Detailed recently by USA Today, the Transportation Security Administration made an official announcement on Friday that the organization will be removing all full-body scanning machines produced by Rapiscan Systems from airports around the United States. The decision to replace the hardware was made after representatives of Rapiscan Systems informed the TSA that the company wouldn’t be able to update the software on the backscatter scanners by a deadline of June 1, 2013. Conceptually, the software update would show potentially dangerous items on an illustration of a body rather than a mostly nude picture of a passenger moving through the security line.
Prior to this point, TSA representatives had defended this type of scanner and indicated that security employees that viewed the image had no form of interaction with the passenger. However, the TSA had quietly started to replace the scanners during late 2012.
Regarding the upgrade deadline, privacy advocates actively campaigned against the use of the scanners and Congress acted accordingly. Government officials ordered that the software used by the machines had to be upgraded by mid-2013 or the TSA simply had to remove the hardware from airports.
After the TSA cancelled the contract with Rapiscan Systems, the organization will have to remove 174 backscatter scanners from thirty airports located in places like Fort Lauderdale, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Seattle. In addition, the TSA is already holding 76 machines in storage. At a cost of $180,000 per machine, those 250 full-body scanners cost the TSA approximately $45 million. However, the TSA can avoid paying an additional $45 million for the remaining 250 scanners that Rapiscan Systems was producing to fill an entire order of 500 machines.
According to TSA spokesman David Castelveter, the backscatter machines will likely be replaced with traditional metal detectors in the thirty airports. However, the TSA also owns 669 millimeter-wave machines and will be moving some of those machines to those airports. Millimeter-wave machines have been praised for using radio waves to scan a body compared to radiation utilized by a backscatter scanner. In addition, the machines use a cartoon image to point out any areas of concern on a passenger’s body.
Actually they aren’t yanking the devices. They’re replacing them with millimeter wave scanners that obviscate the perfect nude image that it generates (and rumors are that they can still get to the full image if they think that there might be something there.)
As for millimeter wave scanners, they are know to unzip DNA, so they are even more harmful than the backscatter radar devices that they are replacing, and just like the backscatter rapiscan devices, their testing is dodgy and they’re avoiding releasing the findings of the testing because they know that people would scream if they found out what this does to your body.
Meanwhile in other news, since 2001 the TSA has stop exactly 0 TERRORISTS all the while violating your 4th amendment rights by searching you without probable cause, and a warrant (or exigent circumstances). This has to get to the supreme court ASAP.
you people moan to much about your whatever amendment rights and your country is well and truly screwed up for it Eg…. “we can’t stop children being blown away in schools because we have this amendment” ” we can’t have tighter boarder controls because of this amendment” stop being so damned suspicious of yourselves get your finger out and sort your country out.
oh and by the way
a·mend·ment (-mndmnt)
n.
1. The act of changing for the better; improvement: “Society may sometimes show signs of repentance and amendment” (George G. Coulton).
2. A correction or alteration, as in a manuscript.
3.
a. The process of formally altering or adding to a document or record.
b. A statement of such an alteration or addition: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote.
basically your country needs a new amendment i.e change
You need to educate yourself:
1. The US has half the violent crime rate as the UK, less than Canada and most of Europe and vastly less than most of Asia. (the UK is busy banning knives longer than 2.5 inches because people just use knives to do their killing now. The US isn’t even in the top 10 violent first world countries in the world.
2. More guns = less crime. All of the statistics prove that the more people carrying the fewer crimes there are. The states in the US with the least gun control are also the ones with the least violent crime per capita. (Chicago, the city with the most gun control is also the 2nd most violent. The worst, is Washington DC which is second in gun control!)
3. 90% of all crime in the US and indeed in most countries around the world is the direct result of drug prohibition. It is the outlawing of drugs (that accomplished nothing because there has been no change in drug use) that caused the massive spike in violence. And those people will still have guns no matter how you ban them, they’ll just have no one that can defend themselves to make them think twice. And the reason the gangs exist and they use violence is because they do not have a court of law to air their grievances and resolve contract disputes. As shown repeatedly around the world, legalizing drugs is the surest way to eliminate the vast majority of violent crime, not disarming citizens.
4. There has been exactly 1 mass shooting in American history where guns were allowed. All other mass shootings were where guns were banned (including Ft. Hood). Arming people stops mass shootings, not the other way around.
5. Read the US Constitution and understand history. The bill of rights was ratified at the same time as the constitution was. And if the US wants to amend the Constitution to alter the bill of rights, they can. It requires 3/5s of the state and 3/5s of the house and senate and the President to do so.
6. What the US needs is a more strict adherence to the Constitution not less. It is the Constitution that protects people from government. All government is always evil. They accomplish nothing of any lasting value, and steal from their people while handing money out to their friends. That is true the world over, and throughout all of human history. It is specifically FDR’s usurpation of the constitution by stacking the supreme court and having the word “regulate” changed from the original definition of “to keep regular” to “control” that got the US into this mess because it allowed unlimited federal government.
And I say this as both a natural born Canadian and an American. I know whereof I speak. Canada’s goodness is directly proportionate to it’s Charter of Rights and freedoms that is even more permissive than the US Bill of rights, and even more strict on personally liberties and privacy from government and that is why, since it was adopted in 1982, Canada has gotten progressively freer and more prosperous, while most of the rest of the world has gotten worse.
And most importantly: The worst mass murder in American history? Wounded Knee, where over 200 unarmed people were killed and injured including countless children. Guess who did the killing? THE US GOVERNMENT (Second largest mass murder in American history? Waco, again US government). Which is exactly why the 2nd amendment exists: To protect the individual from a tyrannical government. And let’s not forget that in 2012 alone Obama ordered the murder (via drone strike) over at least 140 children who were completely defenseless and innocent of any crime.
Get a clue and read history. Your ignorance is scary and it is ignorant people such as yourself that puts this world at risk of descending into another dark ages, for exactly the same reasons as why the Rome Empire fell.
My ignorance is down to not being associated with America in any way shape or form and to America having less violent crime than the eu or uk who the hell are you trying to convinvce ?????
google school massacres in the uk and us
Answer uk 1 in 20 yrs, us so many you even have a top ten run down wtf
your laws are antiquated and not fit for purpose in a 21 st century world
And if you don’t like your president bombing kids or friendly troops don’t vote for him make an amendment
Total all violent crime in the UK and the US.
The UK has ~787 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
Canada has about 494 violent crimes per 100,000 people
Europe as a whole, UK exclusive: ~440
Using the same statistics the US has 401 per 100,00 people.
Yes, the US has more murders, but the UK has more violent crime in total (knives, fists, hammers etc.)
In the US there were more killed from hammers last year than there were from assault riffles.
If your purpose is to have a government that can do whatever it wants whenever it wants and control your life, and steal that which you produce to hand it out to low lifes and losers, and buddies to government officials, then yes, the European/UK way works great! If you value freedom, and as small a government as possible, those aniquated ways outlined in 1791 are invaluable.
If you want prosperity for all, then Capitialism is the way. The freer a country is, with the fewer the controls on trade and commerce and the stronger the right to contract and property is, the wealthier the country.
Meanwhile, the UK has one of the highest tax rates in the world, is essentially bankrupt and living off of US money given to it’s central bank, has massive unemployment and a welfare system out of control. It’s healthcare is brutal compared to the US (as is Canada’s) and has death panels to decide end of life for patients. (And Canada is quickly getting there).
The solution is freedom. The solution is capitalism without government interference (for the benefit of anyone, which has never actually been tried anywhere in the world including the US). Socialism (the new word for communism) is evil and results in the death of a nation. That is why Europe is quickly going bankrupt and is doing so directly proportionate to the amount of socialism.
But more to the point: You keep all of the socialists there. We’ll ship you ours and you can all live in your utopia there and we’ll have freedom here. I am 100% confident that in 20 years you’ll be broke and in massive gang violence and rioting (oh right, you already have that) while the US and Canada will be prosperous and free (again).
Yea, took a look at at. Take a look at that!! Looks like those TSA employees will have to find their porn elsewhere, thank you very much!!
What a crock of shit what’s more important stopping some religious right wing fundamentalist from murdering people in the name of some so called god or flashing your bits for a few seconds c’mon where’s the common sense gone
I hope the complainers out there don’t get blown up somewhere and have your family’s moaning why didn’t the government do something about it
IF they actually did do that, then you *might* have some form of argument, but they have NEVER, EVER STOPPED ANY TERRORIST.
But there is something more important than stopping terrorists: It’s called not giving into Tyranny. It’s called respecting and honoring the 4th amendment that says that the government has to have specific probable cause and a warrant to search your person, property and effects specifically to prevent the government from invading your privacy and becoming Nazi Germany.
It is exactly your style of justification that is allowing this country to become a police state because of a government propaganda campaign to create a boogy man that simply doesn’t exist and even when it did was the creation of American foreign policy in the middle east, trading military protection of the dictators from their own people in exchange for a US dollar monopoly on the purchase of oil after the US left the gold standard in 1971 and it was in free fall as a result.
Educate yourself on the causes of their hatred for us. Understand the actions that were taken by Nixon and Ford to first destroy the US dollar and then Ford to temporarily save it.
Understand that Libya was selling oil in Euros and other currencies and even gold, and it wasn’t until they started, that the US, GB, FR, and Canada bombed him to death all the while supporting terrorist organizations to overthrow him.
Understand that the hate on for Iran isn’t because of a Nuke that they don’t have and even if they did wouldn’t pose a threat, even though we installed the government that they currently have, and gave them the nuclear reactor that they have now. It’s because Iran sells oil in gold, Yuans, and Yen among other currencies. The US MUST put a stop to any country selling oil in anything other than US dollars or the US dollar collapses into hyper-inflation because of all of the money printing to support our massive debit and out of control spending.
The chairman of the joint chiefs said that the most dangerous threat to the safety of the US government is the debit. He was right, but most people didn’t understand why he was right. It is the actions that the government takes using the military to prop up a defunct currency that causes the threat because it puts a target on our backs all the while making the debit worse and the cycle continues.
Educate yourself folks. Stop listening to the government propaganda. It is no more true today than it was in WW2.