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Lawsuit Filed Against NYPD Street Body Scanners
- tsaoutourpants 14y agoOriginal author here... thanks for posting! :) I filed the first lawsuit against the TSA's nude body scanners when they became primary screening in 2010, and you may also remember me from my "How to Get Anything Through TSA Nude Body Scanners" video. Today I filed suit against New York City for attempting to introduce street body scanners that can look under your clothes from afar. It is unfortunate that it seems that government at all levels is always in need of a fresh reminder that the citizens for whom it exists demand privacy, and that each technological advance is not a new tool to violate our privacy. However, as often as proves to be necessary, we will give them that reminder.
- hnwh 14y agonot to mention the health concerns of going around randomly Xray-ing people... "A cancer for you.. and a cancer for you.. "
- tsaoutourpants 14y agoThese devices, as best I can tell, actually don't come with a radiation risk. They're passive scanners, meaning they don't emit their own radiation. TSA scanners on the other hand... ;)
- knowaveragejoe 14y agoPersonally I see the potential for false positives as rendering them mostly useless in a crowd setting.
- tsaoutourpants 14y agoIDK if a crowd would make them less effective, but there is certainly ample opportunity for false positives -- or worse, cops pretending to get a false positive to justify a manual intrusion.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- gnosis 14y agoWhat makes you think they're passive scanners?
- tsaoutourpants 14y agoCheck the mfgr Web site :)
- ScottBurson 14y agoI'm pretty sure you're mistaken. Terahertz waves are absorbed by the atmosphere, so those emitted by the sun don't reach the Earth's surface. So a terahertz scanner has to emit its own radiation.
- greenyoda 14y agoInfrared radiation (e.g., from body heat) is in the terahertz range[1], and might be what these sensors are picking up. And there are definitely passive sensors for infrared, e.g., night vision goggles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared (300 GHz to 430 THz)
- tsaoutourpants 14y ago+1. These things are basically fancy infrared goggles, detecting heat emitted from your body.
- ScottBurson 14y agoOh. Well, in that case it seems to me that the objection to them can't be that they're invasive. We have a well-established principle that says it's okay to take photographs or video of people in public places where there's no expectation of privacy. I'm not sure I see how the fact that this uses non-visible wavelengths removes it from the scope of that principle. Can you explain that? (I'm sympathetic to your goals here, but I think the tough questions need to be asked. They certainly will be in court.)
- derekp7 14y agoThe simple answer is that most people expect clothing to provide privacy for what is kept under them (such as your wallet, cell phone, genitals, etc). Now when the day comes that everyone normally wears augmented reality glasses that can see terahertz / infrared radiation, and that one would normally check themselves out in a mirror with such glasses before going out, then I guess there would be no expectation of privacy for what is under you clothes.
- jellicle 14y agoThe distinction you are trying to make is not between emitting and not emitting radiation - most of these scanners emit some form of electromagnetic radiation. The distinction you're trying to make is between ionizing radiation (x-rays; causes cancer) and non-ionizing radiation (all other sorts of electromagnetic radiation including visible light, infrared, microwaves, and so on; doesn't cause cancer). The TSA currently has some scanners that scan using x-rays and some that scan with non-ionizing radiation. A regular boring old security camera is also a scanner that emits non-ionizing radiation - most of them use infrared LEDs to illuminate at night. If you could see into the infrared it would look like every security camera has a big flashlight mounted next to it, shining on you. So the target, you, gets irradiated with non-ionizing infrared rays, which bounce back to the camera and are recorded. Using different wavelengths of illumination, you find that some of them penetrate clothes easily to see what's underneath. That's what the NYPD/security apparatus are interested in.
- tsaoutourpants 14y agoNo, that's not the distinction I'm trying to make. The NYPD scanners, as best I can tell, are PASSIVE scanners which means they emit NO radiation (any moreso than your digital camera "emits radiation"), ionizing or non-ioninzing. They simply measure the terahertz emissions (and reflections thereof) of other objects -- they do not introduce their own terahertz waves. I'm not defending the scanners (obviously)... I just want the case against them to be clear and sound.
- darkarmani 14y agoThis seems to relate to using devices to detect things inside your car (dogs) or devices to detect growing lamps in your house (unconstitutional search). It looks like they are working to erode searches again, using dogs to detect drugs inside a home. http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/10/argument-preview-drug-sniffing-dogs-and-privacy/ http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/10/argument-preview-drug-snif... Everything I learned in high school civics class seems to be obsolete when it comes to our Constitutional rights: "bong hits for jesus", "administrative" searches (body scanners), and now street searches. Why is it the argument from ignorance/lack of imagination via fear is so compelling? "We need to do X to stop Y." Where Y is something very remote but really scary.
- Zimahl 14y agoUgh, "Bong Hits for Jesus". That SCOTUS decision sincerely and utterly gnaws at my core. One of the worst decisions in the last 30 years.
- Wingman4l7 14y agoFor those who are curious and ignorant of this SCOTUS decison (as I was): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick
- bluedanieru 14y ago>Morse initially suspended Frederick for five days for violating the school district's anti-drug policy, but later increased the suspension to ten days after Frederick quoted Thomas Jefferson. What an asshole.
- stevvooe 14y agoWhat doesn't make sense about this decision is its clear lack of constitutional basis. How does an opinion (via statute) on illegal drug use conflict with a constitutional amendment?
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- josh_fyi 14y agoThanks for fighting the good fight! Just curious ... when you fly, do you get hassled or barred from the plane?
- tsaoutourpants 14y agoNot more than the average citizen. It actually shocks me that the TSA has never seemed to recognize me, especially in light of the fact that my name is in front of them to see and I always opt-out (except when embarrassing them on video, of course ;)).
- cg410 14y agoThank you for doing this!
- tsaoutourpants 14y agoHappy to help ;)
- bcoates 14y agoAre there practical materials to make hoodies and/or jeans out of that are opaque to these devices?
- knowaveragejoe 14y agoIf these are terahertz-band scanners, I believe most metals will block the waves.
- evoxed 14y agoSo, tin foil hoodies? Or maybe chain mail will come back in style? I haven't encountered one of these yet, but I'd actually be willing to go through if I had some sort of metallic pre-wash all over my clothes.
- knowaveragejoe 14y agoApparently there are a number of problems with terahertz technology, meaning potential methods of fooling them. http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/the-truth-about-terahertz?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrumFullText+%28IEEE+Spectrum+Full+Text%29 http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/the-truth-about-...
- tsaoutourpants 14y agoThere are tons of ways to defeat it. If the courts don't stop the scanners, I plan to design and market a scan-proof holster :)
- fnordfnordfnord 14y agoYes. It's trivial to defeat. Proprietor reports that he can't keep them on the shelf. http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2011/01/12/airport-scanner-blocking-underwear-hit/ http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2011/01/12/airport-scanner-blo...
- danso 14y agoPlaying Devil's Advocate here: how is this comparable to "nude" body scanners? From the demo images, it seems to produce an abstract outline except for the shapes that, I'm assuming, are too dense to be organic. In concept, how is this different than being forced to walk through a metal detector? Both this visual body scanner and the metal detector only provide vague indications of what you have hidden under your clothes. From a pragmatic point of view...maybe I'm misunderstanding the technology, but it seems prone to a wide range of false positives...to the point that using the scans to justify apprehending someone is not much better than stop-and-frisking because a person looks "suspicious"
- darkarmani 14y ago> In concept, how is this different than being forced to walk through a metal detector? Well, you generally have a choice (kinda) to walk through a metal detector. People should be protect from random searches while walking around the streets. At one time there were very specific cases where you had to submit to a search -- one being hot pursuit.
- danso 14y agoI guess that's true. I forgot that the NYPD can search through all of your stuff when you enter a subway, but you have the right to refuse and just not take the subway (at least at that station)
- potatolicious 14y agoIn NYC the subway is critical infrastructure, as important as electricity or water, denial of its use should not be taken lightly. Denial of this service to people who would not submit to a search, IMO, makes this highly coercive and the search can no longer be considered strictly voluntary. One has to remember that having seen the flip side of the urban coin, New York City has taken the stance that quality of life ought to be enforced via any means necessary: legal or extralegal. Both stop and frisk as well as the bag searches on the subway do not pass even a cursory constitutionality examination, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.
- DannyBee 14y agoI hope you win, but the way case law has been going, this is going to be a difficult lawsuit to win at the lower levels
- tsaoutourpants 14y agoOf course it will. And let me guarantee you this: the city will not start by defending the merits of the scanners, but by doing everything it can to get my case dismissed before it has to do so.
- codex 14y agoFrom what I can tell these devices cannot look under one's clothes. The image is just too blurry. In fact, these scanners could be considered cameras that capture light outside of the visible spectrum. Are we to now say that one can't take photos in public? That seems to be quite extreme. I would like to preserve my right to do so, even with an infrared camera.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]