Homeland Security Admits That TSA Scanners Have 'Vulnerabilities'

from the shockingly-unshocking dept

A leaked internal report by Homeland Security has revealed what most people already knew: that its new (expensive) nudie scanners have vulnerabilities that could let things through. This is hardly a surprise. We've written about previous claims including a pretty detailed research report highlighting the vulnerabilities. In fact, it seems pretty crazy that the TSA is finally starting to take notice now. What's really the most galling, of course, is that plenty of people have been pointing out these kinds of vulnerabilities for a while and the TSA did nothing. It's just that now, as the vulnerabilities are finally getting press attention, that the TSA starts to pretend to take these things seriously, rather than admitting the truth: they're there for show more than anything else.

Filed Under: homeland security, scanners, tsa

German Police Admit That Full Body Naked Airport Scanners Suck; 35% False Alarm Rate

from the that's-worse-than-useless dept

We've noted all sorts of privacy and health problems related to full body "naked" scanners -- but there's a separate but important question: do they actually work? There's been some evidence presented that they wouldn't have spotted a variety of recent terrorism attempts, but now German police have noted that the machines also have a ridiculously high false alarm rate:

The weekly, Welt am Sonntag, quoting a police report, said 35 percent of the 730,000 passengers checked by the scanners set off the alarm more than once despite being innocent.

The report said the machines were confused by several layers of clothing, boots, zip fasteners and even pleats, while in 10 percent of cases the passenger's posture set them off.

[....]

In the wake of the 10-month trial which began on September 27 last year, German federal police see no interest in carrying out any more tests with the scanners until new more effective models become available, Welt am Sonntag said.

I would argue that this is actually worse than useless, in that providing a significant number of false positives makes it much, much harder to spot the actual positives. It desensitizes agents to assume that any alarm is a false alarm.

Filed Under: airports, germany, scanners

TSA Agrees To Take The Naked Out Of Naked Scanners

from the nice-of-them dept

After all the controversy concerning the TSA's naked scanners, it appears that someone at the TSA just found out that they could be made to work without showing the naked image of a person's body and realized perhaps it's a good idea to switch to that version of the software. Of course, there are still serious concerns about the radiation issues, but at least something is happening.

Filed Under: naked, scanners, tsa

Court: Naked Scanners Are Constitutional; But TSA Should Have Asked For Public Comment

from the can-they-x-ray-the-constitution? dept

This isn't a huge surprise, as we said when the lawsuit was first filed, but EPIC has failed in its attempt to have the TSA's naked scanners declared unconstitutional. The court seems to think the scans are just dandy, though it had some trouble with how they were implemented. There were two key legal points raised by EPIC. The first was that implementing the naked scanners without a public review violated the Administrative Procedures Act. The court seems sympathetic to this argument:

The TSA seems to think it significant that there are no AIT scanners at some airports and the agency retains the discretion to stop using the scanners where they are in place. More clearly significant is that a passenger is bound to comply with whatever screening procedure the TSA is using on the date he is to fly at the airport from which his flight departs. 49 C.F.R. § 1540.105(a)(2) (no passenger may enter the “sterile area” of an airport “without complying with the systems, measures, or procedures being applied to control access to” that area). To be sure, he can opt for a patdown but, as the TSA conceded at oral argument, the agency has not argued that option makes its screening procedures nonbinding and we therefore do not consider the possibility. We are left, then, with the argument that a passenger is not bound to comply with the set of choices presented by the TSA when he arrives at the security checkpoint, which is absurd.

In sum, the TSA has advanced no justification for having failed to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking. We therefore remand this matter to the agency for further proceedings.

Still... even then, it says that ordering the TSA to stop using the machines would "severely disrupt an essential security operation," so it will not halt the use of the machines, even if it expects the TSA to begin holding public review of them.

The second key argument (there are a few other lesser arguments) is the Fourth Amendment claim. And here, the court just doesn't see it.

As other circuits have held, and as the Supreme Court has strongly suggested, screening passengers at an airport is an “administrative search” because the primary goal is not to determine whether any passenger has committed a crime but rather to protect the public from a terrorist attack.... An administrative search does not require individualized suspicion.... (individualized suspicion required when police checkpoint is “primarily [for] general crime control,” that is, “to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing” unlike “searches at places like airports ... where the need for such measures to ensure public safety can be particularly acute”). Instead, whether an administrative search is “unreasonable” within the condemnation of the Fourth Amendment “is determined by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual's privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests.”

That balance clearly favors the Government here. The need to search airline passengers “to ensure public safety can be particularly acute,” ... and, crucially, an AIT scanner, unlike a magnetometer, is capable of detecting, and therefore of deterring, attempts to carry aboard airplanes explosives in liquid or powder form. On the other side of the balance, we must acknowledge the steps the TSA has already taken to protect passenger privacy, in particular distorting the image created using AIT and deleting it as soon as the passenger has been cleared. More telling, any passenger may opt-out of AIT screening in favor of a patdown, which allows him to decide which of the two options for detecting a concealed, nonmetallic weapon or explosive is least invasive.

This is, again, not surprising, but disappointing. It's rulings like this that allow for the gradual disposal of the 4th Amendment, by simply stretching the interpretation further and further each time, until there's just nothing left at all.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, constitution, privacy, scanners, tsa

Woman Arrested For Not Letting TSA Grope Her Daughter

from the terrorism? dept

A woman, who did not feel comfortable going through the TSA naked scanners, was arrested for disorderly conduct when she also refused to let the TSA molest and grope her daughter. I'm trying to figure out how this makes us any safer on airplanes.

"I still don't want someone to see our bodies naked," the mom is reported to have replied.

As for the pat-down option, the police report states that the mom didn't want her daughter to be "touched inappropriately or have her "crotch grabbed."

TSA agents say she became belligerent and verbally abusive. The woman was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

So, either your privacy gets violated, you get molested, or you get arrested. Where do we live again?

Filed Under: arrest, children, groping, scanners, tsa

New Documents Raise More Questions About Safety Of TSA Scanners

from the of-course-they-do... dept

Last year, we noted that the TSA appeared to be misleading the public in stating that its new more intrusive scanners were safe. This didn't mean that the machines weren't safe -- but that the TSA was, at the very least, massively exaggerating the claims that they had scientific support to say that the machines definitely were safe. Earlier this year, there were further worries, when reports came out showing that some of the machines were giving off much more radiation than they were supposed to.

Now, EPIC, which is in an ongoing lawsuit to try to get these scanners banned, is claiming that via a FOIA request, they have new evidence that the TSA has been misleading people about the risks of the scanners. The documents show that Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano blatantly misrepresented a NIST study in a USA Today OpEd, to claim that the scanners were safe. NIST, however, quickly contacted DHS, saying that it was "concerned" about the piece misrepresenting what it had said:

• NIST does not do product testing
• NIST did not test AIT machines for safety
• NIST measured the dose of a single machine and compared it against the standard

Apparently, NIST told DHS to stop misrepresenting its work, and suggested that if DHS agreed, then it wouldn't call for USA Today to run a correction on the piece.

Separately, another document shows that TSA employees in Boston raised serious concerns to officials, claiming that there was evidence of a "cancer cluster" among TSA agents in Boston. The union asked the TSA to provide agents with dosimeters that could be clipped onto uniforms in order to measure the radiation to make sure the machines were safe. Agents in Atlanta apparently also expressed concerns and asked for dosimeters. The TSA refused, noting that it was already running some tests, and the tests showed no radiation problems.

This document is receiving a lot of attention, but I don't find it quite as damning as most. People just claiming that they believe there's a heightened cancer risk is not really evidence or fact. It would be more interesting if there was actual data to support that, rather than just anecdotal evidence. Still, I think it's becoming increasingly clear that the TSA, at the very least, exaggerated the claims of how much scientific support there is that these machines are safe. That's the part that bugs me. They could easily allow for much more testing of the machines, but don't seem that interested in it, preferring instead to mislead the public, a la Napolitano interview.

Filed Under: nist, radiation, safety, scanners, tsa

Congress Wants To Cut Funds To The TSA For Naked Scanners

from the looks-like-someone's-paying-attention dept

Via Slashdot we learned that the House Appropriations Committee's latest plan specifically cuts funding for the TSA's naked body scanners. In the section about the TSA, it notes:

The bill includes $7.8 billion for the TSA, an increase of $125 million over last year’s level, and $293 million below the President’s request. These funds will be used to sustain the current cap level of 46,000 full time screening personnel, and for explosive detection systems, security enforcement, cargo inspections, Federal Air Marshals, and other TSA activities. The bill also includes an additional $10 million to address air cargo threats. However, the bill does not provide $76 million requested by the President for 275 additional advanced inspection technology (AIT) scanners nor the 535 staff requested to operate them.

This won't stop the many such machines already in service, but could potentially slow the expansion of the use of such machines. Of course, I'm sure one carefully placed "soft on terrorists!" fear mongering report will ensure such machines get funded soon enough anyway.

Filed Under: congress, funds, scanners, tsa

Maintenance Report Shows Radiation Levels On Some TSA Scanners 10 Times Higher Than Promised

from the uh,-whoops dept

At the end of last year, we pointed to some discussions that suggested the TSA was being totally misleading in claiming that the new naked airport scanners had been shown to be totally safe when it came to radiation. While the studies the TSA used to make that claim only said that was the case if the machines were working properly, there was no evidence that the TSA was actually making sure the machines were working properly, or how easily they might not be working properly. Well, it appears that this may have been a much bigger issue than originally thought, as some maintenance on these machines has shown radiation levels 10 times the amount that they're supposed to be emitting. The TSA has now agreed to retest all of the machines -- though it still insists that these new reports were "mathematics mistakes." Uh. Yeah.

But, really, the issue goes beyond that. If it's so easy to make "math mistakes," how do we know that the original "lower" reports from these machines was accurate? Assuming these readings were accurate, how long were these machines operating at 10x the radiation levels? How easy was it for the radiation levels to get so high? How will the TSA prevent it from happening again? Honestly, though, the people who should be most upset are the TSA workers who run these machines. It makes you wonder how much radiation they're being exposed to on a daily basis.

Filed Under: radiation, scanners, tsa

TSA Starts Testing New Scanners That Don't Show Your Naked Body

from the well,-that's-a-start dept

Despite all the protests from the TSA that there was nothing (nothing!) wrong with requiring everyone to display their naked body or be groped by TSA employees in order to board an airplane, it appears that even TSA officials are recognizing that the nudie scanners may have gone a bit too far. The TSA is now testing new screening machines that display a generic body outline, rather than showing a person's actual body. Of course, there's no word on if the TSA will similarly mislead the public about the safety (or lack of safety) in these new machines. Also, there's no indication if these new machines will be as easily defeated as the old ones.

Filed Under: scanners, scans, tsa

Patrick Leahy Says TSA Scanners Are Invasive; Will Investigate Them

from the well-that's-a-start dept

We've had plenty of problems with Senator Patrick Leahy on this blog, as his push is to always make intellectual property laws worse, such as with ProIP and now COICA. However, sometimes he does things that deserve kudos, such as his plan to investigate the TSA's new scanners, calling them "invasive." Leahy apparently wants the Senate Judiciary Committee (which he heads) to examine whether or not the machines really make sense. Of course, perhaps we should withhold any kudos until we find out what comes out of that "review..."

Filed Under: patrick leahy, privacy, scanners, tsa