JustGetThere

Editor: It seems as if an image that first appeared on a German website Bild.de, used a female model image that is part of a software package, as if it was an actual image from an airport body scanner. This image has been used by many in the alternative media as an actual body scanned image although it isn't. Some sites have even linked to the original image on bild.de that cites the source, a simple follow up on the image source would have revealed that this image is not an authentic body scanned image from a airport imaging machine. Now people have even reversed the image to show it in it's original form and present it as a reversed body scanned image. As much as I dislike the idea of body scanners, the use of disinfo to prove your point will be used by the media to debunk the argument and take the focus on the real issue. We must check and recheck all information from the MSM, alternative media and even our site to ensure we don't contribute to the spread of disinfo to people who seek the truth.

911 Debunkers | God dammit! I hate being duped by disinformation. Ok so there's this image making its rounds across the internet that has been presented as an actual scan from one of the airport body scanners now cropping up all over the globe in light of the recent staged terrorist incident. People in the truth and patriot communities have been using it as evidence that the scanners are more revealing than the mainstream media is telling us. While I have no doubt that the scanners are indeed more revealing than what the media is telling us, I've just learned this image is disinformation.

When the image is inverted it looks like this:



Now at first I, like others, assumed this meant the scanners are even more detailed. That was until I was directed to this:


Body in 360° [NSFW]

It's a CD of royalty-free photos of a nude woman. Here are two of those images:



It would appear as though someone has just taken those two photos, photoshopped them to invert the colours and add weapons and claimed them to be body scanner images. I kind of wish I hadn't shown it to all my friends and said "See, the media is lying to you!" now. Grrr.

Original article below that states the photo as an image from a real body scanner.
_____

Inverted Body Scanner Image Shows Naked Body In Full Living Color



Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet | The full body scanners that President Obama last night authorized to be rolled out in airports across the country at a cost of over $1 billion dollars not only produce detailed pictures of your genitals, but once inverted some of those images also display your naked body in full living color.

And you don’t need to be a graphics wizard using a $600 software suite like Photoshop to pull off the trick – inverting a photo is a simple process that takes one click and is an option available even in the most basic image editing software.

We were sent examples of the process by readers and then tested it for ourselves to confirm that simply inverting some of the pictures produced by the body scanners creates a near-perfect replica of a naked body in full color. (SOURCE OF IMAGE).



It is important to stress that this is a low resolution image. Airport screeners will have access to huge high definition images that, once inverted, will allow them to see every minute detail of your body.

The inversion trick doesn’t work for all the sample images produced by body scanners, but with or without its application, every image will still show details of your sexual organs. Even without being inverted, the images already break child porn laws in the UK.

Reassurances that airport screeners won’t be abe to save the images will provide little comfort to parents who know that the crystal clear image of their naked son or daughter being ogled by a TSA thug can merely be snapped with a handheld camera for their enjoyment later.

Apologists for the scanners have routinely described the images they produce as “ghostly” or “skeletal” in an effort to downplay the intrusion of privacy they really represent.

As we reported yesterday, claims that the body scanners did not provide details of genitals were disproven after a London Guardian journalist who was present at a trial for the machines earlier this week reported that the devices produce an image which make “genitals eerily visible.”

German Security advisor Hans-Detlef Dau, a representative for a company that sells the scanners, admits that the machines, “show intimate piercings, catheters and the form of breasts and penises”.

Indeed, as was admitted when the scanners were first being rolled out over a year ago, they don’t function properly if areas of the body are blurred out.

A report from October 2008, when the naked body scanners were first being introduced at Melbourne Airport in Australia, detailed how the X-ray backscatter devices don’t work properly unless the genitals of people going through them are visible.

“It will show the private parts of people, but what we’ve decided is that we’re not going to blur those out, because it severely limits the detection capabilities,” said Office of Transport Security manager Cheryl Johnson.

“It is possible to see genitals and breasts while they’re going through the machine,” she admitted.

TV news reports have been deliberately misleading viewers by blurring out faces and genitals of people in images produced by the scanners. When it comes to the real thing, your sexual organs and those of your children will be on full display to officials sat alone in back rooms, and with a simple inversion trick, your daughter’s naked body in full living high definition color will be there to be enjoyed by screeners.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN

The Jerusalem Post | As international aviation officials look to Israel for techniques to safeguard air travel after the failed Christmas Day bombing, Ben-Gurion airport on Tuesday launched a biometric security system for outbound passengers, heralding a new era of hi-tech passenger screening.

The Unipass Airport Management System, developed by the Israel Airports Authority, is initially being tested on El Al Matmid Frequent Flyer Club members, before being gradually expanded to include, within two years, all departing passengers who voluntarily register, the IAA said.

The IAA said the timing of the biometric security program’s launch, amid heightened international air travel security following the Al-Qaeda terrorist plot to blow up a US airliner over Detroit last month, was purely coincidental.

The IAA refused to address the issue of passenger profiling, saying instead that the Unipass system will offer improved service and security, and an identical screening process for all passengers.

"This is the first system of its kind in the world. Interest has been expressed by other international airports," an IAA spokeswoman said.

It was too soon say how much time the new arrangement will save, the spokeswoman added, but once it becomes fully operational, the system is expected to significantly speed up the security and check-in processes.

In the first stage, passengers will arrive at a registration desk, where a machine will scan their passports, and take fingerprint and facial imaging samples to create a biometric signature.

The information will then be stored on personal smart card that will be issued to each passenger. The registration is a one-time process. Equipped with their smart cards, passengers can then proceed to the first security stand, where they will be asked to swipe their cards and passports through the machine. As the computer confirms a biometric match, a touch screen panel will present the passengers with a series of security questions that until now were asked by airport personnel.

Guards will stand next to the stands to help anyone who runs into difficulties, the IAA said. "We¹re not giving up on human interaction," the spokeswoman said.

"If any of the questions receive incorrect answers, or the system reports a problem, passengers will be taken aside by a guard for an in-depth check, before being allowed to proceed."

The luggage X-ray machine is the next stop, and passengers will once again swipe their Unipass cards through a scanner to inform the system that they have passed the first stage of security.

After the luggage is scanned, passengers will go to the airline's check-in desk, where the smart card will again be swiped, prompting a message to appear on the clerk's computer screen that the passenger has passed through all security stages.

Once check-in is completed, the hand luggage scanning stage takes place, where travelers once again swipe their cards before continuing on to border control, the duty free stores and boarding.

The IAA already allows passengers to circumvent Border Control passport checks with a biometric fingerprint scanner, and says it plans to soon replace Border Control with the Unipass system for registered passengers.

Additionally, the IAA said passengers would soon be able to forgo sending their suitcases through the X-ray machine in the departure hall prior to checking in, thanks to a new system called Hold Baggage Screening.

"Passengers registered on the Unipass system will take their luggage directly to check-in, and from there the suitcases will be passed through comprehensive security before being loaded on the plane," the IAA spokeswoman said.

"I have no doubt that this system will significantly decrease waiting time for the various security checks," IAA director-general Kobi Mor said.

The IAA said the biometric information stored on Unipass computers would be fully secure and could not be accessed by outsiders.

The TSA Web site section on imaging technology states that passengers can refuse to go through the full-body scanner, which sees through clothing.

“These technologies are optional for all passengers,” the Web site states. “Passengers who do not wish to utilize this screening receive an equal level of screening and undergo a pat-down procedure.”

Some experts say that scanning technology is not necessarily the “silver bullet” for keeping terrorists armed with explosives from boarding planes.

By Penny Starr

CNS News | The four international airports in Nigeria are equipped with full-body scanners -- the same technology that the United States and other countries are now scrambling to put into place following the attempted bombing of an American airliner on Christmas Day by a Nigerian terrorist.

The scanners were paid for by the United States and installed in 2007, according to the State Department’s 2008 Country Reports on Terrorism.

“The Nigerian government approved the installation of U.S.-funded body scanners in all four international airports to detect explosives and drugs on passengers,” said the report, which is required by U.S. law to be provided to Congress annually. “The scanners were installed in March, May and June. The Nigerian and U.S. governments also co-sponsored a conference on aviation security in Abuja from November 17-18.”

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian national accused of the attack, traveled from Ghana in West Africa, through Lagos, Nigeria, to Amsterdam, Holland, where he boarded a Northwest plane bound for Detroit.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has had the scanning technology in place since 2007, although some reports say Dutch officials will be beefing up security at the airport because of the attempted terrorist attack.

Read full article

Massachusetts Institute of Technology | A new model of the way the THz waves interact with DNA explains how the damage is done and why evidence has been so hard to gather.

Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes , paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and “frisk” people at distance.

The way terahertz waves are absorbed and emitted can also be used to determine the chemical composition of a material. And even though they don’t travel far inside the body, there is great hope that the waves can be used to spot tumours near the surface of the skin.

With all that potential, it’s no wonder that research on terahertz waves has exploded in the last ten years or so.

But what of the health effects of terahertz waves? At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss any notion that they can be damaging. Terahertz photons are not energetic enough to break chemical bonds or ionise atoms or molecules, the chief reasons why higher energy photons such as x-rays and UV rays are so bad for us. But could there be another mechanism at work?

Read full article

Editor: The picture used by this article and countless others was exposed as a fake. Read about it: DISINFORMATION: Inverted Body Scanner Image Shows Naked Body In Full Living Color

By James Ridgeway

Blacklisted News | Scan, baby, scan. That’s the mantra among politicians at all levels in the wake of the thwarted terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet. According to conventional wisdom, the would-be “underwear bomber” could have been stopped by airport security if he’d been put through a full-body scanner, which would have revealed the cache of explosives attached to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s groin.

Within days or even hours of the bombing attempt, everyone was talking about so-called whole-body imaging as the magic bullet that could stop this type of attack. In announcing hearings by the Senate Homeland Security Commitee, Joe Lieberman approached the use of scanners as a foregone conclusion, saying one of the "big, urgent questions that we are holding this hearing to answer" was "Why isn’t whole-body-scanning technology that can detect explosives in wider use?"
Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told the Washington Post, "You’ve got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren’t easy to get at. It’s either pat downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven’t figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out."

Since the alternative is being groped by airport screeners, the scanners might sound pretty good. The Transportation Security Administration has claimed that the images "are friendly enough to post in a preschool," though the pictures themselves tell another story, and numerous organizations have opposed them as a gross invasion of privacy. Beyond privacy issues, however, are questions about whether these machines really work—and about who stands to benefit most from their use. When it comes to high-tech screening methods, the TSA has a dismal record of enriching private corporations with failed technologies, and there are signs that the latest miracle device may just bring more of the same.

Known by their opponents as "digital strip search" machines, the full-body scanners use one of two technologies—millimeter wave sensors or backscatter x-rays—to see through clothing, producing ghostly images of naked passengers. Yet critics say that these, too, are highly fallible, and are incapable of revealing explosives hidden in body cavities—an age-old method for smuggling contraband. If that’s the case, a terrorist could hide the entire bomb works within his or her body, and breeze through the virtual strip search undetected. Yesterday, the London Independent reported on "authoritative claims that officials at the [UK] Department for Transport and the Home Office have already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation." A British defense-research firm reportedly found the machines unreliable in detecting "low-density" materials like plastics, chemicals, and liquids—precisely what the underwear bomber had stuffed in his briefs.

Yet the rush toward full-body scans already seems unstoppable. They were mandated today as part of the "enhanced" screening for travelers from selected countries, and hundreds of the machines are already on order, at a cost of about $150,000 apiece. Within days of the bombing attempt, Reuters was reporting that the "greater U.S. government shift toward using the high-tech devices could create a boom for makers of security imaging products, and it has already created a speculative spike in share prices in some companies."

Which brings us to the money shot. The body scanner is sure to get a go-ahead because of the illustrious personages hawking them. Chief among them is former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, who now heads the Chertoff Group, which represents one of the leading manufacturers of whole-body-imaging machines, Rapiscan Systems. For days after the attack, Chertoff made the rounds on the media promoting the scanners, calling the bombing attempt "a very vivid lesson in the value of that machinery"—all without disclosing his relationship to Rapiscan. According to the Washington Post:

Chertoff’s advocacy for the technology dates back to his time in the Bush administration. In 2005, Homeland Security ordered the government’s first batch of the scanners—five from California-based Rapiscan Systems.

Today, 40 body scanners are in use at 19 U.S. airports. The number is expected to skyrocket at least in part because of the Christmas Day incident. The Transportation Security Administration this week said it will order 300 more machines.

In the summer, TSA purchased 150 machines from Rapiscan with $25 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.

The Washington Examiner last week ran down an entire list of all the former Washington politicians and staff members who are now part of what it calls the "full-body scanner lobby":

One manufacturer, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is American Science & Engineering, Inc. AS&E has retained the K Street firm Wexler & Walker to lobby for "federal deployment of security technology by DHS and DOD." Individual lobbyists on this account include former TSA deputy administration Tom Blank, who also worked under House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Chad Wolf—former assistant administrator for policy at TSA, and a former aide to Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., a top Senate appropriator and the ranking Republican on the transportation committee—is also lobbying on AS&E’s behalf.

Smiths Detection, another screening manufacturer, employs top transportation lobbying firm Van Scoyoc Associates, including Kevin Patrick Kelly, a former top staffer to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who sits on the Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee. Smiths also retains former congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley, R-Md.

Former Sen. Al D’Amato, R-N.Y., represents L3 Systems, about which Bloomberg wrote today: "L-3 has ‘developed a more sophisticated system that could prevent smuggling of almost anything on the body,’ said Howard Rubel, an analyst at Jefferies & Co., who has a ‘hold’ rating on the stock."

In forecasting the fate of the full-body scanners, we can turn to recent history, which saw the rapid rise—and decline—of the previous "miracle" screening technology. In the years following 9/11, dozens of explosive trace portals (ETPs) were installed in airports across the country, at a cost of about $160,000 each. These "puffer" machines—so called because they blow air on passengers to dislodge explosive particles—were once celebrated as the "no-touch pat down." But in a Denver test by CBS in 2007, a network employee was sprayed with explosives and then walked through the airport’s three puffers without any trouble. The machines also set off false alarms, and they frequently broke down, leading to sky-high maintenance costs.

After spending more than $30 million on the puffer machines—most of them purchased from GE—the TSA announced earlier this year that it was suspending their use. Only about 25 percent of the machines were ever even deployed at US airports. A report last month from the Government Accountability Office found that the TSA had not adequately tested the puffers before buying them.

What will happen if the full-body scanner goes the way of the puffer? Well, there’s always the next generation of security equipment: the Body Orifice Security Scanner, or BOSS chair. This contraption, which has an uncomfortable resemblance to an electric chair, is used in prisons, mostly in the UK, for tracing cell phones, shivs, and other dangerous contraband that’s been swallowed or inserted into body cavities by inmates. So far, it only detects metal, but you never know.

Give me a friendly German Shepherd any day.

Bogosity reaches critical mass!

By Lori Price

Citizens for Legitimate Government | In 2008, the ACLU estimated the US 'No Fly List' to have grown to over 1,000,000 names -- heck, even Cat Stevens and the late Senator Ted Kennedy were on it -- and it continues to expand. But, suspected terrorist Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was curiously able to obtain military-grade high explosives --80 grams of PETN (Gee, where'd he get that?) -- managed to escape airport security and detonate his underwear bomb!

In April 2009, American authorities reportedly refused an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico entry into US airspace because a left-wing journalist writing a book on the CIA was on board. Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for Le Monde Diplomatique and has written on revolutionary movements in Cuba and Colombia, figured on the US authorities' 'no-fly list.' Air France said the April 18 flight was forced to divert to the French Caribbean island of Martinique before continuing its journey (telegraph.co.uk).

Got it? Write a book critical of the CIA -- you cannot fly. Carry explosives (allegedly from Yemen) on board when the US is trolling for an excuse to invade and occupy Yemen for its oil -- yes you can! The US needs false flags to provide cover for illegal invasions and occupations. The 9/11 terrorist attacks (aka inside job, six ways to Sunday) worked well for the US government; the security-industrial complex made billions and US corporaterrorists were able to negotiate the wholesale theft of Iraq's oil.

According to CNN, the terror suspect's father tried to warn authorities. CNN reported: The father of a man suspected in a botched terror attack aboard a Northwest Airlines flight contacted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria recently with concerns his son was planning something, a senior U.S. administration official said Saturday. The father -- identified by a family source as Umaru Abdul Mutallab -- contacted the U.S. Embassy "a few weeks ago" saying his son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had "become radicalized," the senior administration official, who is familiar with the case, told CNN.

And yet, Abdulmutallab was not obliged to undergo any additional airport screening layers, prior to boarding for the last leg of his journey to Detroit.

Also, lest we forget: Three key provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to expire 31 December 2009. Hmm. I wonder if post-Abdulmutallab they will get renewed?

Abdulmutallab was thwarted by a quote, unquote vacationing movie producer, Jasper Schuringa, who, within seconds, asserted that he not only tackled the suspect and put him in a headlock but also tried 'to search his body for any explosives' (CNN). Unless one was a bona-fide law enforcement professional or a military agent, who on earth would think of searching a man who had just set himself on fire, in a matter of seconds, for more explosives?

The goal is <strong>Yemeni oil. Hence the reason for the destabilization and the purported need for the US to stop al-Qaeda (literally, 'the database'). The Yemeni national security chief has declared that the country is receiving assistance from the US in the crackdown on what he called 'al-Qaeda operatives' in southern Yemen (Press TV). Translation: US corporaterrorists want Yemen's oil and they want it NOW.

This page will be updated!

Travelers harassed by intense airport security after Nigerian on terror list was allowed to attempt attack on Flight 253

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet | A passenger who boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam with attempted plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab says the would-be terrorist had no passport and was aided by a sharp-dressed man who claimed Mutallab was a Sudanese refugee, just one of a plethora of startling inconsistencies surrounding an incident that has led to ramped up security and increased levels of harassment in airports.

Every single fact that has come to light since the attempted bombing on Christmas Day directly indicates that the bomber was deliberately allowed to board the plane and that his attack would have succeeded if not for the alert and brave reactions of the passengers and flight crew.

According to Kurt Haskell, an attorney with the Haskell Law Firm in Taylor, Michigan, “He and his wife were sitting on the ground near their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they saw Mutallab approach the gate with an unidentified man.”

Mutallab was a poorly dressed, young looking individual, but he was accompanied by a man in an expensive suit, Haskell told MLive.com.
“He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time.’”

Although Mutallab is Nigerian, Haskell said the well-dressed man portrayed him as a desperate Sudanese refugee in an attempt to elicit sympathy and as a way of bypassing his lack of documents.

“The ticket agent referred Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell didn’t see Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an explosive on the plane,” states the report.

Crucially, Haskell said that after the plane landed he saw another man being taken into custody by the FBI along with Mutallab. However, the FBI later said that Mutallab was the only individual taken into custody.

Were the feds retrieving their own agent, the sharp dressed man who ensured that Mutallab boarded the plane despite his overwhelmingly suspicious circumstances?

Mutallab was a known security threat who was on the terror watch list. He is barred from entering Britain after being refused a new visa due to applying for a fake university course. Separate reports said that he did hold a valid visa, which begs the question, how can someone on a terror watch list be allowed to fly?

“On the one hand, it seems he’s been on the terror watch list but not on the no-fly list,” he said. “That doesn’t square because the American Department for Homeland Security has pretty stringent data-mining capability. I don’t understand how he had a valid visa if he was known on the terror watch list,” Dr Magnus Ranstorp of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies told the London Independent.

It has also been revealed that Mutallab’s father contacted U.S. intelligence officials a month ago and warned them that his son was a threat, but nothing was done.

The bomber’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, was a a former minister and chairman of First Bank in Nigeria. The bomber does not fit the image of a disgruntled, rag-tag terrorist. His considerable wealth allowed him to live in luxury at an imposing London mansion.

As a result of the failed attack, new security directives have been introduced for anyone traveling into America. Intense body and hand-luggage searches and sniffer dogs have been beefed up at departure gates and passengers have been ordered not to stand during the final hour of the flight and are not allowed access to any of their hand luggage during the final hour.

There can be little doubt that whatever the nature of this incident, it will be exploited to the maximum in order to further tighten the stranglehold of police state security measures that are increasingly finding their way out of the airport and into our everyday lives. Homeland Security proposals to use a mandatory shock bracelet that will be fitted to all travelers will now move closer to implementation, as will the increased global rollout of x-ray scanning machines that produce naked images of passengers.

However, if you’re a suspicious looking man on a terror watch list with no passport carrying explosives, you should breeze through security with no questions asked, just be sure to have a sharp-dressed man with you at all times.

A man charged with trying to blow up a plane had been on a UK watch list, Home Secretary Alan Johnson has said.

BBC News | He said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was refused a visa 14 months ago and was placed on a security list after he applied to study at a bogus college.

Meanwhile, UK passengers on US-bound flights face delays of up to three hours and extra security measures.

The Nigerian man targeted a Detroit-bound flight with explosives hidden in his clothes, it is claimed.

Police are searching several London properties linked to the Nigerian ex-University College London student.

Travellers are undergoing "pat-down" searches before boarding and being restricted to one item of hand luggage.

'Strong' border security

The home secretary explained that people on a watch list cannot come into the UK, although they can pass through the country in transit.
He said there was now a need to establish what communication had occurred between authorities in the UK and US, although he said the two countries routinely shared security information.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I would be very surprised if there had been a hiccup".

Mr Johnson also said there was a need to establish the nature of Mr Abdulmutallab's activities while he studied in the UK and when he had become radicalised.

Mr Johnson said the UK's border security was extremely "robust".

"We have a very very strong border in this country, we have have strong security measures. We've now monitored 135 million people trying to enter the country."

He said the visa system was now based on biometric fingerprints.

BBC | The authorities say it will speed up security checks by quickly revealing any concealed weapons or explosives.

But the full body scans will also show up breast enlargements, body piercings and a clear black-and-white outline of passengers' genitals.

The airport has stressed that the images are not pornographic and will be destroyed straight away.

Sarah Barrett, head of customer experience at the airport, said most passengers did not like the traditional "pat down" search.

At Manchester Airport's Terminal 2, where the machine has been introduced, passengers will no longer have to remove their coats, shoes and belts as they go through security checks.

Ms Barrett said: "This scanner completely takes away the hassle of needing to undress."

Ms Barrett said the black-and-white image would only be seen by one officer in a remote location before it was deleted.

"The images are not erotic or pornographic and they cannot be stored or captured in any way," she said.

Passengers could refuse to be scanned, she added.

"Maybe if I was 18, slim and lovely, I'd take it"

The scanners cost £80,000 each. They work by beaming electromagnetic waves on to passengers while they stand in a booth. A virtual three-dimensional image is then created from the reflected energy.

Ms Barrett said the radiation levels were "super safe".

She said: "Passengers can go through this machine 5,000 times a year each without worrying. The amount of radiation transmitted is tiny."

The Department for Transport will decide whether to install them permanently in about a year's time.

The scanners, made by RapiScan Systems, have already been tried at Heathrow Airport from 2004 to 2008.

A BAA Heathrow spokeswoman said the technology had been "very effective" and the airport operator was considering possible wider use of it in the future.

The scanners are being gradually rolled out at airports across the US, after use in Los Angeles and New York.

Related: TSA Launches Body Scanner Tests At Tulsa Airport

Gizmodo | A $20 million project funded by Homeland Security is researching ways to detect how suspicious you are by tracking your temperature, breathing, and eye movements. And get this: they’ve modified a Wii Balance board to check for nervous fidgeting/weight-shifting.

Too bad if you’ve got a sore leg, right? Thankfully, they’re still investigating what level of uncomfortable shuffling would be deemed suspicious enough to call for a secondary screening.

The project is called Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), and has also developed machines to measure the interval between heartbeats, and how deeply someone inhales.

It’s still all research, but one of the researchers told CNN the program is “doing significantly better than chance.” I’m all for better security, but it sounds pretty invasive. As Joe Stanley of the ACLU is quoted saying: “Nobody has the right to look at my intimate bodily functions, my breathing, my perspiration rate, my heart rate, from afar.”

Unless you’re entering the U.S perhaps. Welcome to the possible future of travel. [CNN via Kotaku]

By Stephen Webster

Raw Story | A Department of Homeland Security program that tries to detect air passengers who are "up to no good" is raising privacy concerns, says a CNN report which aired Tuesday.

CNN's Jeanne Meserve described DHS's Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) as "marrying a lot of existing technology, some of it medical," to measure breathing, heart rate, blinking, fidgeting, and other bodily functions of passengers at airports.

The idea is essentially to create a remote lie detector, where sensors placed at airport security screening areas would be able to monitor a passenger's physical reaction to questions being asked by screeners.

Critics have likened the concept to the "Department of Pre-Crime" in the 2001 film Minority Report, which describes a future where persons are caught and convicted of crimes before they occur.

Originally entitled Project Hostile Intent, the program was revealed by the science magazine NewScientist in 2007. According to a report at the time in the UK's Guardian, "the new devices are expected to be trialled at a handful of airports, borders and ports of entry by 2012."

As of last year, the program was "running at about 78 percent accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80 percent on deception," according to DHS science spokesman John Verrico.

The Guardian reported in 2007:

The plans describe how systems based on video cameras, laserlight, infra-red, audio recordings and eye tracking technology are expected to scour crowds looking for unusual behaviour, with the aim of identifying people who should be approached and quizzed by security staff, New Scientist magazine reports.

The project hopes to advance a security system already employed by the US transportation security administration that monitors people for unintentional facial twitches, called "micro-expressions", that can suggest someone is lying or trying to conceal information.

"Questions remain, however, as to how secure the system is. The machines could reveal health conditions like heart murmurs and breathing problems as well as stress levels - which would be an invasion of privacy," NewScientist reported last year.

"It is an invasion of privacy," Jay Stanley, director of public education for the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, told CNN. "Nobody has the right to look at my intimate bodily functions, my heart rate, my breathing, from afar."

And, as Meserve noted, "some experts are doubtful the system can distinguish between potential terrorists and people stressed for other reasons, like a late flight."

"There's not much science here," said Stephen Fienberg, professor of statistics and social science at Carnegie Mellon University. "In fact, there may be no science here. And I'm really worried that we're going to carried away by the hype, and there's just nothing here. The emperor may have no clothes."

This video is from CNN's American Morning, broadcast Oct. 6, 2009.

Gothamist | In a harrowing report, CBS introduces us to yet another thing to dread and fear, courtesy of that innovative R&D team at Al Qaeda: Rectal bombs. It’s been revealed that an Al Qaeda operative, who last month tried to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s counter terrorism chief, detonated explosives in his butt. Abdullah Asieri had arranged a meeting with Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef to talk about a truce, but it was just a ruse to get close to him with his exploding ass. Asieri was able to get past two sets of airport security, including metal detectors, and spend 30 hours in the close company of the prince’s own secret service agents, before detonating the bomb during his meeting with Nayef, who was slightly injured. Naturally, the airport screening process is about to get a whole lot more invasive, unless the TSA just decides to ban assholes entirely. Here’s CBS’s report:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Susan Derby

LA Times | With summer now officially over, flu season is right around the corner. Again, as has been the case in recent years, airports are among the places where people are rolling up their sleeves for their shots.

Due to concerns about the potential severity of the coming flu season, some airport clinics started offering the inoculations around Labor Day, USA Today reported.

Because of delays in the production of the regular flu vaccine, Reliant Immediate Care Medical Group, at the LAX Airport Clinic, does not yet have its vaccines in stock, according to Gene Howell, the group’s executive director. But it will soon.

Howell said he expects his supplies to be in later this week. As was the case last year, travelers interested in the vaccine can take a courtesy shuttle from any LAX terminal to the clinic, located near the airport on Sepulveda Boulevard at West 96th Street. The first aid office (number below) can arrange a pickup. The clinic also offers free on-site parking.

And stay tuned, because an effort is being made to provide shots at the airport itself this season. “LAWA (Los Angeles World Airports) has contracted with a company to provide flu vaccinations in the terminals during the flu season,” said Katherine Alvarado, a spokesperson for LAX. Specific locations are being worked out, she added.

And what about the swine flu? Through the Reliant Immediate Care services, you’ll be able to get the H1N1 vaccine too. Howell said he expected Reliant’s shipment to arrive two weeks into October, and he believes there will be a demand for it.

“I really think that’s what travelers are going to want to be vaccinated against,” he said.

Once available, the regular flu shot will cost $25. The cost of the H1N1 vaccination was yet to be confirmed, Howell said.

Among other U.S. airports offering at least the regular flu shots this year is San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

Contact: Reliant Immediate Care, (310) 215-6020; first aid office at Tom Bradley International Terminal, (310) 215-6000

By Michael Ostrolenk, Robert E. Smith, Richard Sobel and Jan Towe

Campaign for Liberty | Starting this year, Americans will have to get government approval to travel by air. As Privacy Journal revealed last fall, henceforth “Permission Now Needed to Travel Within U.S.” Getting a reservation and checking-in for air travel will soon require Transportation Security Administration authorization. That permission is by no means assured: For example, if your name matches a “no-fly” list, even mistakenly, you can be denied the right to a reserve a seat on a flight. If your name is on a “selectee” list, you and your possessions will be searched more thoroughly before you can board. What is going on here?

Protecting air safety is essential, but professional screening at airports already provides for it. Giving the TSA as an official agency the additional authority to decide who gets to go where reaches beyond safety into overextended governmental power. This newly minted “Secure Flight” rule fundamentally imbalances long-standing citizens’ rights both to travel and to be left alone. If your name appears among hundreds of thousands on “watchlists,” you assert that the government should not require ID to fly, you don’t want to reveal your date of birth for concern about identity theft, or you don’t choose to declare your gender, you can stay home.

By combining the requirement for government photo IDs in order to fly with checking government watchlists including potentially every passenger, “Secure Flight” puts the federal government into the business of licensing travel. All travelers will need government OK in order to board a flight, or take a cruise. What the government can allow one day, it can forbid the next. All things considered, isn’t this a higher-tech and later-day version of South African domestic passports or eastern European checkpoints? In fact, because of the high technological capacity of the U.S. version, aren’t its implications for travel control of plane, train, bus and subway travel much more far reaching? It’s incredible that something like this is happening relatively unrecognized in America.

While some people consider the requirement to show ID or reveal a birth date a small trade-off for security, what is at stake here is the right to travel. That fundamental freedom of movement appears in the Articles of Confederation in the right to freely enter and leave all the states of the then small union. It was so fundamentally a part of American citizenship that the privileges and immunities clauses of the Constitution included it without explicitly mentioning it again for the more perfect union. With a large and expansive nation now ranging from Hawaii and Alaska to Washington DC, that right to travel nationally, and petition the distant government, is even more fundamental. Yet some courts maintain that if you can walk, you don’t need the right to fly. People have the right to walk around freely without carrying a national ID; why do they have to show one to travel? The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the scope of the right to travel but lower courts have tended to restrict it more narrowly than the Founding Fathers would approve.

Clearly, the air ID and “Secure Flight” rules mean you cannot travel any distance reachable only by air without official permission. Moreover, the system can easily be extended to Amtrak as a government railroad, which already requires government ID in order to purchase a ticket. It can further be extended to urban rapid-transit networks tied to travel cards, and private inter-city buses requiring IDs to buy tickets or board coaches. These are the bases for an internal passport system in the U.S.

There are a lot of practical issues here too. The assumption that any “no-fly” list includes all potential wrong doers is implausible, and first time criminals would by definition not appear until it’s too late. Many people on these lists are there because their names are similar to those who are suspect for other reasons. There are perhaps a few hundred people whose past activities merit keeping them off the streets, let alone flights; the small group is better caught through search warrants and good police work before they come to the airport. To demand that 750 million annual passengers have to get government permissions to fly creates a needle in-a-haystack approach to locating a few potential wrongdoers (none so far have been caught by the matching). “Secure Flight” is simply an ineffective use of scarce resources that sweeps much too broadly over people’s most basic rights to travel and be let alone.

What can you do? Like other regulations quickly promulgated at the end of an outgoing administration, these rules need to be delayed and reconstituted. Contact your Senators, Representatives and the White House to suspend such ill-considered regulations now. Insist that the government create a system that makes flying safe without granting federal officials the final say over permission for citizens to travel. Otherwise, the traveling public may be detoured onto a perilous downhill road to being permanently grounded.