Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

[streaker69]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

I've heard that one for a while, if you make a law wide enough, it's likely to overlap something. Though I don't think that is distinctive beween Europe/ROW and the USA. It may even be a bigger issue in the USA than elsewhere.

Might want to check again. UK has the problem law.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582027,00.html

Ian Dowty, legal adviser to Action on Rights for Children, said he believes it would be a criminal offense to operate the scanners or to direct anyone to operate them if they are used to produce images of children under the age of 18.

[heisenbug]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

Might want to check again. UK has the problem law.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582027,00.html

Ouch. Child porn vs. maybe not dying. Not any easy decision if the not dying isn't really certain.

It probably wouldn't be too hard to make a script to blur the genitals a little, but then maybe people could get through who decided to make a dildo out of plastic explosives.

I am glad I am not in charge of making that decision at the airport.

[Thorn]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

...
It probably wouldn't be too hard to make a script to blur the genitals a little, but then maybe people could get through who decided to make a dildo out of plastic explosives.

...

That's precisely the problem. Privacy advocates have wanted a blurring of the face and genitals. However, since the Christmas Day wannabe bomber had the PETN in his underpants, blurring the genital areas doesn't seem to be a good idea; at least if you are going to rely on these scanners.

[theprez98]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

That's precisely the problem. Privacy advocates have wanted a blurring of the face and genitals. However, since the Christmas Day wannabe bomber had the PETN in his underpants, blurring the genital areas doesn't seem to be a good idea; at least if you are going to rely on these scanners.

Sounds like we're back to strip, shrink rap and Ambien.

[streaker69]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/tec...0107-lvyq.html

Authorities say scanned images will not be stored.

"In fact, all machines are delivered to airports with [save] functions disabled," says the US Transport Security Administration, which has rolled out the machines to 19 airports.

But this might not be enough.

This is what they say, but you know that it'll get changed. My issue with this is, there's no damn reason to have these things connected to any network. The best kind of security for this would be an airgap. If there's an issue, then a security team physically visits the device, downloads the images (since we know they'll be stored) and then investigates on another system that is not connected to a network. There's no reason to have every single computer on the planet connected to a network.

[AgentDarkApple]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582373,00.html - JFK Airport Detectors Miss Reporter's Titanium

Hmmm another question about the checkpoints - if someone has a titanium item in their carry-on (not hidden in their clothes like the reporter in the story), are the scanners/xray machines supposed to detect it? I have flown several times with my titanium spork in my backpack, and nobody has ever said a word about it.

[theprez98]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582373,00.html - JFK Airport Detectors Miss Reporter's Titanium

Hmmm another question about the checkpoints - if someone has a titanium item in their carry-on (not hidden in their clothes like the reporter in the story), are the scanners/xray machines supposed to detect it? I have flown several times with my titanium spork in my backpack, and nobody has ever said a word about it.

"TSA does not discuss the detection capabilities of our screening equipment, as that is sensitive security information and is not for public disclosure...blah blah blah."

[charliex]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

Might want to check again. UK has the problem law.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582027,00.html

They have the same laws in the USA, so I don't see the difference. The people saying that the scanners are caught up in that law, are not the law makers or enforcers, just a privacy group, the same concerns have been raised in the USA, and not just for children.

There is already a specific law in the USA banning the machines as primary scanners. There is no such European law, or UK law, some countries have decided not to install them due to privacy concern, others are considering the effect on privacy.

All sides have privacy groups saying it could potentially be snafu'd by an existing law, whether it be child porn, or indviduals privacy rights. But to the best of my knowledge only the USA has a specific law currently limiting the usage of the machines as a secondary scanne only.

The EU allows countries to decided for themselves if they want to use them, the UK has had them in test at Heathrow, but everyones still debating how useful they actually are, they've become the talking point about this recent attack, not everyone is convinced they'll be useful and that the real failure was in intelligence.

[Thorn]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582373,00.html - JFK Airport Detectors Miss Reporter's Titanium

Hmmm another question about the checkpoints - if someone has a titanium item in their carry-on (not hidden in their clothes like the reporter in the story), are the scanners/xray machines supposed to detect it? I have flown several times with my titanium spork in my backpack, and nobody has ever said a word about it.

Those articles (both the Fox and NY Post versions) are more hyperbole than informational. The truth is that there are a number of materials that could potentially be used for weapons manufacture that will make it through a magnatometer without setting off an alarm. The articles focused on titanium because of the woman with the hip replacement, but you could easily talk about aluminum, copper, and brass and possible weapons made from those metals. Not to mention ceramic, plastics, and glass, which all make dandy knives. The metal detectors used depend on picking up on the magnetic properties of various metals. Titanium is non-magnetic as are those other materials I mentioned. Here's a quick overview of a metal detector works: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com...-detector7.htm

Regarding your spork, titanium objects will still show on X-ray, so chances are the TSA hasn't told the guys on checkpoint duty that sporks are dangerous.

Interestingly, if one googles the word "titanium" together with "magnatometer" some of the FBI's guides to concealable weapons come up. It's a wonder that the TSA hasn't banned the use of search engines in airports.

[heisenbug]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

I think the scanner employee would be a rough job. Kinda like a gynecologist. For every hot girl that goes through, you probably see a hundred or so very nasty things that you will never get out of your mind.

Heck with the network, I'm not sure if the photos should even be stored locally. There is no reason to save them, unless you plan on prosecuting. Then you have the physical object anyway.

Celebrity naked photos can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and I am sure that would be several years wages for the security personnel. I'm not sure how much jail time they would get, but some might even risk that if the money was high enough. Celebrities fly a lot and it might be hard to prove which security employee even took the photo if the meta data is stripped from it.

It would only take one bad security employee to really make this spiral into something very bad.

[beakmyn]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

From what I've heard so far. The imaging machines are now capable of showing an outline only of the body and then highlighted areas of interest. They do not show the actual person anymore.

Also, the images are stored for up to 3 days then deleted. This is most likely a protective measure so that if someone did get though they'll want to see the images to see if someone wasn't doing their job.

The person that screens the images is offsite of the security area. They have only a radio to communicate a pass/fail.

Besides titanium there's issues of false positives. I've stopped traveling with a soft sided case of CDs because they keep showing up a large amount of liquid material. On the screen they were a large orange mass but the angle scanned did not show the holes in the CDs the TSA doesn't like that I know that.

I'm all for full body scans. Let's get some actual security and not this joke we have now.

rant
I'm also for proper training and getting rid of the jackasses and their friends who don't know the rules. It's 5 inch pair of pliers I shouldn't have to wait for you call your damn supervisor so you both look at them and then decide if the rule is 5" or 6" and whether or not they're ok to travel with. They are. And I'll keep my shoes on my feet.
/rant

[streaker69]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

I think the scanner employee would be a rough job. Kinda like a gynecologist. For every hot girl that goes through, you probably see a hundred or so very nasty things that you will never get out of your mind.

Heck with the network, I'm not sure if the photos should even be stored locally. There is no reason to save them, unless you plan on prosecuting. Then you have the physical object anyway.

Celebrity naked photos can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and I am sure that would be several years wages for the security personnel. I'm not sure how much jail time they would get, but some might even risk that if the money was high enough. Celebrities fly a lot and it might be hard to prove which security employee even took the photo if the meta data is stripped from it.

It would only take one bad security employee to really make this spiral into something very bad.

If the devices store the image, then there should be no method to pull the direct image off the device available to the drones sitting there watching them. The images should only be able to be pulled off by an investigative authority. Short of them taking a photograph of the screen with the person walking through, which would be easily spotted, they shouldn't be able to copy a picture anywhere.

Granted that's in a perfect world.

[hexjunkie]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

If the devices store the image, then there should be no method to pull the direct image off the device available to the drones sitting there watching them. The images should only be able to be pulled off by an investigative authority. Short of them taking a photograph of the screen with the person walking through, which would be easily spotted, they shouldn't be able to copy a picture anywhere.

Granted that's in a perfect world.

I'd say in this world its more likely to send the pictures to a backup server via wifi (to make it easy to be portable and configurable) with some type of weak WEP encryption...

With any luck we can see what that cute girl looks like under all those skimpy clothes while we wait 6 hours with no smokes for our flights.

[theprez98]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

I'd say in this world its more likely to send the pictures to a backup server via wifi (to make it easy to be portable and configurable) with some type of weak WEP encryption...

With any luck we can see what that cute girl looks like under all those skimpy clothes while we wait 6 hours with no smokes for our flights.

If we get to see any girl at all, it won't be the cute one.

[theprez98]

Re: Recent Events - Airplane Bathroom Cameras

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100108/D9D3HB101.html

This article is pretty interesting; despite the name of the article none of these proposals are really "mind reading" they're all just different forms of behavioral profiling.

This one seems very interesting:

The system that Israeli-based WeCU Technologies has devised and is testing in Israel projects images onto airport screens, such as symbols associated with a certain terrorist group or some other image only a would-be terrorist would recognize, said company CEO Ehud Givon.

The logic is that people can't help reacting, even if only subtly, to familiar images that suddenly appear in unfamiliar places. If you strolled through an airport and saw a picture of your mother, Givon explained, you couldn't help but respond.

The reaction could be a darting of the eyes, an increased heartbeat, a nervous twitch or faster breathing, he said.

Beyond this, some of these behavior-based profiling gets into microexpressions. Unfortunately I think we're a long way from even basic, large scale behavioral profiling; the chance that we could accurately read microexpressions at the necessary scale seems too far fetched at least now and into the near future.