TSA Prepares To Opt Out

TSA Chief John Pistole releases a stament signaling their eventual climbdown on their latest staging of security theater:

"We welcome feedback and comments on the screening procedures from the traveling public, and we will work to make them as minimally invasive as possible while still providing the security that the American people want and deserve. We are constantly evaluating and adapting our security measures, and as we have said from the beginning, we are seeking to strike the right balance between privacy and security...".

Meanwhile, our tone-deaf President presents himself as a hapless bystander watching, like the rest of us, as the Security Train rumbles by.

Finally, there is a simple technological fix to the privacy issue raised by the new scanners; it is already patented and implementation would reportedly be EZ:

A cheap and simple fix in the computer software of new airport scanners could silence the uproar from travelers who object to the so-called virtual strip search, according to a scientist who helped develop the program at one of the federal government's most prestigious institutes.

The researcher, associated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he was rebuffed when he offered the concept to Department of Homeland Security officials four years ago.

The fix would distort the images captured on full-body scanners so they look like reflections in a fun-house mirror, but any potentially dangerous objects would be clearly revealed, said Willard "Bill" Wattenburg, a former nuclear weapons designer at the Livermore lab.

...

Wattenburg said that when news reached Livermore in 2006 that the TSA planned to buy the new generation of "backscatter" full-body scanners, the problem seemed clear. "We knew what was going to happen," he said. "People are immediately going to scream like hell because they're taking the clothes off everybody."

Livermore engineers have been deeply involved in enhancing airport security.

Wattenburg said a Livermore colleague, Ed Moses, turned to him and said, "There must be some way to modify the scanner images so that they do not reveal embarrassing things about a person's body profile."

Wattenburg, whose long resume includes designing anti-terrorist devices, sketched out a possible solution and delivered it to Moses, whose computer experts refined the concept.

"Materials you were looking for would still be there, but body shapes wouldn't be apparent," Moses, the principal assistant director of the Livermore lab said on Saturday. "From the point of view of imaging it's very straightforward. Someone should do a quick study of it in an operational setting."

The Livermore laboratory sent off a final application to the U.S. Patent Office on Nov. 23, 2006, and about three weeks later Wattenburg said he called the Department of Homeland Security to share the good news. The patent application is on appeal, according to government records, but the federal government owns the rights to the idea.

"These guys usually come to us when they have a huge problem," Wattenburg said on Thursday. "If it's something simple, we tell them and they don't listen."

Wattenburg says the program is so simple that "a 6-year-old could do the same thing with Photoshop."

Well, six year olds don't vote.  And this wouldn't offer relief to those worried about excessive x-ray exposure, or people with prosthetic devices that trip the alarms and prompt a pat-down.

Comments

[JM Hanes]

POTUS & FLOTUS should set an example for the nation by publicly going through the scanner and submitting themselves to the new improved pat downs -- on camera.

[MarkO]

Horseshit. Let's profile and then use this on the suspects. And, let's blow them up wherever they are.

[Rob Crawford]

And this wouldn't offer relief to those worried about excessive x-ray exposure...

Well, no. But people that concerned over non-existent threats shouldn't fly anyway. They get more radiation while in the air than from the scanners.

[Danube of Thought]

How about the Anduril rule: Mahometans and Jews can't fly.

[Porchlight]

Okay, maybe I'm dumb, but if the image is modified enough to prevent revealing "embarrassing things about a person's body profile," isn't it modified enough to fail to reveal important things about what they might be carrying on their person?

[matt]

they have admitted it's all kabuki already, porch. If they had a whit of ethics and a sense of PR among them, they would have written a report about how much good the TSA has done.

It's all a game. What color is the alert today? tomorrow it will be something else. And somewhere one of these days someone will subvert the system and succeed.After that horse is out of the barn, you can guarantee the government will crack down on it.

By the way, this is also part and parcel of AQ's strategy.Fits with their concept of asymmetrical warfare.

[DebinNC]

Businessweek: "John Pistole told CNN's "State of the Union" [Sunday morning] that, despite the public uproar over new screening techniques, "we are not changing the policies" that he said were the best ways of keeping the traveling public safe. TSA screeners, he said, are "the last line of defense" in protecting air travelers."

So Pistole's unequivocal "we are not changing" became in less than a day his "we are constantly adapting"?

[Clarice]

Whatever TSA now does, it's too late to save the Won. The credibility of the Administration or Obamacare and whatever other overreaching they's engaged in is now gone forever.
So much so, that I can no longer offer shares in my sharpened pike business, which are all sold. OTOH I am announcing my new gibbet business and offering my JOM friends a chance to get in on the ground floor.

[Appalled]

DebinNC:

We are sometimes well served by the infinite flexibility of our politicians. The quicker this policy goes, the better. If some TSA-dude's principles take a beating as a result...well, I can live with that.

[Clarice]

*oN Obamacare*
*they'RE engaged in*

[Clarice]

Well, Appalled, if the peasants seem to have eked out another victory against the machine, there may be no stopping them.

[Jack is Back!]

Clarice,

Do your gibbets come pre-assembled or do I have to build the damn thing? Also, are effigies optional?

[daddy]

Seems to me that if Obama decides to stay in the running for Prez in 2012, that the new ground game for the Media will be as follows:

Yes, we erred by not asking the tough questions of Candidate Obama in the 2010 Election cycle.

Yes we were wrong to put so much of our hopes in an untried, untested candidate.

Yes we were wrong about thinking the American people were ready for Obamacare and Global Warming and etc

And yes we admit that we did not do our important job with the due diligence the American people expect of us...

But all that being said, consider now who he is running against in 2012. Why it's Palin or Romney or Huck or Jindal or Newt or Christie or Rubio or Haley or etc, who is/are uneducated, unethical, unsavory, inexperienced, bigots, racisits, homophobes, any one of which is much worse than Obama. So our game plan for 2012 is not to say that Obama's great, but to say 24/7 that his opponents are much, much worse.

[Jane (sit on the couch or save your country)]

POTUS & FLOTUS should set an example for the nation by publicly going through the scanner and submitting themselves to the new improved pat downs -- on camera.

I've said that from the beginning but I want to add Sasha and Malia altho they are older than some of the kids being terrorized.

[Ann]

daddy:

You will love this: The Left Breaks Upon The Rock Of Palin

Every time Palin closes her eyes and holds out her sword, a hundred liberals race up to impale themselves upon it.

***********
Jane, great to see you back safely at JOM. Looking forward to the pics!

[Jack is Back!]

The guy who had bladder cancer and ergo a urostomy bag and got patted down by TSA and caused the bag to lose its contents was on F&F this morning. It was absolutely appalling and the biggest example yet of the lack of common sense, decency and consideration by a bureaucrat. It really is a disease that comes when high school educated people put on a uniform with a badge. There is no other explanation. The the other examples of patting down kids, nuns and people with prosthetics. We are becoming the laughing stock of the world simply because we reject smarter solutions in order to favor more bureacracy.

[bgates]

the new ground game for the Media will be as follows

I'm kind of expecting, "our decision to find Obama supremely qualified has been thoroughly vindicated by his mastery of all aspects of his position (er, to the extent that any one man can perform the impossible job of the presidency). Nonetheless, we recognize that we did not meet the needs of America's more fearful and reactionary citizens who were unable to grasp Obama's brilliance as quickly as we were. Those elements of our society decided suddenly in 2008 that presidential candidates should be subjected to an unprecedented level of scrutiny. To be fair to them, we will conduct unimaginably thorough investigations into any hint of impropriety we find in any new presidential candidate in 2012."

[Clarice]

Meanwhile, of course, terrorists can just WALK across the border. Can't they?

And here's something that'll curl your toes--the grifters behind the GZM struck out with the Saudis and as seeking a $5 million grant to get this outrage off the ground.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/audacity-gzm-developers-apply-for-5m-in-u-s-taxpayer-money/>$$ for Insulting Us
My first gibbet will be constructed outside the office of anyone who approves such a stupid thing.

[Rob Crawford]

The guy who had bladder cancer and ergo a urostomy bag and got patted down by TSA and caused the bag to lose its contents was on F&F this morning. It was absolutely appalling and the biggest example yet of the lack of common sense, decency and consideration by a bureaucrat. It really is a disease that comes when high school educated people put on a uniform with a badge.

What it is is the result of the left being driven by a mindset out of the pre-information age. They've constructed airline security to be run on an assembly line basis, with the tasks and available options strictly limited by Policy. They cannot allow variations to that Policy; that would be inconsistent, and inconsistencies might result in favoritism and that might appear to be (whisper it) profiling.

They're so stuck in the middle-industrial-age mindset that they're talking about unionizing the TSA, just as if they were Ford auto workers standing along an assembly line.

[Boatbuilder]

Apalled--As Groucho once said: "Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others." (Or something like that).

[matt]

the problem, Rob, is do you really want to dimmies we see at the check points to think? There's a lot of lowest common denominator going on. A lot of them are the same ones who took the "criminology" program at DeVry or ITT Institute, another workfare scam.

This percolates down to the school systems in most major cities and late night basketball.

[Stephanie]

But Rob, it is an assembly line, with us as the widgets, meaningful only so much as the income we produce.

It's about time for the third rail of protesting - opt out of income tax withholding. Their howls would be deafening.

[fdcol63]

Wait until the Feds have "intelligence" that indicates terrorists are now hiding explosives in VERY private bodily orifices.

And then just wait until TSA agents start cavity searches on us ... and our children.

Will that be "ENOUGH"?

We're being conditioned and socialized (de-humanized) like Pavlov's dogs to meekly accept government intrusion into EVERY aspect of our lives .... even the most private parts of our bodies.

[Rob Crawford]

matt, a more effective program that did the dreaded p-word wouldn't require so many people. You could translate that into hiring better people.

[Danube of Thought]

As was pointed out somewhere--maybe here--we are now at the point where the federal government goes to court to prevent police from inquiring about suspects' citizenship, while its agents are grotesquely invading the privacy of citizens who are suspected of nothing at all.

[matt]

"Welcome to LAX. May I fondle you, or would you prefer to be visually undressed?"

[NK]

DOT-- yes that is the state of play in Barry O's America. That plus, trying terrorist soldiers in US District Court, treating Muslim real estate development with more sensitivity than the emotions of thousands of Americans who lost loved ones on 9/11, trating those same Americans with less dignity and respect than a Saudi royal family prince, and continuing to smear the previous President for "torture" while continuing the same policies at Gitmo, rendition and UAV srikes. This is the moral muddle of the Left -- don't harshly interrogate the murderers which puts the innocent at greater risk from future attacks, instead drop Hellfire missles on SUSPECTED murderers, and sometimes kill the innocent, because of faulty intel caused by weak interrogation. This passes for wisdom from the likes of BarryO and Sullivan. What a bunch of preening prigs.

[MarkO]

All and all, these are mere variations on the theme of power. A seasoned student of history has seen their like before. Only power forces out power.

[narciso]

Did you see the latest about the GZ Mosque, it's very metaphorically related to what the TSA is doinf

[narciso]

This is what I was referring to, I didn't want
to give Avlon the link

[sbw]

Rob, I like that: a mindset out of the pre-information age. . .

set loose to play with information age tools

[narciso]

This is just too choice, look in the comments for the surprise

[Rob Crawford]

narciso, this:

He's actually a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. So he's actually part of the Obama administration.

Quelle surprise.

[Rob Crawford]

Oh, followed by:

Professor William Press was recently appointed to the position of Vice Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Professor Press was already a member of PCAST.

[Jack is Back!]

narciso,

The Israeli's do "behavior profiling" and I have written here about my experiences traveling to Israel a number of times on business. But to demonstrate how well educated and trained their airport security personnel are let me give you this example. My travel there was to do with a planned "Pre-Metro Transit Project" for Tel Aviv - The Red Line. It would be subsurface with stations below ground. Lots of geologic conditions to consider because of the strata formations around Tel Aviv. Pretty technical.

Without to much detail, all the security from my perspective, looked like college educated, military trained 30 somethings. As they go through your bags they quetion you. Why are you here, who did you meet with, tell me about what you do, tell me about the Red Line, how deep are the tunnels, what technology would be used to tunnel, etc. You see, Israel is small enough of a country, that they know why people are coming there - tourism, religious, technology or imported engineering and construction. So they train up their people on on constant ever evolving basis to determine the legitimicy of every traveler even the ones who sweat a lot, can't answer the questions and have shifty eyes. Hard to believe that given what we have for TSA currently we could train the necessary qualified people to do that kind of vigorous behavioral profiling. But it works.

"Obama told us not to criticize him on TV"

Sounds like something Al Capone would say.

Re: TSA. Did anyone hear the guy on Rush at about 2:35 asking where are all the MEN, real men would not allow this to happen to their wives or kids. Have we become so emaiciated and scared of police state tactics we are not willing to take a testorone charged stand against the groping and invasioin of privacy. The guy had a point. Sure the TSA has police powers - probably from the Patriot Act- and you'd be pressed to cold cock one of them for feeling up you wife or daughter but sooner or later someone is going to react (I don't think it will be over-react due to the causes) and all hell will break loose.

Wednesday could be the witching hour of homeland security by the homeland.

[Rob Crawford]

Without to much detail, all the security from my perspective, looked like college educated, military trained 30 somethings.

Excepting the very religious and (some) Muslims, Israel has universal military service. Of COURSE they're military trained.

[Jack is Back!]

Rob,

I know that - I had an Israeli officer in my squadron on loan. And my crew in Israel were all reservists even the secretary. But I wanted the others here to understand where the baseline is for professional security. There are no restrictions I know of on Israeli Arabs serving except if they have known ties to beligerents.

[cathyf]

Israel has universal military service, but some percentage of recruits are told "thank you very much, you are not up to our standards, your obligation is fulfilled" before they even get to basic training. And some wash out, too.

The problem is that in the US that sort of folks are the exact ones hired to be TSA screeners.

[Rick Ballard]

"are the exact ones hired to be TSA screeners"

Or President.

[PDinDetroit]

If I was traveling this Thanksgiving Holiday, I would consider consuming large quantities of beans prior to travel and opting for the "TSA Personal Touch" with Monty Python Quotes Ready for the TSA Screener.

I farth in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-a!

Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help! I'm being repressed!

Oh, the humanity of it all...

[Clarice]

exactly, cathy and Rick.Wish me luck tomorrow, I may end up in jail.

[caro]

I would like to see this guy in a TSA uniform. Sniffing pigs and dogs would be a great deterent for any religious jihadist.

[PDinDetroit]

That guy makes far more money hunting truffles...

[Old Lurker]

exactly, cathy and Rick.Wish me luck tomorrow, I may end up in jail.

Valium, Clarice.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Congress exempted themselves from the new airport security, so it is doubtful we'll get any sympathy from the government in regard to the incompetence of the TSA or Obama.

[pagar]

Sara, I saw something that said that it was an Excutive Order that allows them to waltz right past the peons and board without the security hassle, But I could not find a link that showed that EO. Do you have a link that says Congress did it? I thought that an Excutive Order would be a Presidential order, but don't know that is true.

I also wondered if all congressial members were exempt? If you were Congressial exempt and religiously allowed to just pat your self down as CAIR was mentioning, would you have to pat your self down as you waltzed on by security?

[BritAm]

Mrs BritAm asked me today about the gloves that the TSA agents wear during those "pat downs". She wanted to know how often they are changed. If you think for a moment about all of the little "friends" that contaminated gloves could be carrying, you can easily understand her queasiness.

[Pofarmer]

I wonder if we will get a "The TSA aced stupidly" quote?

[selected at random]

whether terrorist or tsa you cant hide a piece of shit. its the smell not how they act ,really

[Brooks]

If I travel by air again, I'm going commando after a couple of days of bad hygiene.

[Janet]

The strip search at an airport wouldn't be such an outrage if I hadn't learned that showing an id to vote or proof of citizenship was an infringement on peoples rights.
Making us strip is okay, but just don't ask for id!

[Jane (sit on the couch or save your country)]

The whole thing is one big violation of the 4th Amendment.

Gee where is the ACLU?

[J2]

There are currently back-scatter body imaging scanners on the market which provide non-explicit images. They are made by American Science and Engineering (ASEI) in Billerica MA. They are in zero US airports. However the Rapiscan machines now in use are made by OSIS of which Deeprak Chopra is the Chairman, Chief Executive, Director and President. OSIS is 'friended' by Michael Chertoff.