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.
Oh my.....These are the same machines that we use at our airports after the US asked us to follow suit for counter terrorist reasons. We were always told that these machines could not save images.....
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.
Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual strip search. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing fuzzier images, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers.
Oh well there you go then, Whoosh that's a relief.....surely we don't have any of this going on here in Canada....eh?
H/T Joel
3 comments:
The thing is, I knew right away that there had to be some way to save the scanned images! Why? Because how could they prove one way or another that a person was body-scanned if something were to happen? Let's say an explosive device manages to get onto a plane... how could the scanning people prove that they were thorough if there was no image to show the authorities later? How could they know if people were still managing to get various devices on board if, again, there were no images saved? It seems pretty pointless to put people through that and not save all of the images somewhere, even if it's just for 24 hours after they were taken.
So on top of this news that says it is supposed to be for training, evaluation, etc - I do not believe that no scanners will save images for the simple fact that they would need to be able to prove to the TSA, govt, authorities, etc that a body scan was done correctly if there was to be another incident. That's always been my personal thoughts on the matter, at least.
Your theory makes perfect sense to me Kez.....:O)
I just thought of court cases (maybe I watch too much tv lol) where the airport security employees were saying 'yes we scanned passenger #5521' and all they could do was produce a piece of paper with a checkmark,,, then how do they also prove that they were paying close attention when the passenger was in the machine if they do not have a copy of the 'scan' to show? Why would they even bother spending multiple millions of dollars on such machines if they had no back-up for employees? An employee could say 'sure I was paying attention', when really they were trying to keep their eyes open from a late night, or got distracted otherwise and did not notice something... who the heck knows. But the only way to fully prove that the passenger was scanned, and that the employee did their job correctly, is to produce a scan image. I can't see any other way to prove that.
Or rule it out if an explosion were to happen on another aircraft. If they had trouble pinpointing where the explosion was centered, how could they know FOR SURE it did not arrive on a passenger's body if they did not have the scans to look at? It seems foolish to think that the machines are specifically set not to save images. There must be a loophole somewhere or it seems completely pointless to even bother using them... Something fishy is going on.
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