Coming soon to the internet...Airport Porn
The new airport body scanners the Transportation Security Administration have been unrolling into airports across the country penetrate clothing to provide highly detailed images so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual strip search. How accurate might you ask? Due to child pornography laws, children are not permitted to be scanned by the machines. As soon as they were announced a couple of years back, the TSA moved quickly to quiet any criticisms by explaining at length, for anyone who could hear how the images would not be saved, in fact, could not be saved on the machines.
Yeah, they lied.
So then they admitted okay, yes, these scanners do have the capability to store and transmit images, however they would never do such a thing, it would be a violation of privacy.
Yeah, they lied again.
The machines can store up to 40,000 images and wouldn’t you know, the U.S. Marshals Service in Florida admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved 35, 134 images with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse. Obviously, they were being respectful as if they really wanted to push the envelope they could have saved an additional 4,866 more.
“TSA is not being straightforward with the public about the capabilities of these devices,” said Marc Rotenberg, the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Exec Director, “This is the Department of Homeland Security subjecting every U.S. traveler to an intrusive search that can be recorded without any suspicion–I think it’s outrageous.”
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently stated the scanners would soon be at almost every major airport, including New York City, Dallas, Washington, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle and Philadelphia.
Seriously though people…relax.
All that image storing stuff happened at a courthouse with criminals and people who know criminals…you know, bad people. Airports are a different story altogether – on Wednesday, TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz said that the agency’s scanners are delivered to airports with the image recording functions turned off. “We’re not recording them,” she said. “I’m reiterating that to the public. We are not ever activating those capabilities at the airport.”
Umm…you lie.
Read the article,
Feds admit storing checkpoint body scan images
Have a nice flight.
