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Defeated

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Re: Defeated

#361

Post by schoen »

mherdeg wrote: post #206
jballanc wrote: post #32

There is an extremely simple solution: leave. I've not lived in the US for almost two years now. I've only had to travel back twice in that time. Meanwhile, in the same time I've visited France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany multiple times. None of those travel experiences were nearly as unpleasant or stressful as my two trips to the US. Furthermore, the technology communities that are growing up in these pla…

Do you happen to know — what happens if you try to decline to enter the full-body-scanners at AMS? Does Schiphol also have a "pat down option" like the TSA offers? Thinking of other European countries, in the UK, signs at Gatwick say that if you are selected for a full-body scan and decline to use the machine, you will not be allowed to travel.

The use of the full-body scanners at Schiphol is optional. The agents there are not very well-trained about this fact but people do normally succeed in opting out. For example, I succeeded after OHM earlier this month, though I was given more push-back than when opting out in the U.S.

Here is a Dutch government site about the scanners confirming that travelers are allowed to opt out:

http://english.nctv.nl/themes_en/themes-a-z/Security_and_civ...

Re: Defeated

#362

Post by Zak »

kghose wrote: post #100

Sorry, but I'm going to be the token "sheeple" here. Did you make such a fuss when you had to go through metal detectors? Did you make such a fuss when you were wanded? Did you make a fuss when you were carded (at the bar, or at the airport?) I think we should protest when the TSA is unprofessional and does not monitor their people and they do unprofessional things, (like circulate photos or make fun of people) but p…

I do find many applications of metal detectors and places where I'm required to show ID objectionable. While relatively minor, I do consider such things unnecessary intrusions in to personal liberty, and I would rather live in the sort of society where they are rare. Instead, they've become more common.

I am willing to accept an increased risk that a criminal might bring a weapon in to a sensitive place or that a teenager might get drunk and hit me with a car in exchange for an increased sense of freedom, even if the actual freedoms involved are fairly trivial. Leaving slippery-slope arguments out of it, I think that the collective mindset of a culture that accepts these risks and spends less time and energy worrying about them encourages more people to strive to reach their full potential.

Re: Defeated

#363

Post by laureny »

ferdo wrote: post #359
laureny wrote: post #270

> I give up. The terrorists have won. Or maybe you could recognize that flying is a privilege, not a right, and that you have other options if you want to make a stand in your beliefs, such as picking a different airline, going to your destination by some other means or, you know, not traveling. These entitled smug conspiracy theorists who act like prima donnas irritate me. "The terrorists have won" because you had t…

> flying is a privilege, not a right The government began to make claims about traveling being a "privilege" in the 20th century. The Soviet government used to claim the same thing, so perhaps the US government took a lesson from them. Traveling is a right, regardless of what power any government exerts to claim otherwise.

> Traveling is a right, regardless of what power any government exerts to claim otherwise.

A right in the US is what's defined in the Constitution. Flying is not one.

Re: Defeated

#364

Post by moheeb »

imsofuture wrote: post #273
tootie wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So invasive you'd rather have a guy grab your junk?

I do that not because I would prefer to be patted down, but because it's a lot more obvious that I'm being subjected to an unreasonable search.

Obvious to who? The people being subjected to the same?

Re: Defeated

#365

Post by B-Con »

ignostic wrote: post #315

I find it odd that a community like HN is reasonable, calm, and science-based on all but a few issues, like the TSA. The problem is not the body scanners. The problem is the TSA and the disregard of the bill of rights. Health claims: Passive mm-wave scanners do not produce radiation. The active mm-wave scanners use non-ionizing radiation which has been studied and shown not to cause cancer. One study even suggested i…

> The machines no longer store or display images of your body - they store and display images of a generic body with the data received from you.

How about a bit of warranted cynicism: How do we know the high-res versions aren't being stored? It would be useful for them to do so, the images have been stored in the past, and the announcements don't mention storage, only display.

(For those unfamiliar: High-res versions have to be taken, they definitely do exist. The vague images the TSA personal see are the result of the original images being run through ATD (sometimes called ATR or AID) filters that boil the original image down to the important parts.)

Storing the original high-res versions would probably be fantastically useful. It would provide a good data source for real-world benchmarks and operational feedback for L3, but most enticingly it would provide an audit trail for post-incident analysis so investigators could re-examine the scanned data for a targeted individual.

Given that this is the age where, by default, we store everything and analyze it later, people did talk about storing the images, even if it was entirely low key. It's just too obviously useful.

I was looking into this recently, and I couldn't find anything about the new L3 ATD machines that mentioned whether the images are stored. The parent comment's links say nothing about it and I couldn't find anything else that did, including the L3 ProVision ATD product page[1].

It certainly seems strongly implied that the images are not stored. We read phrases from L3 like "processed by software without human intervention", but that sounds somewhat suspiciously specific. OK, no one is definitely and actively looking at it, but what about potentially and passively? Is it just bad wording on their part, or is someone actually trying to leave a loophole?

If they're going to scan us in a way we feel is invasive, is it too much to get some sort of assurance that the images are being handled properly? Frankly, an audit of the machines would be more than in proper order, given that it's handling sensitive data that needs to be carefully handled.

Can anyone point out something I've missed? Is there anything that talks about image storage, not just display?

[1]: http://www.sds.l-3com.com/advancedimaging/provision-at.htm

Re: Defeated

#366

Post by ferdo »

laureny wrote: post #363
ferdo wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> flying is a privilege, not a right The government began to make claims about traveling being a "privilege" in the 20th century. The Soviet government used to claim the same thing, so perhaps the US government took a lesson from them. Traveling is a right, regardless of what power any government exerts to claim otherwise.

> Traveling is a right, regardless of what power any government exerts to claim otherwise. A right in the US is what's defined in the Constitution. Flying is not one.

> A right in the US is what's defined in the Constitution.

Can you back up this specious claim with hard evidence?

Re: Defeated

#367

Post by moheeb »

ilyanep wrote: post #335
laureny wrote: post #270

> I give up. The terrorists have won. Or maybe you could recognize that flying is a privilege, not a right, and that you have other options if you want to make a stand in your beliefs, such as picking a different airline, going to your destination by some other means or, you know, not traveling. These entitled smug conspiracy theorists who act like prima donnas irritate me. "The terrorists have won" because you had t…

Comments like yours make my blood boil. > flying is a privilege, not a right Is taking a train a privilege, not a right? Driving? A bus? Would you be okay with TSA-like screening procedures before any such sort of transportation? What makes flying so special? People have bombed trains, cars, busses, etc before too. > "The terrorists have won" because you had to go through a machine? I think it's time for the OP to st…

Driving actually is a privilege. Hence the reason it can be taken away from you due to misconduct. People in the US agree with this practice.

Every driver in the US has to pass a driving test in order to be legally allowed on the road. Is air travel somehow different? Maybe all you folks should be boiling your blood over the fact that you have to prove to the government you're capable of driving!

Re: Defeated

#368

Post by B-Con »

xxpor wrote: post #272
potatolicious wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few reasons: - They actively image your naked body. Metal detectors do not. - They record said image of our naked body for an indefinite amount of time. Metal detectors do not. - A human views the image of your naked body, and makes a subjective assessment of whether or not something suspicious has been detected, based on a wide range of parameters. A metal detector is a simple on/off detection based on an extremel…

This whole rant hasn't been true for over a year. All it shows now is a generic block body, with an indication of an area to check if the COMPUTER decides it needs to be checked. For the majority of people, it doesn't even show the body. It just flashes "OK" on the screen.

That only addresses the active display. What about storage? Do we have any official confirmation on that?

Re: Defeated

#369

Post by moheeb »

coldpie wrote: post #137
bluedino wrote: post #115

Isn't being felt up much more of a violation of your rights than going through an x-ray machine? My nutso-girlfriend refuses to go through them because of OMG CANCER, so instead I end up sitting around for a half hour while they manually search her. It's such a pain in the ass.

I agree. Wouldn't it be nice if every single person opted out, so they became so overloaded with groping that they had to change their policies?

Wasn't that exactly how it was before? How is that better, or worse?

Re: Defeated

#370

Post by droopybuns »

ignostic wrote: post #315

I find it odd that a community like HN is reasonable, calm, and science-based on all but a few issues, like the TSA. The problem is not the body scanners. The problem is the TSA and the disregard of the bill of rights. Health claims: Passive mm-wave scanners do not produce radiation. The active mm-wave scanners use non-ionizing radiation which has been studied and shown not to cause cancer. One study even suggested i…

I find it odd that we can exist as a community here at HN- with reasonable dialog and exchange of ideas, but yet we can have people like you who wholesale swallow these scanners as reasonable and worth accepting.

The TSA has a history of mismanaging the use of these scanners. This includes the actual operation of the devices as well as the maintenance of the devices. They don't provide meaningful security. All encroachments into our privacy should be fought on principle.

Stop moralizing so I don't have to copy your writing style to make a point. We can disagree on topics. There shouldn't be anything off limits at Hacker News.

The tactics you are employing in your writing style are obvious to any critical reader. Do not embarrass yourself by attempting to shame the community be association. We're all above average intelligent here. Reasonable people can disagree. Unreasonable people try to leverage shame. The community of opt-outers at HN is actually a reflection of the thoughtfulness of the average Hacker News Reader. Thoughtful people can disagree about Nginx vs. Apache, just the same as they can disagree about the value of TSA's naked body scanne^d^d privacy disintermediation proxies.

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