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TSA-style body scanners are coming to public spaces
- noja 7y agoI for one welcome our fact-focused overlords.
- gambiting 7y agoThe problem is that everyone is guilty of something. The laws are so complex that it's impossible to not be in a violation of something at any given time. Once surveilance becomes ubiquitous, your only choices are 1) put everyone in prison 2) enforce laws selectively. 2) is of course leading to totalitarianism, where no one is ever innocent - I'm from Poland where the secret police during communism operated on this exact principle. No one is innocent - they just haven't been found guilty yet.
- pera 7y agoThis is the imaging technology that they are implementing: https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1033496.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1033496.pdf
- dannyw 7y agoDoesn’t seem to load for me. Do you have a screenshot?
- pera 7y agoNo, sorry, but you could search for Development of a high-throughput microwave imaging system for concealed weapons detection in Sci-Hub.
- mindcrime 7y agoTry this: https://github.com/mindcrime/RandomPapers/blob/master/1033496.pdf https://github.com/mindcrime/RandomPapers/blob/master/103349...
- petre 7y agoMicrowave? So if we use metal wire mesh clothing it becomes kind of useless. 27 Ghz = 1.1 cm wavelength. That would require a 55 mm mesh. Food for thought for future fashion designers.
- exabrial 7y agoI'm not a huge fan of "only the government gets weapons". It's technologies like this that are bothersome because of both 2nd and 4th amendment reasons.
- late2part 7y agoWhy aren’t you willing to give up liberties for temporary safety, said every dictator ever...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- llukas 7y agoProblem is that government can always buy bigger weapons. Militarization of police in USA is good example. They will always outgun you.
- armenarmen 7y agoYeah, but illiterate shepherds with decades outdated weapons have held off the US in afghan for however many years now
- ben_w 7y agoThe USA won that war — it’s the peace which they’re struggling with, and that’s a very different thing. Doubly so when you’re trying to install a friendly democratic government and the only reason your troops are still there is to support that new government — what would have happened (politically) if the French had kept troops in the USA after the war of independence? Police and soldiers (should) have different goals and tools.
- wongarsu 7y agoIt's semantics, but I don't think "there are people actively attacking our military, and we are struggling with peace" really counts as "winning the war". But I agree that military is probably not the most effective way to achieve progress at this stage.
- asveikau 7y agoIs this going to be safe for pregnant women and the like? I seem to recall that was one reason to opt out at the airport.
- scotty79 7y agoI'd rather be concerned if this is safe for prone for melanoma.
- Jach 7y agoThat seems like a weird reason since the radiation counter argument was typically countered by pointing out the radiation from the flight itself likely exceeded the scan by a lot. This is likely about as safe as wifi. The paper someone linked describes a system using around 24-30 GHz microwaves, one of the company blogs says the power they transmit at those frequencies is even less than a typical router. This isn't unusual. You can see a list of over 800 FCC approved devices in that frequency range here: https://fccid.io/frequency-explorer.php?lower=24000&upper=30000&within https://fccid.io/frequency-explorer.php?lower=24000&upper=30... (I also didn't see anything there for Liberty Defense, the company suspects they'll have a product ready by 2020 but we'll see. Radar and imaging applications are tricky, this company could implode beforehand.)
- djsumdog 7y agoYou need to keep in mind the first body scanners were not millimeter wave scanner. They were much more dangerous back scatter x-ray machines.
- mffnbs 7y ago> That seems like a weird reason since the radiation counter argument was typically countered by pointing out the radiation from the flight itself likely exceeded the scan by a lot. Doctors often advise pregnant women not to fly at certain stages of their pregnancy. I can't imagine a doctor would advise pregnant women to enter these security theaters for literally no reason.
- 7y ago
- miguelmota 7y agoHow harmful is this to our bodies?
- shams93 7y agoYeah I wonder if this raises the risk for cancer it can't be good for you.
- djsumdog 7y agoThe scanners in airports are currently millimeter wave machines. They're fucking useless with insanely high false positive rates, but they don't appear to have any health risks (unlike the backscatter x-ray machines from a decade ago, which I'm sure would be facing cancer lawsuits today if they were still in use).
- mehrdadn 7y agoI was under the impression backscatter x-ray was safe (as in this is what every source I've seen says). Any evidence to the contrary?
- richardhod 7y agothey were not safe, and they were only approved because the research that said they were safe was done by the manufacturers themselves. They were taken away once academics and other experts showed that the risks were way too high using them
- mehrdadn 7y agoLink?
- icelancer 7y agoThe person is probably extrapolating from the UCSF study that was done (and debunked thoroughly by various governmental and non-governmental organizations). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray#Health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray#Health_effec... Ironically enough, millimeter wave scanning is less well-understood than backscatter x-ray!
- late2part 7y agoNote the graphic describing a “45mm Pistol.” No such thing.
- themodelplumber 7y agoWhat does ACP in stand for then? Edit: Oh, you mean the mm part :-) ...actual printed products notwithstanding https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-45MM-PISTOL-GUN-SIDE-BASEBALL-CAP-HAT-GREEN-CAMO/352102122623 https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-45MM-PISTOL-GUN-SIDE-BASEBALL-C...
- late2part 7y agoYes it’s partly cut off on the left but clearly inferrable on closer inspection. The graphic artist doesn’t know firearms. Mostly irrelevant to the article except for peripheral credibility.
- darkpuma 7y agoFor those not familiar with it, the "caliber" system is in theory the diameter of the barrel in inches, so a .45 caliber handgun has a barrel diameter of .45 inches (except in reality it's .451 inches.) Some, like .380 ACP (actually .355 inches e.g. 9mm) are off by even more.
- whenchamenia 7y agoJust noticed that. Hard to take reporting seriously with blatant errors like that. That would be a goddamn cannon.
- js2 7y agoScene from Total Recall, made 30 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWIHv7a6luY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWIHv7a6luY Hexwave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOI32PdPew4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOI32PdPew4
- tyingq 7y ago"Pre crime".
- aaronbrethorst 7y agoRight author, wrong short story. The short stories that inspired both Total Recall and Minority Report can be found in this anthology: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780806537948 https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780806537948
- tyingq 7y agoYes, I'm aware. Wrong story is still relevant.
- djsumdog 7y ago"Deep Learning" This looks like totally marketing bullshit. Exactly how are they training their data sets? How does deep learning distinguish a pocket knife from keys? I call total bullshit. I bet independent tests will show massive false positives (either that or a total failure to detect any real weapons). You're better off with a metal detector.
- chiph 7y agoThe "Hexwave" one is bogus - they show a single person walking through the disguised scanners. Anyone that has been to a sporting event can say that crowds at the gates are the norm, and if the system goes off (it false positives, most likely) security now has to identify which of 8-10 people it alerted on. You've just increased the number of people you annoyed by an order of magnitude.
- 01100011 7y agoYou're not going to be able to stop the scanners, but you can probably convince people to employ enough decoys to jam the system. If they're getting false positives on 15% of people, they're going to have a hard time justifying the expenditures.
- Jach 7y agoIt's not hard to justify wasteful expenditures already, I don't think this would do it. On the other hand it's not illegal to carry a weapon (per state laws around permits for concealed/open carry) and many people routinely do so, so if this were deployed on a wider scale they'd already detect enough people to make stopping each of them pretty time consuming. But from the article it's currently going to be used in "mass gatherings like concerts, malls, stadiums, public transit stops and government buildings" which may have individual rules against carrying and so you can treat this as better enforcement (though existing government buildings' metal detectors and x-ray machines for bags seem to be doing just fine). The more interesting application is combining it with facial recognition. You don't need to approach everyone this system detects, but you can then keep a closer eye on them throughout the duration of the event/their presence in a location. It's just another step in the ongoing and ultimately futile efforts to eliminate lone wolf attackers while continuing to turn a blind eye towards organized crime. It's not just the scanners people aren't going to be able to stop.
- batbomb 7y agoIf you want to kill this in Utah all you have to do is say that this will be used against CCW holders. https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2018/08/21/university-utah/ https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2018/08/21/university-... Can’t do the same in California though
- jakelazaroff 7y agoWould people be even remotely okay with this if mass shootings weren't becoming a daily occurrence? It seems like the 2nd and 4th Amendments may end up mutually exclusive.
- furi 7y agoMass shootings contribute fewer than 1% of US gun homicides as far as I know so any policy based around them should raise serious question marks on that basis alone. Otherwise not to be pedantic but that doesn't lead to mutual exclusivity. If there was another amendment saying "the state must take every measure to prevent mass shootings" then you would end up in a "choose two out of three" scenario but as far as I'm aware there isn't one. Satisfying both the 2nd and 4th amendments at the same time is easy to do, you simply accept a certain level of carnage at the intersection of the two. It might be unpalatable for many but it's hardly impossible.
- lazyasciiart 7y agoI’d be interested in what percentage of gun homicides they are where the victim had no other contact with guns. That said, it doesn’t matter if the link is zero - anything that the majority of the population feels strongly about can become politically impossible to compromise on, so the relevant factor here is whether mass shootings make people more willing to accept these privacy intrusions.
- citilife 7y ago> It seems like the 2nd and 4th Amendments may end up mutually exclusive Whole point was neither should be impeded... Living in a society has risks. Overall it looks worse recently, but deaths from mass shooting are still well below just Chicago's murder rate: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/?utm_term=.a7cc4c4e818c https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-s... https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/31/us/chicago-murders-drop-2018/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/31/us/chicago-murders-drop-2018/... Personally, I'm not at all afraid of gun violence (perhaps because I've used a gun). Bombs, poisons, etc. and the like are way scarier, as they can kill way more people. Honestly if the occasional mass shooting happens every few weeks, it's a pretty low price to pay (as callous as that sounds). With scanners and what not there's such a high potential risk of abuse that it's not worth it. If someone randomly elected can decide to imprison million of people they don't like. We probably don't want them to have said technology already in place (and probably want guns).
- djsumdog 7y agoMillimeter-wave machines at airports today are totally and completely useless. Germany's transportation administration reported a 54% false positive rate for these pieces of rubbish. You are better off randomly searching people by flipping a coin. These are multi-million dollar security theater failures and it bothers me more that people are considering buying even more derivatives based on this garbage technology for anything. Police officers or security guards could just literally point one at anyone they find suspicious and use it to justify an illegal search, because it will most likely read yes, even if the person's pockets are totally empty.
- yzmtf2008 7y agoHaving a high false positive rate isn't really the end of the world for security screening though, as long as they have a low false negative rate, which I don't see many articles complaining. Even at 50% false positive rate, it's 50% time saved compared to patting down every one. Additionally, these machines highlight potential areas to search more carefully, so there's probably even more time saved there.
- close04 7y agoIf your antivirus or car alarm start flooding you with fake warnings you will ignore then more often than not. It’s human nature and you can’t really change it without some drastic measures like severe punishment or constant checks to keep people on their toes. And this last one just kicks the ball further up the ladder but still to a human with the same predisposition.
- eis 7y ago> Millimeter-wave machines at airports today are totally and completely useless. Germany's transportation administration reported a 54% false positive rate for these pieces of rubbish. You are better off randomly searching people by flipping a coin. Edit: note that it seems I had a wrong understanding of the term false positive rate, ignore this comment. Statistics doesn't work like that. The false positive rate is pretty meaningless in this context. It only determines how much useless manual work is performed after the machine flags you incorrectly. You should look at the false negative rate in order to determine how much of a security plus they bring. That being said, I think the whole airport theater is ridicolous. If terrorists wanted to kill people, they literally have thousands of alternative ways to achieve that.
- firekvz 7y agoWas in russia last year, every subway station/public place had scanners, i just saw thousands of ppl go through them and never ever beep... maybe is just something to scare people?
- mahgnous 7y agoGetting so sick of this culture of fear.
- Animats 7y agoIs this company for real? Lots of executives. Lots of advisors. High powered board. No demo. First prototype due this month. Uh oh. The Lincoln Labs group didn't get very far. They could image a single mannequin at close range in a controlled environment. Whether this will work in a cluttered environment is an open question. It might work for sports stadiums, which heavily restrict what you can bring in.
- max76 7y agoThe point is that the idea of public millimeter wave surveillance has some amount of public support. Even if they deploy an ineffective version in 12 months, in 240 months they might have effective hardware. This is the direction some people want things to go.
- unityByFreedom 7y ago> Even if they deploy an ineffective version in 12 months, in 240 months they might have effective hardware. Provided they can still borrow money to fund operations.
- dismalpedigree 7y agocough Uber.
- souterrain 7y ago> The point is that the idea of public millimeter wave surveillance has some amount of public support. Does it? If anyone has data on this, I'd be very interested. I've recently been giving some thought to pervasive electronic and video surveillance as an alternative (specifically not as a supplement) to the presence of armed police being deployed by default in public.
- Lendal 7y agoThis is what it's really about. If you talk to police, they don't want to invade people's privacy. The push is coming from some tech company pushing a product to siphon the taxpayer. Politicians want to make a buck too, so they approve it because no politician ever got fired for pushing too much security on the public.
- stonogo 7y agoWhy was the title changed from "Police To Use TSA-Style Scanners To Spy On People In Public Places"? It was originally submitted with that title, and the title is accurate as Utah's Attorney General has said as much. Who is responsible for the silent editorializing here? And why?
- sirsuki 7y agoProbably a bit too novel but why not just not killing other people? I mean we’ve had a long history that doesn’t include random acts of mass murder why now? Couldn’t we work to fix the actual problem instead of reacting with more theatrics? Seriously, build a culture that engenders good self esteem instead of the abuse laden bully culture we live in now!!!
- dmos62 7y ago> build a culture That's good sentiment and we should definitely work towards it; but do we have examples of our civilization actually doing something like that? Culture continually changes, but to what degree can we influence that change? If we were to take up something like this in an organized way, what kind of precedents or past examples would we look at?
- cyphar 7y ago> Probably a bit too novel but why not just not killing other people? I mean we’ve had a long history that doesn’t include random acts of mass murder why now? I don't know what period of history you're referring to. There has been constant wars or regional conflicts for the majority of recorded human history. If you're specifically talking about home-front terrorism, there is a fairly long history of this occurring too (just the case of terrorism in Ireland takes you back to the late 1960s). Civil wars were incredibly common in Europe in the medieval era, let alone the Crusades. This isn't to excuse what's happening today (far from it) but to put in context that there isn't a perfect time in history we should regress back to -- rather, we need to move the world into a state it hasn't seen before. To be fair, it is definitely the case that modern US imperialism (read: waging illegal and offensive wars overseas) is the cause of many modern problems such as the refugee crisis and acts of terrorism. After all, the US is arguably responsible for Islamic extremism thanks to the CIA-backed coup in Iran[1] and countless other countries[2] that fueled anti-Western sentiments culminating in terrorism. I think stopping rampant (and illegal) imperialism would be far more effective than "building a culture". [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
- vinay_ys 7y agoFirst thing that comes to mind is, are these scanners safe – i.e., do they have any kind of active radio wave source? How reliable are they? Can they malfunction and emit harmful radiation? Is it health certified for kids, adults and pets? What about medical safety devices? Is there a stringent regulatory body certifying these? Second, how does law enforcement of the normal kind work in a society vs how does terrorism prevention work? For the later, intelligence gathering/sourcing, infiltration etc. - isn't this the only realistic (scalable) way for it work? If terror prevention becomes part of law enforcement job, then we will end up with a police state that is unlivable (in effect, terror is now perpetrated by state!) Now, is this scanner device to be installed in public places – is it for law enforcement or for terror prevention? If the day-to-day life habits require this level of monitoring for law enforcement, then that society is screwed up beyond repair. Btw, in my country we have X-ray for bags and metal scanner for body in every hotel, mall, theater, public transport hub, offices etc. There's usually a security guard who will wave a wand on your body but doesn't really know how to use it. For vehicles they make you open the trunk and boot and visually inspect as well as look underneath with a mirror. But I have not seen any 'positive' (false or otherwise) catch. In movie theaters, the best I have seen them catch and confiscate is outside food (for commercial policy reasons, not security) and cigarette lighters (for fire safety and smoking ban). It was irritating at first, but now everyone has become numb to it and you just go through the motions.
- techrich 7y agonone of the safety concerns will matter, if the bribes are big enough. Politicians will be exempt.
- superkuh 7y ago> are these scanners safe – i.e., do they have any kind of active radio wave source? These two things are unrelated unless you are transmitting kilowatts of power and things become heated. Yes, there is a regulatory body (FCC) that limits emissions such that the volts per meter gradient is below some given threshold for a frequency range. And the higher the frequency the higher the power is needed to achieve the same v/m. The 'war on terror' has very little to do with terrorism itself or preventing it. It's all about means to monitor and control the citizens of a nation. As for large scale public 'scanners' well, they have been deployed in the USA around events like the superbowl. I recall they used to call them 'viper' squads or something. And in those I recall they were using backscatter x-ray vans, something which is not intrinsically safe due to using ionizing radiation (unlike radio).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y agoI apologise in advance that this comment has nothing to do with the posted article, and is instead to do with the use of HN. After dang's comment on the latest Assange thread to make the first page on HN, I am trying to decide whether the posted article is one that stimulates intellectual curiosity, or indignation and repetition. I think the answer is - probably the latter. We're not likely to learn much new knowledge from it and it's more likely to generate forceful arguments than productive conversation. Are postings like this welcome on HN or merely tolerated? I assumed, because politically controversial posts frequently make it to the first page, that they are acceptable and welcome. I am not so sure anymore. I believe that an active mind is a politically engaged mind - but perhaps HN is just not the right place for political conversation. I enjoy the civility and dignity of the best threads on HN- and I have to admit that the majority of them are not political. It's hard to have a level-headed, sober discussion on political matters, when everyone who has political views tends to have _strong_ political views (I sure do). So I don't know. Maybe posting stuff like this on HN is not such a good idea after all? (With apologies to jerry2 who posted this article)
- fzeroracer 7y agoI'm more concerned that conspiratorial content and clickbait bullshit is becoming king on HN. This site and the general writing/editorial style fires off massive warning sirens and when I tried to look up the site further, most of the links that followed were similar conspiracy sites. Now don't get me wrong, this is separate from the issue of privacy and ensuring that the government doesn't overstep its bounds. We shouldn't be lured in by people using that as a wedge to spread FUD. Just read the comments on the article by the same writer to understand why.
- norswap 7y agoI'm genuinely curious: do you believe this post in particular to be controversial? I can't picture many people (I can picture some) who would think be in favor of what is described here.
- grenoire 7y agoWith any sentence that contains a "can't think of people who X" structure, you should realise that people you know and talk to are people who think like you. Exceptions don't break the rule, as always – if you do make a statement like that think first if your sample is representative of the population.
- calgoo 7y agoSo could Faraday clothing be a new thing then? Outfits that blocks the scanners in public, and gives of a "generic" shape. I wonder how long it would take for it to be outlawed?
- etiam 7y agoSeems likely they'll just treat it as a positive detection until an unpleasant day/evening/night/morning in the interrogation room has failed to confirm that (for this time)?
- chiph 7y agoI've got a shirt that the millimeter scanners don't like. I get patted down every time I wear it on a flight. No metallic lining needed.
- trott 7y agoI took part in TSA/Kaggle's competition a year ago. https://www.kaggle.com/c/passenger-screening-algorithm-challenge/leaderboard https://www.kaggle.com/c/passenger-screening-algorithm-chall... Let me first say that how well these things work is not a property of the scanners alone, but also of the algorithms they run. I'm quite certain that they can be made to work much better than a random choice, unlike what some other posters claim. The competition did have some issues. For example, the subjects were re-used in multiple scans (although not between training and test2 datasets), and the algorithms were allowed to exploit that (perhaps an oversight in the setup), but most entrants did not actually exploit this fact. Also the dataset was quite small (~20 subjects). We were still doing much better than random. With a larger dataset and perhaps better scanner design, this would work even better.
- velox_io 7y agoAll the gear and no idea... I've redacted this post as I don't want to publicise a gaping hole which renders these measures pointless. You wonder if the security serves a real purpose, or is there just to make people feel safe.
- jadell 7y agoMy wife can't go through these scanners, as she has a medical device that the device manufacturer has warned have not been certified to go through them, and will not be liable if the device stops working (which in this case would mean she dies.) At the airport, she always has to opt-out and get a pat-down (or did, until she broke down and paid the brib...err, "fee" for pre-check.) Will she be safe walking around areas that use these scanners? Will the users of the scanners be required to announce that they are in use? Will there be an opt-out process? How would that even work in a public space? If she opts-out, is she going to end up getting felt-up by some untrained minimum wage pervert with a power complex? Who is liable (legally and financially) if her device stops working because someone made her go through a scanner without her knowledge or consent? This is bullshit for so many more reasons that surveillance (though that is also important.) This is literally a life or death concern for us.
- Gpetrium 7y agoWithout information regarding the medical device, it can be difficult for us to provide a solution, so in my opinion you should ask yourself: * What properties cause the device to malfunction? * What kinds of scanners/tools can lead to the malfunction? * What would the malfunction look like? * How much time would she have to get medical support? * Is there an alternative medical device that decreases the risk? * Is it possible to get a medical certificate that shows she has the device and its implications, allowing the officer to know before-hand? It is worth noting that some devices that can cause the malfunction may already be available for private citizens to purchase, so creating a plan of action may be the best option regardless of whether reinforcement officers intend to use it.
- undoware 7y agoAs a transgender person who has her and her friends frequently flagged for “anomalies” I’m going to call oppression. Don’t look in my pants without asking. Mind your own damned business
- sterlind 7y agoThis used to happen to me all the time, until really recently where suddenly my junk stopped being flagged. Usually my boobs would get flagged (if they set the scanner to M) or my downstairs (if they set to F.) I don't know why it's not happening anymore... software update? but it's a welcome change.
- tracker1 7y agoSounds like an opportunity for an underwear company that blocks the scans.