Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans

[midnight]

As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/08/24/full-body-scan-technology-deployed-in-street-roving-vans/

[peace13]

1. Talk about your radiation plume!

The folks riding around in these things may be the first to fall. Do people understand that they will be xrayed without their knowledge, possibly on a daily basis depending on where they live. This is why we can't have universal health care. We create to many sick people in our society.

[Chris_Texas]

2. Obama will fight against these!!! right?

[ThomCat]

5. The agencies under the Executive Branch are the ones buying them.

So, no, he won't be fighting against these. He'll be celebrating these monstrosities as wonderful "tools to help usher us into the modern era," or some other PR bullshit.

[truedelphi]

3. Thanks midnight.

And how awful these things are used so casually, and no one knows the health effects of being scanned completely head to toe at every juncture of our lives.

[Fearless]

6. +1

[Gregorian]

4. But I thought we already had that.

[truedelphi]

7. Now did you have to eat three boxes of wheaties to

Get those for a dollar?

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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[nuxvomica]

9. Doesn't this constitute an unwarranted seach?

In Kyllo v. United States, the majority found that thermal imaging of a home, a much less invasive activity, violated Fourth Amendment protections. This is certainly far more invasive than thermal imaging. Wouldn't they at least need probable cause, even with vehicles, or could they randomly image vehicles on the street? There's also the exposure issue. I would think that amounts to assault.