Gotta love Yank airport security
- Thread starter rypt
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If you're worried about the radiation from these scanners you really shouldn't be flying.
I assume you're making reference to the cosmic radiation exposure from the flight itself?
In very simple terms, whilst cosmic radiation is very varied and complex, it is so insignificant that dosimetry studies aren’t even considered pertinent for less than 200 hours at altitude (which is the lower limit to provide 1 microsievert) It’d take well beyond that to receive values of concern. Airline personnel face on average 2-5 mSv (after 1000 hours) alongside the 3 msV that natural and man-made sources provide to the average person. Regulations provide limitations of up to 20 mSv/year averaged over 5 years and no more than 50 mSv in any given year. Here is the WHO’s info sheet and their slightly more gentle website.
What if I were to tell you that I’m currently involved in Biochem/Biophy research in conjunction with the Stroud Lab at UCSF and by extension through him personally have enjoyed conversations with not only John Sedat himself but his wife Elizabeth Blackburn. Why am I name dropping? Because she’s a Noble holder in Medicine and was once on the President’s council on Bioethics, Sedat is a member of the National Academy of Science and Stroud himself is significantly involved in cancer research and no less than a founding fellow of the Biophysical Society.
Both Stroud and Sedat wrote a letter to John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology pleading for further studies into the machines and their safety after their preliminary investigation raised serious red flags. So because it’d make no sense for me to try and curtail their already layman ready text, read it for yourself.
There has of course since been a reply but it is full of bad science and double-talk. They are currently working on a reply to this poor response and i assure you it will have far more signatories of significance to carry it's weight this time (probably including David Brenner). What's infuriating is that there's another technology using millimeter-wave imaging that has had all of the relevant studies performed and was cleared of any reasonably risk posed. But, despite being cheaper to make, some lobbyist in Rapiscan's pocket clearly has some people under their thumb as this more expensive, less efficient, lower resolution and less understood machine is being bought and deployed in greater numbers.
Also worth noting is that all of this focus is on individual risk which is flawed logic; even if the individual risk is 1 in 20 million (that's a number floating around at the moment, sorry I don't recall who from) there are 700 million individuals that will face these machines in a year. Fun soundbite, if the risk is indeed 1:20,000,000 for cancer, the machines pose a higher threat than terrorism itself 1:30,000,000 (not restricted to airline terrorism).
The concern is real, I couldn’t care less that they would see a semi-naked picture of me that CAN be stored despite representatives continual lies that images are instantly deleted it’s the real health risk that exists and has been completely ignored that worries me, nobody of any consequence or intelligence has had the ability to study these machines (or perhaps have been muzzled from releasing the pertinent values). Which is why this December when I fly back home, I’m opting out. I seriously suggest everyone do the same.
There are better ways to go about airport security (Israelification) and the TSA have no legal position to be employed in American airports at this point as two years have passed since their placement. The airports are now free to hire their own teams and use their own procedures, the government is blocking this with threats of liability should an attack occur. So, whilst we're being looked at more than ever, bag-monkeys are still allowed to travel to the airport, into the secure area, handle luggage and work in and around the airplane without being searched or scanned once. Their background checks take over 6 months, they are allowed to work whilst it's being processed. Feel safer? This really is a Security Theater.
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Soldato
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Humourless ****s anyway, passing through Logan Airport to see my girlfriend and the guy starts asking me questions about where we met, and when I said while she was studying in Europe, he asked did she enjoy it.
"She got me, didn't she?"
Not even a look up.
I tried to make a joke with the TSA once.... never again.
Yeah we have small pots of yoghurt taken away yet have no problem carrying in Leathermans with massive blades on them and any other dangerous tools.
When you enter USA you do not go through any scanners or security bar the passport control. Same as in UK. So what exactly was he on about? Doesn't sound right overall.
Soldato
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[FnG]magnolia;17860893 said:
One person standing up for their rights is an annoyance, a thousand a protest, a million a movement.
He's one of the few who have started the ball rolling.
Good for him (& the others...)
[SKR]Phoenix;17862866 said:and apparently eating bacon gives you cancer.
I also drive many thousands of miles a year and am diabetic with blood pressure problems.
I also own a mobile phone! Good god!
Might just commit suicide right now, because I've got no chance.
Perhaps you need to learn the difference between a scanning X-ray and low level risks like the ones you have described.
Goddess only knows what will happen if the beam stalls and gets focused of any soft areas like eyes, breasts, stomach or genatalia. You'd get a massive dose of radiation. The system has not been proven. It's dangerous. End of.
That, the fact that government employees can molest children and minimum wages TSA employees masturbating over people should be enough to make most people see this is wrong.
Terrorists must be laughing their beards off.
I'm referring to the story about the guy who refused the scanner and the pat-down, not the original soldiers' one.
When I was writing that I thought up another. Camera lenses have loads of glass and metal in, could quite easily modify one to be dismantableable...
But then agin why go through the hassle? Just go through security with nothing and load up on glass and knives at in the departure lounge...
(Still yet to order a steak from wetherspoons though so not sure if you get a steak knife with it?)
when i was at the australian steak house in orlando international I ordered a delicious 16oz rib eye, rare.
It came out cooked to perfection, with a plastic knife and fork of the worst quality. Every time i tried to cut anything the knife just bent. I had to send it back to the chef to have him cut it up like i was a child
Yep, the same. Despite them being a locking blade they are fine. Knob of butter for my morning toast, omg a butter bomber!
The best way to get a jar of jam or a yogurt through our security is to put a bottle of water at the top of your bag. They see it on the screen, ask to search your bag and get all pleased with themselves taking away a bottle of tap water, leaving the rest of your breakfast alone
One of my collegues had feta cheese taken away from him which sparked an argument on liquids for quite a while. Apparently if you melt it it become a liquid was the argument for taking it off him.
Surely by that reckoning they shouldn't allow any metals or plastics on board either?
They tend to turn into a liquid when you apply heat...
Yep, the same. Despite them being a locking blade they are fine. Knob of butter for my morning toast, omg a butter bomber!
The best way to get a jar of jam or a yogurt through our security is to put a bottle of water at the top of your bag. They see it on the screen, ask to search your bag and get all pleased with themselves taking away a bottle of tap water, leaving the rest of your breakfast alone
One of my collegues had feta cheese taken away from him which sparked an argument on liquids for quite a while. Apparently if you melt it it become a liquid was the argument for taking it off him.
Haha may have to try that!
As for the feta.. That's just bloody stupid. Unfortunately 95% of the security staff I have come across really are jobsworths.
Actually talking of the yank security, I was talking to a captain a little while back that had just returned from Chicago and nearly had something taken off him, I can't remember what it was exactly, but it was something he'd bought from a gardening shop in the states. They said he wasn't allowed it in case he hit the pax with it... After much laughing and speaking to someone higher up he was allowed it.
Yep that's the row people regularly have with them. They then take the stance that you had best shut up or they will take those other items that can be melted down.
Some are ok but the majority are thugs or jobsworths as Justin says. Especially when you have clearance anyway and get easily drive off site and bring stuff in with a van.
I've driven off site to pick up aircraft parts before, one item the box was the size of an arm chair. Obviously it wouldn't go through the scanner and all I was asked was "whats in the box".
Aircraft spares
"ok then"
Random crate which they can't be bothered to open, fine.
Muller fruit corner, kabooooooom.
Yeah there was one in chirp recently where they wouldn't let the captain take his sure deodrant stick on, because it can be melted down. Quite what the captain was going to do with a pool of melted deodrant is anyones guess when he has a few hundred tonnes at his disposal to pile into something should he have a moment of durka durka.
Such as the nightshifts kebab run
I'm surprised they aren't bothered about making a bomb from the chilli sauce or rubbing it in peoples eyes. Actually a lot of the guys go to a chicken place and get those little tubs of Baked Beans and haven't had a problem. I guess it's down to how hungry the security staff are.