Pilots unions: Don't submit to naked-scanners

Lulameagirl says: "Hopefully, this (along with the earlier report that it doesn't detect cavity devices) will be the death knell to the backscatter scanners. Two large pilots unions have advised pilots not to use the scanners due to increased radiation exposure in the profession. They note that the TSA 'has offered no credible specifications for the radiation emitted by these machines.'"

While recommending the pat-downs as an alternative to the AIT scanners, both unions described them as demeaning and intrusive. USAPA recounted the experience of one US Airways pilot who "experienced a frisking that . . . left him unable to function as a crew member."

That must have been one hell of a frisking. Unions advise pilots to avoid full-body scans

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

Baldhead

It is odd that TSA employees aren’t also scanned. After all what’s to stop one of them from taking something past the checkpoint and leaving it where a passenger (now also safely through the checkpoint) can find it? In fact there’s a large number of airport personnel that have access to rather sensitive things that aren’t checked simply because they won’t be going into the air with the plane. Focusing only on attacks on airborne planes is a bit like a soldier going into battle wearing just a helmet, the list of other vulnerable targets is so big it’s pointless to list them.
technogeek

Recommended reading: The short story _Weapons_Of_Mass_Distraction_.

All the security theater is doing more damage to our country than a genuine terrorist attack would.
mdh

i still maintain the role of the TSA is to deter air traffic. It’s cheaper than upgrading the system.
Linds

Who’s going to tell the TSA that if the pilot wants the plane to crash it’s going to crash and the only way to stop them is keep them out of the cockpit?
Anonymous

The U.S. Senate commerce committee is holding a hearing on the TSA *the day after tomorrow*. If one of your senators is on the committee, now would be the time to let him or her know what you think of all this, and what to ask the allegedly Honorable John S. Pistole, A. of the TSA.

Hearing info: < http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Hearings&ContentRecord_id=9ad9e372-c415-4758-805a-4b4a295ccb8b&ContentType_id=14f995b9-dfa5-407a-9d35-56cc7152a7ed&Group_id=b06c39af-e033-4cba-9221-de668ca1978a&MonthDisplay=11&YearDisplay=2010>

Commerce committee members: < http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=CommitteeMembers>
- jackdavinci
  
  WHo? Who? Who?

Jake von Slatt

@blisko

Thanks! That makes me feel better about the people that, for one reason or another, feel they can’t opt out.

Anonymous

Why are they frisking pilots anyway?

A pilot cannot hijack a plane, because they’re already in charge of flying it in the first place.

If a pilot wants to use a plane for the purposes of terrorism, they don’t need a gun or bomb to do so. We’re already entrusting these people with the safety of everyone on board, so they should be allowed to carry more than 3oz of water etc.

Mllerustad

Anon: You treat pilots the same as other passengers because otherwise the obvious terrorist get-out-of-security-free card is to wear a pilot’s uniform and a reasonable facsimile of a badge.

Presumably the airline and the other staff members know who’s supposed to be flying which flight, and scan / properly go over pilot IDs, so a uniformed terrorist probably couldn’t con themselves into the cockpit. (Change in the bathroom, get on the plane dressed as a regular passenger + whatever contraband you just moved through security, done.) The TSA folks, though, don’t have access to that sort of information.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  And what happens when the terrorists show up in TSA uniforms with reasonable facsimiles of TSA IDs? You think every TSA agent at LAX knows every other TSA agent by sight?
  
  We’re doomed! DOOMED!!!
  - Mllerustad
    
    It’s simply a fact that giving special privileges and trust based on a uniform is generally poor security practice. Certainly I don’t think pilots *should* be regularly groped or scanned; rather, it’s not because they’re a special case, but because *nobody* entering an airport should be.
    
    I feel odd having to tell a mod this, but there’s really no need to be snippy.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      I’m merely expanding your point. If you can’t trust the pilots, then everyone who enters the security zone, including police and TSA workers should be searched the same way as passengers. And the people doing the searching should be subject to biometric verification.

Donald Petersen

One of these days, we’ll see a dozen completely unarmed, inoffensive, lightly-shod, rectally-vacant, thoroughly screened men board a plane, wait peacefully for cruising altitude to be reached, subdue the passengers either by threatening to manually dismember a baby in Coach or perhaps through some disabling hi-pitched sonic-attack app one of them has on his iPhone (or whatever), and set to work on the cabin door. And then we’ll see if the plane bears an Air Marshal who can take out a dozen targets before he gets subdued himself. Or if the pilots can maybe depressurize the cabin enough to neutralize the threat (hopefully without substantially damaging too many innocent passengers) before the door is breached. Or if there’s a Federal Flight Deck Officer on board who’s even more of a crack shot than the FAM. And if this were a movie, they’d plow that plane straight into the TSA Administrator’s office. Which would be a damned shame; as Deputy Director of the FBI, Administrator Pistole disallowed “coercive interrogations” and would seem to have fallen on the right side of that particular argument in the wake of Abu Ghraib.

In any case, 9/11 tightened the security bottleneck. Richard Reid stole our footwear. And this latest indignity to our sacrosanct crotchal areas has been brought to you by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Once we start seeing airborne terrorism by small gangs of determined yet apparently unarmed men, no matter how limited the havoc they wreak, how long can the American air travel industry survive? How can they defend against terrorism in the form of brute-force mob uprising? Will they simply have to install a self-destruct on commercial 747s? Have they already?

When will they realize that defending against last week’s attack provides no safety whatsoever against next week’s? When are we finally going to realize as a nation that we just kinda have to take our chances, hope for the best, and try a bit harder not to alienate so many people?

hobomike

Well said.

I suppose it will continue to escalate as long as there’s money in it. We have greed and lobbies to thank for these devices. Security is just lipstick on the pig.

Donald Petersen

Man, you said it. I had a peek at what Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R, Tenn.) had to say about the Federal Air Marshal Service. Four arrests a year on average for all 4,000 marshals? Not four each. Four for the whole service. At a cost of about $200 million per arrest.

Now I’m not usually gonna agree with a Tennessee Republican, but yeah… this is not money well spent. We’re going about this all wrong.

Anonymous

@ Donald Petersen in reply to hobomike
” Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R, Tenn.) … Now I’m not usually gonna agree with a Tennessee Republican, but yeah… this is not money well spent. We’re going about this all wrong.”

I wo9nder if the Small-Govt Teabaggers are in favour of abolishing the Air Marshalls, and TSA as a whole. Seems like a good place to make a quick win in terms of federal money spent.

Wouldn’t that be ironic – the Teabaggers doing something that’d probably enrage their ‘base’, yet simultaneously get most Boing Boing readers on board!

jackie31337

and set to work on the cabin door. And then we’ll see if the plane bears an Air Marshal who can take out a dozen targets before he gets subdued himself. Or if the pilots can maybe depressurize the cabin enough to neutralize the threat (hopefully without substantially damaging too many innocent passengers) before the door is breached.

The vast majority of doors on commercial airlines are plug doors-the cabin pressure actually pushes them closed, making it humanly impossible to open at altitude. Nice movie plot threat though. You should enter Schneier’s contest next year.

Donald Petersen

The vast majority of doors on commercial airlines are plug doors-the cabin pressure actually pushes them closed,

Of course. I meant to say the cockpit door. I don’t know how those are secured, other than they’re supposed to be pretty impregnable these days, but I don’t imagine it’s cabin air pressure that’s holding the cockpit door closed, unless the pilots are in pressure suits these days.

I wonder, though, just how much damage this hypothetical unarmed-gang-of-12 could do.

Hmm. On a long flight, I imagine an opportunity would arise sooner or later. Until the cockpit gets its own galley and head, anyway…

Well! Y’all enjoy your long holiday weekend travels. Me, I’m staying in L.A. for Thanksgiving this year. It turns into a ghost town for four days, there are plenty of good seats at the movies, and my only groping experiences will be solicited and/or welcomed.

Cheers!
Tensegrity

Solution: always turn down scan in favor of government administered crotch grab and then at the moment of truth, borrow this move…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pXfHLUlZf4
Boomshadow

Without endangering oneself or others, is there something I can use to put a message on my body that would only be readable by the scanner? Something like, the Constitution, perhaps? Or, for less subtlety (and if high-resolution body markings are not available), an upraised middle finger?
jasonjeep

More power to the pilots. Any organization that represents frequent fliers should join with them in protesting. Everyone who flies should be concerned. And just how many attacks has the TSA stymied to date?
Clifton

Today is the best day to do something about this: the Senate TSA Oversight Hearing meets tomorrow, November 17 2010.

Call your senator now, today, and politely, calmly and reasonably bitch at them (well, their staff) about this policy.

More info is here at FlyerTalk, together with phone numbers and home pages for key senators’ offices. Even if your senator isn’t on the list, talk to them and let them know this affects you.
hungryjoe

Is there no talk of a boycott? If we all stop flying, the airlines will take it upon themselves to stop this madness. Janet Napolitano may not listen to 300 million Americans, but she will for damn sure listen to the airline industry if they’re losing money over this.
technogeek

Uhm… Do I remember that backscatter is microwave, not X-ray/ionizing?

I grant that microwave can be called “radiation” and too much is unhealthy, and I certainly agree that some indication of “dosage will not exceed [number generally accepted as safe]” would be appreciated — especially for pilots, who spent more time at high altitudes than most of us and hence may pick up a bit more natural dosage. But this sounds like a case of the R-word being used because it’s scary rather than because it’s a valid description of the risk.

(Maybe all it needs is a renaming. After all, people are less scared of MRI than of NMR, just because they don’t like the word “nuclear”.)
- Anonymous
  
  Microwave radiation, like all radio wave radiation, heats tissue. Check out how polymerase chain reaction works. No need to have ionizing radiation knock out a molecular bond, just melt it. The best way to avoid impacts from RF energy is to, well avoid it. Reduce exposure time, reduce energy levels, increase your distance from the source. Which one of those three do _you_ have control over standing in line at the airport?
- Anonymous
  
  Actually, it is radiation. The bad kind. The kind my wife has been warned not to get an more of because of extensive surgeries during her lifetime already. More will not help.
  
  Besides all that, is this making anyone safer?
- the_headless_rabbit
  
  Ultraviolet light is radiation.
  Visible light is radiation.
  Infra-red is radiation
  Radio is radiation
  
  It’s all radiation.
  
  While I’m sure they are using the word to drum up fear, technically, they are using the correct term.
- Bilsko
  
  Backscatter is X-Ray.
  I think you’re confusing with Millimeter-Wave, which is radio-wave based.
  - technogeek
    
    Yep, I was thinking millimeter-wave. Thanks.
Jonathan Frei

Here’s a protest idea: just strip down at security check points. Make the naked body scanner obsolete…
- jackie31337
  
  I’ve often been tempted to strip at the checkpoint, but I suspect that would (ironically) result in me being charged with indecent exposure. My current plan is to get a stars and stripes bikini and strip down to that. I think they maybe Speedo-style briefs for men, as well.
  - Anonymous
    
    so what you are saying is that Lada Gaga isn’t making a fashion statement when she flies without pants.
    
    She’s just trying to prove visually that there’s nothing in those undies to worry about
tkahvesi

I actually think objections to these on health grounds is ultimately not helpful. The TSA merely needs to fabricate some science to overcome these objections; while actually comparing these appalling measures to the U.S. Constitution would hopefully ultimately ensure that the law forbids such violations of personal liberties. And that’s exactly what the scanner AND pat-downs are – egregious violations of the 4th Amendment, which should anger citizens beyond making us want to quibble over ionization and millirems.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
PaulR

Well, since the pilots get so much more exposure to cosmic rays than the rest of us, I think it’s very reasonable for them refuse the TSA scans.

That is, on top of the fact that it’s really just security theatre.
Anonymous

A thought that occurred to me earlier: is it theoretically possible to design a trigger system that detonates on the detection of an increase in microwaves? EG: Could a bomb be built that is set to go off when then bomber steps inside the scanner?

Yes, I realise that if you are a terrorist, that there are probably a lot simpler ways of going about this, timer, push button, but that doesn’t answer the question of if it’s possible.
Jake von Slatt

This is the document that made me decide not to go through one of these machines:

http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf

in part:

“The physics of these X-rays is very telling: the X-rays are Compton-Scattering off outer molecule bonding electrons and thus inelastic (likely breaking bonds).

Unlike other scanners, these new devices operate at relatively low beam energies (28keV). The majority of their energy is delivered to the skin and the underlying tissue. Thus, while the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high.”
- Bilsko
  
  Jake,
  I’ve been following this one too – at Dr. Holdren’s request, the FDA responded to the UCSF letter.
  They also set up this page:
  http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationEmittingProductsandProcedures/SecuritySystems/ucm227201.htm
  
  Their response to the letter is near the bottom of the page under “Other Resources” or go here: http://goo.gl/2hIt7
  
  I’m more inclined to side with the UCSF profs. on being worried, but the FDA does go through their list of questions at length and at least appears to address them. I would like it if some other scientists in the field weighed in on the topic.
  - Anonymous
    
    Bilsko, I looked into your link at the FDA. First I had to figure out what the units were:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
    Seems the units vary depending on the species and tissues exposed? So when we’re talking whole humans what does the “0.25 uSv per ‘screening’” unit mean? These physics are hard for me to grasp.
    
    Also it looks like the standars for exposure were more than doubled in the last year. How convenient.
    The Dose from Compton Backscatter Screening
    Peter Rez,*Robert L. Metzger# and Kenneth L. Mossman
    http://www.public.asu.edu/~atppr/RPD-Final-Form.pdf
    
    From the above links it looks like the manufactures still haven’t released what their units put out, only that they meet guidelines and specifications. No disclosure.
    
    First avoid the impact. Next minimize any impact. Then mitigate for the remaining impact. It’s kind of like the reduce, reuse, recycle triangle. You get more if you start at the beginning.
    
    Opt out. Make some theater of your own.
Anonymous

technogeek: check out wikipedia on the matter, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray

Both are in use, one is X-ray which gives you cancer; the other is used to cook food [to spread the FUD evenly].

oh and another thing–we should all insist on a pre-flight colonoscopy to make sure that nobody has anything up their keisters. And women will need to get an additional exam. It’s for our own security.

We can demand it! This is how prisoners and drug smugglers get things to secure areas; we can’t have that level of risk against our freedom.
Anonymous

@Alosius: well considering how uncomfortable flying is anyway, I might welcome the option to go to my personal pod (perhaps mildly soundproofed?), take some depressants and pass out for the length of my flight.
Aloisius

I’m waiting for the day they just pack us in reinforced personal pods on the aircraft.
- Anonymous
  
  Like this?
  http://trueblood.wikia.com/wiki/Anubis_Air_Airlines
- Mark Dow
  
  Or anesthetized on trays. Don’t miss Ray Vukcevich’s short story “in the flesh”:
  
  http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shorts/in_the_flesh.html
Anonymous

Here’s the bottom line, to me:

The health risks cannot be quantified with current technology.

Until the perceived boost in security CAN be quantified, we have no business adopting these scanners. We cannot simply presume benefits that may or may not be necessary.