What does the inside of a TSA x-ray conveyor look like? Ask a Flip.

Brevity is the soul of Flip. I've been enjoying the proliferation of short, sweet video clips taken with the ultracompact and low-cost digital camcorder. NYC-based PR terrorist Peter Shankman sneakily turned his Flip on while passing it through the TSA flight screening machine, and the resulting footage is above. Link. It's simple, but I like the sparkly parts where the poor little camera gets nuked. Pre-emptive note to actual nuclear scientists who will correct my semantics in the comments: shut up.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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strider_mt2k

It would be funny to splice in some footage of it going through some crazy journey just before it exits the machine.

or something from “Contact”

-I mean how do we know it DIDN’T get sent to another universe? How do you explain the blank spot lasting exactly that long?
doggo

All that bumping and thumping you hear in the video is the civil rights of millions of U.S. citizens in the proto-fascist rock tumbler that is the United States security state in the new century.

“Ze Ministry of ze Homeland Zecurity vill mek yoo ull shiny new zitizens! Jah!”

Just ask Cory.

LMAO about fake (motherfucking) snakes popping out of cans of peanut brittle in the TSA line. Can someone stage that? With a laugh track.
theMage

ND TH WRD FR “MST BRNG VD” GS T…

P.S. as a Nuclear Engineer AND a current travel agent (showing how much good a nuclear engineer degree is worth), Y SHT P!
Frank_in_Virginia

Clearly Mr. Shankman is an enemy of the state. To Gitmo and a Cockmeat Sandwich for you sir.
mappo

My God…..it’s full of stars!
nehpetsE

Maybe next time with a camera that has nightshot?
ahaley

Best pre-preemptive comment EVER. ;-) It has made me laugh for a good five minutes.
Alan

I could see through my hand while watching that vid.
Takuan

it’ll be a little, blinking alien head
shawnaroo

Wow, it sure was dark in there. And as we all know, dark is the color of evil. TSA == EVIL!
Green House Brand

hmm, thats it? I expected something a little more complex.

Slick move Mr. Shankman, slick move.
Suburbancowboy

Hey, I have an idea, put one of those cans with the fake snakes in it. That would be a hoot…
Jake0748

It’s cool, you COULD see a few photons pinging onto the camera’s detector.

It reminds me of a segment they had on Letterman many years ago, what an NFL game looks like from the inside of the football.
Takuan

The Ministry for Silly Sports hereby announces the formal acceptance of “Airport X-Ray Trials”. This is hoped to compete for public favour together with Frozen Turkey Bowling and Microwaving Inappropriate Objects”. The Ministry is now open to all published reporting of x-raying of cool shit with bonus points for any TSA consternation and comedy. Off-hours experiments by airport staff when no one is looking is also welcome. The aim is to achieve the ultimate in utterly pointless use of x-ray screening gear.
Robbo

I think we should start mashing this up with some ride footage from the Haunted Mansion.
iamcantaloupe

The X-ray technology in bomb scanners at airports is going to be getting a much needed boost soon. My dad works at one of the top developers of bomb scanning equipment for the FAA and he showed me their top of the line stuff which is still in production.

Essentially it will be making the move to more MRI-like technology (obviously not actual MRI) where they will literally be able to open up the bag in their computer program and pull different pieces out to look at them in real-time 3D wire frame. This will allow people to leave their laptops and anything else in the bag.

The version of the software I saw did not yet have the real time manipulation capacity, but it was really cool to see them scan a bag with a bunch of clothes and a laptop inside, and they simply clicked on it and out popped a model of the laptop by itself. Seriously cool stuff.
Takuan

that gives me an idea, an x-ray kaleidoscope. Some x-ray reflector mounted on a spindle with a clockwork or rubber band drive. The outer cylinder seems inert but as they watch the screen the contents seem to Move and Change….
ROSSINDETROIT

@7: Windup mechanical snake in the bag. Make sure you get a front row seat for when they call the bomb squad to deal with that.
arkizzle

#6 IAmCantaloupe

“..bomb scanners..”

Sign o’ the times there. They were always just “x-ray machines” to us, even when we were getting wanded and frisked throughout the 80′s and 90′s just to get in the front-door of Dublin Airport.

Maybe you’ve all been calling them “bomb scanners” forever, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard the phrase.
bruhinb

I’m not a nuclear scientists, Ms. Jardin, but you can tell me to shut up any time, anyway.
nick mun

that was a bit of an anti-climax.
Anonymous

@ROSSINDETROIT: Better yet; one of those fake jars of peanuts with the spring loaded snakes inside.

TSA GUY: “What’s in this jar sir?”
PASSENGER: “Fake snakes”

Then then TSA goon opens the jar, screams like a little girl and the passenger gets sent to gitmo to be tortured. The American people feel safer.
Kyle Armbruster

…?
oyvinja

…and I’m guessing next time mr. Shankman wants to go flying, the TSA will inspect HIS insides. Before detaining him for revealing Government Secrets. And then never let him fly again.
justin

I doubt they would notice the snakes in the can.

It would be amazingly funny though to see a TSA goon open a can of those things, though. I’d make sure you’ve got plennnnnty of time before your flight, though.
Takuan

“What’s in the can?” “Like, my shit, man”………
OM

“I doubt they would notice the snakes in the can.”

…You mean “snakes in the muthafucking can, right? :-) :-)
noen

You wouldn’t want to open them on the plane, that’s for sure, since then you’d have fake snakes on a plane.
Jack

Has anyone ever put a can of “fancy peanuts” in an airport screener and then have the TSA guy find out it’s filled with springy snakes?
Takuan

keep up Jack
iamcantaloupe

Yeah, bomb scanners is what pretty much everyone industry (or at least my dad’s company) seems to be calling them, and always have as long as I can remember. It would make sense to not refer to them as such in the airports, but when they’re in the “shop,” so to speak…

And good call on that #21, we really need to watch our over usage of that word, literally.
Takuan

Noen started it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkxBmH1TnbQ&feature=related
cycle23

“where they will <strike>literally</strike> virtually be able to open up the bag in their computer program”

FTFY.
mykie

uuuuuuuuuugh motion sickness….
RJ

Xeni, correcting you for using the word “nuked” would only be fun coming from a guy with a pronounced lisp, a sinus infection and a stutter.

As an added bonus, try to imagine a voice like that reading excerpts from a dirty Ann Rice novel.

*ahem*
Cool video!
Kevin

The next guy to do this has got to use a camera with a built in spotlight, maybe neatly masked off with IR-transparent tape to make it a little less obvious?

that gives me an idea, an x-ray kaleidoscope. Some x-ray reflector mounted on a spindle with a clockwork or rubber band drive. The outer cylinder seems inert but as they watch the screen the contents seem to Move and Change

The obvious approach would be a sizeable corner reflector on a rotor, coupled to a rubber band.

Bonus points for selecting two imiscible fluids of similar densities, one being radio-opaque….
X-ray lava lamp!
Anonymous

How about fitting such a camera with an IR LED so as to be able to actually _see_ what’s in there? Alternately a dark-activated normal light would also do the trick.
woolie

You could outfit the camera with an gadolinium oxysulphide scintillator to convert the high energy electrons into visible light through phosphorescence… but it probably wouldn’t show anything interesting — only the density/absorbance of objects between the detector and the emitter.
Latente

@ #14 Takuan

like this?

http://www.undo.net/Magazines/foto/1178660405.2793.2.jpg
bnt

“Nuked” is close enough for Rock ‘n’ Roll. 8)

I’d hardly call that a “TSA” machine – it’s old tech that pre-dates the TSA, and is in almost every airport in the wurrld…