TSA lied: naked-scanners can store and transmit images

You know those airport scanners that can see through your clothes, offering an intimate look at your junk and your lovehandles and every other part of you that you keep between you, your spouse, your doctor and the bathroom mirror? You know how the TSA swore up and down that these machines didn't store and couldn't transmit the compromising photos of your buck-naked self?

They lied.

The documents, which include technical specifications and vendor contracts, indicate that the TSA requires vendors to provide equipment that can store and send images of screened passengers when in testing mode, according to CNN.
The TSA has stated publicly on its website, in videos and in statements to the press that images cannot be stored on the machines and that images are deleted from the scanners once an airport operator has examined them. The administration has also insisted that the machines are incapable of sending images.

Just more US government employees doing Al Qaeda's business: undermining the quality of life in the "free" world. Osama's still free, how about you?

Airport Scanners Can Store, Transmit Images (via Digg)

(Image: TSA)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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The Snowden Principle

agreenster

As much as I dont like the government lying to us and not caring at all about our privacy, we Americans take nudity a little too seriously.
- DisneyBoy
  
  #21 – It’s not that we take nudity too seriously. I’m all for porn, I’m a consumer of porn. Those people have chosen to be in porn, or to appear naked in some website or publication. Sometimes I even go to a nudist beach and my junk is out for anyone to see and probably photograph if they have a zoom lens and they think I’m hot like fire and I don’t notice.
  
  But I am not giving consent to the TSA to see my naked body and take pictures of it.
  
  I will never set foot inside one those porn machines.
Anonymous

We should all just arrive at the airport 6 hours early and be individually strip searched, of course.

I love how they were able to find a contractor for this technology in like a week. I bet there are people hired to sit around with a pitch for the next anti-terrorism technology.

They aren’t even trying to hide their corruption anymore. It’s insulting.
Anonymous

It seems to me that it’s not long before they adapt computer vision apps to detect anomalies in scanning… with a sufficient set of training data, this shouldn’t be hard, and we would then only enable the invasion of privacy for people who stand out as outliers for the computer’s initial scan.
In that sort of scenario, I don’t see this as being so dangerous.
BdgBill

Anyone who wants to see my nads is welcome to them if it means spending one minute less in damn security lines.
Anonymous

Just as the NSA was NEVER supposed to monitor conversations without proper need under their own watch, someone’s going to start collecting and saving these images.

“So, folks who would forgo this for privacy reasons, would you also avoid getting an MRI? A lot of those are stored on networks that could be hacked, and you can see parts in those as well. Subject the TSA handlers to Hippa, with comparable fines. Still find this a non-story.”

I’m less worried about a hospital mis-using my image in some power-trip than I am the DHS.
tizroc

So they had to add the software to fuzzy the crotch and boobies. The question for me now is, where in the process does that happen? Before local storage? Or just before video processing? Is this storing the raw full Monty view when activated?
JoshP

Hrh,
I wanted to know where the money for these things was headed… traced the makers patent thread to…
http://www.osi-systems.com/
which has some of the nicest web white-washing I’ve ever seen. but look closer…
it’s CEO is none other than … Deepak Chopra!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra
- jimkirk
  
  Are they the same Deepak Chopra? One holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronics and a Master of Science degree in Semiconductor Electronics (OSI website).
  
  The other completed his primary education at St. Columba’s School in New Delhi and graduated from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. (The Wikipedia article.)
mmacneil007

Who in their right mind would believe that technology this sophisticated wouldn’t be capable of transmitting it’s information elsewhere. And of course there will be a need for people to analyze and collect these images in many other places besides airports.