Forbes: Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans

[seafan]

Thankful for our freedoms.....


Andy Greenberg reports from Forbes:





August 24, 2010

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.

.....(video of van in operation at link)



It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)

“It’s no surprise that (governments) and vendors are very enthusiastic about ,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

.....

Though Reiss admits that the systems “to a large degree will penetrate clothing,” he points to the lack of features in images of humans like the one shown at right, far less detail than is obtained from the airport scans. “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says.

But EPIC’s Rotenberg says that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” he says. Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure, he points out. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”

.....

Happy Friday in the Homeland.

[seabeyond]

1. ah... all you people that tell us your fear is greater than our rights....

justify this.

what a cowardly nation we are

makes. me. sick.

[cyberswede]

2. That's just plain creepy. n/t

[pintobean]

3. I wonder if Google is buying these.

[mike r]

4. Homeland Security protecting our groceries

and looking through walls to make sure everyone is in bed at night.

[Lance_Boyle]

5. What is the radiation exposure from these things, again? n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

6. "Land of the Free......."

I really need to get a passport...before it's too late.

[seabeyond]

7. I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be

hm... some woman that has the audacity to not want to be naked for fuckin perverted scums????

dont see there might be an issue there?

[Bonobo]

8. Godwin's Law has now been declared moot. nt

[seafan]

9. Refusing to fly is no longer enough... It's now the new neighborhood ice cream truck.

Peering on us from satellites and drones; tracking us on our cell phones and computers; listening in on our conversations; opening our mail; strip-searching us in airports and now in our cars and homes.



There are just no words any more.


Just keep fighting it. That is all.