Be sure to read the TSA's official response on their blog. [1] The comments there are priceless.<p>[1]<a href="http://blog.tsa.gov/2012/03/viral-video-about-body-scanners.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.tsa.gov/2012/03/viral-video-about-body-scanners....</a>
Here's a few FAQ'ish type links:<p>Body scanner proven ineffective video
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idICUSiGcqo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idICUSiGcqo</a><p>Body scanner has 54% false positive rate
<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/sweating-bullets-body-scanners-can-see-perspiration-as-a-potential-weapon" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/sweating-bullets-body-sca...</a><p>Cost of the body scanners
<a href="http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/03/07/what_tsa_securi.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/03/07/what_tsa_se...</a><p>Some pretty interesting numbers here:<p>"Of these, 18 airports handle fewer than 1,000 passengers daily but were equipped with 21 scanners at an estimated installed cost of $7.3 million to screen 9,538 passengers per day."
Why don't they just install a background behind the subject that produces a checkerboard pattern? This is exactly why programs like Photoshop use a checkered background to make it trivial to detect transparency in your images.<p>Wouldn't that render the exploit this guy found obsolete?
2 words: Ethiopian rat<p>This species can detect all kinds of weapons, explosives, drugs, everything.<p>It can even tell if a person has a contagious DISEASE.<p>And best of all its cheaper to train and maintain than dogs, and more friendly/less intimidating for the passengers.<p>These are already being used in some African countries to find landmines that dogs and electronic detectors can't see.
What's supremely confusing is that the back scatter machines were meant to protect us against the growing threat of non-metallic weapons and yet many TSA demos show how effective they are at finding things like guns and knives. Such objects would be passively and reliably detected by a metal detector and now we find they can be easily taken through a back scatter machine.<p>We've put incomplete tech and massive room for human error in between people and air planes. It's worse than security theater, it's a full digression in our our actual security. We're actually less safe than we were 15 years ago. If this man's video is to be trusted, it's now easier than ever to bring a box cutter onto an airplane. Boggles the mind.