Just a few minutes ago a caller into the Stephanie Miller Show alerted listeners to a video that appeared on German tv about the body scanners (porno scanners) now used at airports.
It's a demonstration about how the scanners DO NOT KEEP US SAFE.
In fact it shows exactly what many of us have been saying: scanners do not detect anything with in body cavities. These x-ray scanners are not like what is the doctor's office, clinic or hospital. It does not go to bone, only to skin.
In the video below not only was a detonator secreted between the person's cheek and gum but also showed what else could be hidden in a pants pocket. Yes, the explosive material was in his jacket which he would have removed to go through the scanner and/or body search/grope down, but the size of the bottle is well within the approved TSA bottle size that can be purchased at a CVS, Walgreens, etc.
It is in German with English subtitles:
(update) The stuff they are detonating is called Thermite. It has been used in hand grenades and to permanently disable artillery. If you google "Thermite" the third link down is a recipe.
Bomb sniffing dogs, as those of us who are against the porno scanners and the grope downs, have said, would have detected the material.
The video points out another point many of us have been saying that may have been taken as hyperbolic: Since these scanners only go to skin and not to body cavities, how long before TSA/DHS demands full cavity searches?
Yesterday I was thinking that since we have been told that the enemy is always adapting and now we must adapt too, what would an enemy have to do to adapt to this. (I thinks of things this way.
My Mom says I have a "criminal mind," but it also allowed me to stay a couple steps ahead of my violent ex-husband in our divorce.)
( EDITED TO ADD: I'm leaving photobucket's "violation" tag up here. The picture that was here was of the scan showing the weapons, but also male genitalia. It can be seen in the study (link) posted below)
Since plastic explosive is malleable, and as has been demonstrated that other than for edges it comes back as "skin" on the scanners. Why not just fashion the plastic explosive into a penis and scrotum and wear a Tena pad between the body and the "prosthetic." We know that the scanners do not penetrate a maxi-pads, Pose pad, Tena pad, Depends, Attends, etc.
But then I learned that terrorists didn't even need to be that inventive or artistic. A phantom study showed that a pancake of PETN placed against the chest/mid section of a person will not show up on the back scatter scanners.
These are images from that study. The scanner picks up the water bottle on the simulated "bomber's" right and the iron taped to the left. What it didn't show was the 320 grams of PETN explosive taped to "his" middle.
. . . the subject is carrying 320 grams of PETN plastic explosive. . .
. . . Finally, he has taped to his abdomen a tapered pancake of PETN explosive, 20-cm in diameter and 1-cm thick at the center, tapering to the edge of the pancake (orange in the color image)
For context, the "shoe bomber" was carrying 40 grams of PETN, and the "Christmas bomber" was carrying 80 grams of PETN. Both amounts were considered sufficient to blow a hole in an aircraft’s skin. The amounts simulated here are four to eight times larger.
embolden mine
To justify these scanners we are told that the enemy is inventive. If this is true these studies (and even my imagination) have already made these expensive, and ineffective scanners obsolete.
They've already told us that the scanners don't work and used it as a rational for the "enhanced pat downs" especially in the random ones. The pat down is NOT a frisking TSA runs their hands around the scrotum, penis, under breasts, between gut folds and through labia.
That running through labia is why one woman could say that the TSA touched her vagina. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
If this is allowed to stand the next logical step for the TSA is the full cavity search because of the first video. Mouth, vagina, rectum - any where a bomb, or it's components can be hidden. Even more invasive and all because the too expensive and totally unnecessary scanners can't see it. A bomb sniffing dog can smell a bomb and the chemicals for a bomb in cavities and in the TSA/DHS size approved liquid container in the carry one.
And for those of us who have been raped there are now many warnings that these pat downs can trigger anxiety and PTSD attacks.
Celeste is a seasoned traveler and a rape victim who was re-traumatized by these new enhanced procedures. What really got to her was after being felt up all over her body the TSA agent began to run his hands through her hair which she said felt like being raped all over again. You can read more oh how this rape survivor was devistated by the TSA here.
- Gonzo Times
For women and men who have already been sexually assaulted, the new screening rules—or just the threat of these rules—present a very real danger. They can be triggering events, setting off a posttraumatic-stress reaction. "I started crying. It was so intimate, so horrible. I feel like I was being raped," an anonymous rape survivor recounted on a Minnesota blog. Melissa Gibbs, a spokeswoman for We Won’t Fly, a group protesting the new regulations, says that a rape survivor she spoke to had a panic attack as an agent began touching her leg.
-- Newsweek: For Survivors of Sexual Assault, New TSA Screenings Represent a Threat
If the grope downs are a trigger for rape victims/PTSD, some have suggested that they take the train instead." I am one of those victims. I detailed what happened here. (I will update this diary in the next few weeks - more info and what has happened since I wrote it). When these pat down procedures were described I knew I would have problems.
There is a question of the radiation the scanners dose out, and I have already been exposed to far too much radiation (another story I intend to diary about). Seeing video and reading John Tyner's account of not being able to leave when they escorted him out - that they were still going to process him even when he decided not to fly, or give him a $11,000 fine, I once again felt trapped in that little exam room. I walked in, and I cannot stop what is happening. Leaving is not leaving, you are stuck on a little island, you are Number 6. Those feelings of helplessness and loss of control are that acute.
I live around Boston, my parents are in Denver, 2,000 miles away. If they are on their death bed an airplane gets me there in 4 hours. A train takes 2 days.
If we had invested in our passenger train infrastructure and had even brought it up to at least the last half of the 20th century (much less the 21st century) that might be a valid argument and reasonable alternative. But that is not the reality of life in the USA in the 21st century. (and I say this as a rail passenger who loves trains)
What is TSA going to do once/if they find a bomber? After waiting in line with all those people, a bomber is simply going to put his/her hands up and go quietly? Why should they?
I thought about this and how effective and probable it would be if a bomber just detonated the bomb they are carrying in-line. Someone else thought of it too:
But it's okay as long as it makes us feel safe, right?
Why is there no loud noise to demand that all letters and packages the USPS puts into the belly of passenger airplanes be screened? Because currently they are not.
Air passengers are at far greater risk from that than passengers being screen the old way, way back to October 1, 2010.
If it fits it ships, right? Including altitude detonators.