The NYPD's X-Ray Vans (theatlantic.com) 190
An anonymous reader writes: A few years ago, we heard tales of vans outfitted by the U.S. government to hold giant X-ray scanners, which they'd use to drive around and inspect vehicles. Now, it turns out similar vans have made their way to police departments, including the NYPD. The police are unwilling to explain (PDF) how they're used, or how often. "A state court has already ruled that the NYPD has to turn over policies, procedures, and training manuals that shape uses of X-rays; reports on past deployments; information on the costs of the X-ray devices and the number of vans purchased; and information on the health and safety effects of the technology. But New York City is fighting on appeal to suppress that information and more, as if it is some kind of spy agency rather than a municipal police department operating on domestic soil, ostensibly at the pleasure of city residents."
Liberal NYC spying on it's citizens! (Score:1, Informative)
Ah yes, the lovely liberal capital of the US east coast, Deblasio and Schumer heaven, spying on their liberal base! WOW, color me SHOCKED!
Cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cancer (Score:5, Informative)
Adding to this, if their platforms are covert vans, that implies the imaging systems are backscatter devices, meaning they are detecting a reflected signal and not a transmitted one. To the parent, x-rays won't penetrate metal, but reflect. However if they are imaging things like people, and since x-rays aren't deflected well by us (except for our bones), then they are having to pump more radiation out of their aperture to collect enough reflected signal for an image than they would if they (like medical x-rays) were making a transmission measurement.
Of course if word got out that they were cooking people with ionizing radiation in the name of national security, the terrorists will have won.
Re:Cancer (Score:5, Informative)
They are, indeed, backscatter devices. See source here [yahoo.com].
The summary is actually wrong in claiming that these vans are just now making their way to police departments. According to this link [foxnews.com], the NYPD acknowledged using these vans at least as early as 2010. I'd really like to know how they've been used over the last five years or if there's any evidence of any additional security being provided from this surveillance.
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The police feel much more secure. Does that count?
Re: Cancer (Score:2)
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My mother was an X-Ray Tech growing up. On the day she started (back well before digital filmless x-rays) she was told "by choosing this profession, you are choosing to take 3 years off your life"
The key is the inverse square law. The exposure is inversely proportional to the square of the distance.
Mom occasionally still chuckles at people's reactions with portable units. She would roll one into the ER, set it up on a patient, and walk outside the little room with her remote button.... and people would clea
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If, as asserted, these are "backscatter machines" that "see through metal", then you can expect that there is considerably more radiation than your mother experienced. Of course, X-Rays are highly directional, so *PERHAPS* the exposure near the machine is less. That, however, is not the way I'd bet.
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True, though, to be honest, I care a lot less about the health concerns than the liberty ones. Id the operators get cancer.... its a life they chose and if they didn't choose it with knowledge, that is between them and their management; not my problem.
What is my problem is how this can be abused. Because any power in the hands of people gets abused, so creating these things and putting them on the streets guarantees abuse.
All I need to do is go back to my mothers own examples of when famous people came to t
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Actually the police that use these vans should be more worried since they are the ones being exposed to X-Rays more than the general public.
Same with the police using radar guns. Since they're relatively heavy and holding them up each time you want to tag a car rapidly gets painful, some cops will open the car door, rest the gun on their laps, and fire it from there. Eventual result: Fried eggs.
Re:Cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
New York City isn't a nation. The NYPD isn't a national security organization. They're a police department. They can't hide behind a national security justification for this.
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If technology like this us being used to detect terrorists, it should be under DHS control, to be deployed under logged circumstances when there is a security threat. Local police have no business using it.
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Nor should the police department be fighting this. Have they completely forgotten who they work for? It's not my money they're spending, but I'd be pretty pissed if they were and were then unwilling to tell me what they're doing with it. That's above and beyond the idea that they have some sort of right to keep information from the people who are paying their salary.
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Nor should the police department be fighting this. Have they completely forgotten who they work for?
It's the NYPD, so yes.
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Perhaps they are owned by the bomb squad and used to x-ray bombs to determine how to proceed? Until they get back to the FOIA request, none of us know.
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That would be justifiable, but barely fits with the publicly revealed information. (I.e., if it's just used by the bomb squad, someone is being intentionally misleading.)
I would still expect it to be dangerous to the people around it in operation, but probably less so that trying to defuse an unexamined bomb.
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Yes, they need a beam strong enough to penetrate the vehicle and still be strong enough that the x-rays that reflect from things inside can again penetrate the vehicle and register on the detector.
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To the parent, x-rays won't penetrate metal, but reflect.
Oh believe me they'll penetrate metal quite easily if they have enough energy - we have a calorimeter to measure photon energies in ATLAS which consists of lead and stainless steel plates. That's at an extreme energy but it's no problem to generate X-rays that will penetrate the thin sheet metal in a car if you wanted to hence the concern. You could certainly imagine building a back scatter device using higher energy photons which could penetrate the sheet metal of a van although I've no idea whether these
Re:Cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure if you pointed a large x-ray scanner at an NYPD building you'd be arrested for grievous assault on a police officer...that's assuming you're not shot on sight. Soon we'll all have to start carrying Geiger counters to protect ourselves from the police. Not that it'd help you though - even if you could prove exposure it'd be hard to prove where the source was if it's buried inside a van. Sure, you can approach the van but chances are some other random cop will show up and demand to know what you're doing checking out vans and arrest you on suspicion of "illegal van checking-out behavior". Can't win this one.
The RHB seems to control a lot of the license requirements here (https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/Pages/RadiologicHealthBranch.aspx)
X-Ray machines are mostly medical grade devices - The devices have to be registered.
Construction site radiation sources are presumably more strict.
Anyone operating these machines must also be licensed.
I'd assume the police have the requisite licenses as it's extremely unlikely there's any police exemption for this sort of tech. On the other hand we have Stingrays which probably violate all kinds of FCC emissions regulations and warrantless wiretap laws. They mostly seem to be getting away with that on the grounds of national security though and they could pull the same stunt here.
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So . . . I now need to upgrade my tinfoil hat to a lead hat?
I'd like to have a little pocket X-Ray detector to keep with me when I am wandering around public places. The results might be frightening . . .
Re:Cancer (Score:5, Informative)
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Probably due to police radiation vans driving down your block.
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Karma Rays (Score:3)
In about 5 years, the very operators of this illegal equipment will start coming down with cancer. Odds are, their employers will deny them benefits and suppress any legal redress they attempt.
In the long run, it's a dumb choice to become a Storm Trooper for an evil empire. Being a 'badass' with a badge comes with a price tag (this time
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Except it's not just the operators. If they're pumping radiation into my house to measure how much is reflected, they are increasing my daily radiation dosage. The TSA's argument that I need to increase my radiation dosage before getting on a plane is a flimsy one, but still rock solid compared to the NYPD's "we need to drive around increasing random people's chances to develop cancer because Terrorism!" Doubly so when they tack on "and we can't be compelled to discuss anything about this program due to
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If they really do irradiate random people, then it's unlikely that any single person will be irradiated several times. The operator is going to be present for all the radiation, and I'd bet the protective measures are inadequate.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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To the people engaging in this spying and other things, they are trying to protect their society from an invader that has learned to hide among the general populous. They feel they are protecting the very thing that you feel they are destroying. The question is, which is more tolerable to most people, and it sounds like most people don't give a damn about the spying, but don't want small incidents like 9-11 to happen every 100 years.
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Or at least that's what the public officials tell us. I haven't heard very many people supporting that "most people want" from either the left OR the right. (Of course I don't listen much to the right, so I could have missed it, but it's certainly not the libertarian wing. And tech discussion groups don't exactly exclude right wingers...certainly not the free marketeers.)
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Actually I'd be less worried about the spying and more worried about the radiation dosage. X-Rays are ionizing radiation and exposure to them increases the risk of cancer. I don't know what the dosage you would get from one of these things is but if it can penetrate the metal bodywork of a car to look inside it will probably be a lot more than a typical medical X-ray.
Maybe it's time to wear radiation detectors when you go outside?
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Actually I'd be less worried about the spying and more worried about the radiation dosage. X-Rays are ionizing radiation and exposure to them increases the risk of cancer. I don't know what the dosage you would get from one of these things is but if it can penetrate the metal bodywork of a car to look inside it will probably be a lot more than a typical medical X-ray.
There seems to be at least three issues here and little data to sort them out with.
One data point is $$:
"The technology was used in Afghanistan before being loosed on U.S. streets. Each X-ray van costs an estimated $729,000 to $825,000."
This price point is high enough that a manager is needed. Sort of like the officers that drove automobiles in the early days when the
military thought autos special.
X-ray imaging techniques based on Compton backscatter is likely the one involved here.
Backscatter is not asto
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It's called backscatter. They're detecting the reflected x-rays, not the ones that make it through. Which of course means the dosage has to be much higher if the want to detect people, since we don't reflect x-rays very well.
One of those lovely little technologies to come out of the anti-terrorism theater.
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It's worse than that, not only do we not reflect radiation very well, but they're trying to detect radiation reflected from within a metallic enclosure. So they need to be LOTS more powerful.
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But putting x-ray tech in the hands of police means that you people can use it too. You know, to detect hidden caches of bagels or Hollywood screenplays.
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Maybe they are searching for Jimmy Hoffa's body?
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Forced? Let me guess, you don't have kids. My sons born in 2000 and 2002 did not get circumcised. The doctors offered the option, and explained the dangers and benefits of the procedures with the latest medical studies available on the subject.
Perhaps you should get out of mom's basement and try making a kid before spouting off on what is forced on people.
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Your knee-jerk need to insult people is mildly interesting, but nothing Roger said in the post you replied to and quoted is incorrect.
Facts (Score:2)
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America the Police State (Score:5, Insightful)
These vans are just the latest in a long line of law enforcement abuse and complete disregard for the Constitution. The government classifies volumes of information to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing. They're "fighting on appeal to suppress information" in this case regarding potential serious public health hazards posed by their tactics. They use secret tools like stingrays to gather secret evidence which they attempt to present in secret, sealed and off the record. And in the event that an "activist judge" calls them on it, they withdraw the evidence so as not to have it revealed. They lock people up in secret detention facilities in Chicago, in America, without booking them, no Miranda rights, no access to a lawyer, such that no one but the police even knows where these people disappear to for days or weeks on end. Police are shooting and killing people weekly if not daily, acting as judge jury and executioner, and they face zero consequences.
The police state isn't coming, the police state is here. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
Re:America the Police State (Score:5, Funny)
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Pick up that can!
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Most of us don't feel the need to cheat that early on in a video game. It takes a special kind of person to cheat that soon.
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The United States: it's safer here.
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"We've always been at war with East Asia." (Or was that one word? It's been a while.)
They hate us for our freedom. Problem solved! (Score:5, Funny)
We should be completely safe now that we got rid of freedom.
Re:They hate us for our freedom. Problem solved! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I get the feeling that some people think of freedom the way that collectors think of toys: They should be locked away in a case, behind a security system, in a darkened room where nobody can ever touch them. Only by locking them away can our freedoms be preserved in mint condition. What? You want to USE your freedoms? That's madness!!!
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The police state isn't coming, the police state is here. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
And yet we need to ban guns and confiscate all guns in private hands, or so the Liberals who run New York would have you believe. I submit that this is precisely why private gun ownership is needed. These people need to be afraid of us, not the other way around.
Re:America the Police State (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that is something I would think we can all appreciate.
That on-duty police offices are murdering people at a lower rate than the general population.
It's all good then.
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Obviously justified cases? How would we ever really know?
In some jurisdictions there is a reasonably sane process led by reasonably honest people to investigate police killings, but in all jurisdictions we basically rely on the police investigating the police. That's a setup for confirmation bias at a minimum and a huge loophole for all manner over cover ups and dissembling to create justification.
Further, the prosecution of police is controlled by the same prosecutors who work hand in hand with the polic
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Europe is a continent and includes countries with varying attitudes from Sweden to Russia. Which, as it happens, incarcerates a lesser (450 vs. 698 per 100,000) fraction of its citizens than US does. In fact, in this race the US is second only to Seychelles [wikipedia.org].
I dunno if you're a police state, but you sure as hell are a jail state.
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The US is a collection of independent states that vary widely in attitude and environment, from the fly over states with their minuscule populations to the East and West coasts with large population densities and many different people put together.
Don't act like Europe is really any different than the US, they are roughly equivalent. The EU is more akin to the US than the US to any single country in the EU.
You need to work on your insults (Score:3)
The term "hillbilly" is a derogatory name that refers to poor white people with no education, no money and a tendency to possess guns, moonshine and other illicit substances. They would be the last people who would defend the police as they're usually too busy running from them and/or shooting back.
Re: America the Police State (Score:2, Funny)
You are either one of the best trolls I have seen in a while (bravo), or you are in need of physical and chemical restraints. I mean, how much freon do you have to huff to get that worldview?
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reread the 4th
Re:America the Police State (Score:5, Insightful)
4th Amendment about "Unreasonable search and seizure." I don't know about you, but I think irradiating the general populace in the course of executing a search without a warrant from behind the veil of an unmarked van is unreasonable on multiple levels.
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So you believe this is unreasonable search. The 4th Amendment and the Constitution: when the key, overriding piece of the legal code is written in such vague language, it doesn't matter what you or I think it means in detail. It matters only what judicial process decides to think it means in detail.
The Constitution is purposely vague because it is not supposed to hamstring the process; it is supposed to be used as a guide by intelligent, well-meaning people to point the way in governing. It presupposes that
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In the words of Adam savage
Well there's your problem. There is no such thing as well meaning intelligent people. If there is a legend it will be abused and worked around no matter it's intent. Remember people we have a law making it illegal to murder someone and another law making it illegal to hire a third party to murder someone for you. Because that was a loophole that needed to be closed.
Doesn't matter if it is tax law to murder charges someone will find a loophole.
For the programmers think of law as
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Considering that IR scanners were ruled to be a search and seizure, why would you think that x-ray scanners used in the same way would be allowed?
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The Supreme Court ruled the government could not use nascent IR scanners to "see" through house walls without a warrant, and that's a freaking passive scanner.
An active one like X-ray is a clear and blatant violation. This one is not even close. These people should literally be sent to jail.
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It is not a violation if they use parallel construction to prevent standing to challenge it in court.
Setup the van to surreptitiously irradiate and inspect people as they pass by. When they stop and search someone based on what they saw, make up some other reason.
the NYPD is a criminal organization (Score:2)
everyone involved in stop and frisk should be in prison, or just executed for treason.
Re: the NYPD is a criminal organization (Score:2)
should be in prison
But NYC *is* the prison. [youtu.be] The mistake would be assuming that most residents aren't happy about being frisked and irradiated.
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Unfortunately you've got a problem in the Constitution. It defines treason very narrowly. "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
The problem is that the Constitution does not define an offense for those sworn to uphold it who in actuality flout it. Nor a process for dealing effectively with these evil, lawless bastard
x-ray van.. (Score:3)
I can see... (Score:5, Funny)
No worries here citizens (Score:4, Funny)
No worries here citizens, we're just going to let untrained people wander around shooting a giant x-ray machine at whatever they want. This is nothing to be alarmed about, please go about your daily routine as if nothing is happening. Thank you for your time.
New toys and such (Score:1)
If I go to NYC, I'm finally going to have an excuse to buy one of these: http://www.berkeleynucleonics.com/products/model-1621M.html
Slashdot moderators owned by NYPD (Score:5, Interesting)
Every story is modded down.
- NYPD violates constitutional tenets (0)
- NYPD violates FOIA rules (0)
- NYPD thinks they are a terrorist fighting organization (0)
Dear /. editors: whomever moderated this thread shouldn't get mod points for another 30 years. I know you think you have checks and balances. So does the NYPD.
E
When you let LEO play "Counterterrorist" Org. (Score:3)
Don't be surprised when they get an exaggerated sense of self-importance and begin to think they're above the 4th amendment.
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The NYPD, tasked with protecting the citizens of NYC from a repeat of one of the largest terrorist attacks on US soil (and by all reports the city is still high on the list of targets), has been willing to push the envelope as far as they can. It is a typical response to the mindset that has, at its core, the phrase "never again". And you will find quite a few people who are more than willing to give up liberty to achieve safety (or at least the assurance of safety from their public officials).
Now, to be
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The NYPD, tasked with protecting the citizens of NYC from a repeat of one of the largest terrorist attacks on US soil .
Well until the NYPD get's it's own air force, I am not sure how they expect to deal with planes flying into buildings. Somehow I don't think X-Ray vans are going to be much help.
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They could just go out and buy some AA turrets, it would be far cheaper.
X-Rays (Score:5, Funny)
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Or F-Rays for short.
*Officer fires an F-Ray at a pedestrian*
Pedestrian: Ow! My sperm!
*Officer fires the F-Ray again*
Pedestrian: Hmmm... It didn't hurt that time.
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Cancer would be renamed Freedom Ray Fry.
A few important questions... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) If something is in plain view, it can be evidence used to justify a search. I suppose it's a plausible interpretation that the heat something gives off could be considered in plain view when looking through an infrared camera. However, an x-ray scan is hardly plain view because it's an active scan, relying on backscatter in the case of these vans. Can any evidence collected from these vans, or evidence collected on the basis thereof, be admissible in court?
2) Is this safe? X-rays pose a health danger, which is why precautions are taken when medical and dental x-rays are taken. What will be done to ensure that people aren't exposed to harmful radiation, especially without notice or consent?
3) The NYPD is refusing to say what these vans are used for. If the NYPD won't say how they're being used, how do people know their privacy isn't being invaded and they're not being exposed to harmful radiation?
4) Because these vans are being paid for with tax dollars, don't people have a right to know how they're being used? How do the people know this is a necessary expense and the taxpayers aren't being ripped off?
5) At what point is it no longer acceptable to justify any and every form of surveillance under the excuse of terrorism? This is a tired refrain that has already been used to justify far too many abuses. Terrorism is the new communism, and I hope one day we'll be able to ridicule many of the things we've done just as we find McCarthyism and the red scare laughably absurd.
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Drive around and the screen shows something 'different' for a substance/material on an existing detection database.
The legal question is the long term risk of "the computer did an aggressive alert" as the only evidence could been questioned in open court. That could make defence lawyers very interested in every aspect of the methods used in open court. Computer source code requests, amount
Re:A few important questions... (Score:4, Informative)
> I suppose it's a plausible interpretation that the heat something gives off could be considered in plain view when looking through an infrared camera.
It's not. This has already been decided by the courts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States
> Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), held that the use of a thermal imaging, or FLIR, device from a public vantage point to monitor the radiation of heat from a person's home was a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and thus required a warrant.
Playing devil's advocate: (Score:2)
Physically, it's not more active than using a flashlight to illuminate a dark area. If the cops use a flashlight to find evidence, should that automatically preclude the evidence from being in plain view? A flashlight is just a source of photons, just like an x-ray source.
Is this safe?
"Ha ha. Prove that you got your nasty cancer from our vans, and not from radon, nuclear tests,
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4. People have a right to know what their government authorities are doing regardless of whether something is paid for with tax dollars. It's not a funding question. Government in a free country exists to serve the public. They can't be allowed to hide what they're doing. The police department isn't the CIA. Secrecy is unjustifiable.
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1) If something is in plain view, it can be evidence used to justify a search. I suppose it's a plausible interpretation that the heat something gives off could be considered in plain view when looking through an infrared camera. However, an x-ray scan is hardly plain view because it's an active scan, relying on backscatter in the case of these vans. Can any evidence collected from these vans, or evidence collected on the basis thereof, be admissible in court?
This is why they don't want to give any records of how and when these are used (and I'll bet you they'll fight the release of anything resembling *details* even harder). Right now, they can zap you with the machine, and then have an officer (possibly even an officer who isn't in on the trick) investigate you for "suspicious activity". When they detain, search, and find whatever the X-ray saw, it'll be recorded as based on the officer's judgement. The X-ray won't be mentioned, meaning the issue will never co
This is also a social justice issue (Score:2, Interesting)
There are ppl. with previous occupational exposures to what is considered to be high-level exposures of radiation today, that have to carefully monitor and restrict such things as dental or medial X-rays (ie. exposure to 60Co due to working around a leaking medical source).
What provisions exist to alert the "police" to these people, and what steps do they take to mitigate aiming their X-ray at these persons?
I would suspect none, so the ethics of this "operation" need to be called into serious question.
Illegal at French Border (Score:1)
The court ruled these scanners illegal in France, where they were being used to scan vehicles for people. You can't Xray people without their permission, and the makers claims of typical 'low' doses equivalent to an arm x-ray was what an illegal immigrant would get if inside a metal tank inside a metal truck. Without all that metal it was a lot higher.
http://news2.onlinenigeria.com/world/21244-french-ban-x-ray-scans-for-illegal-immigrants-as-radiation-makes-them-too-dangerous.html
Just wait for the health-related lawsuits ... (Score:2)
X-rays are ionizing radiation, after all.
And how strong do they need to be to penetrate the metal body of a car?
Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to care about what was happening in US, As sadly it affects the rest of the world quite severely, luckily not as much anymore (with the rise of other nations) but week after week we read stories about the Govt or agencies stepping over the democracy line.
The common response is well when it goes too far we will stand up as put an end to it.
When?.. the answer is never, freedom is not something you even recognize now and wouldn't know what do with it if you had it, even a recent headline about the Drone programme targets being 90% civilian (which is a war crime) apparently is has been clarified that all military aged males in a combat zone are considered combatants even if they have no connections or armaments so just being alive makes you a target. wasn't enough for any action to be taken let alone DC cops driving around in vans X Raying whatever they feel like or the weird idea that americans have the right to do whatever they like. (manifest destiny)
For gods sake, stand up and put an end to this ridiculous farce and become people again before it's too late.
Point of order (Score:2)
It's not "the democracy line." It's "the constitutional republic line."
plot to kill Muslims with X-ray device (Score:3)
CBS news article [cbsnews.com] describes how an upstate New York man was convicted Friday of plotting to kill Muslims with a mobile X-ray device by a jury that rejected his lawyer's argument that he was entrapped by the FBI.
SO - if YOU do it, you go to jail, if the COPS do it, it's crime fighting. Hmmmm.....yeah....
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To be fair, the police DO get extra privileges and powers over ordinary citizens. If you see someone speeding on a highway, you can't just order them to pull over. If you see someone steal something extremely valuable, you can't lock him up in your basement for the night. If you have good reason to suspect your neighbor is up to no good, no judge will let you bang down his door and search his house for wrongdoings.
That being said, cases like this X-Ray van are where the police take their extra power and
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To be fair, the police DO get extra privileges and powers over ordinary citizens. If you see someone speeding on a highway, you can't just order them to pull over. If you see someone steal something extremely valuable, you can't lock him up in your basement for the night. If you have good reason to suspect your neighbor is up to no good, no judge will let you bang down his door and search his house for wrongdoings.
The traffic rules are a consequence of treating the roads as the government's private property—if you don't follow their rules, they can order you off their roads, and if you don't comply then you're trespassing. A private citizen could do the same with their own privately-owned roads.
Apart from that, use of special police powers requires (or at least, should require) a warrant—as in a document stating why this infringement of a citizen's rights was warranted. In the absence of a warrant, a law
NYPD in tough position; UN, national events, etc. (Score:2)
Taking a Dose for the Drug War (Score:2)
There's a truck weigh station in Kentucky, on I-75, where truck drivers have to pass through what can only be an x-ray scanner. I wonder how much of a dose you get each time you pass through? I've also had my truck x-rayed at the border by the Americans, (it's always my home team, the Americans, giving the hassles at the border), but at least I was allowed to exit the truck. They did not find the six-pack of Canadian beer I was smuggling.
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Why would Holland take an american refugee like me?
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America = Nazi Germany now.