According to this article from December, 2018, Denver now has new naked scanners. The upgrade is that it's faster (and possible has fewer false positives):
"The new machines can transmit and receive information almost instantly, because they’re multistatic, rather than multi-monostatic systems, Rappaport said. So, people only need to stay still for one second, not three."
At that time, Denver airport had the new machine, but the are plans to continue rolling them out. TSA continues to find ways to spend money!
Trumps budget requests "only" $75 million for TSA technology (TSA wanted $150M), and some so-called conservatives are upset.
"[Rep Michael] McCaul’s [R-Texas] views were echoed by Reps John Katko, R-N.Y., Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Mike Gallagher, R-Wis. Gallagher has advocated for legislation that increases greater information sharing between federal agencies and the Department of Defense, including biometric data of Islamic extremists returning home from the battlefield."
In general, Republican congressmen are not our friends. They'd rather see bigger government than individual freedom.
According to this USA Today article, the National Academies of Science have finally been asked to evaluate the safety of x-ray backscatter naked scanners. This seems a bit of putting the cart before the horse since the scanners were already used on millions of travelers before being pulled. (And, remember, they were pulled because Rapiscan didn't come up with a software upgrade for "privacy" quickly enough.)
I haven't had a chance this week to look at it more closely, so I am posting it here without further comment. If these machines were truly safe, then that is, of course, a good thing that people were not made ill by government ineptitude in this case.
This video showing a sales pitch by a government supplier is amazing for its bluntness. I blogged about these vans when I first started this blog and again last summer. Two years ago, it was something that was being used covertly, and in other countries. Now, it is being promoted openly as a device for use on American soil.
These vans do not use the backscatter radiation of the airport naked scanners - they are penetrating through metal to find contraband and thus are using x-rays more similar to that used by a doctor to view a broken bone. There is not - and can not be - a claim that they are safe for humans.
I have suspected that these devices have already been used on American soil by VIPR teams when they search trucks. I now have no doubt. It is unclear to me whether they ensure that drivers and passengers of the vehicles (all commercial trucks, to my knowledge) are clear of the x-rays. I certainly hope so, but any truckers out there should be aware of the physical danger these machines could expose them to and protect themselves in the event of a VIPR trap. I also doubt that TSA agents operating these x-rays are wearing dosimeter badges, as the TSA agents in airports do not don such badges.
What really bothers me about the use of these x-ray vans (and which is glossed over by the sales rep in the above video) is that one of the uses of the vans is to examine cargo at border crossings. What is smuggled across borders? Drugs, guns, and people. These vans have been used (at least in other countries) to see inside of trucks to find illegal passengers (leaving jails). In what world is it humane to knowingly expose prisoners, illegal immigrants, or anyone else to large doses of ionizing radiation without their consent or knowledge? It sickens me that this practice is even considered by the US government, and I fear that it has been or will soon be implemented at the Mexican border without consideration of the very serious human rights violation involved.
The department’s chief procurement officer issued a presolicitation
notice on Nov. 2 inviting technology companies to describe their
commercial off the shelf (COTS) or near-COTS handheld detectors that
could provide such secondary screening in the event that the AIT body
scanners now being rolled out to dozens of U.S. airports pick up an
“anomaly” during their primary inspections of passengers.
The US government has had a 50+ year history of getting various foreigners - especially Muslims - mad at us. This provoked a gruesome attack. The government retaliated against "easy targets" that had nothing, or very little, to do with the attacks and used the event to impose a police state. As part of the police state, corporatism was ramped up; that is, private contractors were given big bucks to find technology solutions to fabricated problems. So...
...Now we have porno-scanners that have pretty high false alarm rates, requiring many passengers - even if they don't opt-out - to undergo some sort of pat-down. A fabricated problem has led to a fabricated problem had led to a fabricated problem. Now a hand-held device will be developed by various companies, and they will (bribe) lobby Congress and DHS to pick their device. Given that TSA has over 60,000 employees, let's estimate that 5,000 of these devices are needed at a minimum. They're gonna cost at least $5,000 a pop, too. You do the math, but someone will get rich from this and so there is good reason to bribe officials. The cycle of government inviting corruption continues.
Our Defense & Security market, as we have forecasted, grew again
this quarter, up over 4% sequentially. We saw good bookings and billings
opportunity in missile defense, RF systems and Millimeterwave
solutions, in fact, we booked our largest at Millimeterwave order to
date in the September quarter and we believe that we are still in the
early innings for this advanced scanner ramp.
Around [2006], Rapiscan began to beef up its lobbying on
Capitol Hill. It opened a Washington, D.C., office and, according to required
disclosures, more than tripled its lobbying expenditures in two years, from
less than $130,000 in 2006 to nearly $420,000 in 2008. It hired former
legislative aides to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., then chairman of the homeland
security appropriations subcommittee, and to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.
It started a political action
committee and began contributing heavily to Price; Rep. Bennie Thompson,
D-Miss., then head of the homeland security committee; Rep. Jane Harman,
D-Calif., also on that committee; and Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., the top
Republican on the Senate appropriations committee.
In addition, it opened a new North
Carolina plant in Price’s district and expanded its operations in Ocean
Springs, Miss., [Lott's state] and at its headquarters in Torrance, Calif., in Harman’s
district.
...But
with the 2009 federal stimulus package, which provided $300 million for
checkpoint security machines, the TSA began deploying backscatters as
well. Rapiscan won a $173 million, multiyear contract for the
backscatters, with an initial $25 million order for 150 systems to be
made in
Mississippi.
Has Rep Thompson had a change of heart and now cares about passenger rights, or is it just that SPOT doesn't benefit his benfactors?
The recent ProPublica/PBS report detailing the shady background to scanner installation at US airports has been making the rounds. I like the New American's take on it:
None of this is to say that government standards and inspections are a
guarantee of safety or even that scanner manufacturers are deliberately
making unsafe products. It does, however, suggest that while the
government likes to portray itself as the one thing standing between
Americans and certain harm from unscrupulous companies, that same
government will not let a little thing like safety prevent it from
imposing its will on the people.
A new company is vying for government business. They have developed a scanner that just reads the energy that comes from your body naturally, eliminating the need for radiation. This is supposedly more private because details of your most private areas are not so apparent. But what about the fact that a warrant is needed to search me, and I am innocent until proven guilty? The media and our government continue to ignore this inconvenient truth.
Because many airports were "built at a time when security was much less of a concern," many airports have been getting expensive renovations. Portland's airport just got a $75 million addition. Colorado Springs is starting a $4.7 million renovation, including:
The airport also has plans to expand its security area to make room for larger required security equipment, such as full body scanners.
Don't you just feel warm and fuzzy that your paycheck goes to pay for a bunch of politically-connected contractors to build what should be unnecessary additions? Me too.
... just to support local jobs. Another re-published TSA press release about the cartoon-image naked scanners appears in a Tampa Bay, Florida paper. With a twist:
L-3 Communications, a huge defense contractor headquartered in New York, assembles the ProVision millimeter wave machines in a plant just off Interstate 275 in St. Petersburg. The facility employs about 230 workers.
Rep John Mica, who picked up on the public backlash over the TSA scan 'n grope policies by recommending that airports "opt out" of security, is (not surprisingly) a typical politician. I opposed his suggestion, since it is only substituting fascism for socialism. The "opting out" means that airports can hire a TSA-approved contractor that follows TSA guidelines (including the scans and gropes). Just what we need - more efficient violations of our rights!
Well, it turns out that Mica's interests are most likely with the special interests:
Covenant, based in Mica's home district in northeastern coastal Florida, has airport screening contracts in Sioux Falls, S.D., Tupelo, Miss., and seven small airports in northern and eastern Montana. Its deal at San Francisco International is by far its largest. Covenant employs nearly 1,100 people in the Bay Area, who make up nearly all of its 1,150 workers. The last four-year contract, from 2006 to 2010, totaled $314 million.
Don't forget - this is the same person who drafted the legislation that created both the TSA and the airport "opt out" rules. We won't be safe until this agency is disbanded and airports/airlines are given full discretion over their security.
