Protect yourself and loved one with new ANTI-RAPISCAN Technology

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8 responses to “Protect yourself and loved one with new ANTI-RAPISCAN Technology”

1. 

   Arvin Hill

   May 18, 2005

   And yet the RAPISCAN wouldn’t have stopped a single hijacker. Not one.

   No matter how outrageous any given proposition or policy, it is always rationalized by saying “the world changed since September 11th”. I’m going to start using it as an explanation for my screw-ups, legal infractions and dubious intentions. Maybe I’ll start a war or start spying on my neighbors or shoot the next trespasser on my property or start stealing cars for a living. “Not a problem, officer. The world changed since September 11th.” Even though it didn’t change at all.

   So this is what “freedom” smells like. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? All this freedom really gives a person a lot to look forward to, doesn’t it.

   At least we no longer have to worry about the coming totalitarian state. It’s here in all its glory. Surveillance society? That’s putting it mildly.

   I can still hear Laurie Anderson saying “Home of the Brave” with that little “ha ha” she mutters and tacks on at the end. Home of the brave, ha ha. We’re the most chickenshit people on the planet.

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2. 

   site admin

   May 18, 2005

   I went around the internet looking at several forums and seemed many (at least from what I saw) were all for Secure 1000, saying that the only two reasons one would be opposed to it would be 1) a person had something to hide and 2) a person being concerned over the size of their endowments being revealed.

   Typical.

   Rapiscan states the FDA has approved the Secure 1000 as completely safe. Yet the Rapiscan Secure 1000 will not be used in Canadian airports because I read it doesn’t meet the guidelines established by Health Canada. At least this was the case back in 2000. Because the device has been around a while and appears initially to have been pushed for catching drug smugglers. 9/11 has just given an easy excuse for its admission.

   The ACLU is also saying they worry about ariport security being distracted with being turned into the DEA and pursuing drug smugglers.

   I came across a record of a meeting to do with such security devices and their future (perhaps a Rapiscan meeting, I don’t know, I can’t find it now, sorry) and directly after the mention of Rapiscan an agent remarked that they were working on devices that would scan from a number of feet away. I forget how many feet or meters. (With Secure 1000 you have to stand directly in front of the machine). So, searching the internet for the above document, which I can’t find, I did come across a UK article discussing the problems of radiation accumulation through exposure to machines of this type as they proliferate, and that article mentions the expectation of concealed and mobile scanners in the UK.

   Cumulative dosage will be higher from scanners you have to pass several times every day (say, a weapons scanner at a school), and you’ll be exposed at the hospital, at the dentist, and maybe there will be high exposures you don’t know about. The NCRP speaks of proposals for concealed scanners, and mobile scannners that could check vehicles (which we covered in our earlier piece), while just today UK Secretary of State for Education Charles Clarke was proposing to give schools powers to search pupils for weapons, and to “have arrangements with their local police forces to undertake snap searches if they thought knives were on school premises”. What kind of equipment did you have in mind they bring with them when they do that, Charles?”
   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/18/blunkett_xray_blank/

   The Secure 1000 is already being used at a terminal in Heathrow.

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3. 

   Arvin Hill

   May 18, 2005

   were all for Secure 1000, saying that the only two reasons one would be opposed to it would be 1) a person had something to hide and 2) a person being concerned over the size of their endowments being revealed.

   Well, if that’s the case, then we don’t need any restrictions whatsoever – none – with regard to search & seizure, do we? I mean, hey, only the guilty have something to hide, right? We’re all good people here. Nothing to worry about.

   What this means, of course, is that law enforcment officers within their respective jurisdictions should be allowed direct and unfettered access into citizens’ homes without a warrant or any other kind of court authorization. The very notion of probable cause – already watered down so much as to be almost meaningless – can be done away with entirely since it’s nothing more than a liberal invention to keep the police from doing their jobs.

   It’s only a matter of time until that perfunctory argument is officially made and resolved. Hell, after the next major attack (and I’m damn surprised we haven’t sustained one by now), the Fourth Amendment will be rendered completely null & void and there ain’t a soul in the Senate with the courage to even muster an “Uhhhh… is this really a good idea?” Yaaay, we’ll be able to keep our guns so we can kill each other – but that front door will have to remain open, okay? Right!

   I feel safer already.

   As for the health implications, I have every confidence my government will fully inform itself of the hazards and take reasonable actions to mitigate the damage. Nothing to worry about there, as the Feds have an amazing record in public health… especially where “market forces” are concerned.

   And then – at long last – we can all live happily ever after.

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4. 

   The Heretik

   May 18, 2005

   Every day something new comes along that makes me wonder where are we going with all this help. At a dizzying pace, we are losing our freedom to be left alone.

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5. 

   Treban

   May 19, 2005

   Jefferson, Madison and the gang are turning in their graves. The founders of this nation would be apeplectic with rage at dubbya & co. This is just another way we are letting the terrorists win. I am not surprised we havn’t weathered another attack, they already one the day the patriot act was signed. We just keep putting more nails in America’s coffin.

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6. 

   BadTux

   May 19, 2005

   The Founding Fathers Generating Complex just ramped up by another 20 megawatts, methinks… sure, I’m all for solving the world’s energy crisis, but this is ridiculous!

   – Badtux the Snarky Penguin

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7. 

   site admin

   May 19, 2005

   Surveillance Society. Around 15 years ago my husband was called in by a friend to do some music for a huge animated video presentation, early days computer animation look. It was for a partnership of IBM and Blockbuster. The project went on for a year and a half. Slowly feeding little bits and pieces to score. And finally the partnership blew up and that ended that. It started off being about interactive kiosks for indeterminate use and then moved to wireless computer access, the example being a man on a plane being able to use his laptop. Then the last pieces were all on cameras planted all over a city that could be accessed by individuals in order to track their children and find out what they were up to. The example was a man saying, “Gee I wonder what we’ll have for supper?” Then he flips to a camera in the mall and hears one of his children saying, “I hate peas.” The man goes, “Hmmmm.” And then communicates to the kid, through a speaker mounted in the camera in the mall, “Kids come home, it’s time for supper.”

   “Drugs,” my husband and I said, thinking that was the psych selling point beneath it. Track the kids for drugs.

   Drugs were the excuse for surveillance and imprisonment pre 9-11 and post 9-11 its the combined agreeable oomph of terrorism and drugs. We were going to get there one way or another. The future was on its way a while back.

   The problem is selling it. This 1996 report on Airline Passenger Security Screening mentions Secure 1000 and the problem of public acceptance or rejection of the technology. Here they give the development of these technologies as a response to the increase in hijackings before 1972, though elsewhere pre 9-11 the emphasis on use I’ve read about has been on drugs.

   Anyway sellilng it. We read in media about how people are embarrassed but they’re accepting it.

   The people at Heathrow have been interviewed talking about how “Secure 1000” has been accepted very positively!

   A spokeswoman for the British Airport Authority at Heathrow said 98 percent of participants gave positive feedback. Passengers are invited to go through the body scanner on a voluntary basis as an alternative to undergoing a physical touch search. Bryan Allman, the project manager for Rapiscan’s body scanner, said some travelers may prefer the machine over current inspection methods. “I fly like everyone else,” he says. “And I don’t enjoy being hand frisked at airports. This is much less intrusive in my opinion, because nobody touches you.”
   Source: Revealing scanner in service at Heathrow

   I wondered if they were being told exactly what Secure 1000 was. Today I located the following and it shows that they don’t know, not at all.

   Here’s the article at the UK Register. I give most of it below.

   A Register reader passes us an eye-witness account of progress with the see through clothes scanner currently being tested at Heathrow Terminal 4.

   Queuing for the metal detector our informant spotted a machine with a Secure 1000 nameplate, and this rang a bell: I noticed women being pulled out of line and being asked to go through it. Obviously you couldn’t see them walk through it, but once through they were then escorted straight to the front of the line for the metal detector.

   Bell clearly rung, I’d hardly finished telling my wife to refuse to go through it when she too was pulled aside. After a bit of quick thinking from my wife, who’s just as game for winding up people as I am, the following conversation went something like this…

   Wife: what is it?
   Staff: it’s a low-dose x-ray machine
   Wife: what does it do?
   Staff: it’s a security check
   Wife: is it mandatory?
   Staff: [not actually answering the question] if you don’t go through it, when you set off the metal detector you’d be subject to a pat down.
   Wife: that’s fine, I don’t mind a pat down
   Staff: but it’s only a low-dose x-ray machine
   Wife: I’m a woman of child-bearing age, I’d rather not go through it
   Staff: it’s no more dangerous than having an x-ray at the dentist
   Wife: and I decline those
   Staff: well, you use a cell phone don’t you?
   Wife: yes, but they’re radio waves affecting my brain, not x-ray’s affecting my reproductive organs.”

   Note that staff appear not to be briefed to provide subjects with a clear statement of risks and dosage levels, nor to draw their attention to particular individual considerations which might make it inadvisable for someone to go through the machine. The x-ray levels from one of these are low enough to be generally harmless, but they might not be for all people, so the procedures being operated are, first, negligent in that they might result in someone being harmed because they believed the claim that the machine was harmless, and second, very very careless, because expensive lawsuits arise from this kind of behaviour.

   But instead of giving a fair presentation of the facts, the machine staff are coming up with guff clearly designed to persuade people to go through the machine. We checked with our informant about it being only women being pulled out of the line, but he tells us that there only seemed to be women staff working at the machine. This conforms to acceptable procedure, after a fashion, because as the machine sees through clothes (which the staff seem, erm, not to have mentioned), the general concept of modesty dictates that only people of your own sex get to take pervy looks at you. But it does kind of undermine any method that may underlie the choice of subject.
   

   So, looks like people aren’t being told what Secure 1000 is. But we’re being told they are informed on what it is, and that they have no problem with it.

   Would it make a difference if people understood what it was? Perhaps not. But I thought a 98 percent positive feedback rating was impossibly high for this. Not that people are going to have a problem with surveillance society so much as I didn’t think people would warm up so quickly to being viewed virtually in the nude.

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8. 

   Darren Hendricks

   August 15, 2006

   Well, I guess the bottom line is that the airlines are private conveyances. They have the right to protect themselves as well as the responsibility to protect their passengers as well as those on the ground who could be hurt or killed due to their negligence. I guarantee the same people who are against using this technology would be the first to sue on those grounds if, as a result of not implimenting this technology led to deaths. You home is yours, the only way that I could see this technology being used on your home is if YOU purchased it. I do agree that as Americans we have to keep our eyes on the government to make sure that our civil liberties aren’t lost, but you can already be required to do random strip searches at airports as well as body cavity searches. Seems to me that at least this is non-invasive. Now if people made nearly this much fuss over the person crossing the border who has their car confiscated (stolen) by the government for having a roach under the seat, and I’m not talking about someone who gets arrested here. They don’t have to arrest you, just keep your car, boat, airplane, etc. Whatever happened to due process? And this one has been going on for over ten years.

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