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The TSA's FAST Personality Screening Program Violates the Fourth Amendment [pdf]

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Re: The TSA's FAST Personality Screening Program Violates the Fourth Amendment [pdf]

#41

Post by rasz_pl »

dguaraglia wrote: post #33
guelo wrote: post #17

FAST seems to be some kind of polygraph-type scanner using cameras. It's very likely that it doesn't work but some military contractor will make millions off of it anyway. Any efficacy data will probably be unavailable or classified. Efficacy doesn't matter to the authorities anyway because having people believe that their minds are being read is almost as good as actually reading their minds.

Kind of like that report about how efficient the airport "backscatter" scanners were. All we know about the report is a congressman said that "if released we'd face public outrage". But hey, someone's making a ton of money out of it, so who cares...

Rapiscan - John Kerry, Chertoff, Even Soros

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2010/11/24/politicians-st...

Re: The TSA's FAST Personality Screening Program Violates the Fourth Amendment [pdf]

#42

Post by rhino369 »

lucian1900 wrote: post #19
mikeash wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the idea that gun rights are important because it helps to check oppressive government. Aren't oppressive gun regulations the sort of thing that guns would let you fight against? It's always presented as, "this must be legal, or else we will lose our ability to fight for freedom." If guns don't let you preserve gun rights, how will they let you preserve any other rights?

Also, how would guns help against such a powerful military as the US has?

It definitely would.

The problem is that those guns don't only work when their owners are are supporting a free rebellion. They can also be used to usher in a tyrannical government. Hell, since the US is a democracy, its probably more likely to usher in a tyranny than defeat one.

The Southern states used their guns to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans to hold up slavery.

Re: The TSA's FAST Personality Screening Program Violates the Fourth Amendment [pdf]

#43

Post by batbomb »

EazyC wrote: post #24
guelo wrote: post #17

FAST seems to be some kind of polygraph-type scanner using cameras. It's very likely that it doesn't work but some military contractor will make millions off of it anyway. Any efficacy data will probably be unavailable or classified. Efficacy doesn't matter to the authorities anyway because having people believe that their minds are being read is almost as good as actually reading their minds.

Are you sure things like this can't work? I work in a computational neuroscience lab and we do a lot of modelling and also machine learning. Things like Eulerian Video magnification (EVM) already prove you can do the rudimentary proof of concepts of such "FAST scans" like being able to extract heart rate and blood flow from a simple video. Techniques like EVM can even be used to detect sound from video files simply b…

...and it would be readily defeated with some Xanax, and a bunch of false positives from people afraid of flying, authority figures, or missing their flight. Or any of 1000 other human reasons why people get stressed.

Re: The TSA's FAST Personality Screening Program Violates the Fourth Amendment [pdf]

#44

Post by mdholloway »

logn wrote: post #18

It seems to me that the law and precedent are used by courts much like the Bible is by preachers. You can justify almost anything you want. I read the whole paper (sans footnotes) and it makes a lot of sense. Had I not also read the legal memo on extra-judicial assassinations, I'd be a lot more confident that an average person could predict court decisions based on the current body of law and precedent. But I think a…

This is true, but only to a point. In principle, if the reasoning is flawed in some obvious way (say, writing a memo on executive power during wartime without citing Youngstown Steel, the leading case on the subject), other people with requisite training will sooner or later recognize that, and the error will be corrected.

Of course, this requires public scrutiny to work. Hence the problems with secret legal memos and secret court opinions.

Re: The TSA's FAST Personality Screening Program Violates the Fourth Amendment [pdf]

#47

Post by tajen »

gknoy wrote: post #32
hurin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rather strong verbal comments aside - I think this is almost certainly correct. Polygraph tests are notoriously inaccurate - where as for something like terrorist threats the number of real positives you are interested is probably in the x > 1/10^6. That's totally fantastic - consider that pregnancy tests have a false positive rate in the single digits.

The language is strong, but pretty much encapsulates the impotent anger I feel even __thinking__ about interacting with the TSA. On the rare occasions when I must, my anxiety and fears match very closely to the GP's post's language.

And this is why... I don't go to US. There has been two highly interesting conferences in NY and one in SF (for which another founder offered to give me his tickets for free). But I use a false name on Facebook, which is against my contract with an american company, which is an impersonation, and I don't want to risk it with a TSA agent.

Re: The TSA's FAST Personality Screening Program Violates the Fourth Amendment [pdf]

#48

Post by zaroth »

gknoy wrote: post #32
hurin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rather strong verbal comments aside - I think this is almost certainly correct. Polygraph tests are notoriously inaccurate - where as for something like terrorist threats the number of real positives you are interested is probably in the x > 1/10^6. That's totally fantastic - consider that pregnancy tests have a false positive rate in the single digits.

The language is strong, but pretty much encapsulates the impotent anger I feel even __thinking__ about interacting with the TSA. On the rare occasions when I must, my anxiety and fears match very closely to the GP's post's language.

The newer scanners are much less invasive. You can turn your head and see the display, it's very basic. And I've found TSA agents are much more interested in getting you through security, than holding you up in security. I saw many things that were extremely upsetting a few years ago, but barely much of anything even noteworthy lately.

Now this FAST thing anyhow, sounds insane. I will assume it just doesn't work and isn't going to be a Problem. But really, you would want to be able to stop it or put better bounds on it.

But from what I can tell, you can only sue to stop something after it has already harmed you, not just because it could cause future harm. You have to show damages to even be heard. So, how can you show damages until after it's already built and deployed?

Re: The TSA's FAST Personality Screening Program Violates the Fourth Amendment [pdf]

#49

Post by jimktrains2 »

zaroth wrote: post #48
gknoy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language is strong, but pretty much encapsulates the impotent anger I feel even __thinking__ about interacting with the TSA. On the rare occasions when I must, my anxiety and fears match very closely to the GP's post's language.

The newer scanners are much less invasive. You can turn your head and see the display, it's very basic. And I've found TSA agents are much more interested in getting you through security, than holding you up in security . I saw many things that were extremely upsetting a few years ago, but barely much of anything even noteworthy lately. Now this FAST thing anyhow, sounds insane. I will assume it just doesn't work and…

> The newer scanners are much less invasive. You can turn your head and see the display, it's very basic.

But we'll nicely violate your 4th amendment rights, it's OK!

> And I've found TSA agents are much more interested in getting you through security, than holding you up in security.

Which is why the assign 1 person to the first class line. 1 person to the pre check line. and 1 person to the 4 normal lines. and then have 4 people standing around doing absolutely nothing. The TSA (as an org, not as individuals) is concerned with making money for large political contributors and keeping people afraid.

> But really, you would want to be able to stop it or put better bounds on it.

But really, I want to stop everything that's happened because it's all been insane, completely unhelpful, and worth exactly $0 of the billions we've spent on it.

> So, how can you show damages until after it's already built and deployed?

By having enough people who actually care and are politically active enough to be very loud when things like this happen. Senators and Representatives need to know that their constitutes won't stand for it.

Re: The TSA's FAST Personality Screening Program Violates the Fourth Amendment [pdf]

#50

Post by jimktrains2 »

jrockway wrote: post #38
dguaraglia wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of like that report about how efficient the airport "backscatter" scanners were. All we know about the report is a congressman said that "if released we'd face public outrage". But hey, someone's making a ton of money out of it, so who cares...

The rapiscans? Those are gone now.

We still bought them, and we're still using body scanners in general, which are fairly useless technologies.

I felt less hassled and assaulted going from Jordan to Israel and at Ben Gurion this December. That says something.

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