Former TSA Agent Explains Full Body Scanners Didn't Work, But Did Let Him See You Naked
from the but-of-course dept
There's been less discussion over the TSA's full body scanners recently, especially since the TSA's brief but insanely expensive (with YOUR money!) experiment with the "nudie scanners" went away. However, Politico has a fascinating story from a former TSA agent revealing that much of what you suspect about the TSA is true: they were able to see you naked even as the scanners had little actual value. They do target attractive women and have a rather long list of official sounding "code names" for good looking women so they can alert each other to them while appearing professional. On those nudie scanners, he has the story of the guy who taught them how to use it, who was then asked what he thought of the machines:“They're shit,” he said, shrugging. He said we wouldn't be able to distinguish plastic explosives from body fat and that guns were practically invisible if they were turned sideways in a pocket.Of course, what he leaves out is the real reason why these were installed in airports across the country. It had nothing to do with terrorist threats, but the fact that former DHS boss Michael Chertoff was getting rich off of helping to sell them to the government agency he used to run.
We quickly found out the trainer was not kidding: Officers discovered that the machines were good at detecting just about everything besides cleverly hidden explosives and guns. The only thing more absurd than how poorly the full-body scanners performed was the incredible amount of time the machines wasted for everyone.
As for looking at you naked, yes, the TSA folks would look and laugh:
Most of my co-workers found humor in the I.O. room on a cruder level. Just as the long-suffering American public waiting on those security lines suspected, jokes about the passengers ran rampant among my TSA colleagues: Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display. Piercings of every kind were visible. Women who’d had mastectomies were easy to discern—their chests showed up on our screens as dull, pixelated regions. Hernias appeared as bulging, blistery growths in the crotch area. Passengers were often caught off-guard by the X-Ray scan and so materialized on-screen in ridiculous, blurred poses—mouths agape, àla Edvard Munch. One of us in the I.O. room would occasionally identify a passenger as female, only to have the officers out on the checkpoint floor radio back that it was actually a man. All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels.And yes, he talks about the ridiculousness of confiscating nail clippers and liquids:
There were other types of bad behavior in the I.O. room—I personally witnessed quite a bit of fooling around, in every sense of the phrase. Officers who were dating often conspired to get assigned to the I.O. room at the same time, where they analyzed the nude images with one eye apiece, at best. Every now and then, a passenger would throw up two middle fingers during his or her scan, as though somehow aware of the transgressions going on.
I confiscated jars of homemade apple butter on the pretense that they could pose threats to national security. I was even required to confiscate nail clippers from airline pilots—the implied logic being that pilots could use the nail clippers to hijack the very planes they were flying.Basically, pretty much everything we already knew about the TSA and its security theater seems to be more or less accurate. There's a lot more in the article, but it really paints a picture of typical bureaucratic insanity. The whole setup of the TSA seems designed to do two things: to help make a few ex-gov't officials very wealthy while giving the public appearance that current government officials are "doing something" about terrorism.
Once, in 2008, I had to confiscate a bottle of alcohol from a group of Marines coming home from Afghanistan. It was celebration champagne intended for one of the men in the group—a young, decorated soldier. He was in a wheelchair, both legs lost to an I.E.D., and it fell to me to tell this kid who would never walk again that his homecoming champagne had to be taken away in the name of national security.
As we've noted in the past, even the TSA knows that there's not much of a threat directed at air travel these days, which is probably why they've started giving up the pretense and waving large groups of folks through at times.
Of course, beyond the government officials getting rich part of this, the simple fact is that the political incentives here always will lead to these kinds of ridiculous results. When there is, inevitably, some other attack, questions will be asked about why we weren't "doing enough." So everyone has incentives to do as much useless stuff as possible, even if it's all really useless. That way they can talk about everything they had already been doing -- and then layering on some other idiotic idea (like taking off your shoes, or not carrying water bottles through security) and go on with the myth that they're "protecting" people. It's just that sometimes this leads to bored TSA agents staring at tons of people naked based on no warrant, no threat and no damned reason at all.
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Filed Under: naked scanners, nudie scanners, security theater, tsa
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Face it, our parents flew in slower planes yet got there much faster than we do today. Not only that but somehow, they managed to fly with nail clippers, cigarette lighters, and jars of liquid and the planes made it there without falling out of the sky. Yet today, it's a concern that passengers not have this stuff?
For the budget conscious congress, why is this branch of government not on the chopping block to save money?
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Re:
The truth really is stranger than fiction.
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Congress, DOJ, are you listening?
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Re: Congress, DOJ, are you listening?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_controversy
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Bill Clinton and his wife are war criminals and rapists and pedophiles. Clinton was even on Jeff Epstein list of pedos. He deserved impeachment and jail.
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Whitewater was a complete non-scandal. It was part of an orchestrated attempt to destroy the Clinton presidency, but was too feeble to actually have any real effect. The lying about the BJ bit was all they could come up with. Weak sauce.
Whitewater aside... you are a prime example of what is wrong with this nation. You should never support a public official after they lied under oath regardless of party. Typical my party can do no wrong attitude that will destroy, and not save a thing!
I wonder how much weak sauce you would be eating if a female member of your family was straight up taken advantage of by a superior that lied under oath? Greater men than Clinton have been ruined for less.
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She wasn't underage. There was absolutely no evidence presented that she was coerced in any way. All accounts suggest that it was 100% consensual by both of them. Sure he was married but last I checked, adultery isn't a crime. Sure he could have been divorced and sued by his wife. So nothing about the act was illegal and none of it had anything to do with the business of performing his duties as president.
So I ask again, how was the entire line of questioning any business of Congress and why did they spending millions of tax dollars pursuing it?
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You couldn't be more off base if you tried. First, I'm not a Democrat. Second, I never supported Clinton prior to that, and I certainly didn't support him after.
However, the BJ business was nothing but political theater. As near as I can tell, every politician lies, under oath or not, so it's hard to get all upset about the lies that don't actually matter when there are so many that do.
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Will someone please explain WTF Congress is doing investigating professional baseball players for violating MLB's ban on performance enhancing substances? How the fuck is that any of Congress's business? Shouldn't that be handled by well... MLB!?! Since when are MLB rules federal laws that are the concern of Congress?
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*facepalm*
Really? He really should have included the name of the supervisor that required him to do this so that we know who to remove from their position and that person should then be publicly subjugated to a mocking of epic proportions.
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Can't you just picture the hijackers and pilots facing off in a fencing match with a boxcutter vs a nail clipper (one of those bit toenail ones hopefully)... slash, parry, slash
Sounds almost as silly as the pilot needing nail clipper to "take control" of the plane he is flying...
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Can you just imagine being trapped in a metal tube with a maniac with clippers, threatening everyone with a bad manicure?
These terrorists live for this kind of stuff, you know.
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well, this IS humanity...
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Re: well, this IS humanity...
well, this IS humanity...
So nothing surprising here!
People should remember these things the next time they say they have nothing to hide.
If people are going to be okay with their government having zero respect for them, then they should keep quite when they are abused by their betters.
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The companies that make their living building and maintaining these expensive machines are not going to surrender without a fight. Neither are the labor unions representing the TSA workers -- as tens of thousands of jobs (including layers of high-ranking bureaucratic posts) would be lost in a time of high unemployment. Like all entrenched federal programs, few politicians will want to take on this Frankenstein monster.
At this point the best that we can possibly hope for is for the TSA-Industrial Complex to move its in-your-pants security theater from the airports to some other place ... like border crossings, perhaps.
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TSA's purpose
Nope, these are just "nice" side-effects, like "Oh, there's this TSA thing, I can use that to embezzle a couple mil".
The actual main purpose of the TSA is to get the people to learn to accept any measure, and to be obedient, in the name of "security".
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NSA vrs TSA
If the TSA is as good at using their Crystal Ball (aka Naked Scanners)as they say they are, then the NSA is truly unnecessary.
If the NSA wants me to believe their tactics work, do away with the TSA!
I mean can't they just stop the terrorist before they get to the airport?
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former
This is news?
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remember
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ROFL
and no one listened they downvoted at reddit and would mouth me off here...yet here we are getitng proof of the perversion.
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You don't understand
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Re: You don't understand
So no, it was an attack on us all, and we're all paying for it.
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boss
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Same old crap
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TSA Scum
To the TSA employee interviewed here: You are bonafide scum. Stealing the Champagne bottle from the Marine who lost both his legs? How low can you get? What is wrong with this fucking country?
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