Oh and a relevant FUUUU

More like Rapescan, amirite?

http://instantrimshot.com/

Just because something is silly and trivial to you doesn't make it so for everyone else.

If the govt. said they were going to search everyone's homes tomorrow for illegal drugs there would be people who said "Well, I don't mind, I have none in my house, it's silly to be upset about this if you have nothing to hide."

I'm not saying the scanning is a good idea. I'm not even trying to get into the legality of the situation.

I'm just saying that if faced with

[ ] some guy in another room has to see me naked
[x] somebody gives me a full-scale pat down and otherwise makes my flight annoying.

Somebody's going to end up looking at my x-ray junk. I hope they like it.

I do think that that's am much more valid concern that the health aspect, which just strikes me as really stupid tinfoil hat nonsense until somebody demonstrates otherwise.

If people want to fight it and make a point, more power to them. However, I think they should approach the situation differently than the guy in this case. The language he quotes himself as using seems needlessly confrontational in some cases, and not at all directed at the right people. He wasn't just protesting, he was being a dick, and if you want to make a point, to me you do it in a way that doesn't leave people thinking "he's right, but he's an *******".

The guy is probably a dick, but he's done more than anyone to date to get the ball rolling on getting these things removed.

actually he knows their true motivations

Obamas Hand in Your Crotch/

Quote:

The Transportation Security Administration's demeaning new "enhanced pat-down" procedures are a direct result of the Obama administration's willful blindness to the threat from Islamic radicals. While better tools are available to keep air travelers safe, they would involve recognizing the threat for what it is, which is something the White House will never do.

El Al, Israel's national airline, employs a smarter approach. Any airline representing the state of Israel is a natural - some might say preeminent - target for terrorist attacks. Yet El Al has one of the best security records in the world and doesn't resort to wide-scale use of methods that would under other circumstances constitute sexual assault. The Israelis have achieved this track record of safety by employing sophisticated intelligence analysis which allows them to predict which travelers constitute a possible threat and which do not. Resources are then focused on the more probable threats with minimal intrusion on those who are likely not to be terrorists.

Here in the United States, these sophisticated techniques have roundly been denounced as discriminatory "profiling." Allegedly postracial America has been unable to come to grips with the difference between immoral and illegal racial discrimination and the prudent use of the types of techniques that police on the beat use every day, which is similar to practices the customs service applies to assessing which packages being sent into the country are licit and which were sent by smugglers. TSA believes an 80-year-old grandmother deserves the same level of scrutiny at an airport terminal checkpoint as a 19-year-old male exchange student from Yemen. This policy not only is a waste of time and resources, it denies reality.

Yeah pretty much, another exercise in political correctness ultimately. If current Drudge headline is correct it's more than fondling your junk.

Then we have this:

CAIR Travel Advisory: New Airport Pat-Downs Called Invasive, Humiliating

Quote:

CAIR today issued a travel advisory for airline passengers who may be subjected to new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) "enhanced pat-downs" that many of those who undergo the procedure describe as invasive and humiliating.

These rules won't last too long.

I agree with Dids that the guy went the toolbox route, but that's about all I agree with.



I also think it's great how one day he's Joe Random, and the next day he's Joe Don't Touch My Junk Guy. Forever.

For dids, it's not intrusion to see him naked, it's punishment for the screener.

Wait til you have a daughter or wife that screeners "selectively" pick. But chances are she would never be hot enough to be picked.

Yea, under Bush none of this **** would be going down, but you know just as soon as they get one of their own in the White House it's open season on YOUR WIVES AND DAUGHTERS AND NUNS at the airport.

Also did you hear that Muslims don't have to go through these checks? What is it, backwards day?

Letter of Concern from members of UCSF science faculty
http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf
Dids brought up potential health concerns...

Agreed. I mean, I bet if back in the day someone had recorded the Rosa Parks incident some people who listened to it would (out of ignorance) probably say she acted like a B....

You gotta make waves to make changes.

Well yeah. Some people are more concerned about political scoreboards than actual civil rights.

I assume you can also find quotes from the people that developed and implemented the machines that speak to their safety- right?

Frankly- this is the part that should be bolded. Not that anybody knows anything, but that there isn't enough information available to make an assessment.

I don't really want to get all "appeal to authority", but I have to think that there was some vetting done with these machines, and that somebody at some point asked some of the same questions these USCF people did, and somebody made a call that they were safe (enough?).

Who said I was frowning all over the fight? I think it's a good fight. The current TSA security scheme is kabuki theater. But as you correctly note, the people I'm talking about care more about political scoreboards than actual civil rights, and it's why the political opposition isn't all that deep. ~80% of Americans favor the full-body scanners. That's what I was responding to tom about. I know you and Brian J just heard "wacism wacism wacism" and it made you feel bad and defensive about the radio you listen to or the websites you read, and in your rage or sadness or whatever you just started making irrelevant responses, but I was responding to some specific stuff tom wrote, and it explains why I'm arguing what I'm arguing: that the political opposition to this is currently being mostly manufactured by people with no sincere opposition to TSA security theater and are just looking to made the administration look like fascists.

I already spelled all this out for you earlier pvn, did you read it?

TSA NOW PUTS HANDS DOWN PANTS: PART OF NEW SCREENING
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR5FU...layer_embedded

True, I think more research that answers such questions should be done, if the concern is unfounded, why not?

I don't think the government deserves the benefit of the doubt on the issue of radiation and safety.

Here's an article that touches on said history.

I feel sorry for elderly people who wear adult diapers.

True, but I wasn't talking about the same people you're talking about.

If the real safety data don't exist, it's pretty poor form to assume their safety from indirect measurements. Xrays are something that is intrinsically harmful. There is no such thing as a dose that is harmless, just a dose that your body's natural defenses can usually overcome. I mean, would you voluntarily be exposed to sub-infectious doses of anthrax repeatedly, as long as they're under the lethal dose, just for fun?

How much fun?

I'm almost serious- and that gets into a totally different thread/bent of mine about how silly I find germ/radiation/whatever paranoia in general- especially from people who drink/smoke/do something else that involves intentionally ingesting things that are known to be bad for you. Get your SARS mask on or suck it up and enjoy all the chemically goodness the world has to offer and maybe one day you'll mutate and get super powers and it will be awesome.

Anyway-

Maybe I didn't read that carefully enough- but my assumption was that the data exists but is not publicly available at this point. If I'm wrong, then obviously my impression of things change.

yikes ignorance

It's worse than that, Dids. The available data where they measured safety, they took the amount of radiation you'd be hit with and divided it by the volume of the body. That's the number that was cited for the safety of these machines. However, the whole point of these x-rays is that they don't penetrate the body completely. They stop in the skin. That's why you see naked people instead of skeletons. Thus, the volume of the body and the number of cells exposed to that much radiation is much lower, meaning the damage is much more concentrated than we are being led to believe. Concentrated damage is inherently going to be much more oncogenic. However, no study has been done to exactly measure how much this is.

The point is, Dids, that my paranoia here is not that this machine will give you cancer. I'm not going around telling people to shun getting dental xrays, or CT scans, or something. Those have tangible medical benefits that far outweigh the negative risk from a small dose of radiation. Here, though, we don't get that . Any increased risk of cancer from this device at all is likely going to be large compared to the not-at-all decreased risk that we die from a terrorist on the plane.

I am unwilling to trade my privacy and my health, even if I'm only giving up a little bit of them, for nothing more than security theater.

FWIW, DHS was originally insisting that pilots had to go through the machines but they do seem to be backing away from that insistence. At least in part because pilots have been complaining about the radiation?