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The NYPD Wants Mobile Weapon Scanners for Drive-By Patdowns

The NYPD is in hot water with civil rights groups over its controversial Stop-and-Frisk policy. But, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has a solution—handheld weapons scanners that see guns under clothing! Fourth Amendment? What’s that?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Transportation Security Administration confirms that it is getting rid of airport body scanners that produce a naked image of travelers.

Right now the TSA uses two types of scanners. One makes a generic image showing where agents should look for an object on the traveler's body. Those scanners are staying.

TSA says the X-ray scanners will be gone by June. It says the company that makes them, Rapiscan, was not able to come up with a software fix to make the scanners comply with the Congressional mandate.

Allied Pilots Association president Dave Bates is suggesting that American Airlines pilots go through a pat-down search by Transportation Security Administration personnel rather undergo the repeated radiation from the “advanced imaging technology” body scanners used.
“While I’m sure that each of us recognizes that the threats to our lives are real, the practice of airport security screening of airline pilots has spun out of control and does nothing to improve national security,” Bates wrote.

This video is here to demonstrate that the TSA’s insistence that the nude body scanner program is effective and necessary is nothing but a fraud, just like their claims that the program is safe (radiation what?) and non-invasive (nude pictures who?). The scanners are now effectively worthless, as anyone can beat them with virtually no effort. The TSA has been provided this video in advance of it being made public to give them an opportunity to turn off the scanners and revert to the metal detectors. I personally believe they now have no choice but to turn them off.

The monumental public relations cover-up being run by the TSA and other airport security authorities worldwide in claiming that the naked body scanners do not show crisp images of genitalia has once again been exposed with the story of a TSA worker in Miami who attacked a colleague who had made fun of his small penis after he passed through a scanner device.

Airport body scanners could lead to an increase in skin cancers according to scientists at Columbia University, who warn that the dose emitted by the naked x-ray devices could be up to 20 times higher than originally estimated.

The Transportation Security Administration announced Friday that it would retest every full-body X-ray scanner that emits ionizing radiation — 247 machines at 38 airports — after maintenance records on some of the devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.

An AID is a pain-delivery device that will be soon tested on "unruly" inmates at the sheriff's detention facility in Castaic, California, where an inmate brawl broke out late August, injuring two officers.

The TSA next week will begin installing the first of 150 full-body scanners approved last May as part of the federal stimulus plan. Boston Logan International Airport will get the first three scanners, followed by one machine slated for Terminal 1 at Chicago O'Hare. The remaining scanners should be in place by the spring, according to the TSA.