Airport screeners may get X-ray vision "Susan Hallowell, the director of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's security laboratory, allows her body to be X-rayed by the 'backscatter' machine that bounces X-rays off the skin, producing a black-and-white image. To the eye, she is dressed in a skirt and blazer in dark, businesslike colors. On the monitor she is a NAKED, BRAIN-EATING ZOMBIE, except for a gun and a bomb that she hid under her outfit. (AP Photo/Brian Branch-Price)""It does basically make you look fat and naked, but you see all this stuff," Ms. Hallowell said.
The agency hopes to modify the machines with an electronic fig leaf - programming that fuzzes out sensitive body parts or distorts the body so it does not appear so, well, graphic.
Some were uncomfortable with the technology - called "backscatter" because it scatters X-rays - while others proclaimed it "a whole lot nicer than having someone pat me down," he said. [...] With backscatter technology, rays deflected off dense materials such as metal or plastic produce a darker image than those deflected off skin. The radiation dosage is about the same as sunshine, Ms. Hallowell said.
There was a thread on Fark about this earlier today. I do kindof wonder if any "fuzzing" they add could be exploited to conceal items that would be picked up otherwise.
that was my first thought... hide the gun behind the fig leaf...
Some sort of biblical proportion about that...
I don't think it'd be thar hard to make an image processing algorithm that auto-detected dark areas and only showed those to the screener. I think people would be a lot more accepting of this if no one would actually see the image.
couldn't you just stick the gun up your cooter or ass?
Or both for that matter, so one could go John Woo style.
Maybe this is what that gair detector is for. "CAUTION! SUBJECT IS WALKING FUNNY---PROBABLY HAS A GUN UP HER COOTER."
Seriously, though, you try and walk around with one of those thing in you and act casual.
how often do you practice?
Holy grayfuck, my misspellings are preserved for all eternity, or at least two years. I'm still trying to figure out what the fuck I meant by "gair".
Judging by context and presumed keyboard layout, I'm guessing "gait".
But I vastly prefer "gair".
Hell yeah. Then I could wear a shirt underneath with metallic letter decals spelling out witty messages like, "What the hell are you looking at?".
or even just plastic bits perhaps
Now THAT'S humor!
Or perhaps a new carry-on - imprinted with metallic ink on the t-shirt. Mmmmmm
I don't want my goodies x-rayed; i wanna have kids some day. there's a reason why they make you wear a vest at the dentist.
and what about all the people who fly often?
Now I am going to need foil underpants to go with my foil hat.
You just want them to have to strip-search and grope you.
Now, they do say it's the same level of radiation you get from sunshine.
Of course, they didn't mention that they were talking about the radiation you get from sunshine while floating unprotected at L5.
go go gadget human civilization sterilizer!
damn, this is just spooky bad. I don't want to go to america again.
I think she's sexay.
Don't you disembodied floating brains think of anything else but sexsexsexsexsex? Yer all the same! *sob*
So. Explain to me how this would catch the shoe bomber, again?
i'm strapping the bombs i bring onto planes to my lower legs...
At least there's something to be said for her letting herself be scanned by this thing. Now, if we could get a group picture of the President and the entire Cabinet endorsing this thing, I'd have no problem with it, though I might paste pictures of Ashcroft's chunky belly all over my town. Spying weasel.