EPIC Lawsuit to Suspend Deployment of Body Scanners at US Airports

I dispute this:

>The energy is absorbed mostly in the skin, NOT throughout the volume of the entire body as with other types of ionizing radiation. Also, the dosage is delivered in a few (under 30) seconds. You have to consider dose per unit time; the figures often mentioned for long flights mention the total dose, which is distributed over a period of HOURS.

First, your comparison is misleading. The dose of a backscatter x-ray is about 0.02 uSv [1]. The dose rate at 40,000 ft is around 6 uSv/hour [2]. Simply sitting in an airplane exposes you to the equivalent of a backscatter x-ray every 12 seconds (not "hours"). The dose rates are comparable; the flights last hundreds of times longer, hence give hundreds of times higher doses.

Second, your emphasis on "dose per unit time" (or dose rate) isn't actually important. For low doses (and these are EXTREMELY low doses), there is no difference between fast and slow exposure [3]:

>When you are asked whether there is a critical time period over which 1 rem of dose may have a greater biological impact than it might otherwise have, the answer is "No." One rem of dose is sufficiently low that whether it was delivered within one second or spread over a year or more, we would not expect any difference in biological effects.

(Note 1 rem = 0.01 Sievert (Sv) -- 500,000x higher than a backscatter x-ray).

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1268330...

[2] http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/info/RadHaz.html

[3] https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q8325.html

Not myself being a lawyer, I don't mind hearing this at all. What I mind slightly is not knowing why I'm wrong. Help me out!

The unconstitutionality of airport searches is not in question. The constitution does not have an "administrative search" exception. I understand that you're talking about the ruling of the SCOTUS, but I want to impress upon you the fact that the vast majority of people have never read the constitution, and even among those who claim they have, the vast majority apparently have not done so close enough to overcome the misinformation that exists in popular media about what the constitution says.

For instance, the SCOTUS does not have the power, under the constitution, to deem something as constitutional. They may have ruled (incorrectly, we agree) a dozen times in the past in various cases that "Administrative searches" were legal, but that does not create precedent (another legal term that is not recognized by the constitution) and it does not mean that such searches are legal. The Supreme Court usurped this power by ruling that it had this power in Mabury vs. Madison.

A reading of the constitution finds no creation of federal policing powers in the enumerated powers clause, and the fourth ammendment makes the point very clear. Thus if anyone is to say that this is "constitutional", they must provide a citation, to the constitution, of powers authorizing it.

The constitution was written in plain language requiring essentially no interpretation. It was designed to be enforced by the people, at gunpoint. It was written by revolutionaries, not people who believed in the concept of "free speech zones" or the idea that a judge could make crimes legal because they benefit the state.

The mechanism by which the criminal actions of the US Government become to be seen as legitimate is that of the deferrence to the SCOTUS as if it were the final arbiter of whether something is constitutional or not.

It is not. The constitution is supreme over the SCOTUS (and must be, otherwise how could it have created the SCOTUS and laid out it's jurisdiction?)

And the constitution is absolutely clear on this matter.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

No probable cause, no warrants "particularly describing the place to be search and the things to be siezed"-- makes every search a crime under USC 18-242.

You're probably right that they will get shellacked, but this is not because these searches are constitutional, but because the government is a corrupt criminal enterprise, with a monopoly over the concept of "justice" and thus will rule in its own favor, time and again.

It is time for americans to recognize that these gestapo tactics (strip searches and molesting children) are the actions of an illegitimate and out of control criminal conspiracy.... not a legitimate, let alone, constitutional, government.

And, hey, worst case you get detained by security and charged with a felony.

An easy one to talk yourself out of, though: "Oh, something must have happened to my upgrade since I printed my boarding pass last night."

The 1950s-era reservation system isn't going to refute your story.