
They should just go ahead and 'crowd source' it
Just put the images on TSA-perv.gov and let everyone have a look. Points for catching a "terrist"; just click.
An investigation into the actions of TSA staff has uncovered a series of complaints from self-described “semi-attractive” female travelers who claim they were targeted for scanning based on their figures, and not on the likelihood of them being terrorists. CBS News investigated formal complaints to Texas authorities made by …
I totally agree with your feelings, Sir Runcible, but somehow I feel it would go wrong, some way or another. You know, intermittent connection problems in the camera, wires chewed by rats, nobody remembering to report anomalies in it's working or some guy accidentally knocking the camera over.
You all know that The Guardians of Freedom (TM) can't pry their eyes from their screens, to make sure they catch every terrorist trying to smuggle liquids in the planes, endangering the lives of the passengers. Making sure the camera is always working, even when 'semi-attractive females' -a group collectively known for their eagerness to become terrorists- are crossing the scanner, would imply expenses the USA can't afford, as they are using most of their resources in fighting terrorism everywhere.
The software upgrade solution seems better, but, given the level of security that Government's security contractors usually put in their hardware and software, some thirteen years old hacker would probably find a way to revert the scanners to their older state, and doing so he would win that 200 dollars prize offered by the TSA Employees Syndicate.
The system is broken, and trying to fix it without totally redesigning it is a lost cause.
But, wait! There is still hope!
Please, hear my proposal:
All the scanner's control rooms should be fitted with another scanner, continuously scanning the TSA agents while they fight terrorism. Any time the new secondary scanner detects that one of the agents shows symptoms of improper sexual arousal, an electrical discharge would be dealt to the offending agent in his/her/its private parts through a pair of suitably placed wires. The intensity of the discharge should be graded as to not to cause a risk of death, while at the same time ensuring that the culprit is definitely removed from the human gene pool, or whatever other gene pool they happen to belong to.
Thanks for your attention.
The advantages of my plan should be obvious to anyone. If culling the human gene pool -that really needs some culling!- and protecting citizen's privacy is not enough to convince you, please consider the long term savings and the expected pay rise for the surviving TSA agents, as they become scarcer.
If you find my plan has merit, please show me your support by proposing me for a Nobel Prize. Any of them will do.
Thanks, again, for your attention.
Postdata: Damn the 2.000 letter limit!!!
Happened to my rather buxom sister two weeks ago at DFW. She refused to go through the nude scanner a second time, after becoming suspicious about the chuckling she heard; then was forced to wait 10 minutes for a female screener to "become available" to pat her down.
Not everyone in the TSA is a high-school bully; but according to acquaintances in the agency and friends in airport security, the atmosphere is poisonous enough to encourage those who aren't to look for new jobs.
Three weeks ago I was flying with my four-year-old, and they ran him through the scanner twice, patted him down, and disemboweled the two teddies he was carrying before returning them with half their stuffing missing. No explanation, no apology. I'm a clean-shaven white American businessman, so I'm not sure what threat profile my son was supposed to fit...
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You're forgetting that they made the mistake of making those buffoons a law onto themselves. They know full well that you have a choice between being cooperative or miss your plane - that's why you also have the delay before the patdown alternative to scanning is available.
The TSA *URGENTLY* needs a large team of undercover inspectors to randomyl visit their locations and shake this crap out. It's already doubtful if they are not simple a huge money drain on the USA without delivering any decent security (I'd set up a couple of dogs with handlers myself - much more effective) - this sort of shit is not exactly helping.
"It's already doubtful if they are not simple a huge money drain on the USA without delivering any decent security"
Doubtful? Doubtful?! What are you smoking, dude? The TSA's own annual reports make it perfectly clear that they contribute nothing to security. It is an established fact that it is simply a job creation scheme. (I have to say, mind, that putting your hard-to-employ people in a customer-facing position probably wouldn't be what a private corporation would do. Still, government is as government does.)
Ask Ryan "Kip Hawley is an idiot" Bird if that's a good idea.
The TSA, and the local LEOs who back them up, have been more than happy to violate your civil rights if they feel you're giving them grief. You might sue them afterward, and you might even win; but it's likely to be a Pyrrhic victory.
I think they should put everyone through the scanners and put the pictures on big screens overhead for everyone else flying with you to see. Don't discriminate against anyone, discriminate against everyone. The Radical Fundamentalists we are protecting ourselves from would not want to sully their purity before suicide so they'd go and do it somewhere other than an airplane.
Nah. Make everyone fly naked. That would make air travel that much more horrible, and with any luck enough people would give it up that the airlines would finally start fighting back against the security state. (Until now it's been mostly to their economic advantage to go along with it.)
I bet the DHS sends a few of these guys to sensitivity training or something like that, and nothing more comes of it. If DHS agents who were very disproportionate in screening attractive members of the opposite sex were fired, then it might actually make a difference.
Big Brother is ogling you.....
It's time to turn off those machines.
A month or two ago I had a delayed flight out of one of the Dallas airports. While there I lost count of the number of good looking women who received pat downs at the entrance I was close to. However I know exactly how many guys got the treatment: zero.
TSA is a joke.
Or... the women were refusing to go through the perv scanners and so had to queue up for the pat downs.
I do wonder, however, if we'll hear of a woman deciding she'd rather strip in public so she can see if the attendant gets excited rather than let some faceless letch drool over her scanned form.
And no, I don't believe the stick figure story is true, either: That would require an image recognition system to identify objects and indicate relative positions on a mannequin. That's a totally different system to a millimeter scanner that just renders an image so an operator can use Mk1 eyeball to identify objects.
Anon for the obvious reason.
Not just what's in the bag, they stole our padlocks! We even had the ones with the special (highly secure, obv) bypass key for the TSA to use.
When I completed I was basically told that I must have put the wrong locks on. Since they took the locks, what proof would I have?
I avoid travelling through the USA now, preferring to do UK to Aus/NZ through Asia. Nicer people, nicer food, and they don't force my luggage open.
"I avoid travelling through the USA now, preferring to do UK to Aus/NZ through Asia. Nicer people, nicer food, and they don't force my luggage open."
A wise decision. I live in the U.S. and have had things stolen from my luggage, too, including, of all things, the guest book from my wedding (we got married about 1,800 miles from home so my wife's grandmother could attend the wedding). On top of this, several other expensive, fragile gifts were broken because of them. They were originally wrapped and placed in the center of the suitcase, surrounded by padding, but after the TSA thieves rummaged about in my bag, they tossed the fragile stuff on top -- practically guaranteeing that they'd be broken.
It's a boring job. 90% of straight men are going to be a little bit tempted, just occasionally, to select one of the more attractive females. It's human nature. If they want truly random selection then roll a dice or something.
Obviously I'm in the minority of men who can control their hormones. Everyone else is a perv but I'm caring and sensitive.
Thing is the image is not that good and a 5 second search will fidn you better pictures online.
So why bother ?
It is a power thing. If they were looking through a window to peep on someone it is a crime why is it not a crime now ?
If they must have these scanners they should have 2 lanes. one for women, one for men.
Unless I am mistaken they have these at Manchester Airport. At least that's what I assumed they were.
It was on my last holiday, and there were electronically controlled gates. AFAIK they were randomly controlled, or chose every nth person or some such, sending people either through the scanner or straight past.
I could be wrong, but if I am correct I think this is the right way to do it. No human interference (if someone is already flagged as a threat or security officials think they are acting sus, they have other procedures they can follow), just "random" selection.
"just "random" selection"
It should be all or none.
Random selection probably means 1 in 5, or 1 in 6 or some other calculated ratio (ie guessed). So the terrists send a team of 3 through. One might get caught. Will security be clever enough to then scan everyone getting on that plane or do the other team members get through?
Well of course it is; It's a proven fact that perverts will target jobs that will allow therm access to prospective victims, paedos will look for jobs in orphanages where they can have access to vulnerable children. The TSA would be targeted in the same way by the pervs.
http://www.google.com/search?q=tsa+strip+searching+children
Won’t somebody think of the children… really.
> If they want truly random selection then roll a dice or something.
Up here they have "randomizers": you step on it, it displays an arrow showing which lane you go to (scan or non-scan). Recently I noticed that the machine actually waits for the nearby operator to scan your boarding pass and validate something before it made a decision about the lane. Random indeed.
...arrange for all perv-scanner operators to be provided with a feed of high quality porn, carefully selected to match the individual workers tastes (including a blurry momochrome option for those who just prefer that sort of thing).
They'll either get bored silly with it or simply no longer feel the need to pick on the punters :-)
The behaviour reported in this article is entirely inevitable as the scanner staff are human, let alone when you consider how jobs in the CCTV monitoring field have always attracted the perverts. What's more surprising is that afaik these type of images haven't turned up on the web yet, there must be numerous specialist grumpleflick sites that would be interested in buying them.
Sorry, but I just wet myself when you described America as a 'police state'! Far from Land Of The Free maybe, but when you hear about the shit going down in places like North Korea (a birthday celebration venerating a DEAD dictator whilst a quarter of the population starve?!) then you really have to take a reality check I think my friend ;-)
@NogginThe Nog: don't confuse quantity with quality. Just because there is somewhere that does something to a greater extent than any given example doesn't mean that the given example doesn't have the same problems.
A good definition of a police state involves: a police force that regards itself as separate from the community; many branches of police with different heads/objectives; police powers granted to non-police personnel; little effective control of the police/pseudo-police by anyone, including the judiciary and [elected] members of the legislature. Both the US and the UK score very poorly on many of those counts. Stating that we have not developed police states because we aren't as bad as the extreme helps no-one.
By the way - used to love your adventures when I was a child! :-) (http://www.nogginthenog.co.uk/welcome.htm for those who don't understand the reference!)
When I tried to follow your link, to find out whether someone had been fast enough to register that domain or similar ones after reading your post, I found the following link:
http://www.airport-scanner.com/
Obviously someone expects to earn lots of cash with the TSA in a near future.
why difficult? plenty of software to take images and obscure intelligently. There have been years of development on stick images for sport purposes. Even open source options.
I suspect someone did suggest this years ago during development by the geeks who could see the obvious. But it wasn't included because of cost or because customers insisted the unspoilt image was shown.
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is staffed by morons to put it bluntly
The sort that have to open you backpack by cutting through the straps because they could'nt operate the squeeze together plastic clips holding the strap together...
US immigration was bad enough... now I know where the people who failed the entrance exam for them went
"The sort that have to open you backpack by cutting through the straps because they could'nt operate the squeeze together plastic clips holding the strap together..." I hate to sully myself by thinking like one of these people (my excuse is that I've not been well!), but, if you take the paranoia far enough, those clips could be switches that would set off the bomb ...
I'm so ashamed ... :-(
Utter tosh!
If they had the faintest reason to believe there was an actual explosive device inside a given piece of luggage then it simply wouldn't be opened at all.
When they open them they're looking for contraband, and they cut them open because it's fast and there appears to be no consequences whatsoever for them destroying peoples' property.
I saw a recent TV documentary about US customs. The staff shown in that one seemed to take pride in wanton destruction - and had a rather worrying habit of waving sharp knives around.
If anybody else did that it would be (possibly malicious) criminal damage.
The result? Travel insurance via and to the US is considerably higher than going anywhere else in the world, and people avoid the US whenever possible.
BTW, American Airlines in is Chapter 11 (administration). This may be related...
Anon because I do occasionally have to travel there.
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To be fair to the US authorities, if this were to happen, 19 muslims would be found and sent to Guantanamo Bay or back to Saudi Arabia, PATRIOT ACT III "You ain't seen nothin yet!" would be passed within weeks and some random Middle Eastern country would be invaded.
Sigh.
I'm sure that I'll be asked to explain this post to the U.S. Customs' officers should I ever enter the U.S.
It is neither to catch terrorists, nor to let some mouth-breather exercise power over a nicer woman than will ever speak to him, not even (fully) to get folks to reflexively obey the new Stasi.
It is to make money for Michael Chertoff and his pals and fellow investors.
Follow the money.
As others have noted, the TSA folks who steal from your luggage are not (precisely) the ones that grope your kids or ogle you, although they may rotate positions.
Every year or so I find I need to buy a batch of new "TSA" locks because I've run out.
My experience is that the thugs in TSA baggage screening lose, break or steal the locks on 15% of the trips I go on. So much for keeping your cases closed and secure, some times they don't even close them all the way. And I've given up on hoping they won't stir, shuffle and muck around with my stuff. At they usually put all the tools back that I carry for my work.
Ass holes.
War of Terror... When we win the war on terror do we send the gate guards home?
Can we tell if we're losing the war on terror by the increasing number of gate guards?
If the number of gate guards goes up, is that a sign we need better gate guard managers because the current ones are losing the war on terror?
lol the only problem I see here is that everytime I have to go through these checks some fat bald dude shows up and starts touching me everywhere and it is disgusting !!! Male travellers should have an option to choose who performs this check, a fat dude or maybe a good looking blonde female officer.
Something IS actually being done. Guns and other weapons are confiscated everyday and some criminals are hauled of to jail. Fewer terrorists are likely to try to get on an airplane now. That's a good thing.
Until someone can go to every airport, train station, bus station, etc. and point out the terrorists, this may be the best deterrent we have? No one likes the inconvenience but it's a lot better than a plane blowing up at 30,000 feet.
Ok - planes and people sometimes have problems at 30,000ft but what are the chances? Jeez - do you never go outside just in case a meteorite lands on your head? Really - there's got to be a better way than all this security hysteria - we can fly half way round the world in 12 hours but have to shuffle about airports at 1mph for hours on end...and then get perv scanned as well! It would be nice to see some sensible improvements somehow but I give up on answers - I'll go now