The uproar over the TSA’s new porno scanners (and the agency’s general fecklessness) is spreading.

Seems that the TSA is facing increasing push-back from passengers, pilots, and others over the new “submit to a privacy-invading full body x-ray scan of questionable usefulness or have your crotch inspected manually” policy.

Nearly a week before the Thanksgiving holiday air travel crush, federal air security officials struggled Monday to reassure rising numbers of fliers and airline workers outraged by new anti-terrorism screening procedures they consider invasive and harmful.

Across the country, passengers simmered over being forced to choose scans by full-body image detectors or probing pat-downs. Top federal security officials said that the procedures were safe and necessary sacrifices to ward off terror attacks.

Jon Tyner, The software engineer in San Diego who refused to be groped and was threatened with a civil lawsuit and a $10,000 fine, is now actually being investigated by the TSA, and they’ve upped the penalty to $11,000.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she “regrets” the resistance to these new procedures, but they are “necessary to deal with emerging terrorist threats such as a Nigerian man’s alleged attempt to blow up a jetliner bound from Amsterdam to Detroit last Christmas Day using hard-to-detect explosives.”

One guy’s failed attempt last year is not an “emerging threat.” It’s one guy’s failed attempt. People who want to blow up planes will use whatever method of concealing their weapons that you’re not checking for. Gaggles of hundreds people waiting to go through security is a bigger security threat than underpants. We’re spending too much time chasing after the last method we saw employed and not enough time using intelligence and common sense.

And groping a screaming 3-year-old? Just ridiculous.

Oh, and those machines that supposedly aren’t even capable of storing the revealing images they take? Bullshit.

Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys.

58 replies on “Backscatter Backlash”

  1. The head of the TSA recently said that they’ve decided not to search kids under 12. (Like 13 year olds are so much more suspicious?) But someone might want to spread the word in Chattanooga.

  5. Just wear a swimsuit and when the pervs “ask” you to step thru the TSA nude pix uploader (which has already uploaded hundreds of nude pix on the Internets) – take off all your clothes and say “Touch my junk and I’ll sue you.”

    Then walk thru the normal scanner while your clothes flouresce under the ineffective x-ray machines that can’t stop terrorist attacks on planes anyway.

    It’s time to just say No.

  8. A friend of mine came up with this one… I think it would make a much more affective protest.

    “I’d like to see a movement among fliers to really overtly sexualize TSA pat downs. Would they continue if we all talk dirty and groan and such?”

  9. Erosion of rights and dignity, and potentially massive inconvenience for cheap political points and the nominal “protection” of a relative few against an increasingly implausible threat? NECESSARY.

    Relatively minor sacrifices and gradual lifestyle change to protect everyone from the manifold certain threats of environmental degradation? UNACCEPTABLE SOCIALISM.

    Politics, y’all.

  10. Anytime you see a government official make a statement like, “…automatically deleted from the system after it is cleared by the remotely located security officer.”, you should assume the exact opposite is true.

    When you think about it, how stupid would it be for the system not to be able to match up real faces with the scan images? How the fuck would they know who to grab if they spotted something in the scanner? OF COURSE, the images are saved & linked to identifying info. If it didn’t, the system would be useless!

    How about we replace these brainless TSA agents with returning veterans? You know, people who actually know something about security and properly following orders.

  12. @11 – Only one problem with that, Fifty-Two-Eighty – the Democrats have never gotten anything done without the Republicans’ say-so.

  14. I have to say, I’m one of the people who doesn’t really get what the big deal is. Airport security is an inconvenience and I accept that it likely helps with perception of security more than actual security.

    BUT I don’t get what’s so violating about a pat-down, or those body scanners. We all have fleshy human bodies, there’s no secret there. We’ve all been subject to far more invasive procedures at the doctor’s office. Just let the people do their jobs, for Christ’s sake.

  15. Next up – TSA to quarter “agents” in our homes.

    Official reason: cause they feel like it.

    All your rights are belong to Republican pervs selling your pix on the Net.

  18. I think the TSA agents running the naked pictures machine should have to be in sight, and naked. The TSA agents doing the groping should have to let you grope them back.

  19. Or worried about the possible exposure to the radiation generated by the backscatter X-rays – which hasn’t been subjected to any sort of comprehensive scientific study of its effects, despite TSA’s “assurances” to the contrary.

    Given their track record to-date a sane person would be led to conclude that the truth of any such assurance coming from TSA is in fact 100% the opposite.

    @13, I regularly wear my UK survival kilt when flying because I can stuff a bunch of gear into the snap-on cargo pockets which can then be very easily removed and dropped in the x-ray bin.

  20. Tribune (foolishly, if they really want to make an issue out of this…or maybe they don’t?) forced YouTube to take the video down. Anyone got a link to the video of this I can post on FB? Need to send this around as much as possible.

  21. Also, as a software developer, I will maybe believe the whole “it can’t save any images” thing the day the machines are running software I wrote myself.

  22. I’d like the option to strip naked. No radiation, no worries about a biometrics database, no unwanted groping, just a straight-forward visual inspection. “ya see, nuthin here but wut god give me”. I think that would make me feel more empowered.

  23. @19 – Good point on the radiation, but consider the context that like 18 million man-made chemicals can be found in stuff we buy, despite only about 2,000 of them having full toxicological profiles. It seems odd to stand one’s ground on this one unstudied potential danger in a sea of unstudied potential dangers.

  24. @14, 23 – The issue is choice and privacy, and being subjected to this by our government (very different than a doctor), for dubious reasons, and with assurances that are shown again and again to be false. Whether you worry about the effects of the radiation or the act itself of being patted-down itself isn’t the point.

    Remember, this is most often interstate travel in your own country. Would you tolerate this level of “security” when you drive across the river into Portland? How about on a train or on a bus? All it will take is one big act of terrorism using one of those for the same level of intrusion in the name of security to happen there.

  25. What we need are undies that reflect X-ray backscatter with a giant “Fuck You, TSA pervs!” and an international No symbol when they scan us.

    Just say no to the Gestapo.

    If we wanted to be scaredy cat Russians with a Gestapo, we wouldn’t have fought the Cold War to be free.

  26. @24 – That’s the question I’ve been wondering myself. If the example of the “emerging threat” is a foreign individual on an international flight, why are these security measures being used on domestic travel?

    And the TSA’s threat that opting out is just going to cause further delays at airports seems to completely miss the point.

  27. Bring this letter from a UCSF Professor Emeritus with you. It describes the serious cancer risk that these non-independently tested machines pose to our testes, skin, pregnant women, people who have already had cancer, children and elders.

    “There is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations.”

    (Check it out, @14, this is a large part of what the big deal is; along with the sheer vulgarity of apparently unaccountable, lying goons touching your private parts.)

    Opt the fuck out. Every time.

  28. I’ll be traveling this xmas with a shy 3 year old who also cries when they make him put his comfort toy through the scanner. I’m practicing in my head now how to react to something as stupid as in that video happening to us. I don’t wan to get arrested, causing an even more traumatic experience for him, but I’m not going to just sit there while some moronic, impatient, and inconsiderate TSA pervert scares the living shit out of my child.

  30. So, we FINALLY begin to have some technology that can actually reveal things folks might try to sneak onto an airliner… and people are pissed off? Even though you can opt out?

    But they weren’t pissed off about random passengers being pulled from line and patted down or being forced to take off your shoes or being told that you can bring as many 300ml or less bottles of liquids along but not a single one over that limit? Because those procedures made sense or made them feel safe?

  31. Watching that vid with the screaming three-year-old being patted down, all I could think was, “Tell me again how the terrorists have not won…?”

    And good luck to any parent who has to explain to their child why in this one instance it’s not a “bad touch” they’re receiving.

  32. @30:

    Yes, you are correct. Because the double-humiliation of having to choose between either letting a bunch of complete strangers ogle your goodies – and potentially saving their favorites for subsequent extended viewing (not to mention the potential health-risk) – versus allowing said strangers to publicly grope your junk, has absolutely NOTHING to do with why people might be expressing outrage about this.

    Nothing whatsoever.

  35. Yeah – if they had actually ever caught even one terrorist as a result of all their bullshit, don’t you think it would have been all over the news?

  36. @30: We’ve always had the technology to reveal things folks might try to sneak onto an airliner. It’s called a strip search. The reason that this technology hasn’t been in common use is because people expect to be treated with at least a bare minimum level of basic human dignity.

    Yeah, all the restrictions so far have been useless, considering that you can still bring an empty glass bottle on the plane. But none of the measures so far have involved touching my dick.

  37. @24 – Okay, I get your point. I maintain that the TSA screenings do provide some level of security, and I feel that the level of personal invasion/intrusion is being over-hyped. BUT I concede on the grounds that treating everyone as a potential threat is a disproportionate response to a statistically small chance of danger, and could pave the way for even more unnecessary measures. It’s detrimental to society for the government to distrust it’s people as a matter of routine.

    So, congratulations, you changed someone’s mind in a comment thread. I think that means you win at the internet.

  38. Last week I got felt up all around my crotch because. . . . I was wearing a skirt. Yes. That was the reason they told me when I asked. I had to stand there and wait for a woman crotch feeler guard and watch a guy try to pick up my laptop off the conveyor belt and I couldn’t go and get it because the woman guard had not come over to reach up into my crotch.

    Because, I repeat, I was dressed in my normal woman outfit, a skirt, and because I was wearing a skirt that they decided was too loose. I offered to take it off so they could see my legs but they wouldn’t let me. So I had to stand there and yell at the guy to take his god damn hands off my laptop.

    Jesus H Christ.

    I hate all of them.

  39. @37 and …

    … you’d still be wrong.

    Doesn’t work.

    You’re more at risk of a terrorist attack sitting in your car on the freeway than in a plane.

    And four out of five times the TSA does a test of their security the “fake terrorists” get their items on a plane.

    Heck, this farce is just a plain waste of time. We all know that. Your seat tray table is a handy weapon if you have a penny.

  40. @10 – Exactly. And there are other reasons why they would need to save the images:

    1. Evidence – If they find a weapon in a scan, does’t it make sense to save an image of that scan to use in court when prosecuting the would-be criminal?

    2. Legal Defense – let’s say something shows up on a scan that looks like a weapon. The person is arrested and subjected to an even more invasive search, and they find nothing. The poor humiliated soul files a lawsuit. Wouldn’t TSA save a copy of the image so they can justify the further detainment and search of this person? (This also brings up the point that if they DON’T save the image, the agent can make up any damn thing they want that they “saw” to justify harassing a traveler.)

    3. Evaluating employees / investigating errors – how will TSA be able to tell if the screeners are doing a good job if they can’t review the images? What if there’s a breach – someone gets through with a gun – they are sure as shit going to find a magical way to recover the image so they can figure out how they missed it.

  41. @38 Yeah, I get that all the time when I travel. I only wear dresses, and if it’s a flowy dress, they’ll pat me down (I opted out of the scanner). It fucking sucks. But dresses are way more comfortable to travel in, so I put up with the momentary suckery for several hours of comfort.

    But at least at SFO they asked if someone was traveling with me, so’s someone could pick up my conveyor items. I guess that’s good to know for next time? Ask the guard to grab your items for you while waiting for the female TSA.

    Also, you can ask them for a private screening, which just means they’ll take you to a private room to pat you down, rather than in front of everyone else.

    Still sucks, of course.

  43. @30 – I was pissed off about that stuff too. It’s all pointless, reactive bullshit. This is much more invasive bullshit, and there’s no inconsistency in reacting when things go too far.

  44. I kinda hope that the FOX.news types get all hot over this… I’d wager we see some changes then.

    Also, national hero Capt. Sully (of land-a-plane-in-the-Hudson fame) weighs in against institutional groping.

    “I can tell you from my perspective as an airline pilot for three decades, this just isn’t an effective use of our resources.”

  46. What they should do is get convicted pedophiles to offer training sessions for the screening staff, i.e. teach them to how put the kids at ease so the molestation goes more smoothly for everybody.

  48. The machine is a giant computer, in order for it to display the image the image needs to have a physical reference point. Sure, it can be deleted, but if it’s just a regular delete not only can you get it back but you can save it from there. They really didn’t think this through.

  49. ARGH WHO CARES. IF EVERYONE IS NAKED THERE IS NO SHAME IN BEING NAKED.

    Seriously, though, the “privacy” issue is really, really, really not the problem here. It’s the backroom-deal bullshit that got these expensive hunks of junk put in place, and the continuing security theater in place of really useful, reasonable security measures, and the increasingly adversarial, authoritarian behavior of the TSA.

  50. @48: No, the image could be held in memory and never touch disk. I’m not saying it is, in fact I’d be damn surprised if it worked that way. I’m just saying that just because an image is displayed doesn’t guarantee it’s stored somewhere.

    Of course, the TSA isn’t the only entity buying these, and many other purchasers want the ability to save images. I have a very hard time believing that thoroughly removing that functionality was a high-pri item for the development team.

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