As we warned at the beginning of the year, X-ray body scanners currently being used and abused in airports across the world are set to hit the streets as American Science & Engineering reveals that “more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents” have been sold to government agencies.
In January, we divulged how the ultimate end use of the body scanners would not be limited to airports, and that they were going to be rolled out on the streets as mobile units that would scan vehicles at checkpoints as well as individuals and crowds attending public events.
Dutch police announced that they were developing a mobile scanner that would “see through people’s clothing and look for concealed weapons” and that it would be used “as an alternative to random body searches in high risk areas”.
The device would also be used from a distance on groups of people “and mass scans on crowds at events such as football matches.”
The plans mirrored leaked documents out of the UK Home Office three years prior, which revealed that authorities in the UK were working on proposals to fit lamp posts with CCTV cameras that would X-ray scan passers-by and “undress them” in order to “trap terror suspects”.
Now, according to a Forbes report, backscatter x-ray vision devices mounted on trucks are already being deployed inside the United States to scan passing individuals and vehicles in complete violation of the Fourth Amendment.
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold many of the devices to U.S. law enforcement agencies, who are already using them on the streets for “security” purposes.
“Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” points out Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure. 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.”
Watch a video demonstration of the device below.
“The TSA’s official policy dictates that full-body scans must be viewed in a separate room from any guards dealing directly with subjects of the scans, and that the scanners won’t save any images,” states the report. “Just what sort of safeguards might be in place for AS&E’s scanning vans isn’t clear, given that the company won’t reveal just which law enforcement agencies, organizations within the DHS, or foreign governments have purchased the equipment.”
However, as we reported right from the start and as was confirmed earlier this month, federal authorities have been storing checkpoint body scan images all along, proving that their claim that no images could be stored or transmitted was an act of mass public deception in order to grease the skids for the rapid introduction of the devices after the botched and highly suspicious underwear bomber incident.
As we have constantly reiterated, everything that we see unfolding in the airports is eventually designed to be used on the streets. People who had a blasé attitude about the privacy-busting body scanners, behavioral interrogations, and intrusive pat-downs occurring in airports on the basis that they could avoid them by not flying face a rude awakening once all this is in their face on a daily basis.
Body and vehicle scanners are just one tool authorities plan to implement on a widespread basis as part of our deepening decline into a hi-tech militarized police state.
Homeland Security is already implementing technology to be enforced at “security events” which purportedly reads “malintent” on behalf of an individual who passes through a checkpoint. The video below explains how “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST) checkpoints will conduct “physiological” and “behavioral” tests in order to weed out suspected terrorists and criminals.
The clip shows individuals who attend “security events” being led into trailers before they are interrogated as to whether they are terrorists while lie detector-style computer programs analyze their physiological responses. The subjects are asked about their whereabouts, and if they are attempting to smuggle bombs or recording devices into the “expo,” proving that the technology is intended to be used at public events and not just airports. Individuals who do not satisfy the first lie detector-style test are then asked “additional questions”.
The use of such technology is not only a complete violation of the Fourth Amendment, it also eviscerates the notion of innocent until proven guilty, and therefore totally undermines everything America stands for. Given the widespread abuse witnessed in the first eight months alone after the roll out of airport body scanners, Americans need to boycott the companies producing these systems and also resist their deployment at every turn.
Fourth Amendment lawsuits such as the one filed by EPIC against the naked body scanners should be used as a tool with which to ensure that such systems are never allowed to become commonplace, unless we wish to see supposedly free countries turned into high-tech prison grids ruled over by corrupt government enforcers who treat citizens as slaves.
