Pssst, Uncle Sam Can See You Naked

This is a picture of Susan Hallowell, who runs the Transportation Security Administration's research lab. Four years ago, she volunteered to be scanned by a backscatter x-ray machine, which sees through clothing. She was wearing a skirt and blazer. But in the picture, she's as good as nude.

Now it's your turn.

Like retarded children drooling over old comic-book ads for "X-Ray Specs!" and daydreaming of actually being able to see through clothing and and leer shapely women, America Top Cops™ at the Homeland Security Department/Transportation Security Administration have decided that in order for you to be Safe From Terror™, they have to be able to take naked photos of you.

Now, any kid with half a brain knew that X-Ray Specs were a novelty gag that didn't really work. But time marches on and technology makes the impossible possible. Get ready, air travelers, because this week the Homeland Security Department began using backscatters at airports to screen passengers for weapons. The first machine is up and running in Phoenix, Arizona. The next ones will be in New York and Los Angeles.

Are you ready to get naked to protect your country from Osama Bin Laden™?

This is no joke. The government desperately craves to look under your clothes. Ceramic knives, plastic guns, and liquid explosives have supposedly all made metal detectors obsolete. Carry-on bags are X-rayed, so the safest place to hide a weapon is on your body. Puffer machines can detect explosives on you, but only if you're sloppy. Backscatters are different. They can scan your whole surface, locating and identifying anything of unusual density—not just metals, which have high atomic numbers, but also explosives or, say, large sums of money and/or drugs, which have low ones.

Which may be the real reason the TSA is rolling out these types of scans. Not for the terrorists... but in order to help them catch people with undeclared cash or drugs on them. Hurrah! Another way to tie together the War On Terror™ with the War on Drugs™!

Of course, the TSA has downplayed the privacy concerns about these backscatter x-rays, saying that they've imposed very rigid protocols for this early "experimental" and "voluntary" use of backscatter x-rays. In Phoenix, for example, the TSA screener operating the machine can't see you in person -- he's in an entirely different airport terminal entirely. The idea being that it's totally cool for you to be strip-searched so long as you don't have to look at the face of the guy doing it to you via remote, I suppose. Additionally, the TSA's backscatter x-ray machines won't currently identify you by name, nor do they currently save scans of your naked body, nor do they currently print out scans of your naked body (as always, the key is their emphasis on the word CURRENTLY, of course). The TSA was also forced by privacy activists to "distort" the images the machine produces. Here are some examples of the "distorted" images:



Note that the sexual organs of both the male and female are very clearly visible

More importantly, the TSA's "voluntary submission" and "very rigid protocols" are just the proverbial camel's nose under the tent. It's very clear that someday everyone, without exception, will need to go through one of these things to get on an airplane. Of course, once that legal justification is made, then there isn't much reason that you can't be required to go through a backscatter everywhere else. To take a train. To get on a bus. To enter any courthouse or federal building. Every day at school. Private businesses.

And once we get to the point of private businesses requiring this technology ("but we Have To... it'll keep Puff Daddy's rap protégé from sneaking handguns into our club!"), then we immediately lose the strict procedures which are currently set in place for the TSA. Worse, there's no proof and it's not very likely that these proceedures will be enforeced at non-experimental airports once the program rolls out wide.

Think about the airport today... the TSA has proven completely incapable of getting luggage x-ray machines out of the lobbies of our airport terminals after SIX YEARS. Still we have to step up, check in, watch that luggage belt rotate behind the counter uselessly, then trudge with our luggage to a different part of the lobby, then undergo a pointless explosives residue test, then take the luggage to a different part of the lobby and stand in a NEW line and drop it off with the TSA who x-rays it right there in the middle of what used to be space for walking and THEN puts the luggage on the conveyor belt.

Where the hell are they going to put these x-ray strip show machines BUT in the middle of the lobby? Great, a new line to stand in. Oh, and for everyone standing behind the TSA guy to be able to see you naked. Sweet! Humliate Yourself For America!

Corporations will claim it's too much work, takes too many employees, etc. to have 2 people scanning entrants. People will rig their private machines to make jpegs, etc. Then we'll all be naked all the time. How better to cow and scare and terrify the Little People than to expose them in all their flabby nakedness?

Oh, and it'll only be the Little People, don't fool yourself. The powerful and wealthy won't be subjected to this bullshit... they'll just bypass all security just like they already do. No, this invasive bullshit is just for us plebes.

And in case you think I'm being overreactionary, think about this: Because of concerns about killing people with radiation, body scanners are designed not to penetrate the skin. All that's needed to defeat this entire system is for is someone heavily overweight to go through the system with a weapon or explosives pack tucked into a flabby body fold and it won't be detected by the scanner. For that matter, how big of an issue is it -REALLY- for a Terrorist who's perfectly willing to die for Allah to shove 10 pounds of C4 explosive up his ass in order to sneak it onto a plane?

Lastly, consider this simple question: would this technology have prevented 9/11? Answer: No. Those 19 men took common household objects on board that plane with them and then used them as weapons. Any of you could do today exactly what Mohammed Atta did with 19 friends armed with metal coat hangers and aluminum soda cans torn in half.

No, once again, this is baloney fake-o protection designed to make America FEEL safe while simultaneously stripping our Civil Liberties from us AND simultaneously shift tax dollars from the poor and working class to the wealthy connected few who own these defense corporations.

The Military-Industrial-Terrorism-Drug-Complex strikes again.

5 Years Late, Relief Arrives For Banned Travellers

Word from the Department of Homeland Security is that it will review the terror watch list for travelers and would probably cut it in half. In addition, an appeals process will be put in place as of 20 Feb 2007, so people can appeal their inclusion on the list.

That's great. The people on the Do Not Fly List will FINALLY be able to beg the Government for the right to travel and assemble freely. Neato.

I note that it doesn't say ANYTHING about the "Hassle When They Fly List" which the DHS admitted existed. Maybe those of us with big mouths will just have to get used to to being hassled.

Still, it's a fine step for the DHS to be taking, what, almost six full years after the 9/11 attacks? I'm thrilled that the Bush Administration has finally managed to realize that babies with names similar to those of suspected terrorists probably aren't those terrorists.

Sadly, the DHS just can't manage to do one single good thing without simultaneously adding an additional inconvenient "security" measure:

Passport Requirement for Air Travel Now in Effect

January 23, 2007 — Citizens of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Bermuda are now required to present a passport to enter the United States when arriving by air from any part of the Western Hemisphere.

The department expects a smooth transition to the new passport requirement based on the current numbers of travelers arriving at U.S. airports with passports. Over 90 percent of U.S. citizens, 97 percent of Canadians, and virtually 100 percent of Mexicans and Bermudans flying to the United States over the past week arrived with passports.

Ha ha, have fun flying to see your friends in Canada and Mexico with your passport at hand, something that has NEVER been required before today. Sucks to be one of those American tourists, filmmakers, students or any number of other innocents who happen to be in Canada right now who don't know about this obscure rule change... have fun getting back into our Free Country™ you filthy terrorist scumbags!

The Minister Has Been Away

The Minister has been away in Miami Beach, Florida. He was invited to speak at The Wolfsonian Museum and the Miami Ad School about the subject of Propaganda and the Propaganda Research Project.

The Miami Ad School students were an amazing audience. They laughed where they were supposed to and asked a lot of questions afterwards. Hell, they even sat still, long after the Minister accidentally went over his time limit. The presentation that night involved the various types of Propaganda, how to see through them, and then some examples of the Minister's own Propaganda. The Minister kicked himself later for not speaking about fonts, the care he uses to replicate old 40's fonts, and the difficulty involved with picking a replacement font when the original is not available (or was hand-drawn). The Minister will make up for that next time.

The Wolfsonian audience was kept low due to a ferocious rainstorm which raged for two hours prior to the event. Still, for the 20 or so who turned out, a good time was had by all. The presentation on that night focused on the Bush Administration's attempts to propagandize the American citizenry through the use of subliminal signage and religious imagery in official press photographs, followed by a historical examination of the President's term in office as told through the Minister's propaganda pieces.

The Minister's favorite attendee at the Wolfsonian was the beefy white man, mid-40's with a crew-cut blocked three inches above the collar of his tweed coat, who was sitting in the audience taking notes on a clipboard. Afterwards the Minister ran into the man in the hallway and thanked him for coming to the event:

The Minister of Propaganda: "Hi, thanks for coming out. Oh, hey, I saw you taking notes... You're not with Homeland Security, are you?"

Sinister Man In Tweed: "See you in Gitmo, Kid!"

The Minister of Propaganda: "Ha ha... huh?"

For the rest of the evening, the Minister signed all books like this: "Dear __________, You're a traitor for owning this book. See you in Gitmo, Kid!"

The Minister has no idea if the crew-cut was indeed a military snitch, but the stories in the paper the next day where the ACLU once again proved that the Pentagon is spying on non-violent anti-war protestors like it was 1972 all over again didn't ease the mind.

Oh, and the Minister's bags were searched both when flying to Miami and flying home to Los Angeles. Probably because of the high incidence of published authors/anti-war activists who have joined Al Qaeda and blown up airplanes, right? Polite notecards were even left in the Minister's bags by the TSA, informing him of the search. That wasn't necessary though: the Minister always knows when his bags have been searched because they're the first ones off of the baggage carousel. Why, it's so convenient that it's almost worth surrendering your civil liberties for!

This marks the 19th and 20th consecutive times that the Minister's bags have been searched. Simple probability math results in a box set showing that the odds of this happening at random are approximately 1 in a few billion.

Lest you sneer and delcare that the Minister is suffering from delusions of grandeur, reflect for a moment on the fact that the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York City wrote the text for the Minister's first book of posters. Then reflect on the fact that Barbara Olshansky, assistant legal director of the CCR in New York, reports that she has been stopped and searched every time she has flown since 9/11. On several of those occasions, she was forced to pull down her pants in view of other travelers. On one flight in 2002, six members of the CCR's staff, including Olshansky, were stopped and subjected to intense scrutiny, even though they had purchased their tickets independently and had not checked in as a group. On that occasion, Olshansky got angry and demanded to know why she had been singled out. The airline agent at the gate threatened to bar her from the plane if she raised a fuss and added brusquely, “The computer spit you out. I don’t know why, and I don’t have time to talk to you about it.”

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is authorized by law to maintain watch lists of names of individuals suspected of posing "a risk of air piracy or terrorism or a threat to airline or passenger safety." While initially denying to the media that such a list existed, the TSA finally acknowledged the No-Fly List's existence in October 2002. In December of 2002, the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC) sued the TSA and DHS to force them to reveal details of the No-Fly List and any evidence of the suspected "Hassle When Flying" List.

The documents obtained by EPIC establish that the TSA administers two lists: a "No Fly" list and a "Selectee" list, which requires the passenger to go through additional security measures. The names are provided to air carriers through any number of local and federal police agencies and are stored in their computer systems so that an individual with a name that matches the list can be flagged when getting a boarding pass. A TSA "No Fly List" name match requires the agent to call a law enforcement officer to detain and question the passenger. In the case of a Selectee, an "S" or special mark is printed on their boarding pass and the person receives additional screening at security. The TSA has withheld the number of names on each of the lists. The TSA has also withheld information about any existing approval process for putting citizens on the lists. Nor will the TSA reveal who (if anyone) verifies that the names are selected appropriately and whether the information is accurate. Nor does the TSA have a centralized standardized way to challenge or remove your name from either list.

In other words, even if the Minister has been put on the Selectee List, there's no way to verify that he has been, no way to discover why, no way to challenge said placement, and no way to get the Minister's name removed from the list.

While the Minister fully supports catching air-travelling "Terrorist Suiciders" he doesn't support the Bush Administration using a non-partisan government agency to target Americans based on their political beliefs.

Airport Security in this country has gotten painful in America since 9/11. Our Government's immediate response was to blame failed airport security for the failures of the CIA and FBI and Customs & Immigration services in allowing known terrorists into the country, to live here for years while planning and training for their attacks, and for not stopping them before they slammed two jetliners into the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon and a fourth into a field a few hundred miles short of the Capitol Dome or the White House.

This over-reaction to perceived (but not real) failures and the corresponding bulking up of Airport Security is stupid, futile and, in the long run, utterly pointless.

On September 11th, 2001, airport security did exactly the job that it was meant to do that day: it x-rayed the terrorists' carry-on baggage and ran them through a metal detector. The box cutters and Leatherman tools that the hijackers used on 9/11 were detected... and ignored because they were all perfectly legal to carry onboard of airplanes. If they hadn't been, they would have been confiscated.

Even that wouldn't have stopped the 9/11 hijackers, however. Ban whatever you like, it doesn't take the world's smartest criminal to smuggle a dangerous item onto plane. There's an entire class of people who spend all day concocting nefarious, and ultimately undetectable, instruments of destruction... prison inmates. As any Corrections Officer can tell you, prisoners are ruthlessly inventive when it comes to improvising weaponry with which to cause their fellow prisoners harm. Hell, G-10 laminate is an ultra-hard, metal-free material used in circuit boards, and can be carved into a wicked razor-sharp credit card knife that would pass any x-ray screening or metal detector. We can't keep weapons out of maximum security prisons... so how can we hope to keep them out of airports? Let's just stipulate that the hijackers would have boarded the planes on 9/11 despite whatever kind of weapons they had on them at the time.

So what's that mean? Quite simply, it says that metal detectors and X-Ray machines are the last line of defense designed to prevent a criminal from getting onboard a commercial airliner with an obvious weapons such as a handgun or a knife. They are not, and we should not expect them to be, front-line anti-terror tools. Stopping terrorists is a police and intelligence matter. Terrorism needs to be stopped at the planning stages. That's where increased security spending could do the most good. By the time the terrorist gets to the airport, it's too late... the primary line of defense has already failed and no amount of bullshit airport security will stop them at that point. If they've avoided detection, then these theoretical terrorists are easily clever enough to sneak weapons onboard the planes.

Despite whatever paranoid bullshit terror plots the Administration might bring up to scare Americans into surrendering civil liberties and expanding airport security measures, there remains one highly exceptional anti-terrorist protection scheme: the onboard passengers.

On September 11th, 2001, the era of the Al-Qaeda Passenger Airplane Bomb was both born... and strangled in its cradle. Prior to 9/11, terrorist hijackings typically ended with extended hostage negotiation situations and special-forces-shootouts on airport tarmacs. When those planes were hijacked, the passengers in them could only imagine that their flights would end the same way. But when the first three planes hit the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon, word went out to every plane in the air, including United Flight 93. There were no armed pilots or Air Marshals on United 93... instead, average American citizens discovered that they were NOT going to be landing in Cuba and traded for PLO "prisoners of war" but instead that they were going to be slammed into a government building. So they charged their attackers and forced them to prematurely crash the plane.

Today, there will be no "maybe this will all work itself out" phase for airline passengers. Today, EVERY passenger knows what will happen if terrorists get control of the plane: either they'll die when they're slammed into a building or they'll die when Dick Cheney orders them shot out of the air. NO ONE will EVER allow their plane to get taken over by Terrorists ever again. People will stand up, push one arm through the strap of the flotation devices that they're sitting on, and charge whatever stupid Al Queada Suicider was dumb enough to announce his intention to hijack the plane. Then that stupid terrorist will be kicked and stomped to death by the panicked passengers. United 93 wasn't the first time passengers had risen up against people trying to take over the plane, but it was certainly the LAST time that any passengers anywhere will allow a small group of terrorists to hijack their plane. Knives or no knives, guns or no guns, bombs or no bombs, shoebombs or no shoebombs, liquid explosive bombs or no liquid explosive bombs, no terrorist will ever again be able to take control of an airplane once it is in flight.

Osama (or whoever) has to know this. It's why Al Qaeda hasn't tried the same tactic again. It's too bad that the TSA insists on always protecting us against YESTERDAY'S threat.

Yes, Al Qaeda has tried other things, such as the stupid Richard Reid shoe bomb plot attempt which utterly failed... and yet accomplished Al Qaeda's primary goal of spreading fear and panic... because now the TSA (reacting to yesterday's threat) makes us take off our shoes at the security booth and stand around waiting for our shoes to come out of the x-ray machine. Reid's lame shoebomb attempt was foiled not by an x-ray machine, but by a flight attendant and some passengers who punched his lights out (thus proving my above theory).

Yet again, though, we see the average passenger being punished for the actions of one lone nutcase who was easily stopped. Enough with the x-raying of shoes... it's inconvenient for passengers, the Department of Homeland Security said that x-raying shoes doesn't detect bombs,and even if some idiot winds up on the plane with a shoe-bomb, he's going to get kicked and stomped to death. Give us some credit for a sense of self-preservation, would ya?

Incidentally, all airport security is rendered moot by the simple fact that for $50, any Al Qaeda Terrorist can put a package onto any airliner he wants simply by sending it "air freight." To this day, a full five fucking years after 9/11/2001, Air Freight packages are NOT x-rayed, nor does the Al Qaeda shippen even have to get on board with his bomb!

Only a moron would allow potentially bomb-filled packages to be shipped on civilian airliners while simultaneously making fliers take off their shoes, not carry liquids, or like in Britain, check their laptops and ipods. The simple fact that air freight isn't x-rayed means that ALL airport security is merely a Kabuki Dance designed to make the sheep feel safe-ish, all while reinforcing the need for an all-powerful police state.

See ya in Gitmo, kids!