Re-entry to US without backscatter or pat-down • Hacker News Board

Re: Re-entry to US without backscatter or pat-down

#181

Post by hga » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 1:59 AM UTC

epo wrote: post #164

brown9-2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the TSA is disbanded, then how do you suggest handling airport security? Who is in charge of it and who is responsible?

Look at the rest of the world, they've been doing airport security in a reasonably civilised manner since the Palestinians and Cubans started hijacking back in the 60s(?)

The threat profile of "prevent a hijacking" and "prevent a bomb with no metallic content from bringing down a plane" are very different.

I don't see how the TSA (as constituted, see below) can do the latter without the scanners ... it's how they're approaching this, most especially the deliberately punitive enhanced groping if you opt out or if the scanner can't image you properly that's one facet of the problem.

At its base, by looking for weapons instead of terrorists ... well, we've decided that profiling is an ultimate evil and cannot be continenced. Unless we reverse that....

Re: Re-entry to US without backscatter or pat-down

#182

Post by jballanc » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 5:54 AM UTC

aperiodic wrote: post #148

jballanc wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll get false positives if anyone goes for a cardiac stress test...

That's why you only wear your dosimetry when you're at work.

Wouldn't matter. Cardiac stress tests usually use technetium or some other radioactive tracer which remains in the body for a day or two after the test. That means that, for the next day or so, you are a "radiation hazard" (not really, but the dosimeters don't know the difference, or at least that's what I was told by the radiation control officer).

Re: Re-entry to US without backscatter or pat-down

#183

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 9:37 AM UTC

jeroen wrote: post #152

jacquesm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice pdfs, there does not seem to be a single item in there that matches your $10K fine for anything the guy did, in fact he has a bunch of police officers on hand as witnesses that he behaved impeccably. What specific reason (instead of links to a bunch of documents) do you see for them slapping a civil suit on him ? The gawker article reads: "He said that once I start the screening in the secure area, I could not l…

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/nov/15/tsa-probe-sca... : The Transportation Security Administration has opened an investigation targeting John Tyner Michael J. Aguilar, chief of the TSA office in San Diego, .. said the investigation could lead to prosecution and civil penalties of up to $11,000.

The operative word is 'could'.

I don't see it happening.

Re: Re-entry to US without backscatter or pat-down

#184

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Nov 26, 2010, 10:55 PM UTC

aperiodic wrote: post #180

rmc wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as there were procedures to ensure that the badges are only worn on the job, false positives shouldn't be an issue. And that's how your false positives happen. How many people would have to wear dosimetres? Would they be mandatory? How many people per year will leave them at home and borrow their workmate's dosimeter so the boss doesn't give out? How many will drive home in their uniforms? Go to the shops in…

It's not very hard to solve this problem. At work, we just have a bunch of small cubbies where everyone keeps their dosimeters. When you come in, you take it out and put it on; when you leave, you take it off and put it in. Occasionally people forget to take their dosimetry off, but it's not a big deal–it's extremely unlikely you're going to receive a significant dose outside of the facility (although you are constan…

If you're a traveler, you should be much more concerned about the radiation dose you receive on the plane than the one you receive from the scanner.

I dislike "spherical cow" assumptions when they are applied to my health. If you are a government agency, then applying "spherical cow" assumptions by imposition to large numbers of people is inexcusable.

http://compilerbitch.livejournal.com/218216.html

Backscatter X-rays are completely unlike the radiation you receive on a cross country flight. Natural high energy tends to deposit energy evenly throughout your body. The energies in backscatter are manipulated so that the majority of the energy is deposited near the surface of your body.

We don't have that much data on the effects of low energy X-rays, because we didn't have many applications for them until recently. We do not understand in complete detail the mechanisms by which radiation causes cancer. We have equations for predicting cancer rates for radiation doses, but these are entirely adhoc and empirical! We don't have a first-principles understanding of this stuff yet. We don't know enough to say for sure that this application of X-rays is safe. I'd only feel safe if there were experiments on a bunch of lab animals.

Re: Re-entry to US without backscatter or pat-down

#185

Post by daniel-cussen » Sun, Nov 28, 2010, 6:42 PM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #140

brown9-2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the TSA is disbanded, then how do you suggest handling airport security? Who is in charge of it and who is responsible?

Like everywhere else in the world? In a civilized manner, friendly respectful and efficient? Maybe by checks conducted by real professionals and not with the aim to have it as cheaply as possible and thus paying minimum wages to badly trained "agents" on a power trip? Maybe in a way where you're not blackmailed into going through a machine, which effects are very unproven and in whoms installation the former director…

They're government workers; their salaries are probably not that bad.