10 ms·

Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans

122 points by georgecmu 14y ago

incongruity 14y ago
Imaging the contents of my vehicle without a warrant or even without probable cause? No thank you. I have nothing to hide, but I fear what others might want to look for and why. I'll come right out and say it – the balance of power between the common citizen and the government has shifted way too far in favor of the government. More and more we accept invasive search/oversight from powers who continue to deny the public the same sort of transparency and insight. "Who watches the watchmen?", indeed.
- blhack 14y ago
  I wonder how much it would take for private citizens to hire their own lobbyists? edit: in case this isn't glaringly obvious, the joke is that we do have our own lobbyists. They're called congress. They're just horrible lobbyists.
  - incongruity 14y ago
    I think the easiest route is for anyone who cares about these sorts of things is to fund groups like the EFF and the ACLU. I'm just finishing graduate school (and am thus kind of broke) but still have an automatic payment to the EFF setup every month and will probably start the same sort of donations to the ACLU as well.
  - AsylumWarden 14y ago
    I also wonder if a group of people could get together and purchase their own x-ray vans and position them at the homes and offices of the politicians who support these vehicles. The vans are safe, right? And it is OK to use them on citizens, right? It'll be a fun experiment!
  - dclowd9901 14y ago
    The fact that your joke wasn't glaringly obvious (and I had seriously contemplated how much it'd cost to hire lobbyists), says much more about the shitty system.
    - zithtar 14y ago
      I know several Associates and Senior Associates at lobbying firms. A good state firm will run you $4-10k per month on a 1-year contract. Not sure about Federal but I'd imagine one of similar caliber would be 3-4x that. Now, this is in PA which has a relatively large, well-staffed and full-time legislature with (partisan politics aside) legislators who want to learn the issues and want to help their constituents. YMMV based on state.
  - incongruity 14y ago
    Yeah, nope, not glaringly obvious, to me at least. Thanks for the clarification. I guess I can see your point, but I think, in general, lobbyists are thought of as external to the congressional establishment, despite the similarity in possible roles, such as you point out... well, at least that's the way it works in my head, fwiw.
  - crazygringo 14y ago
    Oct 6, 2010: "American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist To Push Interests In Congress" http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-hire-highpowered-lobbyist-to-push,18204/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-hire-highpo...
  - Useful_Idiot 14y ago
    As far as I understand the American system, this is a false analogy: your Congressman 'lobbies' for interests within their core voting block. i.e. why your mid-west Congressman lobbies hard for corn subsidies, if a large percentage of her voting base are corn farmers. Given the "first past the post" nature of American politics, this can exclude up to 49% of your voting base before said Congressman has even been sworn in. To make this clearer: the way the system is set up, your Congressman isn't lobbying for any individual, they're lobbying for a percentage of the voting block that is sufficient to return them to Congress next vote. This is why campaigning on single issues is so common, and so successful for power-blocs such as the Christian Right. (This isn't to go into gerrymandering, which further skews the 'democratic' input of your system. If you didn't already know that only ~8-12 seats in Congress are actually contested in terms of party fealty, you really, really, really should do).
    - MartinCron 14y ago
      a large percentage of her voting base are corn farmers There aren't really that many corn farmers out there. Maybe you meant "a large percentage of her campaign donors are corn farmers"?
    - bigiain 14y ago
      "your Congressman 'lobbies' for interests within their core voting block. " This is where I think current "politics" is lagging many decades behind modern society. Politicians are fundamentally geographically defined. They get voted in (or out) by groups of people with no relationship with each other beyond happening to live nearby. That idea worked out fine when your village was your whole life, and it works OK for "big issues" that affect everyone (like taxation, education, military), but there are a lot of issues where there is more than enough public support to deserve representation but that support is not geographically localized enough for the current system to give the people concerned a voice. So many of the things I end up shouting at the television or newspapers about are in this category. What _I'd_ love to be able to vote for: A Congressman for The Internet A Congressman for Copyright and Patents A Congressman for Motorcyclists A Congressman for Citizens Rights WRT Government & Law Enforcement I'd like the opportunity to choose to vote for someone aligned with issues that concern _me_ instead of being assumed to be a "constituent" of an aspirant politician just because of where they and I happen to choose to live. Instead, the issues that concern _me_ are debated and voted on by people who don't give a damn because they know there's not enough geeks/musicians/inventors/entrepreneurs/motorcyclists/libertarians geographically clustered enough to make any difference at the polling booth, and so the only issues that ever get addressed are ones with a local enough aspect to risk having a likely effect on a city/state/federal elections outcome. Society has spread beyond having my circle of friends and acquaintances being "other people in my village" - and in the last 20 years the internet has magnified that change enormously, political and legal structures haven't changed to reflect that. (and may never - my circle of friends crosses national boundaries in ways that probably make my desires of how I'm personally politically represented impossible)
  - baddox 14y ago
    > They're just horrible lobbyists. Are they really? I suspect a lot of representatives are successful largely due to their ability to get federal funds directed toward their districts. The point I would want to make isn't that representatives should be better at shuffling money around, but rather that the whole game shouldn't be about shuffling money around.
rwmj 14y ago
Anyone know the amount of radiation received from these things versus other sources (granite, the sun, etc)? Assuming the machines are properly serviced and not faulty.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  Properly serviced, not faulty, and operated by qualified personnel with health physics training. (What? You mean that TSA goons get to shoot X-rays at people without having to take the same courses as doctors, dentists, and medical techs, including state certification and continuing-ed requirements?! Sign me up!)
- bgraves 14y ago
  From the article... The company’s vice president of marketing Joe Reiss told me in an interview that any dosage received by a human from these backscatter vans would be "exceedingly small," far smaller than a medical x-ray. He says that the vans’ dosage falls well within the health standards set by American National Standards Institute, and AS&E’s marketing materials say that the scan’s x-ray levels are equivalent to the dosage received in fifteen minutes inside a typical airplane.
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    They neglect to mention is that the nature of backscatter X-ray technology concentrates the radiation exposure on the skin's surface and underlying tissue, causing a significantly higher local dosage than medical X-ray technology and a typical airplane ride. For medical X-rays, precautions are also taken to avoid exposure to reproductive organs, since genital exposure to X-rays in parents is associated with leukemia and other diseases in their children. This is not the case with backscatter X-ray machines, and it is especially relevant for men, since their reproductive organs are so close to the skin's surface. Obviously, these things can't be turning up everywhere, or that remote possibility that a person would be scanned over 1000 times per year is all-of-a-sudden not so remote. Some regulation is clearly needed. [Another interesting question is how the drivers of these vans are protected from cumulative radiation exposure, as these X-rays are being scattered around them all day.]
nathan_long 14y ago
It's hard to see this standing up in a Supreme Court trial, if it ever made it there. IIRC, they struck down heat images of houses without warrants because they reveal too much about the inhabitants' activities. This is way worse.
- wissler 14y ago
  It's not hard to see at all: http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty/are-you-living-constitution-free-zone http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty... See?
  - granfalloon 14y ago
    how is that link relevant? the supreme court (led by scalia) has said that "heat-sensor" searches of homes are illegal. it's true there's a diminished expectation of privacy in vehicles, but i'd be very surprised if the x-ray vans withstood a legal challenge. just recently, there was also a unanimous opinion also that held that warrantless gps tracking is unconstitutional.
    - wissler 14y ago
      "I would be surprised" is not a very good argument. What is clear is that there is no principle guiding the Supreme Court in these decisions; you have to know which way the political winds are blowing. That may "surprise" you, but it's still perfectly consistent with the reality of our political situation.
      - granfalloon 14y ago
        if you read through some of the big case from the last couple decades, you'll see that there are plenty of principles guiding the court's fourth amendment jurisprudence. i'd actually argue that the court's search and seizure doctrine has been far less affected by the "political winds" than many of its other bodies of case law in my opinion, the biggest problem faced by the court in fourth amendment cases isn't political pressure, but the subjective notions of privacy of the individual justices. they've lived lives that are very different than those of the average american, and as a result i think their perception of what makes an expectation of privacy reasonable is a bit off
stevejabs 14y ago
This scares the shit out of me. Honestly, if applied broad spectrum (pedestrians, passenger vehicles, etc) what is the legality of what I conceal on my person or in the privacy of my car? What if I'm in a public space and I have a concealed weapon but a permit to do so? How do the differentiate in that situation? I really don't like this at all. I love how the company making this product is called 'American Science & Engineering' and if this is applied on a street level it's one of the most un-American things I've seen. Stuff like this makes me sad about where this country is heading.
mistercow 14y ago
>“From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says. Honestly? You're hard-pressed to see how x-ray vision into people's cars is a privacy concern?
- roc 14y ago
  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
kilroy123 14y ago
Funny, that the video in this article has already been pulled. I'm guessing it won't be long until law enforcement agencies start using these when they have "probable cause".
- dickfickling 14y ago
  The article was written in August 2010; who knows how long ago the video was pulled.
- meatsock 14y ago
  here's a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ
gatsby 14y ago
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3311647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3311647
paulsutter 14y ago
The actual text of the fourth amendment is pretty elegant. One paragraph explaining the legal requirement for probable cause and a specific search warrant: - "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." We don't need to justify privacy rights. The constitution already does that.
- daenz 14y ago
  It's the fuzziness that these backscatter machines bring in that's the problem. Is it really a search if you're bouncing invisible light through an object and measuring latencies? Does the concept of a search fundamentally mean "discovering property that was previously unknown"? Or is there a clause to that definition, something like "unless it is readily visible"? Can any legal guys chime in on what the definition of a search is?
  - beambot 14y ago
    "Unless it's readily visible" in which spectrum? Whether X-ray, terahertz, microwave, UHF, or visible light... it's all just electromagnetic radiation. Seems weird to make distinctions. To me (and trust me, IANAL) it seems that any law governing a "camera" should be equally-applicable.
    - mistercow 14y ago
      It's actually a pretty easy line to draw; the spectrum is the visible spectrum of the average human. The reason is that this makes it trivial for citizens to know what constitutes "in plain sight", and thus to control what lies in plain sight. If it bothers you that a legal matter is based on fuzzy lines defined by human physiology, then welcome to the entirety of pretty much all law everywhere.
  - Jtsummers 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States IR sensors used on a home constituted a search so could not be used without a warrant. This would likely end up in a similar ruling, especially since it can provide more detail than that the walls and roof are hotter than they ought to be.
taylorbuley 14y ago
FWIW, this is a very old story (close to two years old)
mleonhard 14y ago
Are there any inexpensive sensors that trigger an alarm when one of these vans drives by?
ChuckMcM 14y ago
This is a great motivator for bringing back lead based paint :-) More seriously though, its useful to know that back scatter x-rays are blocked by a number of easily obtained materials, and I don't doubt that the same guys who installed vibration dampening foam in your car for a better stereo experience, or the house siding/insulation sales guys, will have a pitch for you if this becomes an issue.
- sageikosa 14y ago
  That would just help redefine the term I first heard on season 2 of Archer: "rolling probable cause"
lurkinggrue 14y ago
I predict lead lined trucks.
- bigiain 14y ago
  I predict gieger counter equipped IEDs
jrockway 14y ago
I can't wait until this actually finds a bomb and they can't prosecute the driver because of the illegal search. Oh well, I guess the cops will learn that lesson after hundreds of people are killed...
- tedunangst 14y ago
  I think that may even be something they considered. Ideally, you'd find out about the plot to blow up the X beforehand, but as a last resort finding the bomb in the street sure beats having it go boom. If the perpetrator gets off because there wasn't a warrant, that's not the worst possible outcome.
WalterBright 14y ago
I don't care to have xrays randomly fired at me.
- dr42 14y ago
  The Sun kicks out gobs of x-rays, you're already being exposed to x-rays. One week in the sun is about the same as a chest x-ray.
  - WalterBright 14y ago
    I don't believe that chest x-rays are nearly so benign. For example, they've found even one x-ray for a toddler increases the chance of brain cancer. Nor do I trust that those machines in a van are calibrated properly - they may be emitting far more x-rays than they're supposed to. Who'd know?
Useful_Idiot 14y ago
If no-one noticed, in the video that meatsock posted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ) you'll notice that in the fluff (audio: "military bases" "border controls", "checkpoints") you'll see real world photos with US military personnel in.i.e. This technology has already been deployed. And, judging by the number plates on those border control pictures, on US soil. The chickens have already flown the coop. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
beloch 14y ago
It's also worth noting that these ZBV's deliver a higher radiation dose per scan than an airport scan. That's still quite small, especially compared to a medical X-Ray, but radiation exposure is cumulative. Effectively, every time one of these vans drives by you it's as if the government is giving you a lottery ticket where the prize is cancer. The odds of you being a "winner" are astronomically small, but should the government be able to hand you these lottery tickets without any cause for suspicion at all? I also suspect that, like airport scanners, these scans amount to nothing more than security theater and pork-barreling for contractors with government ins.
munin 14y ago
this article is from 2010. have there been any new developments?
philip1209 14y ago
The article is from 2010.
joering2 14y ago
This is sad news; what is becoming of this country? Does anyone know if they have those in Russia, China, or even on Cuba? If you think about this, and how this country looked like 7 years ago, where is this all going? I cannot imagine all the changes by the time I will be dead, in 50 years from now, approx.
rblackwater 14y ago
"You can't see any details." An insurance company could buy scans of cars linked to license plates to see if you are gaining weight over time, or how often you smoke. That's what I came up with after a couple of minutes of thinking. I think this technology should be criminalized.

122 points by georgecmu 14y ago

Imaging the contents of my vehicle without a warrant or even without probable cause? No thank you. I have nothing to hide, but I fear what others might want to look for and why. I'll come right out and say it – the balance of power between the common citizen and the government has shifted way too far in favor of the government. More and more we accept invasive search/oversight from powers who continue to deny the public the same sort of transparency and insight. "Who watches the watchmen?", indeed.

blhack 14y ago
I wonder how much it would take for private citizens to hire their own lobbyists? edit: in case this isn't glaringly obvious, the joke is that we do have our own lobbyists. They're called congress. They're just horrible lobbyists.
- incongruity 14y ago
  I think the easiest route is for anyone who cares about these sorts of things is to fund groups like the EFF and the ACLU. I'm just finishing graduate school (and am thus kind of broke) but still have an automatic payment to the EFF setup every month and will probably start the same sort of donations to the ACLU as well.
- AsylumWarden 14y ago
  I also wonder if a group of people could get together and purchase their own x-ray vans and position them at the homes and offices of the politicians who support these vehicles. The vans are safe, right? And it is OK to use them on citizens, right? It'll be a fun experiment!
- dclowd9901 14y ago
  The fact that your joke wasn't glaringly obvious (and I had seriously contemplated how much it'd cost to hire lobbyists), says much more about the shitty system.
  - zithtar 14y ago
    I know several Associates and Senior Associates at lobbying firms. A good state firm will run you $4-10k per month on a 1-year contract. Not sure about Federal but I'd imagine one of similar caliber would be 3-4x that. Now, this is in PA which has a relatively large, well-staffed and full-time legislature with (partisan politics aside) legislators who want to learn the issues and want to help their constituents. YMMV based on state.
- incongruity 14y ago
  Yeah, nope, not glaringly obvious, to me at least. Thanks for the clarification. I guess I can see your point, but I think, in general, lobbyists are thought of as external to the congressional establishment, despite the similarity in possible roles, such as you point out... well, at least that's the way it works in my head, fwiw.
- crazygringo 14y ago
  Oct 6, 2010: "American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist To Push Interests In Congress" http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-hire-highpowered-lobbyist-to-push,18204/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-hire-highpo...
- Useful_Idiot 14y ago
  As far as I understand the American system, this is a false analogy: your Congressman 'lobbies' for interests within their core voting block. i.e. why your mid-west Congressman lobbies hard for corn subsidies, if a large percentage of her voting base are corn farmers. Given the "first past the post" nature of American politics, this can exclude up to 49% of your voting base before said Congressman has even been sworn in. To make this clearer: the way the system is set up, your Congressman isn't lobbying for any individual, they're lobbying for a percentage of the voting block that is sufficient to return them to Congress next vote. This is why campaigning on single issues is so common, and so successful for power-blocs such as the Christian Right. (This isn't to go into gerrymandering, which further skews the 'democratic' input of your system. If you didn't already know that only ~8-12 seats in Congress are actually contested in terms of party fealty, you really, really, really should do).
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    a large percentage of her voting base are corn farmers There aren't really that many corn farmers out there. Maybe you meant "a large percentage of her campaign donors are corn farmers"?
  - bigiain 14y ago
    "your Congressman 'lobbies' for interests within their core voting block. " This is where I think current "politics" is lagging many decades behind modern society. Politicians are fundamentally geographically defined. They get voted in (or out) by groups of people with no relationship with each other beyond happening to live nearby. That idea worked out fine when your village was your whole life, and it works OK for "big issues" that affect everyone (like taxation, education, military), but there are a lot of issues where there is more than enough public support to deserve representation but that support is not geographically localized enough for the current system to give the people concerned a voice. So many of the things I end up shouting at the television or newspapers about are in this category. What _I'd_ love to be able to vote for: A Congressman for The Internet A Congressman for Copyright and Patents A Congressman for Motorcyclists A Congressman for Citizens Rights WRT Government & Law Enforcement I'd like the opportunity to choose to vote for someone aligned with issues that concern _me_ instead of being assumed to be a "constituent" of an aspirant politician just because of where they and I happen to choose to live. Instead, the issues that concern _me_ are debated and voted on by people who don't give a damn because they know there's not enough geeks/musicians/inventors/entrepreneurs/motorcyclists/libertarians geographically clustered enough to make any difference at the polling booth, and so the only issues that ever get addressed are ones with a local enough aspect to risk having a likely effect on a city/state/federal elections outcome. Society has spread beyond having my circle of friends and acquaintances being "other people in my village" - and in the last 20 years the internet has magnified that change enormously, political and legal structures haven't changed to reflect that. (and may never - my circle of friends crosses national boundaries in ways that probably make my desires of how I'm personally politically represented impossible)
- baddox 14y ago
  > They're just horrible lobbyists. Are they really? I suspect a lot of representatives are successful largely due to their ability to get federal funds directed toward their districts. The point I would want to make isn't that representatives should be better at shuffling money around, but rather that the whole game shouldn't be about shuffling money around.

rwmj 14y ago

Anyone know the amount of radiation received from these things versus other sources (granite, the sun, etc)? Assuming the machines are properly serviced and not faulty.

CamperBob2 14y ago
Properly serviced, not faulty, and operated by qualified personnel with health physics training. (What? You mean that TSA goons get to shoot X-rays at people without having to take the same courses as doctors, dentists, and medical techs, including state certification and continuing-ed requirements?! Sign me up!)
bgraves 14y ago
From the article... The company’s vice president of marketing Joe Reiss told me in an interview that any dosage received by a human from these backscatter vans would be "exceedingly small," far smaller than a medical x-ray. He says that the vans’ dosage falls well within the health standards set by American National Standards Institute, and AS&E’s marketing materials say that the scan’s x-ray levels are equivalent to the dosage received in fifteen minutes inside a typical airplane.
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  They neglect to mention is that the nature of backscatter X-ray technology concentrates the radiation exposure on the skin's surface and underlying tissue, causing a significantly higher local dosage than medical X-ray technology and a typical airplane ride. For medical X-rays, precautions are also taken to avoid exposure to reproductive organs, since genital exposure to X-rays in parents is associated with leukemia and other diseases in their children. This is not the case with backscatter X-ray machines, and it is especially relevant for men, since their reproductive organs are so close to the skin's surface. Obviously, these things can't be turning up everywhere, or that remote possibility that a person would be scanned over 1000 times per year is all-of-a-sudden not so remote. Some regulation is clearly needed. [Another interesting question is how the drivers of these vans are protected from cumulative radiation exposure, as these X-rays are being scattered around them all day.]

nathan_long 14y ago

It's hard to see this standing up in a Supreme Court trial, if it ever made it there. IIRC, they struck down heat images of houses without warrants because they reveal too much about the inhabitants' activities. This is way worse.

wissler 14y ago
It's not hard to see at all: http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty/are-you-living-constitution-free-zone http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty... See?
- granfalloon 14y ago
  how is that link relevant? the supreme court (led by scalia) has said that "heat-sensor" searches of homes are illegal. it's true there's a diminished expectation of privacy in vehicles, but i'd be very surprised if the x-ray vans withstood a legal challenge. just recently, there was also a unanimous opinion also that held that warrantless gps tracking is unconstitutional.
  - wissler 14y ago
    "I would be surprised" is not a very good argument. What is clear is that there is no principle guiding the Supreme Court in these decisions; you have to know which way the political winds are blowing. That may "surprise" you, but it's still perfectly consistent with the reality of our political situation.
    - granfalloon 14y ago
      if you read through some of the big case from the last couple decades, you'll see that there are plenty of principles guiding the court's fourth amendment jurisprudence. i'd actually argue that the court's search and seizure doctrine has been far less affected by the "political winds" than many of its other bodies of case law in my opinion, the biggest problem faced by the court in fourth amendment cases isn't political pressure, but the subjective notions of privacy of the individual justices. they've lived lives that are very different than those of the average american, and as a result i think their perception of what makes an expectation of privacy reasonable is a bit off

stevejabs 14y ago

This scares the shit out of me. Honestly, if applied broad spectrum (pedestrians, passenger vehicles, etc) what is the legality of what I conceal on my person or in the privacy of my car? What if I'm in a public space and I have a concealed weapon but a permit to do so? How do the differentiate in that situation? I really don't like this at all. I love how the company making this product is called 'American Science & Engineering' and if this is applied on a street level it's one of the most un-American things I've seen. Stuff like this makes me sad about where this country is heading.

mistercow 14y ago

>“From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says. Honestly? You're hard-pressed to see how x-ray vision into people's cars is a privacy concern?

roc 14y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

kilroy123 14y ago

Funny, that the video in this article has already been pulled. I'm guessing it won't be long until law enforcement agencies start using these when they have "probable cause".

dickfickling 14y ago
The article was written in August 2010; who knows how long ago the video was pulled.
meatsock 14y ago
here's a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ

gatsby 14y ago

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3311647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3311647

paulsutter 14y ago

The actual text of the fourth amendment is pretty elegant. One paragraph explaining the legal requirement for probable cause and a specific search warrant: - "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." We don't need to justify privacy rights. The constitution already does that.

daenz 14y ago
It's the fuzziness that these backscatter machines bring in that's the problem. Is it really a search if you're bouncing invisible light through an object and measuring latencies? Does the concept of a search fundamentally mean "discovering property that was previously unknown"? Or is there a clause to that definition, something like "unless it is readily visible"? Can any legal guys chime in on what the definition of a search is?
- beambot 14y ago
  "Unless it's readily visible" in which spectrum? Whether X-ray, terahertz, microwave, UHF, or visible light... it's all just electromagnetic radiation. Seems weird to make distinctions. To me (and trust me, IANAL) it seems that any law governing a "camera" should be equally-applicable.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    It's actually a pretty easy line to draw; the spectrum is the visible spectrum of the average human. The reason is that this makes it trivial for citizens to know what constitutes "in plain sight", and thus to control what lies in plain sight. If it bothers you that a legal matter is based on fuzzy lines defined by human physiology, then welcome to the entirety of pretty much all law everywhere.
- Jtsummers 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States IR sensors used on a home constituted a search so could not be used without a warrant. This would likely end up in a similar ruling, especially since it can provide more detail than that the walls and roof are hotter than they ought to be.

taylorbuley 14y ago

FWIW, this is a very old story (close to two years old)

mleonhard 14y ago

Are there any inexpensive sensors that trigger an alarm when one of these vans drives by?

ChuckMcM 14y ago

This is a great motivator for bringing back lead based paint :-) More seriously though, its useful to know that back scatter x-rays are blocked by a number of easily obtained materials, and I don't doubt that the same guys who installed vibration dampening foam in your car for a better stereo experience, or the house siding/insulation sales guys, will have a pitch for you if this becomes an issue.

sageikosa 14y ago
That would just help redefine the term I first heard on season 2 of Archer: "rolling probable cause"

lurkinggrue 14y ago

I predict lead lined trucks.

bigiain 14y ago
I predict gieger counter equipped IEDs

jrockway 14y ago

I can't wait until this actually finds a bomb and they can't prosecute the driver because of the illegal search. Oh well, I guess the cops will learn that lesson after hundreds of people are killed...

tedunangst 14y ago
I think that may even be something they considered. Ideally, you'd find out about the plot to blow up the X beforehand, but as a last resort finding the bomb in the street sure beats having it go boom. If the perpetrator gets off because there wasn't a warrant, that's not the worst possible outcome.

WalterBright 14y ago

I don't care to have xrays randomly fired at me.

dr42 14y ago
The Sun kicks out gobs of x-rays, you're already being exposed to x-rays. One week in the sun is about the same as a chest x-ray.
- WalterBright 14y ago
  I don't believe that chest x-rays are nearly so benign. For example, they've found even one x-ray for a toddler increases the chance of brain cancer. Nor do I trust that those machines in a van are calibrated properly - they may be emitting far more x-rays than they're supposed to. Who'd know?

Useful_Idiot 14y ago

If no-one noticed, in the video that meatsock posted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ) you'll notice that in the fluff (audio: "military bases" "border controls", "checkpoints") you'll see real world photos with US military personnel in.i.e. This technology has already been deployed. And, judging by the number plates on those border control pictures, on US soil. The chickens have already flown the coop. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

beloch 14y ago

It's also worth noting that these ZBV's deliver a higher radiation dose per scan than an airport scan. That's still quite small, especially compared to a medical X-Ray, but radiation exposure is cumulative. Effectively, every time one of these vans drives by you it's as if the government is giving you a lottery ticket where the prize is cancer. The odds of you being a "winner" are astronomically small, but should the government be able to hand you these lottery tickets without any cause for suspicion at all? I also suspect that, like airport scanners, these scans amount to nothing more than security theater and pork-barreling for contractors with government ins.

munin 14y ago

this article is from 2010. have there been any new developments?

philip1209 14y ago

The article is from 2010.

joering2 14y ago

This is sad news; what is becoming of this country? Does anyone know if they have those in Russia, China, or even on Cuba? If you think about this, and how this country looked like 7 years ago, where is this all going? I cannot imagine all the changes by the time I will be dead, in 50 years from now, approx.

rblackwater 14y ago

"You can't see any details." An insurance company could buy scans of cars linked to license plates to see if you are gaining weight over time, or how often you smoke. That's what I came up with after a couple of minutes of thinking. I think this technology should be criminalized.