Tag Archives | Body Scans

Blogger Proves Body Scanners Worthless, Sues TSA

By majestic on March 7, 2012 in News 16

There have been all sorts of complaints about invasion of privacy and radiation dangers when it comes to the extremely expensive full body scanners employed by the United States’ notorious Transport Security Administration (TSA), but Jonathan Corbett may have the most effective gripe yet: they don’t work! He’s suing the TSA as he explains on his blog, TSAOutOfOurPants.com:

This video is here to demonstrate that the TSA’s insistence that the nude body scanner program is effective and necessary is nothing but a fraud, just like their claims that the program is safe (radiation what?) and non-invasive (nude pictures who?). The scanners are now effectively worthless, as anyone can beat them with virtually no effort. The TSA has been provided this video in advance of it being made public to give them an opportunity to turn off the scanners and revert to the metal detectors. I personally believe they now have no choice but to turn them off.

Please share this video with your family, friends, and most importantly, elected officials in federal government…

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Lingerie-Clad Woman Who Protested TSA Pat-Downs At OKC Airport Banned From Flying (Video)

By HAL9000 on December 30, 2010 in News 8

I say the reason she was/is banned is because it’s a frakin’ Cylon! These are not the movement of a human being.

But this time she was wearing all her clothes, so … via NewsOn6:

OKLAHOMA CITY — The woman who made national headlines for her near-naked protest at the airport in Oklahoma City is back and once again banned from flying. A YouTube video put Tammy Banovac in the national spotlight. Banovac says she went through security wearing next-to-nothing, to protest new security rules at airports nationwide. Banovac was back at the Will Rogers Airport Tuesday and once again, security says she can’t board her flight back home to Phoenix.

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The TSA Let a Loaded Gun Get on an Airplane (Video)

By HAL9000 on December 19, 2010 in News 14

Kevin Quinn reports for ABC KTRK-TV:

HOUSTON (KTRK) — TSA checkpoints at airports are at the front lines of preventing terrorism. When you go through security, you expect to be scanned and searched. And you expect TSA to prevent contraband from getting on planes, but as we’ve learned, that doesn’t always happen.

Houston businessman Farid Seif says it was a startling discovery. He didn’t intend to bring a loaded gun on a flight out of Houston and can’t understand how TSA screeners didn’t catch it.

Nearing the height of last year’s Christmas travel season, TSA screeners at Bush Intercontinental Airport somehow missed a loaded pistol, one that was tucked away inside a carry-on computer bag. “I mean, this is not a small gun,” Seif said. “It’s a .40 caliber gun.”

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Woman Strips Down to Her Lingerie, Gets TSA Pat Down Anyway (Video)

By HAL9000 on December 10, 2010 in News 22

C’mon, it’s obvious why she was questioned … she’s a frakin’ Cylon! Jesus Diaz writes on Gizmodo:

This bombshell wearing just black lace, a pearl necklace and a white dog is Tammy Banovac, a retired surgeon in a wheelchair. She got down to her lingerie while going through airport security and still got a pat down. (Update: Turns out that Tammy Banovac posed naked for Playboy in 1997, when she was a dental surgeon in Oklahoma, under her maiden name Tammy Lynn Brewer.)

Dr. Banovac always refuses to go through the metal detector. She has to use a metal wheelchair and that means that she always gets a pat down no matter what. Lately, she says she feels violated because the pat downs have become increasingly invasive during the last few months. “If it happened anywhere else, it would have been sexual assault,” she declared to a local newspaper.

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Hate TSA Body Scans? Homeland Security Is Monitoring More Than You Realize

By HAL9000 on December 2, 2010 in News 32

Lisa Rab writes on the Broward-Palm Beach New Times:

If you thought intrusive body scans and airport pat downs were just a fluke in the War on Terror bureaucracy, fear not: The Department of Homeland Security has plenty of other programs that will make your skin crawl.

For instance, Big Brother is reading your tweets and Facebook status updates, searching for dangerous words and phrases such as militia, Iraq, and, ironically, body scanner.

The program is called the “Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative,” and yes, it’s as strange as it sounds. The goal is appropriately vague, “to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture for the federal government.” Hmmm.

Scroll to page 17 of this recent Homeland Security report and you’ll find an extremely lengthy list of the terms — posted on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and other social media sites — that will grab the attention of government search engines.

… Read the rest

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Engineer Invents Underwear To Protect Privacy At Airport

By Pelliciari on November 22, 2010 in News 9

Rocky Flats Gear/AP

If it’s easy enough for an engineer to manufacture underwear to maintain some privacy when going through the body scanners, how long before people wear entire outfits like this rendering the scans useless. The New York Daily News reports:

While holiday travelers may not get through this week without a Transportation Security Administration agent touching their junk, a man in Colorado has a new invention he says will prevent anyone from looking at it.

Jeff Buske has created a special kind of underwear with strategically placed fig-leaf designs he says will shield TSA scanners from viewing fliers’ private parts and keep travelers safe from radiation emitted from the notorious “backscatter” x-ray machines.

Buske, an engineer, said his briefs, bras and inserts, which he’s marketing under the name Rocky Top Gear, use a special metal that protects people’s privacy when undergoing medical or security screenings.

“The object is…to protect the public, educate people and ultimately see these X-ray machines put in the Dumpster,” Buske told CBS4 Denver.

… Read the rest

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How To Israel-ify America’s Airport Security

By JacobSloan on November 16, 2010 in News 20

Security screening at North American airports is inconvenient and invasive, yet at times seems as if it’s all for show. How could it be done better? In Israel, they examine behavior rather than shoes or crotches. The Toronto Star enlightens us:

While North America’s airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification.

That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel’s, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience. Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel’s largest hub, Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002. How do they manage that?

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

… Read the rest

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Feds Admit Storing Checkpoint Body Scan Images

By Join Or DIE on August 4, 2010 in News 5

TSA's X-ray backscatter scanning with "privacy filter"

Declan McCullagh reports on cnet News’ Privacy Inc:

For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they’re viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for “testing, training, and evaluation purposes.” The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.

… Read the rest

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Airport Worker Caught Abusing Body Scan Pics

By majestic on March 25, 2010 in News 5

Airport Body Scanner You knew all those assurances that the full body scans were not going to intrude on your privacy were just waiting to be disproved. Here’s an early indicator from Britain, via Reuters:

A security worker at London’s Heathrow Airport has received a police warning and faces disciplinary action over claims he ogled a female colleague using a full-body scanner, officials said on Wednesday.

The 25-year-old worker made lewd comments after his colleague Jo Margetson, 29, mistakenly strayed into the scanner, which can see through clothes to produce an image of the body, the Sun newspaper reported.

The case is believed to be the first of its kind since the full-body scanners were rushed into service at a number of British airports in the wake of an attempt by a suspected Muslim extremist to blow up a plane bound for Detroit on December 25.

They are now being rolled out at airports across the world.

… Read the rest

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U.S. Airport Security Plan Calls For 500 Body Scanners In 2011

By Aaron Dames on February 5, 2010 in News 2

total_recall_skeleton “No wonder you’re having nightmares. You’re always watching the news.” – Lori in Total Recall

By Thomas Frank at USA Today:

Body scanners that look under airline passengers’ clothing for hidden weapons could be in nearly half the nation’s airport checkpoints by late 2011, according to an Obama administration plan announced Monday.

The $215 million proposal to acquire 500 scanners next year, combined with the 450 to be bought this year, marks the largest addition of airport-security equipment since immediately after the 9/11 attacks. There are only 40 body scanners in a total of 19 airports now.

“It’s a move in the right direction,” aviation-security consultant Douglas Laird said. “We need to scan all passengers.”

The push for more scanners accelerated after the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner near Detroit. Suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Flight 253 in Amsterdam after walking through a metal detector with powder explosives hidden in his underwear, authorities say.

… Read the rest

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