Apparently a software upgrade is taking care of the issue:
After complaints from travelers the TSA earlier this year began testing at four airports software for the full-body scanners that instead uses a generic body outline and highlights the area where any anomaly is detected, eliminating the actual image of the passenger.
This deals with my primary concern about these things. I’d also want to know that there’s no way an agent can pull up the image, and that the image is not stored. I don’t really give a crap if a computer analyses an image of me. Now the only concern is the long-term effects of the radiation.
Someone should probably FOIA specs for this software upgrade to ensure everything is as advertised. You know, someone like the media, who’s supposed to hold the Government accountable. Or something like that. Hard to say that with a straight face these days.
No. Its not what the machines do. Its not controls that keep images from being saved*. Its that these scanners are used on the travelling public at all. Its that the TSA exists. Its that we are stripped of our rights, liberty, and property without cause, without trial by agents who are neither LEO’s nor judges.
I’m pleased with this. We can start chipping away at the devices that represent the infringement of our rights and humanity. Then we can start chipping away at the procedures. Finally we can chip away at the very institutions that infringe them.
This is a step, but it is not the end goal.
* Good luck with that. TSA agents have cellphones and cameras**
** Stolen from travelers of course.
Sorry, but you’re a tech guy, you should know better.
To know *where* those objects are, the nude picture of you has to be analyzed. It will be stored too, for ‘quality assurance purposes’. Then, a gingerbread icon is displayed so that everyone believes that’s the image the system was working with and the nekkid pictures will continue to somehow magically end up on USB drives.
The best course of action is to rid ourselves of the TSA, allow a private security firm to perform the scans, harden the cockpit, and rely on the swarm of passengers that will take care of any idiot who tries to take down a plane.
Hey! Look! The short bus stasi are making superficial changes to the way they do something they should Not be doing in the first place!
(And that is not even getting into their complete worthlessness or criminal behavior.)
And now they have evolved the argument from their existence, to what they initially see.
I dont care what they have, they dont need to be there.
My primary objection to these machines, and the TSA in general, is that they shred the Fourth Amendment. That is far more offensive than the thought of some jackbooted thug laughing or wanking over a picture of my naughty bits.
I had a fake screen-saver like that once in case the boss came looking over the top of the cubicle, it looked like a spreadsheet.
Dang, is it too late to withdraw my application to work as airport “security”?
Sorry, slapping a blur filter into the image processing chain isn’t sufficient to bootstrap these monstrosities into something that is 4th amendment consistent.