Documents Reveal TSA Plan To Body-Scan Pedestrians, Train Passengers

Giving Transportation Security Administration agents a peek under your clothes may soon be a practice that goes well beyond airport checkpoints. Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.

The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of of new anti-terrorism technologies that EPIC believes raise serious privacy concerns. The projects range from what the DHS describes as “a walk through x-ray screening system that could be deployed at entrances to special events or other points of interest” to “covert inspection of moving subjects” employing the same backscatter imaging technology currently used in American airports.

The 173-page collection of contracts and reports, acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, includes contracts with Siemens Corporations, Northeastern University, and Rapiscan Systems. The study was expected to cost more than $3.5 million.

One project allocated to Northeastern University and Siemens would mount backscatter x-ray scanners and video cameras on roving vans, along with other cameras on buildings and utility poles, to monitor groups of pedestrians, assess what they carried, and even track their eye movements. In another program, the researchers were asked to develop a system of long range x-ray scanning to determine what metal objects an individual might have on his or her body at distances up to thirty feet.

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/03/02/docs-reveal-tsa-plan-to-body-scan-pedestrians-train-passengers/ (you have to watch an ad before you can read the article)

!!

and the House GOP would kill it.

were just sure it would go no further.

It's about money. All of it. And it's disgusting.

Money, yes, 100% yes, but also control.

Follow the DOLLAR. It's about money.

...for when people get fed up to the breaking point on this.

:hide:

Using tech way beyond any Orwell foresaw.

That is all.

I find it amazing that I have not heard nor seen hardly any concerns about radiation via the airport scanners,
much less this crazy idea.

to reflect this back at the equipment, hopefully damaging it.

...how soon before we have to present our papers on demand for no reason? Somewhere in a cave a sick old arab is laughing his ass off...

Huh. Remember when they rolled this out at airports and people got angry and there were always people around to say things like "Lol, if you don't want to be scanned don't fly. Durr you don't have a right to fly hurr.".

Wonder why none of those people are commenting. I guess "If you don't want your body scanned don't go out in public. You don't have a right to leave your house." sounds a little too overtly authoritarian and it was the closest thing to an argument they had.

Siemens Corporations, Northeastern University, and Rapiscan Systems