Full Body Scanners - Good or Bad?

[archibaldcrane]

I already avoid flying if at all possible - because I find the security, mainly the way you're treated like shit when going through security at some airports, quite upsetting to be honest. I don't mind the need for it - but how you're treated, spoken to like shit, grabbed by the arm and pulled physically out of the line for a pat-down search is getting ridiculous.

What airports do you fly in?

I've never felt like I was being "treated like shit" by security at an airport, and I've probably flown 30 times since 9/11.

Maybe British people are just assholes.

[toonces]

i gotta say cesaria, maybe you have bad attitued towards it, cuz i fly a lot, i get checked a lot. I'm very polite about it, i get the same treatment back. Is their job, no need to make it harder than it is. Once you back talk, you setting your self the bomb.

[Woozie]

It's like light.

It is light. It's long-wavelength light.

[Uzor]

I don't mind them. I've got nothing to be embarrassed about.

Besides, for those that do, you won't ever come in contact with the person that see a naked doll of you.

[SilverBreeze]

I don't think it has anything to do with being embarrassed for most people.

You can be perfectly comfortable with your body and still not want some random stranger to see what is essentially a naked picture of yourself.

[Kryssan]

I don't think it has anything to do with being embarrassed for most people.

You can be perfectly comfortable with your body and still not want some random stranger to see what is essentially a naked picture of yourself.

I read this and all I thought was "Hint Hint".




At any rate, I can't honestly care too much about the T-rays bit. Unless they can really prove its more dangerous than the extra radiation you're going to take by actually flying on the plane in the first place, its just another datapoint on a scatter chart that you have no control over as far as stochastic radiation effects are concerned. You're alive, you're being bombarded by it. Most of you actually take more than the nukes do, because they intentionally have crazy shielding for us that works against the reactor and the ground/sky.

[willriker]

It has nothing to do with people seeing 'naked' picures of me.
It has nothing to do with the person seeing the pictures will never see what i really look like.
It has nothing to do with the software used to blur my face.

It is that this does nothing a drug/bomb sniffing dog cannot do.
It is about me knowing that displaying 'naked' pictures of my Grandmother does not make the plane safer/secure.
It is about this not even being manditory, you can opt out of this in favor of a, lol, pat down.
It is about disguising Bombs as things many people have attatched to their bodies. Things like colonoscopy (however you spell it) bags.

This does just as much to protect us as taking your shoes off before passing security... Nothing. This security measure, when combined with the process involved in its use, Adds absolutely nothing to the process. Adding a drug/bomb sniffing dog would add more to your security than this machine.

Lets set aside the invasion of privacy thing for a moment. Lets talk about how useless this thing is. You take an 'X-Ray'. Someone examines the 'X-Ray'. If they dont see anything, you pass through. People have medical devices attatched to themselves. Many many people. What about people in wheel chairs? People who crap in a bag, what if the bag happens to be full at that time? People who use a cane/walker? Of course there are more examples but youll get the point in a second. You can shape a bomb to look like any of these things. Do you guys propose they force someone who craps in a bag to display that it realy is a bag? Of course not. But, you might have just let the colon bomber on your plane. A dog would be able to tell, but not this machine.

This machine does not penetrate the body very far at all. It does not see anything hidden inside the body. If a bomber has something hidden in their colon, or swallowed a condom full of explosive material, it will not find it. A dog would, but not this machine.

The skilled, highly commited, bombers will still find ways to get on the plane. This machine only provides the illusion of safety at the expence of my grandmother getting a pat down (useless) or being forced to display herself (also useless). Again, its only going to catch the stupid people. But we already catch the stupid people. Those who truely plan things out, like the 911 hijackers need to be stopped through use of our intellegence agencies. There is no way to catch people who plan on the order of the 911 hijackers through the use of standard, unchanging, security protocols.

If you cannot rely on your intellegence agencies, then you will need to insert an element of randomness into the security consumers witness. Make sure to check the same things, but the method of checking needs to be randomized.

[zoobernut]

It is light. It's long-wavelength light.

Wouldn't a more accurate way to say it is Light is part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum?

The set is electromagnetic radiation and light and radio waves are both part of that set. They are different ranges of wavelength though.

[Correction]

Technically, anything that gives security personnel new information makes us safer. The issue seems more to be whether the small amount of extra safety is utilized efficiently by the staff and is worth the trade-off in inconvenience.

There's more to it than that. This same security personnel apparently failed to check his passport or find a syringe on him and higher up even better trained security personnel didn't pass information given to them about his potential risk to others to the relevant staff on the ground. These are all procedures they have been trained to follow since 2001. And they still fucked up.

You can put the best machines in the world between me and my flight but really some dumbshit is going to fuck up and endanger people. The solution there was never to put more machines in place and call it a day because the masses stopped crying out in fear.

[Rammses]

Wouldn't a more accurate way to say it is Light is part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum?

The set is electromagnetic radiation and light and radio waves are both part of that set. They are different ranges of wavelength though.

You're thinking of visible light. Simply light can be used to describe the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

[Woozie]

Wouldn't a more accurate way to say it is Light is part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum?

The set is electromagnetic radiation and light and radio waves are both part of that set. They are different ranges of wavelength though.

Yes, you are correct. In the end, our two ways of looking at it are the same, but your way of looking at it is "more correct". But when I'm explaining it to people who aren't into physics, I usually use light and electromagnetic radiation interchangeably. Then I call the light we see "visible light". Then I explain that it's collectively called "electromagnetic radiation" and they're just on different ends of the spectrum, similar to how red light and blue light are the same thing but are on different ends of the visible spectrum. It's a little easier for people to conceptualize. I'm basically simplifying the understanding of EM radiation by exploiting the fact that people already have a conceptual understanding of visible light, and the fact that visible light isn't physically different than other forms of EM.

I've noticed that when I try to explain it as "Light is just one form of electromagnetic radiation. Radio waves are another", people tend to get the impression that they are two entirely different things that both happen to be called 'electromagnetic radiation'. Kind of like how hurricanes and earthquakes are two entirely different things that both happen to be called 'natural disasters'. So yeah, the way I explain it is kinda weird, but I'm just trying to reinforce the notion that x rays/gamma rays/microwaves and all the other types of electromagnetic radiation that we hear of are the same thing but with different energies. So instead of thinking

"light is to radio waves as earthquakes is to hurricanes"

they think

"light is to radio waves as a magnitude 5 earthquake is to a magnitude 4.5 earthquake"

I know the way I do it does seem kinda weird to someone who already understands the stuff pretty well. But physics books actually do it my way too, kinda. In physics books, they often talk about the properties of "light". They say things like "the speed of light remains constant" and "light is made of photons" and things like that, but in reality they're really referring to all forms of EM radiation, not just visible light. So they're using the terms interchangeably just like I do. If they want to say something specifically about the visible part of the spectrum, they'll say "visible light" instead of just "light".

Edit: Rammses summed up my entire post in one sentence lol. Basically, what it boils down to is that the word "light" is somewhat ambiguous.

[willriker]

But your explanation was more eloquent.

[zoobernut]

I guess I always had physics teachers in high school and college that would yell at me if I referred to any electromagnetic radiation as "light". It is ambiguous and in the world of science that is not the best thing.

Edit: And yes light we can see is the visible light spectrum.

I guess I personally have never seen the term light used to describe the entire electromagnetic radiation spectrum. Specially not radio waves.

[BRP]

Dear people who are so incredibly proud of their bodies you are looking at this the wrong way. These people able to see your magnificent naked bodies for FREE. This is an outrage. Someone as beautiful and perfectly shaped as yourself should never be turned into a freebie.

[Acturus]

http://www.applegeeks.com/lite/strips/aglite561.jpg

Saw this today, thought it was applicable.

[SilverBreeze]

Wearing the biggest strap on I can find next time I go to the airport.

[Rammses]

http://i49.tinypic.com/148jkop.png







http://www.pamil-visions.net/wp-cont.../04/skynet.jpg

[Woozie]

I guess I personally have never seen the term light used to describe the entire electromagnetic radiation spectrum.

Sure you have. Those same teachers who made you say "EM radiation" instead of "light" probably talked a lot about the speed of "light" and the properties of "light". When they said "the speed of light", they weren't specifically talking about the visible part of the EM spectrum. They were talking about any or every part of the entire spectrum. You've also seen us do this in the LHC thread. We talk about photons and the properties of light and such, but we're usually not referring specifically to visible light. We're talking about any or every part of the spectrum.

Now when it comes to any specific part of the spectrum, we usually don't use the term "light". If we're referring specifically to radio waves, we say radio waves. If we're specifically talking about microwaves or gamma rays or x rays, we just say the specific name of the waves. If we're talking about light that we can see, we say "visible light" instead of just "light".

[Rowe]

Back in the 50s when the cold war was just getting going the US Air Force built a lot of Radar installations in the north, Alaska and Canada. The personnel assigned to these installations thought it was pretty cold and would sometimes go stand in front of the radar dish to warm up. The dishes emitted microwaves so standing in front of them made you warm, standing in front too long a couple men had their eyeballs cooked.

T-Rays are in between radio waves and microwaves so their effect on tissue is considered thermal. I would expect over exposure would probably lead to melanoma. Only time will tell.

Over the last 60 years the amount of electromagnetic radiation humans are exposed to has risen an incalculable amount. People wonder why 1 in 166 children are autistic, they want to blame one thing as the cause. I don't believe it is any one thing causing such things as increased rates of cancer or autism. I believe it is a cumulative effect of our modern lives. Processed foods, EM exposure even clothing is chemically treated and we absorb these chemicals through our skin. Cancer is simply faulty cellular replication.

This whole big full body scanner roll out is a knee jerk reaction to a set of circumstances which should have been preventable within the current system were it not for bureaucratic incompetence. Fine if it is limited in it's use I can live with that but some schmuck getting paid $10-20 buck an hour sitting in front of the screen at an airport is just as likely to fuck up as some bureaucrat in an embassy.

In the end it is all a smoke and mirrors game to give the illusion of greater security. But no system will be foolproof. There is an element of risk in all things and there will be more lapses in security in the future.

[BunkMonk]

Their profiling is decidedly shonky - my mum and step-dad flew to the States from the UK for a holiday on the 26th (white, middle-class professional couple - so not exactly the type to "look" like a terrorist if we're stereotyping here). They got off the flight and were pulled to one side and shunted into the "suspects" room - full of arabs and whoever had met the latest image of whatever a terrorist is looking like this week - they were the only white people in the room, my mum's convinced they were there to prove there wasn't racial discrimination going on. Kept for three hours - shouted at by security en masse to sit down and shut up, no toilet facilities etc - until my mum went and asked politely what was going on - and they immediately ushered them through and straight out within about 10 minutes with massive levels of apologies. While they appreciated what was going on in the aftermath of the Xmas nutter - my mum, who is normally very calm and laidback about things that need to be done, is actually at the point where she won't holiday in the States again after it.

So nope, "don't go to the airport looking like a suicide bomber" isn't quite it really.

I already avoid flying if at all possible (I prefer being on the guaranteed winning side when gravity's involved anyway) - because I find the security, mainly the way you're treated like shit when going through security at some airports, quite upsetting to be honest. I don't mind the need for it - but how you're treated, spoken to like shit, grabbed by the arm and pulled physically out of the line for a pat-down search is getting ridiculous.

Being older and white doesn't give you an automatic clear as far as security is concerned. Last I knew, people in that group can still commit crimes. I've been pulled aside for a slightly more detailed search, and I'm a white, female, and in my 20s. Total terror profile, I know, but it doesn't hurt to check random people.

Example of that, long ago I worked retail - an office supply store. The store had a policy that allowed us to open up boxed items that people were purchasing to make sure they didn't stash anything inside. We didn't check everyone, mainly just those who fit the typical shoplifter profile, but one day I checked the box of this little old lady who was buying some file trays. Stuffed inside were 2 laser toner cartridges valued at $130 each - box of file trays was $6.99. I asked if she would like to purchase a box of actual trays, and she got all weirded out and left, so I can only assume she was in on it. Anyway, point is old people can pull some dirty shit too.

Back to the topic at hand though, I'm down for the scanners provided whatever rays they're using aren't harmful. A lot of you are saying that the body scans would be useless as the terrorists will just start ingesting and/or stuffing the items inside of themselves - so what's the alternative? Just do nothing because they're going to win anyway? Of course there will be those that take the extra steps, but I'm willing to bet it discourages many would-be terrorists.