Leaked DHS memo: Pornoscanners don't work

$90 million later, after a series of humiliating demonstrations, and critical analysis, an unclassified memo shows that the DHS suspects what everyone else knows: pornoscanners don't work. Here's David Kravets in Threat Level:

Meanwhile, an unclassified version of the Inspector General report, unearthed Friday by the Electronic Information Privacy Center, may give credence to a recent YouTube video allegedly showing a 27-year-old Florida man sneaking a metallic object through two different Transportation Security Administration body scanners at American airports.

The TSA agreed with all of the Inspector General’s recommendations. The Inspector General did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In March, meanwhile, a TSA spokeswoman said “These machines are safe” when asked to address a video by Jonathan Corbett, of Miami Beach, who allegedly had discovered a method tobeat the body scanners, which number 600 and are in about 140 U.S. airports. A brief YouTube video allegedly shows Corbett, who had sewn a pocket to the side of his shirt, getting past two body scanners with a metallic object in that pocket.

Homeland Security Concedes Airport Body Scanner ‘Vulnerabilities’

• [ǝɔʎoſ ʇʇɐW]

   Seriously if there is anyone left in the US who thinks we should be spending twice the budget of NASA on these clowns I’d like to personally sit them down and explain the situation to them over hot cocoa.

  • [Ender Wiggin]

    if by “cocoa” you mean  ” drag them off to gitmo, and enhanced interrogate some sense into them”   i’m behind you all the way.

    • [ǝɔʎoſ ʇʇɐW]

       No I mean a nice warm cup of cocoa.  Maybe with a candy cane thrown in to add a little flavor.  I figure once they realize that the world can actually be a nice place and they don’t need to be afraid all the time, they might come around.

• [littledansonman]

  Correct URL for the PDF of the memo - 
  http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/OIG_SLR_12-06_Nov11.pdf

• [fantabulizer]

  They were never really meant to work. They were meant to look like they worked and cost a lot of money to be paid to the lobbyist-laden companies that make them. When these are proven to be useless and/or dangerous, well, we’ll all just have to pay up to the companies again to make new ones.

  • [mr_subjunctive]

    . . . which won’t work either. And will immediately kill 1 out of every 1000 people who go through them. (Just ’cause.)

  • [Inspector Spacetime]

    I would have preferred that the security theatre made them to look like they worked while being pleasantly surprising us how inexpensive they were.   HAve they learned nothing from Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark?

• [Bink Binkerson]

  Noun!  Verb!  …oh, you know the rest.

  Brought to you by the Ministry of Fear and Permanent War

• [Churba S]

  Pornoscanners, eh? So there is only two conclusions I can draw here. Either, you’re super prudish, and anything with people disrobed in any capacity is pornography, or you’re cranking your handle to some real strange stuff. Your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay and all, but still, my eyebrow is raised at you, sir.

  (p.s – Taking the piss, be chill.)

  • [Cowicide]

    My apologist scanner just went off.  Beep!  Beep!

    • [Churba S]

      Are you telling me you didn’t realise that I was joking, despite the fact that at the end, I literally told you it was a joke? Not even subtly or anything, just straight up telling you that was a joke.

      I’m just too baffled to know exactly how to respond to this. I mean, really, guy? Really?

      • [Cowicide]

        I don’t think you realize how many idiots say crap like that every day.  I stopped reading after your first sentence and I think some others did as well.

        To hell with you Churba, you bastard!  /s

        • [Churba S]

           ”To hell with you Churba, you bastard!”
          I hear that a lot. Mostly from women. And without the sarcasm.

          I understand, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t done the same thing many a time before, so it’s cool, don’t worry about it.

• [xzzy]

  They worked great!

  The purpose was to infuriate travelers, right? The only way to make the air perfectly safe is to convince everyone to stop flying entirely, so therefore more devices like this are in our future.

  • [EH]

    Also to make Michael Chertoff and his friends rich.

• [journey46]

  Follow the money.
  It was always Cheney and his cronies (Michael Chertoff) making easy money off the taxpayer, while laughing their asses off at the stupidity and timidity of the masses.

• [benher]

  The straight-up bigotry of the operators is worse than the scanners. 
  Yes, that’s right. Just went through SFO this past weekend. 
  These assholes stand around mocking the accents of every Asian going through the lines who can’t understand their barking slurs. Black, White, Latino, even other Asians mocking elderly folk who are trying their best to comply with this blue-man group from hell. 
  My partner  (who is Asian) was groped, humiliated, and upon refusal to strip to underwear in front of everyone she and I (I had already cleared) were both forced into another room for “special screening.” 

  I read these posts on BB all the time – it’s too bad I had to live through one. Is there any avenue for travelers to have their voices heard? It puts the whole airport on edge – it puts everyone in a shit mood and they pass it on to all the vendors, ticket counters, boarding terminals, etc.

  TSA – Take Some Aspirin… it’s what we had to do after the headache.

• [Cowicide]

  Pornoscanners still work for security theatre at least.  What would we do without a little humiliation now and then to remind us of how free we are in the USA?

• [Patrick McGorrill]

  It’s lucky no terrorists called our bluff!!!
  Surely everyone will need to be patted down now. It’s the only other way to keep people from excessive murders.

• [lostinutah]

  ‘In March, meanwhile, a TSA spokeswoman said “These machines are safe” when asked to address a video by Jonathan Corbett, of Miami Beach, who 

  ALLEGEDLY

  had discovered a method tobeat the body scanners, which number 600 and are in about 140 U.S. airports. A brief YouTube video 

  ALLEGEDLY

  shows Corbett, who had sewn a pocket to the side of his shirt, getting past two body scanners with a metallic object in that pocket.’

  –

  It’s easy not to trust the TSA.  Why, on the other hand, should we trust this Corbett person?

• [Anon_Mahna]

   http://www.explosm.net/comics/2708/  

• [Michael Smith]

  I heard that diabetic people take  Hypodermic needles on planes without declaring them because scanning equipment can’t detect the small amount of metal they contain, and it can take hours to get permission to take them on board.

  Needles and syringes are a favourite weapon for hold-ups of course.

• [Noctilucent Studios]

  As long as Mike Chertoff can keep cashing them checks, NOTHING will change anytime soon.

• [Jim Thomason]

  Amoung the many things I don’t get about the porno scanners is why they aren’t used in sequence with metal detectors.

  So if someone can strap a long bladed knife close to their body and walk through the nudy machine, isn’t that a step backwards for security? It’s something that would’ve been caught by a metal detector.

  It seems to me that it would’ve made more sense to make everyone walk through both. First a metal detector like we always did, and then a porno scanner on top of it for additional screening. Or vice versa, the order probably doesn’t matter.

  That way, you’re at least augmenting the existing measures with something new. Whether or not they work or are an improvement or anything is beside the point. Using both machines would actually be adding something to the process, as opposed to removing an existing tech that can catch things the newer stuff doesn’t.

  Not that I want the porn scanners users at all, mind you. But if they’re going to insist upon it, then why the powers-that-be didn’t insist upon using it in tandemas opposed to a replacement of a useful tech is completely beyond my comprehension.

• [John Hall]

  That link is wrong. This is the correct one:  http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/OIG_SLR_12-06_Nov11.pdf

  • [John Hall]

     Yeah, that unclassified version doesn’t say anything interesting. Just that the everything is classified.