Homeland Security Wants to X-Ray Your Car… With You in It

September 17th, 2008

Via: USA Today:

A controversial new X-ray technology is being tested that could stop potential terrorists from blowing up a car bomb at one of the nation’s airports, homeland security officials say.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is running a test at a North Carolina ferry terminal of a 21-foot-high arch-like machine that shoots low-intensity X-rays at cars as they pass through. The photos show whether explosives or drugs might be in the car.

The technology, called backscatter X-ray, is in use at several airports to screen passengers. Privacy advocates have denounced scanning people as invasive because the X-rays can see through clothes.

Melissa Ngo, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who focuses on privacy issues, says using the technology for cars could pave the way for “Big Brother” government spying.

“If this technology ends up being deployed widely, it seems to be another step toward a society where you need to accept surveillance in every part of your life,” Ngo says.

4 Responses to “Homeland Security Wants to X-Ray Your Car… With You in It”

  1. pookie says:

    The health risks associated with these “harmless” backscatter x-ray scanners are being justified by their supposed greater “security” good for society in general, of course. Here’s a public domain source of info about x-ray scanners: “Presidential Report on Radiation Protection Advice: Screening of Humans for Security Purposes Using Ionizing Radiation Scanning Systems” — prepared for the FDA by the Natl Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. If you bother to read it (and can control the Puke Factor), you’ll see that they admit to not knowing much about actual harm done to humans over time by these low-dose systems, because all they really have to go on are studies done on … yes, mice. Scroll down to pg. 58 to read about Radiation Sensitive Subgroups. Woe to parents trying to protect their children, especially those still in the womb.

    http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/03/briefing/3987b1_pres-report.pdf

  2. tm says:

    Here’s another thing to consider in the event we are constantly being x-rayed in the emerging Big Brother state: the more x-rays people are subjected to, the more their risk of getting cancer. This is why people are told they shouldn’t have x-rays done more than once a year at the dentist. I guess a huge increase in the cancer rate is a small price to pay for “national security”.

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161268,00.html

  3. dagobaz says:

    it’s really quite simple: The People Who Matter fly from private airports; rest assured there will be NO backscatter x-ray machine(s) in use there, ever.

    Don’t you think it is you duty as a patriotic sheep to sacrifice your own or your child’s genetic purity such that The People Who Matter can be safe from terrah ?

    What’s that, citizen ?
    Are you unlawfully criticising the government ?

  4. Larry Glick says:

    Similar situations have existed for many years. Police speed radar is actually a microwave transmitter aimed at your car. Low power, but under the right circumstances capable of causing damage. Police speed lasers emit a laser beam that is in the infrared (invisible) range but still capable of causing eye damage. It’s illegal to point a laser pointer at a cop but they can point them at you all day long. With the pigs, the ends are always claimed to justify the means. The past few years, we see more and more cops with video cameras in the cruisers to take pictures of us suspects. Yet don’t they hate it when a citizen videotapes them while in uniform!

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