EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Surveillance City: New Body Scanners Head to NYC
New plans for monitoring people in New York City has civil liberties advocates up in arms.
The International Business Times reports:
In a speech to the New York City Police Foundation Tuesday morning, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced the NYPD was working with the Department of Defense to develop a scanner that is capable of detecting concealed firearms.
The device picks up on the heat energy produced by people or objects, measured in terahertz, to pinpoint objects that are blocking that view of energy, like a gun. "If something is obstructing the flow of that radiation, for example, a weapon, the device will highlight that object," Kelly explained. "This technology has shown a great deal of promise as a way of detecting weapons without a physical search."
Is this only about detecting guns? RT reports:
What it can also do, however, is allow the NYPD to conduct illegal searches by means of scanning anyone walking the streets of New York. Any object on your person could be privy to the eyes of the detector, and any suspicious screens can prompt police officers to search someone on suspicion of having a gun, or anything else under their clothes.
CBS reports that the civil liberties groups are already concerned:
"It's worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police Department when you're doing nothing wrong," the NYCLU's Donna Lieberman said.
RT further notes:
The scanners also raise the question of whether such searches would even be legal under the US Constitution. Under the Fourth Amendment, Americans are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. Does scoping out what’s on someone’s person fall under the same category as a hands-on frisk, though?
To the NYPD, it might not matter. In the first quarter of 2011, more than 161,000 innocent New Yorkers were stopped and interrogated on the streets of the city. Figures released by the NYPD in May of last year revealed that of the over 180,000 stop-and-frisk encounters reported by the police department, 88 percent of them ended in neither an arrest nor a summons, leading many to assume that New York cops are already going above and beyond the law by searching seemingly anyone they chose. Additionally, of those 161,000-plus victims, around 84 percent were either black or Latino. At the time, the ACLU’s Lieberman wrote, “The NYPD is turning black and brown neighborhoods across New York City into Constitution-free zones.”
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
49 Comments so far
Show AllWell, last summer we took a trip up to NJ. As we got close to D.C. we were really creeped out by all the cameras that there were. Cameras high on top of stop light poles, cameras at eye level on other street posts. It felt like we were under constant surveillance.
Then there was the trip to the big city of Charlotte before that. We were driving down the highway when we came around a corner to see somebody standing on the side of the road with something that looked like a very large video camera with various "things" hanging off of it. He was dressed in black, and standing next to a black unmarked SUV. He pointed his thing-a-ma-jiggy right at us. I have no idea who the hell he was, or what the hell he was doing, but it was very odd.
So for the time being I'll enjoy my quiet part of NC for as long as it lasts, but Im sure given enough time the police state will come to me like it has for so many of my fellow Americans.
Of course if your scan does test positive for stolen merchandise, drugs, or a gun, a simple pat down will clear you to continue on your way. That is of course as long as your fingerprints raise no suspicions, and as long as all your papers are in order, drivers license, birth certificate, passport, etc.
Remember there is a terrorist behind every corner. For proof of this just look at all the busts that the FBI makes. They are constantly giving fake bombs to disgruntled people and busting them before they cannot set the fake bombs off.
Oh and by the way, are you a disgruntled person? You know, pissed off over the bank bailouts, or the fact that you can't get a job, or that you got foreclosed on. If you are, then heck, maybe there is a fake FBI bomb in your future too...
We have no reasonable expectation of privacy is what I'm gathering. All people will be spied on and searched at all times - by the people we should be watching. Aren't all of these people incorporating this public servants - even the politicians?
I guess this is part of the price of fascism.
Is everybody willing to pay? And pay? And PAY?
'Yes, I was wondering about radiation too.'
From the article:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The device picks up on the heat energy produced by people or objects, measured in terahertz, to pinpoint objects that are blocking that view of energy, like a gun.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reference is to the blackbody radiation (non-ionizing) that all objects emit if the temperature is greater than absolute zero (-272.16 degrees celsius). At normal temperature (20 degrees F = 68 degrees C), a body (including a human body) emits radiation that peaks in the infra-red range. That's a wavelength of about 9.7 micrometers and a frequency of about 31 terahertz. So there doesn't seem to be any health hazard (aside from being beaten to death by a police officer).
John
Aside from the general creepiness factor of hi tech body scan surveillance, the real threat to civil liberties and personal privacy is the slippery slope potential.
When a scanner detects the possible presence of a vaguely "suspicious" object (maybe a gun), does the triggering of the device's bells and whistles create a sufficient justification for a stop and pat down search by the nearest constable? Herein is where major mischief lurks.
The nearest constable might be Barney Fife, inspector Closseau, or perhaps Bull Connor. It's the luck of the draw. Regardless of the level of authoritarian bluster or pleasantry of the individual officer, the citizen is being subjected to an intrusion upon their personal space initiated by an agent of governmental authority.
Does the citizen have a right to go on about their business and walk away? Could such a refusal of cooperation be considered interference with a police officer in the course of performance of his or her duties?
This slippery slope can cascade swiftly. Under the "plain feel" doctrine, the initial Terry pat down search can seemlessly move from the exterior of the pocket into exploring the inside of the pocket, in order to confirm or dispel suspicion. If a scanner senses there may be a handgun in a woman's purse, what do you suppose happens when the opening up of the purse exposes not a weapon, but a bag of weed or some other type of identifiable contraband?
Under the "plain view" doctrine, a (mistaken) good faith search for a gun which by sheer coincidence discovers cocaine instead is not considered a Fourth Amendment violation. People passing through airports or metal detectors at public building entrances have been known to get busted this way for the craziest array of things.
If the eyes of Big Brother are constantly watching, the long arm of the law is never far behind.
Bill from Saginaw
They'll just call in their markers, re-po the country, then set up some of those stadium sized manufactories here in the United State of China, where we can, from the age of twelve to senility, work ten to eighteen hour shifts for a few yuan and a bowl of rice or two, making Ipods, Iphones, Ipads and other cheap junk until we finally jump off the roof to end it all.
Oh, wait, they handled that problem in China. They put huge nets around the buildings at about the first floor to catch the jumpers.
Think of it though, "Made in America" once again!
With these infra-red scanners on every block, any attempt at a sneak flatulence will be graphically recorded and, as most of us on this board are considered 'dissidents' we may well find ourselves in court charged with 'Felony Flatulence' or sent summarily to the KBR re-education camps.
In my humble opinion, this is a self-destructive a laundry list of "reforms." The last thing in the world we want to have is a periodic popular referendum on whether to keep the Bill of Rights, and to let the wack jobs and corporate shills meet every 18 years to redraft the US Constitution wholesale into whatever the national Constitutional Convention delegates might dream up. Are you serious?
Bill from Saginaw
"The device picks up on the heat energy produced by people or objects, measured in terahertz, to pinpoint objects that are blocking that view of energy, like a gun. "If something is obstructing the flow of that radiation, for example, a weapon, the device will highlight that object," Kelly explained. "This technology has shown a great deal of promise as a way of detecting weapons without a physical search."
What could possibly go wrong with that? Watch now little old ladies being arrested for having their needlework in their pockets, old men hauled to jail for having their heart pill bottles in their pockets, little kids for having a toy and babies for carrying their binkeys...on the subway. In 2012, everybody is a "terrorist." Gotta wonder how much the demonic corporation behind those cancer-causing devices is sending Kelly and Bloomberg's way in order to implement this Draconian, money-making scam."Mahatma Gandhi Nonviolent Power In Action" describs in detail and with quotes that same idea. "Swaraj" is a personal acheivement first, then a political one in community. Independence being the result of personal charactor and undeniable truth. Fascinating read.
Here we have just the thing for you!
It's all in the name of both national security and domicile security. You can't be too careful you know! Page down to see the picture.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/practical-travel-safety-issues/1298927-se...