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$1B of TSA Nude Body Scanners Made Worthless By Blog

1637 points by zotz 15y ago

russell_h 15y ago
Does the scanner not pick the object up at all (I don't see why this would be true), or is this simply a matter of needing to change the background color?
- mahyarm 15y ago
  And they can have a two stage process (metal detector and xray) that would solve this problem too.
  - lignuist 15y ago
    Not all weapons are made of metal.
- ars 15y ago
  > Does the scanner not pick the object up at all (I don't see why this would be true) The object and the background both look the same in reflected x-rays. It's not just the background color.
  - russell_h 15y ago
    In that case, couldn't they put a non-reflective material behind the person being scanned? Perhaps that would interfere with their ability to scan you from both sides, but if they have a reflective material behind you it seems like they must already have a way to scan through/around that.
ny3t 15y ago
feh!
togasystems 15y ago
I wonder if the color of the background is a simple variable or is based off physics rules? Does anybody know if they can change the color to something different?
- ars 15y ago
  I think it's checking how many x-rays are reflected back to the machine. But since the background and the object are both metal they both reflect equally, and are indistinguishable.
  - agumonkey 15y ago
    Can't they add some time based depth information to discriminate ? Or add a slightly absorbing background , additional maybe. ...
    - tonfa 15y ago
      Some pattern in the background maybe?
  - ynniv 15y ago
    The background is not metal, it is open space that does not reflect xrays. The targeted metal objects also do not reflect xrays. It is more intuitive to say that these machines are not threat detectors (like metal detectors), they are people detectors. The lack of a person is considered to be a threat within the bounds of their silhouette. Place a threat outside the silhouette and it is undetectable.
    - mc32 15y ago
      So what would happen if they had a wire mesh (chicken wire, for example) for the background? An interruption in the wire mesh pattern would indicate an anomaly. They could change up the pattern every so often to thwart any attempt to match the pattern --even if it woud be difficult to match up.
TamDenholm 15y ago
Rather than get rid of the body scanners, i think they'll simply just require you to stand sideways as well, or add a scanner on the side of the machine.
- waqf 15y ago
  Or have the background colour of the display changed, by contracting with the original suppliers for a few million more taxpayer dollars.
  - shingen 15y ago
    Don't be ridiculous. Billion is the new million.
    - tibbon 15y ago
      Clearly, this will require a well paid committee and 5,000 page investigation.
  - ars 15y ago
    It's not a color like in a webpage. It's a measure of how many x-rays were received by the scanner, and presumably the background and the object both look the same. Making the person stand sideways would sort of work, but it wouldn't be hard to shift the flaps of an open jacket while turning.
  - huhtenberg 15y ago
    > have the background colour of the display changed Have you thought this one through?
- RKearney 15y ago
  Then you could hide something in the arches of your feet or under a wig.
  - kami8845 15y ago
    Then they'll just extend all US scanned to 2.2m meters width and enforce scanning people lying down in both directions.
ars 15y ago
Summary: The background around the person is black in the scanner. Place the object slightly distant from the person so it's also in the background (i.e. not silhouetted by the person), and the object and the background will look the same to the scanner.
ck2 15y ago
You have to be crazy brave or crazy ignorant to do this kind of analysis and share it in the USA. At a minimum his name will now show up on the no-fly list for the rest of his life. If he realized this, I am in awe.
- mikezupan 15y ago
  he said he was the first person to sue the TSA over the nude scanners.. I'd bet he was already on it
- tsaoutourpants 15y ago
  Crazy guy who did this here. Before I made the video, I spent the last 18 months manipulating the court system against the TSA. The TSA does not want to add me to any no-fly list (or more realistically, the "selectee list") because every time a legal battle starts, I'm entitled to more and more discovery in court, and more and more of their lies come out. --Jon
  - snprbob86 15y ago
    ::hug:: Thank you. Keep on fighting the good fight man.
  - toomuchtodo 15y ago
    #shutupandtakemymoney Thank you for your hard work.
  - tsaoutourpants 15y ago
    You guys are very welcome... I appreciate the support, and I feel like on this board it's coming from my own people, so thank you!!
    - ktizo 15y ago
      This may not be the ideal forum for lighthearted sillyness, but I still think you have won 1000 internets and a life supply of adorable kittens. Well done ;)
tsaoutourpants 15y ago
Hi Guys, Jon here, the creator of the TSA video you're discussing. Thanks for picking this story up. As a tech guy myself, I'll be happy to answer any questions you have. --Jon
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  How are you dealing with the legal bills? Do you have a team of lawyers, or a legal background as well (I see you went to Stevens Institute, so I'm guessing you have an engineering background.) Many thanks.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- spolsky 15y ago
  Is it possible that the TSA actually observed the metallic object at your side, but decided that it wasn't threatening based on its shape?
  - dskang 15y ago
    I would imagine that they would demand that every metal container be opened for inspection, no matter its shape.
  - jonursenbach 15y ago
    This has been what I've been wondering. While going through HNL a few weeks ago my girlfriend forgot to take her cellphone out of her bra before going through the backscatter. Nobody said a peep.
  - sim0n 15y ago
    Surely any TSA agent would see a concealed object on the side of a body worthy of at least an inspection/questioning.
  - capnrefsmmat 15y ago
    The TSA generally detects my watch when I forget to take it off, and insist on rolling up my sleeve and checking despite its obvious location. I'm not sure how shape could imply safety, either, since anything could have been concealed inside of it.
borski 15y ago
Simple, yet brilliant; equivalent to a side channel attack on most systems. I can't believe nobody had noticed that before, including myself.
afterburner 15y ago
So they should keep using the metal detectors then. I wonder if they'll make people go through both.
- orblivion 15y ago
  I'm surprised they haven't built one in already.
- URSpider94 15y ago
  The ONLY way that they've been able to sell this to fliers is that it gets rid of the existing process, and maybe some time soon we'll be able to keep our shoes on. If they now make this sequential, then it's twice the time, twice the staff to manage, and twice the inconvenience -- you now have people queueing up between the two screens, passing one and failing the other, etc.
rogerbinns 15y ago
Just more security theatre and corrupt politicians (guess who runs the companies the scanners are bought from). The reality is that they can't keep weapons and drugs out of prisons where there are no freedoms, and there is plenty of time to be as invasive as you want to visitors and residents. Additionally the security system has failed if the point you pick up the bad guys is by some low paid grunt at the airport staring at a screen. The point of airport security should be to catch occasional idiots and that is about it - something any metal detector can do. The reality is that anyone determined can get through any security system and wreak terror. The response is to not be terrorised. It is to live well and not in fear. It is to have made their actions completely pointless.
- seanp2k2 15y ago
  ...and instead, we freak out as a nation, flush our civil liberties down the toilet to feel "safe", and let our country fall apart in the wake of our fears. "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Bravo, USA, bravo. Osama is still #winning because we're still dealing with his terror of >10 years ago. Let that sink in for a bit....this is exactly what he wanted.
  - davidhollander 15y ago
    Fear is not always irrational. If we encountered a large tiger while out on a walk, it would be a very beneficial response. To discuss the pragmatics, the problem appears to be the near deterministic impossibility of shutting off the defense contracting money spigot once it has been opened. It's not a business one has the power to boycott.
  - thewisedude 15y ago
    For the sake of honest debate... how do you know what exactly it is Osama wanted? Maybe all he wanted was to kill people and didn't care about liberty because he does not know what it is! or he wanted to send some kind of a message to westerners or something else... we will not know. Sure, liberty seems to be lesser in airports...but connecting that to what Osama wanted is a big stretch!
dirkdk 15y ago
good thing you are hosting your blog on wordpress.com. Hope they keep it available!
robgibbons 15y ago
All they have to do is make you turn sideways. This video is a well intended but weak attempt
- brunomiranda 15y ago
  They do not make you turn sideways.
jballanc 15y ago
While it's encouraging to see such a thorough debunking of the latest security theater technology, it's always been security theater... Allow me a few quick anecdotes: My family is friends with a gentleman who was a green beret medic during Viet Nam, and later worked for the CIA. Once, when I was younger (and metal detectors were the norm), we had the opportunity to fly with him. He entered the metal detector before me, and was waved along. Once we were past the detectors, he turned to me and said, "Guess how many blades I have on me?" He then proceded to produce seven blades. They were a combination of ceramic blades (undetectable by the metal detector and sharper than most metal as well) and traditional blades held or placed on him so that they would not set off the detector. It was part of his CIA training to be able to do that. I went to college at Stevens Institute of Technology. The Chemical Engineering department there has a lab known as the Highly Filled Materials Institute. When I was an undergraduate, I got a tour of the lab. They informed me that they had been working on an extruder that they were selling simultaneously to Picatinny Arsenal and Hersey. It turns out that C4 and Chocolate are both colloidal suspensions with nearly identical properties. A consequence of this is that in the X-ray machines used in airports, plastic explosives are indistinguishable from chocolate. Shortly after 9/11 my father, a very frequent traveler, had forgotten his nail clippers in his carry-on luggage. Predictably, they were confiscated. When I greeted him at the airport, he remarked on how ridiculous that was, as he produced his fountain pen from his jacket pocket. "They let me on with this," he said. "I could have stabbed anyone in the eye with this and they'd be dead. What was I going to do with nail clippers?" ...I could go on, but why?
- tsaoutourpants 15y ago
  You remind me of the occasional TSA "good catch" where they find some weed stashed in a jar of peanut butter. Peanut butter and C4 have the same density. Not a good place to hide your weed. ;)
  - zotz 15y ago
    It seems like your metal container would be a good spot to hide a doob.
lojack 15y ago
Every time I've gone through the new scanners, I've had to go through a metal detectors first, which would pick up this object. Anyone know if there are actually airports that use only the new scanners without a metal detector?
- johns 15y ago
  I've traveled extensively since the scanners have been in place and I've never gone through a traditional detector before a new scanner. They're almost always side-by-side.
- martingordon 15y ago
  As far as I can recall, people were not required to go through the metal detectors at these airports: MIA, FLL, BNA, EWR, PIT. MIA (at least last time I was there in December) has some lines that do solely metal detectors and some that do solely scanners. That is, until the scanner lines start to get long and they start putting everyone through the metal detectors. I've always opted out (except once at EWR when I was with a large group and the screener took longer than the 5 minutes I was willing to wait) and about half the time I've gone through the metal detectors. In fact, last week at PIT, I tried going through the metal detector on my way to the pat down area and was told to go around it.
nivertech 15y ago
TSA should use MRI scanners - no radiation exposure and no metal objects are allowed. As an added bonus they can use fMRI mode and ask following questions: 1. Are you a member of a terrorist organization? 2. Where is the Weapons of Mass Destruction?
- MSexton 15y ago
  The problem with this, of course, is the immediate (ie, sudden and possibly very visible) danger posed to people with devices embedded in them. Pacemakers and MRIs do not interact well.
- catch23 15y ago
  Standing near a MRI machine is also likely to erase the magnetic material on any of your credit cards -- plus they could never shut off the machine. There's probably a bunch more obvious reasons why MRI was never chosen. And if some metal object were to get stuck on the machine, they'd need a team of people to remove it. Every airport would also need to keep a good stock of liquid helium for the cases where machines need to be shut down.
geuis 15y ago
The supposition here is that since magnetic scanners are being removed and replaced with xray scanners, which do not have the feature of detecting metal with magnetic fields, the new machines are more ineffective than the old magnetic scanners. This therefore single-handedly invalidates the xray machines and they should be removed. The entire video is produced in such a way as to say this is a major discovery and that it will single-handedly trigger Congress and the TSA to backpedal on what they've been for the last 10+ years. I disagree. To state, I do not like the TSA. I do not like Congress very much. I have very little respect for the people that are commonly elected to government because of the long history of ineffectiveness, ignorance, and stupidity that continually seeps out when they talk and make "decisions". The best I can say about our government is that it mostly keeps the really bad people out of power. The kind that become Caesars and Napoleons and Hitlers and Pol Pots. My issues with this video are that its too filled with a political tilt. There is a clear play on emotions and rhetoric with less emphasis on the purported vulnerability being shown. Further, the actual nut of the video, i.e. the demonstration of the vulnerability, is so underwhelming that its impossible to take the video in its entirety seriously. First, the most important part where the speaker is actually going through security is sped up past the point of being intelligible. That's the part that might actually get some interest. If the speaker just showed that clip in its entirety, demonstrating how to attach the pocket and further how easy it is for him to get through the scanners, and providing pure technical notes as to the background color and such, it would be easier to take seriously. As it stands, any reasonably competent person's first thought should be "So we just put a magnetic scanner before or after the x-ray scanner. Ok, problem solved." Other thoughts might be, ok so make people stand sideways, change the background color, etc. Obvious tweaks to the system to patch over this problem. The video doesn't address this simple point and goes on to argue that no metal detectors invalidates the entire concept of xray scanners. Its a very bad premise to base such an argument on. The argument against xray scanners needs to be based around the already-proven points: *Violates people's privacy *Security theater (which the Pocket Problem falls into) *Possible negative health consequences for passengers and workers *Over-reaching government bureaucracy *Etc. So in summary, I don't like this video because it shows nothing really new, makes a large claim on very little foundation, focuses attention on the wrong things, and is counter-productive to the task of convincing enough "policy makers" to start doing the right thing.
thewisedude 15y ago
My guess is in the future...you will have to walk through both metal detectors and body scanners! I am not sure, if they will dump the body scanners based on this video!
deleted 15y ago
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deleted 15y ago
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mark_l_watson 15y ago
A pretty good video, but it is not quite convincing enough for me to email to family and friends. Still, kudos to the guy who did it. BTW, the first time I went through the backscatter scanner, I had a killer sinus headache within about 30 seconds. I went from feeling great to shitty almost instantly. Anyone else experience this? I have refused (opted out of) the scanner ever since. My many opt-out experiences have all been OK: a quick personal search and I am on my way. That is what I recommend to my friends and family to do. BTW, part 2: the TSA corporation employees at the security checkpoints are not the problem, so be polite to them. The problem is the bribery and corruption that lead to the privatization of airport security.
- hoganheros 15y ago
  "the TSA corporation employees at the security checkpoints are not the problem" Yes, they are. "Just following orders" does not hold any water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders#Nuremberg_Trials_after_World_War_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders#Nuremberg_Trial... "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him." "so be polite to them" No, THEY should be polite to ME. They are public servants.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    Why do so few people get this? Why, for example, do people continue to insist "the war is unjust, but I still support our soldiers"?
    - nitrogen 15y ago
      Why? Because many of the soldiers are their family and friends.
    - gruseom 15y ago
      They're the same soldiers we would expect to fight the just wars. It's not as if they're the ones starting these things.
Sniffnoy 15y ago
Not made worthless -- revealed as worthless.
sushantsharma 15y ago
I find it a little strange that, at present, more than 400 people have upvoted the link, but the linked youtube video has less than 400 views. Edit: I am not trolling. It was just an observation that I found interesting even though it may not directly add much to the conversation.
- queensnake 15y ago
  I think those are updated 'eventually', to cope with the scale. I've noticed the same thing.
- barrkel 15y ago
  Popular videos stop having their view count immediately updated at around 300 views. There's probably some duplication / distribution that kicks in to spread the load, and reliable statistics then requires aggregation. Happens very predictably on new videos in some of my YT subscriptions.
Vixter 15y ago
If the TSA has to investigate abnormalities with a pat down, you might as well opt for the groping to begin with.
mikeklaas 15y ago
Thanks. Now they'll just make us do both.
queensnake 15y ago
It's even easier. I was carrying a metal external hard drive, put it through the belt with no problem. You could easily take out the HD and put some explosives in there instead. edit Also, if combining fluids really is a threat, they're allowing liquid medicine bottles, now. It really /is/ theater.
- vidarh 15y ago
  I've had bottles of liquid in my carry on several times by accidents - what happens when you travel alone with a toddler and get slightly frazzled. They've never caught it.
tlrobinson 15y ago
So now they'll just require two scans, one turned 90 degrees. How hard would it be to construct a prosthetic fat suit that's invisible to scanners? I bet not very.
bicknergseng 15y ago
The introduction to <i>Thinking, Fast and Slow</i> by Daniel Khaneman immediately made me think of security theater. He starts by discussing how humans are generally rational, but intense emotions of fear, anger, etc. often cause us to act completely irrationally. While I imagine the book goes on to describe how the individual can stop emotion from perverting what should be a rational judgement, I wonder what defense we have as a society against making bad, emotional decisions on things that shouldn't involve emotions. I understand reactionary emotional decisions and opinions tending to snowball behind them, but why does it take so long, if at all, for rationality to take over?
antonej 15y ago
What a bizarre obsession. The only reason this is at the top of HN is because the word "nude" is (misleadingly) in there. Obviously airline security in the US is deeply flawed because look at how many planes are being hijacked or blown out of the sky by terrorists! I mean there have been -- wait, let me count -- ZERO on American soil since September 11, 2001. With about 28,000 commercial flights per day in the US alone, approximately 3,800 days after 9/11, that multiplies out to 106 million fights without a successful terrorist attack. Not a bad batting average if you ask me. With apologies to Churchill, I guess this airline security regime is the worst system there is -- except for all the other systems.
- _delirium 15y ago
  That lacks a sensible baseline to compare against. The flaw that 9/11 exploited was the conventional wisdom drilled into everyone that, if your plane is being hijacked, you shouldn't resist, because hijackers just want some money/prisoner-exchange/whatever, and by resisting you'll only be putting your fellow passengers in more danger. Post-9/11, nobody believes that anymore, so the one proven hole was plugged.
- veidr 15y ago
  You're focusing on the wrong thing. The problem with the American airline security system is the invasive nude imaging, needless radiation exposure, and the hundreds of millions of hours of human time it wastes annually. Here in Japan, I arrive at the airport 20 minutes before a domestic flight, show no ID, take my lighter and PET bottle with me, and we haven't had any terrorist attachs either.
- andolanra 15y ago
  1. "Nude Body Scanners" is a common name for the backscatter machines, and is generally understood as such. I'm not sure if you're asserting that people are randomly upvoting this article on the off chance it contains naughty material, but quite a few people—here and elsewhere—are heavily interested and involved in the TSA's use of these machines due to their isolated and cumulative effects on civil rights, so it shouldn't be surprising that it's at the top. 2. The TSA is not the only system keeping terrorists off planes. We don't have a "double-blind survey" where half the airports were protected by the TSA and the other half weren't, so we can't make any kind of sensible comparison. (A better metric would be, "How many attempted terrorist attacks were directly stopped by the TSA during the airport security checks," and it's widely accepted that the answer is, "None.") 3. These new backscatter machines were not put in place immediately in 2001. A great deal of the time you've mentioned involved elevated security on the part of the TSA, but not specifically through the measures being discussed here, which decrease the actual security of the planes by allowing people to bring items through that would have been caught by earlier measures (c.f. the article being discussed.) A case can be made that the TSA's post-9/11 response has been useless and possibly harmful, but this article is specifically making the point that the backscatter machines are problematic. 4. There have also been zero hijackings in other countries, as well, and those countries have different (and usually much less invasive and less expensive) security measures. If we provisionally accept that it is the TSA, and not the other agencies involved, that is preventing attacks, why does it necessarily follow that the only way to keep planes safe is the drastic measures taken by the TSA? (I can quite easily rid my house of mosquitos by burning it down, but that doesn't mean the only or best way to keep my house free of mosquitos is arson.)
nizm 15y ago
In case some of you haven't seen this video. Live on Germany TV man walks through body scanner and builds explosive with everything that passed on the scanner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idICUSiGcqo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idICUSiGcqo
- mikecaron 15y ago
  He also said that in airports, a full scan also scans the sides of the person, in which case the video producer would not have gotten through. So... how often is a "Full" scan done?
jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
To everyone saying that now they will make you turn sideways i have to tell you that there are many blind spots even with those two angles, think about "corners" of yourself. An example: http://imgur.com/Q1DTp http://imgur.com/Q1DTp (The rolled paper represents some sort of tube) The point is that many angles are required (or another kind of "solution")
- jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
  Looks like someone could put it under their skin and the metal object will go unnoticed; heck! a terrorist could use someone else's skin...
astrofinch 15y ago
It wouldn't be hard to get a profile view of airline passengers by having them spin or installing additional scanners. Not that I disagree with this guy.
georgieporgie 15y ago
While I think the TSA is ridiculous, can't this be solved by having the people stand at 45 degrees to the left or right, chosen at random?
- discountgenius 15y ago
  That's too smart an idea. Get ready for four images instead of two. And then when somebody sneaks something past that, we'll go eight.
aaronharnly 15y ago
Interesting video. However, I would like to have seen a controlled experiment – i.e., with the same metallic case placed in a breast pocket. Trials with only that variable changed, and yielding a different result (presumably being pulled for patdown?) would more conclusively demonstrate the hypothesis that with the side-pocket technique "anyone can beat them with virtually no effort."
gringomorcego 15y ago
Nobody's gonna mention Snow Crash? Really? Come on guys...
charlieok 15y ago
...so what if they get images from four sides instead of two. Doesn't that defeat the "side" method demonstrated in the video?
njtotten 15y ago
I am a frequent flier and hate this stuff as much as the next guy, but doesn't this just argue (from the TSA point of view) that the TSA should be using BOTH the metal detector and the body scanners?
yason 15y ago
It has never been about real security. It's about the huge load of money that is funnelled through TSA who are set to spent it all, regardless of what they receive, on these magic wand devices or just angry personnel. Another reason is that security checks allow for arbitrary control of passengers. It's a powerful mechanism, just like a country with enough laws to make everyone guilty but where those laws are only enforced when "necessary", on a select few people. It's like legalized totalitarianism: all backed up by law and rules but the outcome is the same.
GigabyteCoin 15y ago
I once got "sharp weapons" (a manicure kit) through London's Heathrow airport. I was connecting from Shanghai and had stupidly left a souvenir manicure kit in my bag... they found it, but after some pleading allowed me to keep it. As per usual, I picked up a bottle of liquor at the duty free in Shanghai before I left... Not sure if I was meant to inform them I was connecting, or they simply forgot to do their jobs... but apparently I was meant to have my liquor in a sealed "official duty free" bag when I landed at heathrow. Long story short, I got the full attention of about 10 security officers when checking through security in Heathrow. They were entirely concerned with the liquor I had purchased in shanghai, and were so vocal about the whole thing that I personally witnessed the xray machine man turn around and see what the problem was. Everybody was trying to be the next big hero, when the only problem was I didn't have the right security bag, and who knows what else I might have had in my carry on? (Hint: I had "weapons", I mean nailclippers).
mikejestes 15y ago
What if the scanners actually take a 360 degree xray?
yaix 15y ago
Just hope that somewone will be helt accountable for it. Anyway, the link to the relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/651/ http://xkcd.com/651/
fab13n 15y ago
Most people with critical thinking are hardly surprised by this; this needs to be shown to average Joes, not hackers. Hence I suggest to vote this up on YouTube, rather than / in addition to HN.
chrischen 15y ago
His statement about no one boarding a plane in the US with explosives seems to be false: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-16/underwear-bomber/53115186/1 http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-16/underwe.... Although he seems to be right that the detectors are useless since the guy who was pretty incompetent (set his underwear on fire) and still managed to get it on board a plane.
- saalweachter 15y ago
  The "underwear bomber" boarded in Amsterdam; the plane was an international flight to Detroit.
joezhou 15y ago
epic fail indeed...
alan_cx 15y ago
I have a great solution to this. Its cheap and easy to set up. Just tell people that planes are a bit dangerous and might well be stacked with terrorists and bombs. Fly at own risk. Be grateful if you land. No? Oh well. In all seriousness though, I do wonder given the above, how much passenger numbers would drop. Flying is known to be very safe, and there was a statistic that showed more people died after 9/11 than in 9/11 due to people taking to the roads through fear of flying. Plus, there are not that many planes blown out of the sky by terrorists. If they did nothing, planes would still be statistically safe. Its kinda like those stats that show people drive in a more reckless manner because they now have to wear seat belts and have air bags etc. Take that lot away and people tend to drive safer. No, Im not suggesting and of this, just food for thought.
petenixey 15y ago
I for one would just like to take a moment to welcome our new guests, the intelligence observers! May you be inspired by the quality of debate and not may you not add any of the good HN folks to any lists.
downx3 15y ago
Sadly I don't think the scans are their to protect lives, but rather to protect the machinery (and the industry.) Planes are expensive. It's trivial to kill people elsewhere. I just loathe the rhetoric.
tuxguy 15y ago
From Bruce Schneier's blog scheier.com FBI Special Agent and Counterterrorism Expert Criticizes the TSA http://gmancasefile.blogspot.in/2012/01/tsa-fail.html http://gmancasefile.blogspot.in/2012/01/tsa-fail.html (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/fbi_special_age.html#comments http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/fbi_special_ag...)
cpursley 15y ago
What really blows my mind is that Bin Laden pulled 911 off with about $400,000 - about the price of about two porno scanners.
impunity 15y ago
I always thought that the purpose of the scanners was to catch currency entering and leaving the country, not to catch terrorists.
deleted 15y ago
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hippich 15y ago
I can tell you what will happen next - instead of shutting down the whole nude-scanner program, more money will be fed into developing enhanced version of nude-scanner with built-in metal detector. All old scanner will be scraped, more billions will be pushed toward TSA to buy more nude-scanner upgrades.
poppysan 15y ago
$1B saved by having them take a side profile shot...
bstpierre 15y ago
It's interesting how so much is focused on airport security. Let's assume that we figured out how to make airline terminals 100% terrorist-safe and completely secure, no exceptions. (Yeah, it's a fantasy, but stay with me...) At that point the terrorists will give up on the airports and pick something different. Remember that the first attack on the WTC, and the (domestic!) attack on OK City were TRUCK bombs. What's to stop someone from hijacking a tanker truck and detonating it? Trucker school must be easier than pilot school, right? And if the terrorists are still hot and heavy for airplanes, they could bring down an airplane without actually going through airport security. At most airports I know of, the planes are vulnerable to ground-based attack on takeoff and landing. Not the same as crashing one into a building, but it seems unlikely that that attack is repeatable.
joshwprinceton 15y ago
most ptz ever?
api 15y ago
One word: lobbyists. Nearly everything of this type is a giveaway to some private vendor with lobbyists in Washington. Whether it works or not is secondary to the primary purpose: handing money over.
samspot 15y ago
Seems like they should just combine Body Scanners + Metal Detectors + Pat Downs. A weakness in one tech doesn't make the whole stack worthless. Please don't interpret this comment as approval of the body scanners or the pat downs. I'm just trying to express that the body scanners have not been "made worthless".
eta_carinae 15y ago
All he did to prove his point was smuggle a small empty metallic case in his pocket and he expects all the airports to take down their scanners as a result... Makes total sense.
alinspired 15y ago
it's amazing how all governments, and monopolies are alike, whether it's US or not they will get away with it, until smacked really hard - which is almost impossible to do
nimrodreader 15y ago
so, if i face the scanner frontally, and the object is on my side, the object can be lost in my contour. then the TSA guy says, "rotate to right". now that object hidden on my side might as well have been taped to my forehead - what was lost in contour is now nicely in silhouette. or, i go through metal detector first, then get scanned. no big deal?
pseingatl 15y ago
Curiously, once upon a time the U.S. federal courts considered a police crotch grab offensive behavior: http://federal-circuits.vlex.com/vid/oswald-blake-leonard-eason-defendants-37283218 http://federal-circuits.vlex.com/vid/oswald-blake-leonard-ea...
pfcwt 15y ago
There are real terrorists out there you know. And they should be scanned, metal detected, and detained. They are called "US Soldiers"....

1637 points by zotz 15y ago

Does the scanner not pick the object up at all (I don't see why this would be true), or is this simply a matter of needing to change the background color?

mahyarm 15y ago
And they can have a two stage process (metal detector and xray) that would solve this problem too.
- lignuist 15y ago
  Not all weapons are made of metal.
ars 15y ago
> Does the scanner not pick the object up at all (I don't see why this would be true) The object and the background both look the same in reflected x-rays. It's not just the background color.
- russell_h 15y ago
  In that case, couldn't they put a non-reflective material behind the person being scanned? Perhaps that would interfere with their ability to scan you from both sides, but if they have a reflective material behind you it seems like they must already have a way to scan through/around that.

ny3t 15y ago

feh!

togasystems 15y ago

I wonder if the color of the background is a simple variable or is based off physics rules? Does anybody know if they can change the color to something different?

ars 15y ago
I think it's checking how many x-rays are reflected back to the machine. But since the background and the object are both metal they both reflect equally, and are indistinguishable.
- agumonkey 15y ago
  Can't they add some time based depth information to discriminate ? Or add a slightly absorbing background , additional maybe. ...
  - tonfa 15y ago
    Some pattern in the background maybe?
- ynniv 15y ago
  The background is not metal, it is open space that does not reflect xrays. The targeted metal objects also do not reflect xrays. It is more intuitive to say that these machines are not threat detectors (like metal detectors), they are people detectors. The lack of a person is considered to be a threat within the bounds of their silhouette. Place a threat outside the silhouette and it is undetectable.
  - mc32 15y ago
    So what would happen if they had a wire mesh (chicken wire, for example) for the background? An interruption in the wire mesh pattern would indicate an anomaly. They could change up the pattern every so often to thwart any attempt to match the pattern --even if it woud be difficult to match up.

TamDenholm 15y ago

Rather than get rid of the body scanners, i think they'll simply just require you to stand sideways as well, or add a scanner on the side of the machine.

waqf 15y ago
Or have the background colour of the display changed, by contracting with the original suppliers for a few million more taxpayer dollars.
- shingen 15y ago
  Don't be ridiculous. Billion is the new million.
  - tibbon 15y ago
    Clearly, this will require a well paid committee and 5,000 page investigation.
- ars 15y ago
  It's not a color like in a webpage. It's a measure of how many x-rays were received by the scanner, and presumably the background and the object both look the same. Making the person stand sideways would sort of work, but it wouldn't be hard to shift the flaps of an open jacket while turning.
- huhtenberg 15y ago
  > have the background colour of the display changed Have you thought this one through?
RKearney 15y ago
Then you could hide something in the arches of your feet or under a wig.
- kami8845 15y ago
  Then they'll just extend all US scanned to 2.2m meters width and enforce scanning people lying down in both directions.

ars 15y ago

Summary: The background around the person is black in the scanner. Place the object slightly distant from the person so it's also in the background (i.e. not silhouetted by the person), and the object and the background will look the same to the scanner.

ck2 15y ago

You have to be crazy brave or crazy ignorant to do this kind of analysis and share it in the USA. At a minimum his name will now show up on the no-fly list for the rest of his life. If he realized this, I am in awe.

mikezupan 15y ago
he said he was the first person to sue the TSA over the nude scanners.. I'd bet he was already on it
tsaoutourpants 15y ago
Crazy guy who did this here. Before I made the video, I spent the last 18 months manipulating the court system against the TSA. The TSA does not want to add me to any no-fly list (or more realistically, the "selectee list") because every time a legal battle starts, I'm entitled to more and more discovery in court, and more and more of their lies come out. --Jon
- snprbob86 15y ago
  ::hug:: Thank you. Keep on fighting the good fight man.
- toomuchtodo 15y ago
  #shutupandtakemymoney Thank you for your hard work.
- tsaoutourpants 15y ago
  You guys are very welcome... I appreciate the support, and I feel like on this board it's coming from my own people, so thank you!!
  - ktizo 15y ago
    This may not be the ideal forum for lighthearted sillyness, but I still think you have won 1000 internets and a life supply of adorable kittens. Well done ;)

tsaoutourpants 15y ago

Hi Guys, Jon here, the creator of the TSA video you're discussing. Thanks for picking this story up. As a tech guy myself, I'll be happy to answer any questions you have. --Jon

jpdoctor 15y ago
How are you dealing with the legal bills? Do you have a team of lawyers, or a legal background as well (I see you went to Stevens Institute, so I'm guessing you have an engineering background.) Many thanks.
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spolsky 15y ago
Is it possible that the TSA actually observed the metallic object at your side, but decided that it wasn't threatening based on its shape?
- dskang 15y ago
  I would imagine that they would demand that every metal container be opened for inspection, no matter its shape.
- jonursenbach 15y ago
  This has been what I've been wondering. While going through HNL a few weeks ago my girlfriend forgot to take her cellphone out of her bra before going through the backscatter. Nobody said a peep.
- sim0n 15y ago
  Surely any TSA agent would see a concealed object on the side of a body worthy of at least an inspection/questioning.
- capnrefsmmat 15y ago
  The TSA generally detects my watch when I forget to take it off, and insist on rolling up my sleeve and checking despite its obvious location. I'm not sure how shape could imply safety, either, since anything could have been concealed inside of it.

borski 15y ago

Simple, yet brilliant; equivalent to a side channel attack on most systems. I can't believe nobody had noticed that before, including myself.

afterburner 15y ago

So they should keep using the metal detectors then. I wonder if they'll make people go through both.

orblivion 15y ago
I'm surprised they haven't built one in already.
URSpider94 15y ago
The ONLY way that they've been able to sell this to fliers is that it gets rid of the existing process, and maybe some time soon we'll be able to keep our shoes on. If they now make this sequential, then it's twice the time, twice the staff to manage, and twice the inconvenience -- you now have people queueing up between the two screens, passing one and failing the other, etc.

rogerbinns 15y ago

Just more security theatre and corrupt politicians (guess who runs the companies the scanners are bought from). The reality is that they can't keep weapons and drugs out of prisons where there are no freedoms, and there is plenty of time to be as invasive as you want to visitors and residents. Additionally the security system has failed if the point you pick up the bad guys is by some low paid grunt at the airport staring at a screen. The point of airport security should be to catch occasional idiots and that is about it - something any metal detector can do. The reality is that anyone determined can get through any security system and wreak terror. The response is to not be terrorised. It is to live well and not in fear. It is to have made their actions completely pointless.

seanp2k2 15y ago
...and instead, we freak out as a nation, flush our civil liberties down the toilet to feel "safe", and let our country fall apart in the wake of our fears. "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Bravo, USA, bravo. Osama is still #winning because we're still dealing with his terror of >10 years ago. Let that sink in for a bit....this is exactly what he wanted.
- davidhollander 15y ago
  Fear is not always irrational. If we encountered a large tiger while out on a walk, it would be a very beneficial response. To discuss the pragmatics, the problem appears to be the near deterministic impossibility of shutting off the defense contracting money spigot once it has been opened. It's not a business one has the power to boycott.
- thewisedude 15y ago
  For the sake of honest debate... how do you know what exactly it is Osama wanted? Maybe all he wanted was to kill people and didn't care about liberty because he does not know what it is! or he wanted to send some kind of a message to westerners or something else... we will not know. Sure, liberty seems to be lesser in airports...but connecting that to what Osama wanted is a big stretch!

dirkdk 15y ago

good thing you are hosting your blog on wordpress.com. Hope they keep it available!

robgibbons 15y ago

All they have to do is make you turn sideways. This video is a well intended but weak attempt

brunomiranda 15y ago
They do not make you turn sideways.

jballanc 15y ago

While it's encouraging to see such a thorough debunking of the latest security theater technology, it's always been security theater... Allow me a few quick anecdotes: My family is friends with a gentleman who was a green beret medic during Viet Nam, and later worked for the CIA. Once, when I was younger (and metal detectors were the norm), we had the opportunity to fly with him. He entered the metal detector before me, and was waved along. Once we were past the detectors, he turned to me and said, "Guess how many blades I have on me?" He then proceded to produce seven blades. They were a combination of ceramic blades (undetectable by the metal detector and sharper than most metal as well) and traditional blades held or placed on him so that they would not set off the detector. It was part of his CIA training to be able to do that. I went to college at Stevens Institute of Technology. The Chemical Engineering department there has a lab known as the Highly Filled Materials Institute. When I was an undergraduate, I got a tour of the lab. They informed me that they had been working on an extruder that they were selling simultaneously to Picatinny Arsenal and Hersey. It turns out that C4 and Chocolate are both colloidal suspensions with nearly identical properties. A consequence of this is that in the X-ray machines used in airports, plastic explosives are indistinguishable from chocolate. Shortly after 9/11 my father, a very frequent traveler, had forgotten his nail clippers in his carry-on luggage. Predictably, they were confiscated. When I greeted him at the airport, he remarked on how ridiculous that was, as he produced his fountain pen from his jacket pocket. "They let me on with this," he said. "I could have stabbed anyone in the eye with this and they'd be dead. What was I going to do with nail clippers?" ...I could go on, but why?

tsaoutourpants 15y ago
You remind me of the occasional TSA "good catch" where they find some weed stashed in a jar of peanut butter. Peanut butter and C4 have the same density. Not a good place to hide your weed. ;)
- zotz 15y ago
  It seems like your metal container would be a good spot to hide a doob.

lojack 15y ago

Every time I've gone through the new scanners, I've had to go through a metal detectors first, which would pick up this object. Anyone know if there are actually airports that use only the new scanners without a metal detector?

johns 15y ago
I've traveled extensively since the scanners have been in place and I've never gone through a traditional detector before a new scanner. They're almost always side-by-side.
martingordon 15y ago
As far as I can recall, people were not required to go through the metal detectors at these airports: MIA, FLL, BNA, EWR, PIT. MIA (at least last time I was there in December) has some lines that do solely metal detectors and some that do solely scanners. That is, until the scanner lines start to get long and they start putting everyone through the metal detectors. I've always opted out (except once at EWR when I was with a large group and the screener took longer than the 5 minutes I was willing to wait) and about half the time I've gone through the metal detectors. In fact, last week at PIT, I tried going through the metal detector on my way to the pat down area and was told to go around it.

nivertech 15y ago

TSA should use MRI scanners - no radiation exposure and no metal objects are allowed. As an added bonus they can use fMRI mode and ask following questions: 1. Are you a member of a terrorist organization? 2. Where is the Weapons of Mass Destruction?

MSexton 15y ago
The problem with this, of course, is the immediate (ie, sudden and possibly very visible) danger posed to people with devices embedded in them. Pacemakers and MRIs do not interact well.
catch23 15y ago
Standing near a MRI machine is also likely to erase the magnetic material on any of your credit cards -- plus they could never shut off the machine. There's probably a bunch more obvious reasons why MRI was never chosen. And if some metal object were to get stuck on the machine, they'd need a team of people to remove it. Every airport would also need to keep a good stock of liquid helium for the cases where machines need to be shut down.

geuis 15y ago

The supposition here is that since magnetic scanners are being removed and replaced with xray scanners, which do not have the feature of detecting metal with magnetic fields, the new machines are more ineffective than the old magnetic scanners. This therefore single-handedly invalidates the xray machines and they should be removed. The entire video is produced in such a way as to say this is a major discovery and that it will single-handedly trigger Congress and the TSA to backpedal on what they've been for the last 10+ years. I disagree. To state, I do not like the TSA. I do not like Congress very much. I have very little respect for the people that are commonly elected to government because of the long history of ineffectiveness, ignorance, and stupidity that continually seeps out when they talk and make "decisions". The best I can say about our government is that it mostly keeps the really bad people out of power. The kind that become Caesars and Napoleons and Hitlers and Pol Pots. My issues with this video are that its too filled with a political tilt. There is a clear play on emotions and rhetoric with less emphasis on the purported vulnerability being shown. Further, the actual nut of the video, i.e. the demonstration of the vulnerability, is so underwhelming that its impossible to take the video in its entirety seriously. First, the most important part where the speaker is actually going through security is sped up past the point of being intelligible. That's the part that might actually get some interest. If the speaker just showed that clip in its entirety, demonstrating how to attach the pocket and further how easy it is for him to get through the scanners, and providing pure technical notes as to the background color and such, it would be easier to take seriously. As it stands, any reasonably competent person's first thought should be "So we just put a magnetic scanner before or after the x-ray scanner. Ok, problem solved." Other thoughts might be, ok so make people stand sideways, change the background color, etc. Obvious tweaks to the system to patch over this problem. The video doesn't address this simple point and goes on to argue that no metal detectors invalidates the entire concept of xray scanners. Its a very bad premise to base such an argument on. The argument against xray scanners needs to be based around the already-proven points: *Violates people's privacy *Security theater (which the Pocket Problem falls into) *Possible negative health consequences for passengers and workers *Over-reaching government bureaucracy *Etc. So in summary, I don't like this video because it shows nothing really new, makes a large claim on very little foundation, focuses attention on the wrong things, and is counter-productive to the task of convincing enough "policy makers" to start doing the right thing.

thewisedude 15y ago

My guess is in the future...you will have to walk through both metal detectors and body scanners! I am not sure, if they will dump the body scanners based on this video!

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mark_l_watson 15y ago

A pretty good video, but it is not quite convincing enough for me to email to family and friends. Still, kudos to the guy who did it. BTW, the first time I went through the backscatter scanner, I had a killer sinus headache within about 30 seconds. I went from feeling great to shitty almost instantly. Anyone else experience this? I have refused (opted out of) the scanner ever since. My many opt-out experiences have all been OK: a quick personal search and I am on my way. That is what I recommend to my friends and family to do. BTW, part 2: the TSA corporation employees at the security checkpoints are not the problem, so be polite to them. The problem is the bribery and corruption that lead to the privatization of airport security.

hoganheros 15y ago
"the TSA corporation employees at the security checkpoints are not the problem" Yes, they are. "Just following orders" does not hold any water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders#Nuremberg_Trials_after_World_War_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders#Nuremberg_Trial... "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him." "so be polite to them" No, THEY should be polite to ME. They are public servants.
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  Why do so few people get this? Why, for example, do people continue to insist "the war is unjust, but I still support our soldiers"?
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    Why? Because many of the soldiers are their family and friends.
  - gruseom 15y ago
    They're the same soldiers we would expect to fight the just wars. It's not as if they're the ones starting these things.

Sniffnoy 15y ago

Not made worthless -- revealed as worthless.

sushantsharma 15y ago

I find it a little strange that, at present, more than 400 people have upvoted the link, but the linked youtube video has less than 400 views. Edit: I am not trolling. It was just an observation that I found interesting even though it may not directly add much to the conversation.

queensnake 15y ago
I think those are updated 'eventually', to cope with the scale. I've noticed the same thing.
barrkel 15y ago
Popular videos stop having their view count immediately updated at around 300 views. There's probably some duplication / distribution that kicks in to spread the load, and reliable statistics then requires aggregation. Happens very predictably on new videos in some of my YT subscriptions.

Vixter 15y ago

If the TSA has to investigate abnormalities with a pat down, you might as well opt for the groping to begin with.

mikeklaas 15y ago

Thanks. Now they'll just make us do both.

queensnake 15y ago

It's even easier. I was carrying a metal external hard drive, put it through the belt with no problem. You could easily take out the HD and put some explosives in there instead. edit Also, if combining fluids really is a threat, they're allowing liquid medicine bottles, now. It really /is/ theater.

vidarh 15y ago
I've had bottles of liquid in my carry on several times by accidents - what happens when you travel alone with a toddler and get slightly frazzled. They've never caught it.

tlrobinson 15y ago

So now they'll just require two scans, one turned 90 degrees. How hard would it be to construct a prosthetic fat suit that's invisible to scanners? I bet not very.

bicknergseng 15y ago

The introduction to <i>Thinking, Fast and Slow</i> by Daniel Khaneman immediately made me think of security theater. He starts by discussing how humans are generally rational, but intense emotions of fear, anger, etc. often cause us to act completely irrationally. While I imagine the book goes on to describe how the individual can stop emotion from perverting what should be a rational judgement, I wonder what defense we have as a society against making bad, emotional decisions on things that shouldn't involve emotions. I understand reactionary emotional decisions and opinions tending to snowball behind them, but why does it take so long, if at all, for rationality to take over?

antonej 15y ago

What a bizarre obsession. The only reason this is at the top of HN is because the word "nude" is (misleadingly) in there. Obviously airline security in the US is deeply flawed because look at how many planes are being hijacked or blown out of the sky by terrorists! I mean there have been -- wait, let me count -- ZERO on American soil since September 11, 2001. With about 28,000 commercial flights per day in the US alone, approximately 3,800 days after 9/11, that multiplies out to 106 million fights without a successful terrorist attack. Not a bad batting average if you ask me. With apologies to Churchill, I guess this airline security regime is the worst system there is -- except for all the other systems.

_delirium 15y ago
That lacks a sensible baseline to compare against. The flaw that 9/11 exploited was the conventional wisdom drilled into everyone that, if your plane is being hijacked, you shouldn't resist, because hijackers just want some money/prisoner-exchange/whatever, and by resisting you'll only be putting your fellow passengers in more danger. Post-9/11, nobody believes that anymore, so the one proven hole was plugged.
veidr 15y ago
You're focusing on the wrong thing. The problem with the American airline security system is the invasive nude imaging, needless radiation exposure, and the hundreds of millions of hours of human time it wastes annually. Here in Japan, I arrive at the airport 20 minutes before a domestic flight, show no ID, take my lighter and PET bottle with me, and we haven't had any terrorist attachs either.
andolanra 15y ago
1. "Nude Body Scanners" is a common name for the backscatter machines, and is generally understood as such. I'm not sure if you're asserting that people are randomly upvoting this article on the off chance it contains naughty material, but quite a few people—here and elsewhere—are heavily interested and involved in the TSA's use of these machines due to their isolated and cumulative effects on civil rights, so it shouldn't be surprising that it's at the top. 2. The TSA is not the only system keeping terrorists off planes. We don't have a "double-blind survey" where half the airports were protected by the TSA and the other half weren't, so we can't make any kind of sensible comparison. (A better metric would be, "How many attempted terrorist attacks were directly stopped by the TSA during the airport security checks," and it's widely accepted that the answer is, "None.") 3. These new backscatter machines were not put in place immediately in 2001. A great deal of the time you've mentioned involved elevated security on the part of the TSA, but not specifically through the measures being discussed here, which decrease the actual security of the planes by allowing people to bring items through that would have been caught by earlier measures (c.f. the article being discussed.) A case can be made that the TSA's post-9/11 response has been useless and possibly harmful, but this article is specifically making the point that the backscatter machines are problematic. 4. There have also been zero hijackings in other countries, as well, and those countries have different (and usually much less invasive and less expensive) security measures. If we provisionally accept that it is the TSA, and not the other agencies involved, that is preventing attacks, why does it necessarily follow that the only way to keep planes safe is the drastic measures taken by the TSA? (I can quite easily rid my house of mosquitos by burning it down, but that doesn't mean the only or best way to keep my house free of mosquitos is arson.)

nizm 15y ago

In case some of you haven't seen this video. Live on Germany TV man walks through body scanner and builds explosive with everything that passed on the scanner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idICUSiGcqo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idICUSiGcqo

mikecaron 15y ago
He also said that in airports, a full scan also scans the sides of the person, in which case the video producer would not have gotten through. So... how often is a "Full" scan done?

jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago

To everyone saying that now they will make you turn sideways i have to tell you that there are many blind spots even with those two angles, think about "corners" of yourself. An example: http://imgur.com/Q1DTp http://imgur.com/Q1DTp (The rolled paper represents some sort of tube) The point is that many angles are required (or another kind of "solution")

jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
Looks like someone could put it under their skin and the metal object will go unnoticed; heck! a terrorist could use someone else's skin...

astrofinch 15y ago

It wouldn't be hard to get a profile view of airline passengers by having them spin or installing additional scanners. Not that I disagree with this guy.

georgieporgie 15y ago

While I think the TSA is ridiculous, can't this be solved by having the people stand at 45 degrees to the left or right, chosen at random?

discountgenius 15y ago
That's too smart an idea. Get ready for four images instead of two. And then when somebody sneaks something past that, we'll go eight.

aaronharnly 15y ago

Interesting video. However, I would like to have seen a controlled experiment – i.e., with the same metallic case placed in a breast pocket. Trials with only that variable changed, and yielding a different result (presumably being pulled for patdown?) would more conclusively demonstrate the hypothesis that with the side-pocket technique "anyone can beat them with virtually no effort."

gringomorcego 15y ago

Nobody's gonna mention Snow Crash? Really? Come on guys...

charlieok 15y ago

...so what if they get images from four sides instead of two. Doesn't that defeat the "side" method demonstrated in the video?

njtotten 15y ago

I am a frequent flier and hate this stuff as much as the next guy, but doesn't this just argue (from the TSA point of view) that the TSA should be using BOTH the metal detector and the body scanners?

yason 15y ago

It has never been about real security. It's about the huge load of money that is funnelled through TSA who are set to spent it all, regardless of what they receive, on these magic wand devices or just angry personnel. Another reason is that security checks allow for arbitrary control of passengers. It's a powerful mechanism, just like a country with enough laws to make everyone guilty but where those laws are only enforced when "necessary", on a select few people. It's like legalized totalitarianism: all backed up by law and rules but the outcome is the same.

GigabyteCoin 15y ago

I once got "sharp weapons" (a manicure kit) through London's Heathrow airport. I was connecting from Shanghai and had stupidly left a souvenir manicure kit in my bag... they found it, but after some pleading allowed me to keep it. As per usual, I picked up a bottle of liquor at the duty free in Shanghai before I left... Not sure if I was meant to inform them I was connecting, or they simply forgot to do their jobs... but apparently I was meant to have my liquor in a sealed "official duty free" bag when I landed at heathrow. Long story short, I got the full attention of about 10 security officers when checking through security in Heathrow. They were entirely concerned with the liquor I had purchased in shanghai, and were so vocal about the whole thing that I personally witnessed the xray machine man turn around and see what the problem was. Everybody was trying to be the next big hero, when the only problem was I didn't have the right security bag, and who knows what else I might have had in my carry on? (Hint: I had "weapons", I mean nailclippers).

mikejestes 15y ago

What if the scanners actually take a 360 degree xray?

yaix 15y ago

Just hope that somewone will be helt accountable for it. Anyway, the link to the relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/651/ http://xkcd.com/651/

fab13n 15y ago

Most people with critical thinking are hardly surprised by this; this needs to be shown to average Joes, not hackers. Hence I suggest to vote this up on YouTube, rather than / in addition to HN.

chrischen 15y ago

His statement about no one boarding a plane in the US with explosives seems to be false: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-16/underwear-bomber/53115186/1 http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-16/underwe.... Although he seems to be right that the detectors are useless since the guy who was pretty incompetent (set his underwear on fire) and still managed to get it on board a plane.

saalweachter 15y ago
The "underwear bomber" boarded in Amsterdam; the plane was an international flight to Detroit.

joezhou 15y ago

epic fail indeed...

alan_cx 15y ago

I have a great solution to this. Its cheap and easy to set up. Just tell people that planes are a bit dangerous and might well be stacked with terrorists and bombs. Fly at own risk. Be grateful if you land. No? Oh well. In all seriousness though, I do wonder given the above, how much passenger numbers would drop. Flying is known to be very safe, and there was a statistic that showed more people died after 9/11 than in 9/11 due to people taking to the roads through fear of flying. Plus, there are not that many planes blown out of the sky by terrorists. If they did nothing, planes would still be statistically safe. Its kinda like those stats that show people drive in a more reckless manner because they now have to wear seat belts and have air bags etc. Take that lot away and people tend to drive safer. No, Im not suggesting and of this, just food for thought.

petenixey 15y ago

I for one would just like to take a moment to welcome our new guests, the intelligence observers! May you be inspired by the quality of debate and not may you not add any of the good HN folks to any lists.

downx3 15y ago

Sadly I don't think the scans are their to protect lives, but rather to protect the machinery (and the industry.) Planes are expensive. It's trivial to kill people elsewhere. I just loathe the rhetoric.

tuxguy 15y ago

From Bruce Schneier's blog scheier.com FBI Special Agent and Counterterrorism Expert Criticizes the TSA http://gmancasefile.blogspot.in/2012/01/tsa-fail.html http://gmancasefile.blogspot.in/2012/01/tsa-fail.html (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/fbi_special_age.html#comments http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/fbi_special_ag...)

cpursley 15y ago

What really blows my mind is that Bin Laden pulled 911 off with about $400,000 - about the price of about two porno scanners.

impunity 15y ago

I always thought that the purpose of the scanners was to catch currency entering and leaving the country, not to catch terrorists.

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hippich 15y ago

I can tell you what will happen next - instead of shutting down the whole nude-scanner program, more money will be fed into developing enhanced version of nude-scanner with built-in metal detector. All old scanner will be scraped, more billions will be pushed toward TSA to buy more nude-scanner upgrades.

poppysan 15y ago

$1B saved by having them take a side profile shot...

bstpierre 15y ago

It's interesting how so much is focused on airport security. Let's assume that we figured out how to make airline terminals 100% terrorist-safe and completely secure, no exceptions. (Yeah, it's a fantasy, but stay with me...) At that point the terrorists will give up on the airports and pick something different. Remember that the first attack on the WTC, and the (domestic!) attack on OK City were TRUCK bombs. What's to stop someone from hijacking a tanker truck and detonating it? Trucker school must be easier than pilot school, right? And if the terrorists are still hot and heavy for airplanes, they could bring down an airplane without actually going through airport security. At most airports I know of, the planes are vulnerable to ground-based attack on takeoff and landing. Not the same as crashing one into a building, but it seems unlikely that that attack is repeatable.

joshwprinceton 15y ago

most ptz ever?

api 15y ago

One word: lobbyists. Nearly everything of this type is a giveaway to some private vendor with lobbyists in Washington. Whether it works or not is secondary to the primary purpose: handing money over.

samspot 15y ago

Seems like they should just combine Body Scanners + Metal Detectors + Pat Downs. A weakness in one tech doesn't make the whole stack worthless. Please don't interpret this comment as approval of the body scanners or the pat downs. I'm just trying to express that the body scanners have not been "made worthless".

eta_carinae 15y ago

All he did to prove his point was smuggle a small empty metallic case in his pocket and he expects all the airports to take down their scanners as a result... Makes total sense.

alinspired 15y ago

it's amazing how all governments, and monopolies are alike, whether it's US or not they will get away with it, until smacked really hard - which is almost impossible to do

nimrodreader 15y ago

so, if i face the scanner frontally, and the object is on my side, the object can be lost in my contour. then the TSA guy says, "rotate to right". now that object hidden on my side might as well have been taped to my forehead - what was lost in contour is now nicely in silhouette. or, i go through metal detector first, then get scanned. no big deal?

pseingatl 15y ago

Curiously, once upon a time the U.S. federal courts considered a police crotch grab offensive behavior: http://federal-circuits.vlex.com/vid/oswald-blake-leonard-eason-defendants-37283218 http://federal-circuits.vlex.com/vid/oswald-blake-leonard-ea...

pfcwt 15y ago

There are real terrorists out there you know. And they should be scanned, metal detected, and detained. They are called "US Soldiers"....