Inside TSA scanners: How terahertz waves tear apart human DNA

Blasted with THz Radiation

Terrence Aym
Helium

While the application of scientific knowledge creates technology, sometimes the technology is later redefined by science. Such is the case with terahertz (THz) radiation, the energy waves that drive the technology of the TSA: back scatter airport scanners.

Emerging THz technological applications

THz waves are found between microwaves and infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum. This type of radiation was chosen for security devices because it can penetrate matter such as clothing, wood, paper and other porous material that's non-conducting.

This type of radiation seems less threatening because it doesn't penetrate deeply into the body and is believed to be harmless to both people and animals.


THz waves may have applications beyond security devices. Research has been done to determine the feasibility of using the radiation to detect tumors underneath the skin and for analyzing the chemical properties of various materials and compounds. The potential marketplace for THz driven technological applications may generate many billions of dollars in revenue.

Because of the potential profits, intense research on THz waves and applications has mushroomed over the last decade.

Health risks

The past several years the possible health risks from cumulative exposure to THz waves was mostly dismissed. Experts pointed to THz photons and explained that they are not strong enough to ionize atoms or molecules; nor are they able to break the chains of chemical bonds. They assert—and it is true—that while higher energy photons like ultraviolet rays and X-rays are harmful, the lower energy ones like terahertz waves are basically harmless. [Softpedia.com]

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Intelligence Contractor Floats Body Cavity Bomb Propaganda

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars

Get ready for the government to add body cavity searches to its intrusive airport repertoire. The intelligence disinformation operation known as the SITE Intelligence Group has scoured the internet and found jihadis on a forum used by supposed al-Qaeda affiliates discussing "Frankenbombers" on a forum, according to the New York Daily News.

An individual described as a doctor posted his thoughts about a “new kind of terrorism” – surgically implanted bombs. ”

The scheming comes amid controversy over body scanners and pat-downs in airports that some Americans complain are too invasive. The ideas for a ‘surgically booby-trapped martyrdom seeker’ were chillingly concise for the doctor of death monitored by SITE,” writes James Gordon Meek in a Daily News exclusive.

TSA boss John Pistole said last month that his agency would not conduct body cavity searches. He said secondary screening procedures and technology can find fuses and detonators, which must be outside the body.


According to SITE, the would-be terrorists concluded that the best method would be to stitch a bomb into the abdominal cavity made of plastic or liquid explosives such as Semtex or PETN. “It must be planted near the surface of the body, because the human body absorbs shocks,” instructed the doctor in a post.

Body cavity bombs worry security agents, although “no one has figured out how to actually do it,” a counterterror official told the New York Daily News.

SITE’s founders, Rita Katz and Josh Devon, have collaborated with the National Security Agency, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. SITE, MEMRI, and the IntelCenter operate as propaganda outlets for the government as it carries out its contrived war on global terrorism. SITE has claimed to discover a number of al-Qaeda tapes, including the 2007 Osama bin Laden video.

Rita Katz “personally briefed government officials, including former terrorism czar Richard Clarke and his staff in the White House, as well as investigators in the Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security on the financing and recruitment networks of the terrorist movement,” the SITE website states.

“In the short-term, there will not be any changes, but what I’m looking at is how can we best use the information we have, both the intelligence from overseas such as what we saw this weekend from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula about how they design and conceal the toner cartridge bombs in cargo flights out of Yemen that coupled with the thoroughness that we believe is appropriate,” said Pistole after the ludicrous printer toner bomb fiasco last month.



Now that the NSA, FBI, and DHS contractor SITE has floated propaganda about the possibility of al-CIA-duh using surgically implanted bombs to kill apostates during the Christmas season, we can expect another absurd event like the one staged by the underwear non-bomber last year. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s stunt was exploited in order to excuse intrusive pat downs and rush dangerous naked body scanners into airports with the help of the former DHS boss, Michael Chertoff.

The Stasi-like searches of Americans at airports has nothing to do with al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism. The searches are designed to humiliate, intimidate, and control the American people and acclimate them to the militarization of society and prepare citzens to obey guards, as Lew Rockwell notes.

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Harvard pair sue TSA over screenings

Donna Goodison
Boston Herald

Two Harvard Law School students are suing the Transportation Security Administration, claiming the so-called “nude body scanners” and intrusive pat-downs used to screen airline passengers are unconstitutional.

Jeffrey Redfern and Anant Pradhan claim use of the scanners and pat-downs as primary screening methods violates their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. The frequent air travelers want to stop the TSA from using either without “reasonable suspicion or probable cause.”

“The abstract risk of terrorism without a credible, specific threat … does not justify the (searches),” states the suit, filed in Boston federal court.

“The enhance pat-down procedure, if done non-consensually, would amount to a sexual assault in most jurisdictions, and the intrusion of peering under his clothes would be similarly illegal,” the lawsuit states.

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How to Save Taxpayer Money: Bring in The Dogs, Not Naked Body Scanners (VIDEO)

video by iching64

Commentary by Brasscheck TV

This video exposes the blood-boiling waste and corruption that the new airport body-scanning machines represent. So far, at least $160 million in US Taxpayer money has been spent, with potentially billions more to be paid on these systems in the next few years.

Trained bomb sniffing dogs, in combination with the metal detectors *already being used* in airports would produce FAR more accurate readings of REAL threats to airline passengers, without the Gestapo-like humiliation, the illegal invasion of privacy and the toxic exposure to radiation from these devices.

The Iraqi government spent millions of dollars on bomb-detecting machines, which they found to be USELESS -- then *returned to using bomb-sniffing dogs*. The FBI relies almost exclusively on bomb-sniffing dogs because they don't trust anything else.

Why shouldn't paying airline customers have the best security there is - rather than being subjected to the dubious results of these radiation devices made by defense contractors that have scammed the government out of the Taxpayers' hard-earned
money?

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Why the TSA pat-downs and body scans are unconstitutional

Jeffrey Rosen
Washington Post

The protest on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was called National Opt-Out Day, and its organizers urged air travelers to refuse the Transportation Security Administration's full-body scanning machines.

But many appeared to have opted out of opting out. The TSA reported that few of the 2 million people flying Wednesday chose pat-downs over the scanners, with few resulting delays.

There have been high-profile acts of civil disobedience in response to the two controversial procedures recently deployed by the TSA for primary screening - the body-scanning machines and the intrusive full-body pat-downs - including software programmer John Tyner's unforgettable warning to a TSA official: "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested." But the public seems less opposed to the scanners than civil libertarians had hoped. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, only 32 percent of respondents said they objected to the full-body scans, although 50 percent were opposed to the pat-downs offered as an alternative.

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Fear Pays: Chertoff, Ex-Security Officials Slammed For Cashing In On Government Experience

"He (Chertoff) sits at the heart of the giant security nexus created in the wake of 9/11, in effect creating a shadow homeland security agency. "

Huff Post collage

Marcus Baram
Huffington Post

After last month's plot to send bombs from Yemen to the United States aboard a cargo plane, former U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff's whiskerless visage was ubiquitous on cable news. Solemnly warning that the nation needed stronger security procedures, Chertoff patiently repeated his talking points on ABC News's "World News Tonight", "Fox and Friends", CNBC's "Squawk Box" and Bloomberg TV.

Almost unmentioned in these appearances: Chertoff has a lot to gain financially if some of these measures are adopted. Between his private consulting firm, The Chertoff Group, and seats on the boards of giant defense and security firms, he sits at the heart of the giant security nexus created in the wake of 9/11, in effect creating a shadow homeland security agency. Chertoff launched his firm just days after President Barack Obama took office, eventually recruiting at least 11 top officials from the Department of Homeland Security, as well as former CIA director General Michael Hayden and other top military brass and security officials.


Chertoff's predecessor at DHS, Tom Ridge, has also parlayed his experience into a lucrative career. Since 2005, he has served on the board of Savi Technology, the primary technology provider for the Pentagon's wireless cargo-monitoring network, and he has served as a senior advisor to TechRadium, Inc., a Texas-based security technology company.

Chertoff's clients have prospered in the last two years, largely through lucrative government contracts, and The Chertoff Group's assistance in navigating the complex federal procurement bureaucracy is in high demand. One example involves the company at the heart of the recent uproar over intrusive airport security procedures -- Rapiscan, which makes the so-called body scanners. Back in 2005, Chertoff was promoting the technology and Homeland Security placed the government's first order, buying five Rapiscan scanners.

After the arrest of the underwear bomber last Christmas, Chertoff hit the airwaves and wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post advocating the full-body scanning systems without disclosing that Rapiscan Systems was a client of his firm. The aborted terror plot prompted the Transportation Security Agency to order 300 machines from Rapiscan. Yet last spring, the Government Accountability Office reported that, "It remains unclear whether [the scanners] would have been able to detect the weapon" used in the aborted bombing attempt. And according to a recent report by DHS's Inspector General, the training of airport screeners is rushed and poorly supervised.

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Placards, kilts part of plans for scanner protests

Michael Tarm
Associated Press

CHICAGO – Travelers dismayed by airport body scans are headed to airports Wednesday with the makings of any good protest: handmade fliers, eye-catching placards, slogan-bearing T-shirts — and Scottish kilts.

The loosely organized effort dubbed National Opt-Out Day hopes to highlight what some call unnecessarily intrusive security screenings. Others fear it will merely snarl pre-Thanksgiving airline operations on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Robert Shofkom wasn't worried about delayed flights, maybe just strong breezes.



The 43-year-old from Georgetown, Texas, said he planned for weeks to wear a traditional kilt — sans skivvies — to display his outrage over body scanners and aggressive pat-downs while catching his Wednesday flight out of Austin.

"If you give them an inch, they won't just take in inch. Pretty soon you're getting scanned to get into a football game," the IT specialist said.

Shofkom was momentarily disheartened when his wife informed him Tuesday that the Austin airport doesn't yet have body scans. But he decided to wear the kilt anyway, a show of solidarity with fellow protesters who have taken to Facebook and other websites to tout plans for similarly revealing travel outfits.

One Internet-based protest group called We Won't Fly said hundreds of activists would go to 27 U.S. airports Wednesday to pass out fliers with messages such as "You have the right to say, `No radiation strip search! No groping of genitals!' Say, `I opt out.'"

"If 99 percent of people normally agree to go through scanners, we hope that falls to 95 percent," said one organizer, George Donnelly, 39. "That would make it a success."

If enough people opt for a pat-down rather than a body scan, security-line delays could quickly cascade.

More than 40 million people plan to travel over the Thanksgiving holiday, according to AAA, with just more than 1.6 million flying — a 3.5 percent increase from last year. Body scans for passengers chosen at random take as little as 10 seconds. New pat-down procedures, which involve a security worker touching travelers' crotch and chest areas, can take 4 minutes or longer.

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Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects?

Dr. Ron Paul
Campaign For Liberty

The growing revolt against invasive TSA practices is encouraging to Americans who are fed up with federal government encroachment in their lives. In the case of air travelers, this encroachment is quite literally physical. But a deep-seated libertarian impulse still exists within the American people, and opposition to the new TSA full body scanner and groping searches is gathering momentum.

I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

This principle goes beyond TSA agents, however. As commentator Lew Rockwell recently noted, the bill "enshrines the key lesson of the freedom philosophy: the government is not above the moral law. If it is wrong for you and me, it is wrong for people in government suits. . . That is true of TSA crimes too." The revolt against TSA also serves as a refreshing reminder that we should not give in to government alarmism or be afraid to question government policies.


Certainly, those who choose to refuse the humiliating and potentially harmful new full body scanner machines may suffer delays, inconveniences, or worse. But I still believe peaceful resistance is the most effective tool against federal encroachment on our constitutional rights, which leads me to be supportive of any kind of "opt-out" or similar popular movements.

After all, what price can we place on our dignity, personal privacy, and physical integrity? We have a right not to be treated like criminals and searched by federal agents without some reasonable evidence of criminal activity. Are we now to accept that merely wishing to travel and board an aircraft give rise to reasonable suspicion of criminality?

Also, let's not forget that TSA was created in the aftermath of 9/11, when far too many Americans were clamoring for government protection from the specter of terrorism. Indeed it was congressional Republicans, the majority party in 2001, who must bear much of the blame for creating the Department of Homeland Security and TSA in the first place. Congressional Republicans also overwhelmingly supported the Patriot Act, which added to the atmosphere of hostility toward civil liberties in the name of state-provided "security."

But as we’ve seen with TSA, federal "security" has more to do with humiliation and control than making us safe. It has more to do with instilling a mindset of subservience, which is why laughable policies such as removing one’s shoes continue to be enforced. What else could explain the shabby, degrading spectacle of a long line of normally upbeat Americans shuffling obediently through airport security in their stocking feet?

TSA may be merely symbolic of much bigger problems with the federal government, but it is an important symbol and we have a real chance to do something about it. We must seize this opportunity, before TSA offers some cosmetic compromise or the media spotlight fades. If you don’t live in my congressional district, please consider contacting your member of Congress and asking him or her to cosponsor HR 6416, the American Traveler Dignity Act of 2010. With enough help, we can push the bill to a vote early next year. Unless grassroots Americans take action, federal agencies like TSA will continue to bully us and ignore our basic constitutional freedoms.

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TSA chief: Resisting scanners just means delays

Editor's Note: Propaganda Alert!

Ray Henry
Associated Press

ATLANTA — Despite tough talk on the Internet, there was little if any indication of a passenger revolt at many major U.S. airports, with very few people declining the X-ray scan that can peer through their clothes. Those who refuse the machines are subject to a pat-down search that includes the crotch and chest.

Many travelers said that the scans and the pat-down were not much of an inconvenience, and that the stepped-up measures made them feel safer and were, in any case, unavoidable.

"Whatever keeps the country safe, I just don't have a problem with," Leah Martin, 50, of Houston, said as she waited Monday to go through security at the Atlanta airport.

At New York's LaGuardia Airport early Tuesday, Jeannine St. Amand got a pat-down in front of her husband and two children. The 45-year-old from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, figured she got one because the underwire of her bra tripped the metal detector.

"It's hard to remember all the restrictions. Next time, I'll wear a different bra," she said.

She opted to have the pat-down in public rather than private and said it was professional and done by a female agent.

"She tells you ahead of time what she is going to do, which is a good thing because that could be awkward," St. Amand said.

Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole pleaded with Thanksgiving travelers for understanding and urged them not to boycott full-body scans on Wednesday. It would only snarl what is already one of the busiest, most stressful flying days of the and would only "tie up people who want to go home and see their loved ones," he said.

"We all wish we lived in a world where security procedures at airports weren't necessary," he said, "but that just isn't the case."

He noted the alleged attempt by a Nigerian with explosives in his underwear to bring down a plane over Detroit last Christmas.

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Naked body scanners may be dangerous: scientists

AFP

WASHINGTON — US scientists warned Friday that the full-body, graphic-image X-ray scanners that are being used to screen passengers and airline crews at airports around the country may be unsafe.

"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP.

"No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner," he said.

The possible health dangers posed by the scanners add to passengers and airline crews' concerns about the devices, which have been dubbed "naked" scanners because of the graphic image they give of a person's body, genitalia and all.

A regional airline pilot last month refused to go through one of the scanners, calling it an "assault on my person" and a violation of his right to privacy.

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Body scanner makers doubled lobbying cash over 5 years

Fredreka Schouten
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The companies with multimillion-dollar contracts to supply American airports with body-scanning machines more than doubled their spending on lobbying in the past five years and hired several high-profile former government officials to advance their causes in Washington, government records show.
L-3 Communications, which has sold $39.7 million worth of the machines to the federal government, spent $4.3 million trying to influence Congress and federal agencies during the first nine months of this year, up from $2.1 million in 2005, lobbying data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show. Its lobbyists include Linda Daschle, a former Federal Aviation Administration official.

Rapiscan Systems, meanwhile, has spent $271,500 on lobbying so far this year, compared with $80,000 five years earlier. It has faced criticism for hiring Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary, last year. Chertoff has been a prominent proponent of using scanners to foil terrorism. The government has spent $41.2 million with Rapiscan.

"The revolving door provides corporations like these with a short cut to lawmakers" and other decision-makers, said Sheila Krumholz, of the Center for Responsive Politics.

The use of body-scanning machines has ignited controversy over privacy and health concerns.

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Dear Airline, I'm Leaving You

Megan McArdle
The Atlantic

But don't feel too bad.  It's not you, it's me.  Or rather, it's the TSA.

I'm not going to lie.  It's come between us.  If I have to let someone else see me naked in order to be with you--well, I'm just not that kinky.  And deep down, I don't think you are either.  I think it's the TSA making you act like this.  Frankly, you haven't been the same since you started running around together.

But I can't put all the blame on them.  I think you went along because you thought I had to have you--that I couldn't live without you.  That no matter what you did, I'd stay.  And it's true, you had a pretty strong hold on me.  Took away the food, and I still loved you--who wanted to eat a terrible, fattening meal anyway?  Narrowed the distance between the seats, and still I stayed, using my airline miles to upgrade to first class.  Charge me for baggage?  I'm an economics writer--I love unbundled products.  So I can see where you got the idea that I'd stick by you no matter what.


But the kinky stuff is just a bridge too far.  I'm not saying I'll never see you again:  we can still meet up for a drink, or even a quick weekend trip to California.  But our days are a regular item are through. I'm writing this letter because one of my commenters pointed out that it was only fair to let you know what was going on:

Especially if you've got frequent flyer status, don't forget to mail the airline and tell then you're flying amtrak...optouting is fine, but it's really only the airlines that have the clout to push back.

It wouldn't be fair to just drop out of sight and not return your calls without letting you know why I was leaving.  As it happens, I'm a frequent flier on American, and a pretty reliable customer of Delta and United.  Or rather I was.  Because like I said, I'm leaving you.

In fact, I've already left.  My cousin's wedding in Buffalo in October?  Drove eight hours each way.

Going to visit Dad in Boston over Christmas?  We're taking a slow train from DC rather than subject ourselves to the increasing indignity of flying.  If it's under 500 miles, I'll do anything rather than hop on a plane.  And if it's over 500 miles, it had better be way over . . . or I'd better be carrying a cooler with a still-beating heart in it.

I suspect there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way, and may not have blogs, so I'm urging them to put their Dear John letters right in the comments.  I'll forward any Dear Airline letters that are left in the comments to the relevant airlines.

Uncle Sam may not care about the minority of voters who fly often.  But I'm kinda hoping that you guys do.  Maybe the flame of our old romance isn't entirely out.  I don't want to raise false expectations--but you might win us back.  If you play your cards right.

If not--well, here's looking at you, kid.  From the window of the BoltBus as it cruises past Newark airport.

Love,

Megan

Opt-Out

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