This'd fix 'em!
Force them to store 35,000 images of us old, fat, ugly guys and make them look at all of 'em sequentially. THAT would put them off their feed for a week or so!
Feds admit storing pervscanner pics
US Marshals have built a collection of more than 35,000 "virtual strip search" body scans at one Florida courthouse in just six months, despite wider assurances the technology cannot store images, it's been revealed. The service has installed a millimetre wave scanner at a federal court in Orlando to detect concealed weapons …
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Thursday 5th August 2010 14:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Insert Title
Is anybody in the least bit surprised? Nope? Didn't think so. We all know our governments are run by a bunch of lying *******s, and there is nothing we can do about it. They are the ruling class and get to do what they want, we are the peasants and get to be abused. It really is quite simple, deal with it.
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Friday 6th August 2010 09:00 GMT alien anthropologist
So...
> I don't give a shit if they store images or not. No one is scanning me, my wife or my kids.
All right then sir.. please proceed to "The Room" while I snap on these gloves... and my colleagues and I poke our fingers up your ass, your wife's ass, and your kids asses....
Is that what you want as an alternative? Don't be an idiot.
The issue is about *correctly* using technology to ensure some crazy bastard does not do what crazy bastards tend to do. Yes, it is a balance acting between privacy and individual rights and public safety - but you mouthing off as you are simply reeks of stupid arrogance and utter ignorance.
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Friday 6th August 2010 12:04 GMT Wize
@ Alien
But at least no one is filming when the gloves are on. There won't be pictures of his family doing glove puppet impressions going round the net.
Besides, the scanner doesn't go 'up your ass'. One of the points regularly made is a terrorist could have a stick of dynamite up their bum and you'd only have the fuse wire as a clue on the scanner.
You have a cheek to call anyone else an idiot.
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Thursday 5th August 2010 14:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
well what a surprise
"not capable of storing images" actually means "we store the images".
You'd have to be desperately naive not to have suspected that form the off. And you're certainly an idiot if you believe that a machine built in the information age can't store information.
I wonder how people would have reacted if Henry Ford had said "yes my cars burn fossil fuels but they are not capable of producing any kind of emissions". No one would have believed it.
Tell a similar lie today on the other hand and people are far too stupid, lazy or just plain apathetic to call you out on it. Yet test scores go up year on year. Everyone is getting smarter. A new race of super-geniuses are only just around the corner if the stats are to be believed.
How do you reconcile these facts?
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Friday 6th August 2010 11:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
@How do you reconcile these facts?
They are afraid to stand up to perceived authority figures. This has always been the case, although certain periods have been a teensy bit more promising (basically the '60s and the '70s). In the '80s youth was once more brought mostly back under control and has been too self-absorbed ever since. Yes you could characterise that as stupidity, laziness, apathy, but it still reduces to a smokescreen for blind obedience.
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Friday 6th August 2010 13:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Not necessarily blind obedience.
Peaceful protests, writing to newspapers, writing to MPs. All of these have been reduced to a useless, easily ignored nuisance. Vote the old lot out and have them replaced by a slightly different instantiation of the problem. Not a solution.
So what is the other option? Violent rebellious protest of the type the commenters on this board pine for merely ruins one's future. If I'm going to get CRB checked for almost every job I apply for I'm sure as hell not risking a smudge on that just to have the protest ignored.
You want the smarter, more involved, youths to throw away their future just so that you can preserve privacy? Sod off. This is the paranoid, terrified mess that the generation above us has created. And I'm not risking my future to save you from yours.
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Thursday 5th August 2010 14:28 GMT Edwin
Ho hum
I see thumbnails of hi-res imagery on every page and poster on this topic, but a quick scroll through the 100 images EPIC got suggests that if you get off on these pics, there's something seriously wrong with your vision.
I'm not defending lying guvmint types, but is this really such a big deal?
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Thursday 5th August 2010 15:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
You just said it
Lying from government types should be reason enough to get them sacked and blackballed. And I don't mean just the goons on the ground. Every clerk, every plod, every politician, has a function serving the public, and the least we could expect from them is a modicum of integrity.
As to your judgement on others' "vision", well, I call rule 34 and that's all the troll wrote.
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Thursday 5th August 2010 15:48 GMT David 105
you've missed the point somewhat
I don't think anyones overly concerned about randy airport staff whacking off to grainy, ghostly images of the people who walk through the airport scanner (lets be honest, if they were going to, their imagination would work just fine for that), what I'm concerned about is the fact that privacy concerns were dismissed with the now obvious fallacy that the scanners couldn't record any images. With that in mind, what other comforting lies have we been told about surveilance equipment that we haven't found out yet?
That's my concern, and I think it is a big deal
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Thursday 5th August 2010 15:46 GMT JaitcH
It's not the fact that governments consistently lie ...
but what in earth do they want with disembodied images that cannot easily be linked to live bodies and serve no apparent purpose?
The only reason they are able to do this because storage is so cheap.
Maybe we should claim copyright infringement after all our body image is our property.
Another answer might be to have a persons national flag embroidered on the underwear in the genitalia area(s) using metallic thread which should prove impervious to these government perverts.
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Thursday 5th August 2010 17:40 GMT Tom 35
Ass urances
"Yes, it's a big deal, people were "assured" that images would not be stored, and they have been. So yes it's a big deal."
It's worse then that. They didn't just say "we will not do it" knowing no one would trust them not to.
They claimed that they were "not capable of storing images" so even if you don't trust them it's ok because they can't do it.
So they can't say we didn't lie, we had to change our mind because of... Think of the Children... oh wait that didn't sound so good, terrorists... yes that's it terrorists made us do it.
They said that they were "not capable of storing images" and that was clearly a big fat whopping lie.
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Friday 6th August 2010 12:05 GMT Edwin
Missing the point
As I said in my original post, I'm not defending lying. But perhaps I was a little unclear.
When i look at the media coverage (including El Reg here) it's about banning the machines (perv scanners? puh-lease!) because they store nude pics of pax. Which, as far as I can see, is patently not true. They store vague, low-res grainy images.
Let's try to focus on the lying, and not on the tech please.
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Thursday 5th August 2010 15:48 GMT James 47
The point isn't blurry pictures
but the fact the authorities were not believed from the start and this has proven to be correct. What is a government agency doing lying to its citizens? Stupidly lying?
Besides, could these images not be classified as 'Extreme Porn'? People get off on a lot of weird shit. The Government continually reminds us that there are paedos out there we need protecting from, yet breaks its own rules when its in its own interest.
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Thursday 5th August 2010 15:49 GMT Paul Smith
is this really such a big deal?
So if the images are too blurry to whack off too so we should not be upset? Hmm... If someone want's to enjoy themselves looking at a blurry image of me, why should I care. Even if the images were much sharper then the ones we have seen, it still doesn't bother me.
If a public official wants to take a picture of me for clear public safety reasons and catagorically states that the picture can not be stored, and that checks and safeguards have been put in place to ensure that my trust is not abused, then I will reluctently give my consent.
If that public official turns out to have been lying through there teeth about not storing the image, then I have to assume that they were also lying about the uses that image will be put to. And while I do not know what they have in mind, I do not think I am being paranoid in assuming it is something I am not going to like, otherwise why risk lying.
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Thursday 5th August 2010 16:36 GMT tom 24
Nonsense!
They said the machines can not store images, therefore they can't, therefore this is just an attempt to slander the TSA's good name!
Anyway, if they are storing naked images (which may be blurry today, but advancements in technology will certainly improve them, so the precedent is important here) it's in a good cause. As Dr. Necessiter said, "If the murder of twelve innocent people can help save one human life, it will have been worth it." The end always justifies the suspension of any inconvenient human rights.
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Friday 6th August 2010 12:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
I suppose
if one is trumping like Nellie the Elephant while boarding they stop you? In which case drinking a gallon of cabbage water and eating a multipack of baked beans before setting out wouldn't be much help.
Unless you go with United and book the flight _before_ the one you want to light that fart on...
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Thursday 5th August 2010 23:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
How long
before it turns out someone has been flogging these pics to the health insurance industry, or gymnasium telemarketing scum?
Naturally linked to your passport ID, name, age, telephone number, address, and biometrics for good measure. Oh and travel history too.
In fact, given the risk of death by terrorism is currently so minuscule it is on a par with a fatal lightning strike... and the 'monetization' of personal data so attractive to corrupt civil servants and politicians... one could be forgiven for thinking it was the whole purpose from the outset.
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Thursday 5th August 2010 23:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
ORLY?
<-- cuz the black choppers really are here.
"We do not store images of your body scans"
... you mean, like:
"We do not torture people"
"We do not spy on US civilians"
"We do not shoot at innocent civilians"
"There are WMDs!"
"Secret detention centers? What secret detention centers?"
"Secret human experiments? What secret human experiments?"
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_United_States
- http://www.healthforyou.org/m/medical/index.htm
- http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FDAinDrugTrial.php
- http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/human_experimentation.html
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4110224.stm
( ^ anyone remember this bbc doc? made virtually NO news in the US back in 2005)
- http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/06/cia_doctors_engaged_in_human_e.html
"Vote for change"
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Friday 6th August 2010 12:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Nausea
While not entirely unfamiliar with the subject, just reading the wikipedia page I genuinely felt nauseous. Kind of like the first time I saw footage of the liberation of the concentration camps that as a young adult changed my life forever as the complacency was savagely beaten out of me.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
