonate them. Look up the "Christmas bomber" and the "shoe bomber".
  - _delirium 16y ago
    Neither of those were "US domestic air travelers"; both boarded U.S.-bound international flights in Europe.
marze 16y ago
Airport in Orlando opts out of using TSA to screen their passengers: http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-national/florida-airport-to-opt-out-of-tsa-screening http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-national/florida-airp...
- SoftwareMaven 16y ago
  This is the best news I've heard on this topic. If enough airports were to do this, things would change at the TSA.
davidj 16y ago
If the argument that the risk of backscatter radiation damage is acceptable, and it is the same risk as the chance of terrorism, then by extension the risk of terrorism is acceptable as well. So basically this isn't about terrorism, it is about taking away our liberty.
grellas 16y ago
I don't think I know anyone who isn't spitting mad about this TSA thing. Quite an accomplishment, really, for the feds to manage to unite the entire country - left, right, center, and from every strata of society - on a given issue. I didn't think such a thing was possible.
- hyperbovine 16y ago
  I went and had a long, hard look in the mirror when I found myself in suddenly agreement with Ron Paul, Matt Drudge and, wait for it ... Ann. F'ing. Coulter.
- lukeqsee 16y ago
  The accomplishment is amazing. I guess our country really still does care about liberty and -- imagine this -- the constitution. Trouble is, are people going to do anything with their "spitting mad[ness]?" I hope they do.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    I think they just have an irrational fear of radiation outside the doctor's office (whether or not that's valid here) - due to it being crammed down their throats for decades - and a massive aversion to being seen naked - also largely due to it being crammed down their throats for decades. If they like liberty, why did/do they not get as spitting mad about the Patriot Act, the DMCA, and the ACTA? I'm guessing it's because their naked butts aren't staring them in the face after being irradiated.
    - lukeqsee 16y ago
      Absolutely right. It seems the media for good or ill drives the country and their responses. Hopefully the internet will eventually change that.
    - Female 16y ago
      Upvoted you, but I would like to add that I'm spitting mad and not afraid of radiation or being naked. I think at least part of it is simply mass hysteria. It's very easy when other people are upset to get swept up into it.
robwgibbons 16y ago
So my chances of dying have been doubled?
comster 16y ago
So long as I don't die it's ok? So cancer that I survive would be alright? ok, cool. k'no'thanks given that this really has no impact on security...
gills 16y ago
Sigh. While interesting, arguing about the methods used to violate your basic civil rights only distracts from the real discussion about YOUR CIVIL RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED BY THE VERY GOVERNMENT FORMED TO PROTECT THEM. Keep your eye on the ball people.
VladRussian 16y ago
After reading about the backscatter, i'm wondering why i was so much against the gropping. Nobody got cancer from being gropped, and after 10th or 20th time i may even start to enjoy it. Some hands would become familiar... :)
aneth 16y ago
The effect of you dying from terrorism is not the same as the effect of you dying from backscatter radiation. From a utilitarian standpoint, the chance of dying from something is not the most important factor in deciding where to put resources. I'd also say, the neither of these numbers can be known in any accuracy right now, and there would be fast disagreement on any guess at what they might be.
zoomzoom 16y ago
I can't believe that even on HN there are so many posts about something so dumb. Our country is up in arms about some new X-ray machines that a corrupt defense contractor sold to an overzealous department of homeland security in a panic after 9/11, and yet we are hardly this angry about the 2 wars we are fighting or the fact that the New Start treaty is about to be ran over with a bulldozer. Please, let's get over the stupid X-rays machines. Let Fox News and CNN cover this one.
- lukeqsee 16y ago
  I can believe it, and you know why? Because our country still cares about personal American liberty. Viva la libertad!
  - zoomzoom 16y ago
    Sometimes I get hyperbolic. What I mean to say is that these machines are a symptom of a larger problem. The time that we spend trying to get rid of these machines is time that we don't spend on solving the real problems. I love freedom, too.
bittermang 16y ago
Do you know who else was told that the product they were dealing with was completely safe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls The group who would come to be known as the Radium Girls. They were told that Radium was safe if ingested, and many of them would lick the tips of their paint brushes, or paint their teeth and nails with the substance. Soon after they began suffering radiation poisoning, but were discredited of their claims by the company publicly defaming them as contracting syphilis.
muldrake 16y ago
America is a nation of goose-stepping cowards willing to give up their most fundamental freedoms based on an incredibly unlikely event. They'll shove cheeseburgers down their gaping maws and virtually guarantee they get diabetes and heart disease, which is vastly more likely to kill them, while cowering and whimpering about terrorism. I live in Newark. I'd be about 100 times more likely to get killed walking to the bus to get to the airport than I would be in the plane, even if we had no security at all. Anyone willing to tolerate this shit is a drooling fascist who also doesn't understand security if they think this bullshit will stop even one determined and competent terrorist. We should do security like El-Al, modifying it of course for the practical differences between the threats we face, and for our own constitutional protections. People say that would be "expensive" but then, these are the same morons who think we should piss away fundamental rights millions of Americans have fought and died for for hundreds of years. And these morons want to talk of "expensive?" Please.
billybob 16y ago
I'm just thankful that the TSA makes people mail home their keychain Swiss Army knives with 1-inch, non-locking blades. Goodness knows what sort of carnage someone could inflict with that. Almost as much as with a ballpoint pen, which I notice they are still allowing. For shame. I will not feel truly safe until each of us is forced to change into a hospital gown, be cavity-searched, and be duct-taped inside of a cargo container for the duration of the flight.

252 points by mcantelon 16y ago

wnoise 16y ago

Oh, well if they're equal, then that means this is a perfectly proportional and appropriate response.

deleted 16y ago
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burgerbrain 16y ago
That only holds if being sexually molested and having naked pictures of yourself taken is weighted at zero. Furthermore, this statistic in no way indicates that these screenings reduce the risk of dying in a terrorist attack. 1 plus 1 does not equal 0. You've allegedly doubled your risk of dying, not reduced it.
- shasta 16y ago
  Well, you're right to question what the reduction in risk these scanners produce, but your first point is way off. The cost of terrorist attacks is hardly limited to death. Those planes and buildings aren't free. Not that cancer treatments are, either, but if you weigh in the psychological damage to the public (you know, why they call it "terrorism"), terrorist attacks are far more costly.
  - burgerbrain 16y ago
    The real cost of terrorism is having to deal with all the people talking about "the real cost of terrorism", and instituting retarded policies like these scanners/molestation sessions. Planes and buildings are cheap as shit in comparison.
  - smokeyj 16y ago
    A "terrorist" would just find another way to terrorize.. duh. Real terrorism is a drama, as orchestrated by our overlords, to polarize the public in attempt to deprive them of their liberty. That is all.
  - wiredfool 16y ago
    1 unsuccessful underwear bomber => $500 million in contracts for scanners. There's your cost of terrorism right there.
- ax0n 16y ago
  The second paragraph is almost verbatim to the statement I was about to say in response to the OP. Blacklists do not work. Antivirus software checks for a hundred thousand individual known problems, yet viruses and malware continue to evolve and bypass the blacklist. So do explosives hiding in containers that the TSA doesn't expect to find explosives in.
eru 16y ago
Judging by the other replies, I guess you should put explicit sarcasm tags around your comment.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  Yes. And then it still won't be very funny. It's too similar to something an actual TSA flack would say.
  - wnoise 16y ago
    If it weren't similar at all it wouldn't be funny either. It's a hard balance to set.
gojomo 16y ago
Only if: • the scan completely offsets the risk of terror death. I suspect not; someday someone will tell the TSA and/or terrorists about drug mules. • the economic cost of the scanning infrastructure/training/delays etc. is equal or less than the economic cost of the terror deaths offset.
stretchwithme 16y ago
as if they are delivering total immunity from terrorist attacks in exchange.
Eliezer 16y ago
I don't even know the name of that fallacy, but it ought to have one. (Yes I know parent is sarcastic.)
- eru 16y ago
  Something like `false proportionality'?

zipdog 16y ago

> Peter Rez ... calculated the risk of getting cancer from a single scan at about 1 in 30 million His odds were for a single flight, but I wonder if the scanner radiation has a cumulative effect? Surviving a plane flight has no impact on the likelihood of the next one, so taking a lot of flights would edge the odds in favour of dying from the scanner cancer. But then there`s the wide difference in the type of death.

alanh 16y ago
> But then there’s the wide difference in the type of death. Good point, I would rather die in a terrorist attack than after months of chemo and hospital food… that said, one is a lot more premature! (Edit: Actually, if you got cancer from the scanner, it would probably kill you within a few years.)

zbanks 16y ago

More tellingly, on an average two-hour flight, you'd receive about 100 times the radiation from a single scan. But, by using the transitive property, you're more likely to die from radiation at flying altitudes than from a terrorist attack on said airplane. EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to include the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray#Health_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray#Health_effect... Which comes from: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/radexp.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/radexp.htm... Which explicitly states its references.

deleted 16y ago
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maninthemirror 16y ago
You are understating the risk from backscatter radiation. Because the radiation is sent in a burst, and targets skin tissue, the DNA damage may be far greater than a similar dose of cosmic radiation. You are also assuming that the backscatter machines are functioning properly and aren't overdosing people.
- naz 16y ago
  A single backscatter X-ray scan gives a radiation dose of 0.009 mrems, about the same as eating a banana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose Don't get me wrong, I'm opposed to the scanners as much as anyone for privacy reasons and general pointlessness. But I'm seeing a lot of bad science thrown around here.
  - daten 16y ago
    You're not comparing bananas to bananas. As I understand, the limited information that has been publicly released about the backscatter machines is a useless measurement when you take into account how they actually work. You can't apply a standard measurement from a medical x-ray machine that targets a small part of your body using one technique to a different machine that targets your entire body using a different technique. So the two problems are: 1. You don't have good numbers to even evaluate how dangerous they are, many evaluations, including possibly the article above, are useless because they don't have the real data to compare to. 2. The radiation exposure from a banana also effects your body differently than a medical x-ray machine which is in turn different from a backscatter machine targeting your entire body. I'm not saying people aren't trying to evaluate the actual risk in good faith. I'm saying they're skipping the step where we get useful numbers from the manufacturer of the machine to even apply good science to. Edit: by "whole body" I mean "whole surface of your body" since it's concentrated on your skin

jdp23 16y ago

This article from NPR a few days ago has a lot more details, and gives context for the estimates: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/11/12/131275949/protests-mount-over-safety-and-privacy-of-airport-scanners http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/11/12/131275949/protest...

cj 16y ago

Direct link to article: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-airport-x-ray-scanners-harmful http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-...

deleted 16y ago

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noonespecial 16y ago

I'm going to go ahead and take this to mean that the TSA just doubled my chances of death. Seems appropriate in the current climate of hysteria, and makes an excellent sound bite.

eleusive 16y ago
I'll take it to mean that (given the 1 in 30 million estimate and that there are well over 250 million outgoing airplane seats filled per year by U.S. airlines), the expected number of scans which will cause cancer is nearly 10. That's 10 people who's lives may be put in very real danger. It doesn't make a very good soundbite, but it plays well to the climate of hysteria!
- roc 16y ago
  According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there were 617,977,711 passengers on domestic flights in 2009 [1]. At the (incredibly optimistic) risk rate of 1 in 30 million, that's about 20 people given cancer, each year, if this policy goes forward and these devices become standard procedure. [1] http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Data_Elements.aspx?Data=1 http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Data_Elements.aspx?Data=1
  - drawkbox 16y ago
    The TSA kills 20 people per year. Keep the hysteria simple. Are you willing to kill 20 people per year to keep safe?
    - OneWhoFrogs 16y ago
      > Are you willing to kill 20 people per year to keep safe? Unfortunately, the answer for most is yes. That's more or less the definition of war. Edit: Yikes! I'm really getting downvoted here, but no one's saying why. I didn't say I agreed with it! I just said that most people would probably say yes.
    - KiwiNige 16y ago

goldenthunder 16y ago

Maybe I suck at basic prob/stats but if you remove the scanners, I bet the chance of a plane getting blown up by a terrorist is significantly increased. ;)

tibbon 16y ago
Two things have made the US safer 1- Pilots with guns & keeping the doors closed for the full flight 2- Passengers not willing to allow others on the plane do harm to the plane. If passengers see things happen now, they will stand up and makes attempts to stop them. We won't have a 9/11 style hijacking. Even if someone gets a box cutter in, people will take them down before they'll let them take the plane. I can't imagine how these body scanners would make us significantly safer.
- BCM43 16y ago
  What we are trying to stop has shifted from someone hijacking the plane to someone trying to blow it up. However, this is not a new threat at all, and there are always more ways of getting a bomb on the plane as well as more targets.
  - tibbon 16y ago
    Perhaps, but why do we still focus then so much on 'hijacking' items, like knitting needles that would do little good in making bombs? We haven't reverted to pre 9/11 search coverage of hijack items. Actually, we haven't backed down at all on anything. It seems that once something is identified a threat, it will always now be seen as a threat.
- davidj 16y ago
  won't work. Flight 93 was taken back by the passengers and Bush ordered it to be shot down anyway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9MD15qs5s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9MD15qs5s http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread624915/pg1 http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread624915/pg1
  - 16y ago

aphyr 16y ago

Actual web page: http://www.public.asu.edu/~atppr/bodyscan.html http://www.public.asu.edu/~atppr/bodyscan.html Actual article: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.public.asu.edu/~atppr/RPD-Final-Form.pdf&pli=1 https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.public.asu.edu... The first thing you'll learn in radiation safety is that the nature of the dose matters a lot. Sometimes you're A-OK if you can survive the initial dose. Other doses are accumulative. It depends on the energy of the radiation, the tissue's scattering cross-section, the time, and the flux, among other things. This means that the Sievert (a unit of biological impact due to radiation) is only meaningful in the context of the dose geometry. It's great for talking about a chest X-ray, where the dose is spread out over a big volume of tissue. Where it's unclear is in the case of rapidly-thermalizing or compton-scattered particles: like backscatter. Look at the graph in that article. Something like half of the energy is deposited in the first couple centimeters of tissue. We haven't done this before, and don't have a good model for the long-term effects. My guess? This kind of exposure is a hell of a lot worse for melanomas than a chest X-ray delivering the same energy. Claiming compliance to a metric like the ANSI limits is meaningless. Edit: Oh, and the concern raised over the beam stopping and delivering a couple Sv to a quarter-sized patch of skin is definitely scary. We did exactly that to several people with medical cyclotrons. Edit: I should also mention that tissues have varying tolerance to radiation. Rapidly-dividing cells tend to be hit the hardest, which is why your stomach lining, skin, and hair slough off after acute ionizing rad exposure. Your skin, stomach, lungs, breast and thyroid are also the most frequent to undergo cancer in radiation-linked longitudinal studies. See, for example, http://pats.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/full/5/9/934 http://pats.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/full/5/9/934

jdp23 16y ago
And according to David Brenner of Columbia University: Recent research ... indicates that about 5 percent of the population — one person in 20 — is especially sensitive to radiation. These people have gene mutations that make them less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA. Two examples are the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 mutations associated with breast and ovarian cancer, but scientists believe many more such defects are unknown. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833083 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1268330...

stretchwithme 16y ago

Yes, but the peace of mind one experiences while being groped or ionized makes it all worth while. Regarding how much radiation you receive on the plane itself, I always try to sit away from the window and on the north side of the plane if possible.

jcl 16y ago
My impression was that the increased radiation experienced on a flight was due to cosmic radiation, not radiation from the sun. So it shouldn't matter where you sit on the plane, right?

Xipe 16y ago

Chance of securing flights against terrorism with backcatter radiation same chance as dying from backscatter radiation.

butterfi 16y ago

With all due respect to Dr. Reiz, and the Dept. of Physics at ASU, I think I'll be taking my advice from the group of doctors from UCSF (a school well known and respected for its medical research) who wrote a formal letter to the president's science advisor. The letter is worth reading. "Agard and several of his UCSF colleagues recently wrote a letter to John Holdren the president's science adviser, asking for a more thorough look at the risks of exposing all those airline passengers to X-rays. The other signers are John Sedat, a molecular biologist and the group's leader; Marc Shuman, a cancer specialist; and Robert Stroud, a biochemist and biophysicist." Story here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833083 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1268330... Letter here: http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf

yummyfajitas 16y ago
I'll go with the physics prof. He did some calculations, admittedly imperfect, based on generally known principles of dosimetry, and got what seems like a reasonable order of magnitude result. All the MD's at UCSF said was "oh noes, the possibility of radiation danger isn't ruled out precisely by a previously done study, it might be dangerous." I'd be very curious to know whether they would use this same logic on a less politically charged topic.
- butterfi 16y ago
  Reasonable doesn't necessarily mean correct. In the face of specific questions raised by doctors with expertise in this specific field, is reasonable is good enough? From the NPR article: "The stated dose — about .02 microsieverts, a medical unit of radiation — is averaged over the whole body, members of the UCSF group said in interviews. But they maintain that if the dose is calculated as what gets deposited in the skin, the number would be higher, though how much higher is unclear." The observation about how high a dose gets deposited is a very specific observation made by people who actively apply radiation to people on a daily basis.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago

cedsav 16y ago

1 in 30M? so, with over 600M passengers per year, that's roughly 20 people a year who would get cancer (and die?) because of those machines. I'm not sure how credible are those stats, but I wouldn't want to be making decisions at the TSA right now...

wvenable 16y ago
Not everyone gets screened. So only a fraction of those 600M passengers are getting a dose.
- ljf 16y ago
  at the moment... not long ago not everyone went through the metal detectors...
  - borism 16y ago
    seriously? when was that? was it not so long ago we had armed plane hijackings almost every month?
    - kscaldef 16y ago
      well, since you asked: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/airplane_terror.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/airplane_terro...
      - ljf 16y ago
        thanks for that, excellent read. many forget that guns were allowed on flights until relatively recently, not everyone was xrayed and hijacking was common. also like the point raised in the comments that the main thing that killed off the IRA as a major terrorist movement in Europe, was when their American supporters finally remembered what terrorism was in 2001.
- machrider 16y ago
  The plan is that all 2200 checkpoints in the USA will have backscatter or millimeter wave scanners within 2 years.

sequoia 16y ago

My takeaway: -I don't like the privacy ramifications of these scans. -I don't like being bombarded with additional radiation for no good reason, regardless of whether people think it will harm you. Just as I will get an x-ray for a good reason, but decline getting one for a silly reason, I would decline this if able. Maybe taking an aspirin a day is bad for you, maybe it's not, but I'm not going to start doing it for no reason. So one more reason I don't like the scan.

jerf 16y ago

So, the risk from a backscatter radiation machine is roughly equal to the risk from terrorism. The Federal Government, via the FDA, tells us that the risk of the backscatter machine is "minuscule". Therefore, in the Federal government's own risk terminology, the risk from terrorism is "miniscule". Why are we spending all this money on a "miniscule" threat? Why are sexually molesting the population over a "miniscule" threat? (Rhetorical.) (I say "sexually molesting" on the grounds that if I personally performed those same actions on a stranger, that is what it would be called. It would continue to be called that if I tricked this person into giving "consent" for false reasons. A doctor has a compelling reason. I do not grant that excuse to the TSA. I also do not think I am being unduly inflammatory, I think it's just plain fair.)

josefresco 16y ago
Terrorism can in both small and very large ways effect entire nations. backscatter radiation? Not so much. It's illogical to compare the two and make judgments on based solely on the death rate. You don't need to kill people (all of them) to influence them.
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  Isn't this the same utilitarian argument that would restrict all of diets for the sake of healthy, roads for the sake of safety, and civil rights for the sake of efficiency?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- rbarooah 16y ago
  So then perhaps the best way to protect a nation from terrorism is not to be influenced by it.
  - yeahsure 16y ago
    I completely agree with this statement.

marze 16y ago

This discussion is properly focused at the core of the matter, the cost benefit analysis. Some of the costs are easy to see, like the acute embarrassment some experience from an intimate "pat down" if they elect to avoid any risk from x-ray radiation. Others are much more difficult, such as potential health consequences of the x-ray radiation exposure. Since the TSA has refused to disclose the x-ray flux, it is hard to even get started. The comparisons the TSA makes with other radiation sources are flawed because they assume the dose is uniform throughout your body when it is actually highest at the surface. But even if an outside evaluator did have good numbers to start with, in the end the best you can expect are extrapolations using data from dramatically different radiation exposure, which is the nature of calculating radiation risks. The only way to have a non-extrapolated number is to expose half of a sample population to the scanner radiation and measure outcomes for 50 years. Avoided consequences are easier to calculate. Of the 8,000,000,000 or so US domestic air travelers of the past ten years, zero have smuggled a bomb on board, and zero have attempted to. Zero out of billions of passengers. The worst consequences are the loss of an aircraft. A terrorist cannot take control of an aircraft using a bomb, only destroy it. An X-ray scanner will not stop someone from bringing a knife onboard (even if it could, it is probably not possible to take control of an aircraft with a knife due to cockpit doors, passenger awareness, etc.) So, cost benefit sum-up: zero attempts to smuggle bomb onto domestic flight over past 10 years, unknown but likely low health risk, consequences limited to loss of one aircraft due to screening failure.

fluidcruft 16y ago
> Of the 100,000,000,000 or so US domestic air travelers of the past ten years, zero have smuggled a bomb on board, and zero have attempted to. At least two have succeeded in smuggling a bomb on board, but failed to detonate them. Look up the "Christmas bomber" and the "shoe bomber".
- _delirium 16y ago
  Neither of those were "US domestic air travelers"; both boarded U.S.-bound international flights in Europe.

marze 16y ago

Airport in Orlando opts out of using TSA to screen their passengers: http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-national/florida-airport-to-opt-out-of-tsa-screening http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-national/florida-airp...

SoftwareMaven 16y ago
This is the best news I've heard on this topic. If enough airports were to do this, things would change at the TSA.

davidj 16y ago

If the argument that the risk of backscatter radiation damage is acceptable, and it is the same risk as the chance of terrorism, then by extension the risk of terrorism is acceptable as well. So basically this isn't about terrorism, it is about taking away our liberty.

grellas 16y ago

I don't think I know anyone who isn't spitting mad about this TSA thing. Quite an accomplishment, really, for the feds to manage to unite the entire country - left, right, center, and from every strata of society - on a given issue. I didn't think such a thing was possible.

hyperbovine 16y ago
I went and had a long, hard look in the mirror when I found myself in suddenly agreement with Ron Paul, Matt Drudge and, wait for it ... Ann. F'ing. Coulter.
lukeqsee 16y ago
The accomplishment is amazing. I guess our country really still does care about liberty and -- imagine this -- the constitution. Trouble is, are people going to do anything with their "spitting mad[ness]?" I hope they do.
- Groxx 16y ago
  I think they just have an irrational fear of radiation outside the doctor's office (whether or not that's valid here) - due to it being crammed down their throats for decades - and a massive aversion to being seen naked - also largely due to it being crammed down their throats for decades. If they like liberty, why did/do they not get as spitting mad about the Patriot Act, the DMCA, and the ACTA? I'm guessing it's because their naked butts aren't staring them in the face after being irradiated.
  - lukeqsee 16y ago
    Absolutely right. It seems the media for good or ill drives the country and their responses. Hopefully the internet will eventually change that.
  - Female 16y ago
    Upvoted you, but I would like to add that I'm spitting mad and not afraid of radiation or being naked. I think at least part of it is simply mass hysteria. It's very easy when other people are upset to get swept up into it.

robwgibbons 16y ago

So my chances of dying have been doubled?

comster 16y ago

So long as I don't die it's ok? So cancer that I survive would be alright? ok, cool. k'no'thanks given that this really has no impact on security...

gills 16y ago

Sigh. While interesting, arguing about the methods used to violate your basic civil rights only distracts from the real discussion about YOUR CIVIL RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED BY THE VERY GOVERNMENT FORMED TO PROTECT THEM. Keep your eye on the ball people.

VladRussian 16y ago

After reading about the backscatter, i'm wondering why i was so much against the gropping. Nobody got cancer from being gropped, and after 10th or 20th time i may even start to enjoy it. Some hands would become familiar... :)

aneth 16y ago

The effect of you dying from terrorism is not the same as the effect of you dying from backscatter radiation. From a utilitarian standpoint, the chance of dying from something is not the most important factor in deciding where to put resources. I'd also say, the neither of these numbers can be known in any accuracy right now, and there would be fast disagreement on any guess at what they might be.

zoomzoom 16y ago

I can't believe that even on HN there are so many posts about something so dumb. Our country is up in arms about some new X-ray machines that a corrupt defense contractor sold to an overzealous department of homeland security in a panic after 9/11, and yet we are hardly this angry about the 2 wars we are fighting or the fact that the New Start treaty is about to be ran over with a bulldozer. Please, let's get over the stupid X-rays machines. Let Fox News and CNN cover this one.

lukeqsee 16y ago
I can believe it, and you know why? Because our country still cares about personal American liberty. Viva la libertad!
- zoomzoom 16y ago
  Sometimes I get hyperbolic. What I mean to say is that these machines are a symptom of a larger problem. The time that we spend trying to get rid of these machines is time that we don't spend on solving the real problems. I love freedom, too.

bittermang 16y ago

Do you know who else was told that the product they were dealing with was completely safe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls The group who would come to be known as the Radium Girls. They were told that Radium was safe if ingested, and many of them would lick the tips of their paint brushes, or paint their teeth and nails with the substance. Soon after they began suffering radiation poisoning, but were discredited of their claims by the company publicly defaming them as contracting syphilis.

muldrake 16y ago

America is a nation of goose-stepping cowards willing to give up their most fundamental freedoms based on an incredibly unlikely event. They'll shove cheeseburgers down their gaping maws and virtually guarantee they get diabetes and heart disease, which is vastly more likely to kill them, while cowering and whimpering about terrorism. I live in Newark. I'd be about 100 times more likely to get killed walking to the bus to get to the airport than I would be in the plane, even if we had no security at all. Anyone willing to tolerate this shit is a drooling fascist who also doesn't understand security if they think this bullshit will stop even one determined and competent terrorist. We should do security like El-Al, modifying it of course for the practical differences between the threats we face, and for our own constitutional protections. People say that would be "expensive" but then, these are the same morons who think we should piss away fundamental rights millions of Americans have fought and died for for hundreds of years. And these morons want to talk of "expensive?" Please.

billybob 16y ago

I'm just thankful that the TSA makes people mail home their keychain Swiss Army knives with 1-inch, non-locking blades. Goodness knows what sort of carnage someone could inflict with that. Almost as much as with a ballpoint pen, which I notice they are still allowing. For shame. I will not feel truly safe until each of us is forced to change into a hospital gown, be cavity-searched, and be duct-taped inside of a cargo container for the duration of the flight.