Oleg Volk ([info]olegvolk) wrote,
2008-06-08 22:42:00
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Technology leaves civil liberties behind?

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080606/a_bodyscan06.art.htm
Privacy in the age of multi-wavelength scanning -- can it survive?

Another question: how would civilians be able to get portable lasers when those become practical?  Are we necessarily doomed to fall even further behind government enforcers?

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  • 29 comments

[info]chuckles48

June 9 2008, 04:03:42 UTC 3 years ago

What, you thought you had privacy? No, give up on that illusion. Just... give up.

[info]wolfrick

June 9 2008, 04:14:49 UTC 3 years ago

Another question: how would civilians be able to get portable lasers when those become practical? Are we necessarily doomed to fall even further behind government enforcers?

Build them. Physics doesn't belong to anyone; there's no monopoly.

[info]olegvolk

June 9 2008, 04:20:13 UTC 3 years ago

In theory, you can build your own Stens, too. Few have the know-how. Fewer yet would be willing to break the law prohibiting making of such. And acquisition of components would be a problem.

[info]wolfrick

June 9 2008, 04:31:07 UTC 3 years ago

True, and valid points all.
But a STEN can be built with equipment and parts on-hand at almost any muffler shop in America.
I am actually considering document the process of building a functioning, durable firearm built ONLY from parts and items available at a typical HomeDepot or Lowes home store. The knowledge is the only thing standing between people and the means of effective self defense.
No weapon ban anywhere can ever stop some from being armed. The good people have a duty to be armed to deter the bad people from misbehaving, even if becoming armed is inconvenient, difficult, dangerous or expensive.
When I contemplate this project, I think of the Polish Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, and I think we owe it to their indomitable spirit to make information about building weapons free and available.
Yes, even knowing that some bad people or children or insane people might use the knowledge to do harm.
I think the benefit outweighs the risk.
~Rick

[info]tomcatshanger

June 9 2008, 05:25:05 UTC 3 years ago

Seeing as our wondrous government has banned non-existent, totally imaginary "plastic guns" since 1988, and has reauthorized the ban twice now, I have little to no hope of them not banning any man portable weapon in the near future.

Hell, some states already ban tasers, stun guns and pepper spray for gods sake.

The chances of them allowing us mere private citizens to possess newly developed effective weapons is slim to none in my opinion.

[info]sethb

June 9 2008, 16:29:09 UTC 3 years ago

The chances of them allowing us mere private citizens to possess newly developed effective weapons is slim to none in my opinion.

They can't ban them until after they learn about them, and can manage to write a law describing them. So there's almost always a couple of years margin.

[info]tomcatshanger

June 9 2008, 23:40:58 UTC 3 years ago

Why not? Plastic gun's don't even exist, and I'm sure more then one "Liberal" has watched Star Wars. They just have to ban "energy" weapons.

[info]sethb

June 10 2008, 00:16:23 UTC 3 years ago

Like flashlights and laser pointers?

[info]tomcatshanger

June 10 2008, 01:50:04 UTC 3 years ago

Are you silly enough to believe the plastic gun ban outlawed water pistols, or are you being obtuse on purpose?

If you're only argument against the possible ban on laser guns is because you lack the imagination to describe them, congress also invented "assault weapons" in 1994.

[info]sethb

June 10 2008, 02:10:25 UTC 3 years ago

Water pistols are outlawed in some cities.

The government knows how to define "firearm" and can ban those made of plastic.

The government does not know how to define "energy weapon". Care to give it a try?

[info]tomcatshanger

June 10 2008, 04:49:21 UTC 3 years ago

So the "The Terrorist Firearms Detection Act" didn't ban water pistols? Then a ban on "energy weapons" wouldn't ban flashlights and laser pointers.

It would most likely include power rating (scaled like they already do for lasers) caps. It's not rocket surgery.

If you could be bothered to tell me when the US government has ever cared about unintended consequences of it's laws, I'm all ears.

Anonymous

3 years ago

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[info]sethb

3 years ago

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[info]sethb

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[info]squidb0i

June 9 2008, 09:15:57 UTC 3 years ago

Definitely ping me when that goes on line.
Will spread it around.

[info]madscience

June 9 2008, 04:17:04 UTC 3 years ago

I don't see what the big deal is. You shouldn't expect to have any privacy in your possessions at an airport. As for the privacy of your own body, the person operating the machine can't identify you or see what you look like in optical wavelengths, so there's no reason to be embarrassed about it. (And for that matter, the sooner our society gets over this stupid body modesty thing, the better. We should all be able to walk around naked anywhere we want, and the heck with anyone who has a problem with it.)

What kind of portable lasers are you talking about? The scanner isn't a laser, it's more like radar. Anyway, you can already walk around looking through people's clothing with a video camera – either certain models that were manufactured before they found out about the phenomenon, or any model with a few simple modifications.

[info]olegvolk

June 9 2008, 04:22:44 UTC 3 years ago

Further developments of http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/14/pictures-of-boeings-humvee-mounted-laser-avenger/

[info]madscience

June 9 2008, 04:36:44 UTC 3 years ago

That thing looks like it wants to roll over when it's not even moving. Seems like it might be a practical replacement for the Navy's CIWS, but I can't imagine it being very effective against IEDs.

[info]wolfrick

June 9 2008, 04:46:46 UTC 3 years ago

The point is to shoot suspicious items from safety. The laser can ignite the explosive material, safely detonating or burning the IED's charge before actual people have to get within its effective range.
The only IEDs I can see it not being terribly effective against are the ones cast into curbstones or buried under the pavement or in culverts. But that's mainly a problem of detection, rather than the laser's effectiveness.

[info]madscience

June 9 2008, 08:00:05 UTC 3 years ago

The only IEDs I can see it not being terribly effective against are the ones cast into curbstones or buried under the pavement or in culverts.

Exactly. Insurgents aren't dumb – they hide the damn things.

[info]tomcatshanger

June 9 2008, 04:54:30 UTC 3 years ago

All current lasers require continuous painting of the target in order to transfer enough energy to do damage, and that's against flimsy airframes. We can also cook off high explosive warheads.

We could definitely flash blind people with a hand held laser, we can more or less do that today. But cooking through body armor, yet alone hard armor of any sort, is an entirely different problem.

Thermal blooming is the problem. Of coarse, they are hard at working looking at the problem, the solution might be right around the corner.

But I'd still bet on kinetic kill weapons for the foreseeable future. If we have the man portable energy to cook something with a laser, we have the energy to launch itty bitty projectiles at insane velocities.

[info]cramer

June 9 2008, 07:50:18 UTC 3 years ago

we have the energy to launch itty bitty projectiles at insane velocities
Check; we're already doing that. The US Military (contractors) have built rail gun systems that can fire 1 million rounds in 1 second. (it is, of course, then empty.) I've seen video of that class of weapon, and it's very impressive. It makes my high-school-science-fair "nail gun"[1] look like a box of tinker toys.

[1] It could fire a 10p finish nail through a 2x4. Until it caught fire :-) It was a common end to most of my projects.

[info]squidb0i

June 9 2008, 09:17:30 UTC 3 years ago

lol.. awesome story

WHAM *floof* 'Ooops'

[info]microbalrog

June 9 2008, 09:12:49 UTC 3 years ago

Questions:

1.Is there a particular reason a laser would be specifically superior to a kinetic-kill weapon built on the same technology level? While I can see that they would have some advantages (specifically, better accuracy), I don't know if they'd be decisive.

A laser has near-perfect accuracy - you poke the gun at something, you hit it.

But that does not matter, because any modern firearm, use within the range it is intended to be used in, will hit the target it is aimed at, provided it is aimed properly. It may be off by a few centimeters - hitting your eyebrow rather than the eye - but that does not matter, does it?

2. As for privacy: As long as there is no popular RESPECT for privacy, it cannot really survive. Once we agreed to being body-searched at every turn, there's no reason to think they wouldn't make the searches more and more invasive.

The question is:
How do we restore a rights-respecting society?

[info]neutrino_cannon

June 9 2008, 11:17:22 UTC 3 years ago

This is the technology that uses terahertz-frequency radio waves no?

If we know the frequency we can jam the sons of bitches. If there's a will, this doesn't need to be a one-sided arms race, and given the existence of cell phone jammers, radar gun jammers, and that article I read about digital camera jammers, I suspect that at least a few engineers have been thinking along similar lines.

[info]seadevil001

June 9 2008, 15:39:01 UTC 3 years ago

Hmm...

The scanners bounce harmless "millimeter waves" off passengers who are selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal detector.

Point about millimeter waves being "harmless" sounds fishy to me. I spent about a year at Temple University (Philadelphia, PA) doing studies of millimeter waves effects on immune system. Well, we did not found any bad effects. From the other hand - we looked for benign effects and there are certainly a few of them. And there are a big difference in methodology if you looking for good or bad effects.
One thing certain - millimeter waves of certain intensity and frequency can modulate one immune system and pain perception. This is well known phenomena in post USSR countries widely used for therapeutic purposes. But I bet nobody at TSA commissioned a study for side effects of those scanners. I think, for passengers they must be almost certainly harmless, but screeners who get exposed for 8 hour/day - I do not know...

[info]house_pundit

June 9 2008, 17:16:52 UTC 3 years ago

Did you not see the solution in the article? Rubber or plastic skivvies. Uncomfortable, sure. Not something you'd want to wear every day, sure. But if you object, it's easy enough not to fly non-charter most of the time, and the only real "need" to wear same would be if you had to go to a courthouse.

If you had tight briefs on for the scanners, and tit stick-ons--generally need no adhesive--then if they tried to stop you from using those, or used them as an excuse to search you more intrusively, a lawsuit would sure as hell stop them from doing so. Even the courts have limits.

And, of course, you simply carry another pair of drawers in your pack to change to after navigating security. Or go commando.

But yeah, the erosion of the illusion of privacy sucks.

[info]neutrino_cannon

June 9 2008, 23:00:01 UTC 3 years ago

I was thinking weave a bit of mylar into the clothes myself.

Alternatively, something that absorbs it with a high degree of efficiency ought to confuse the machines as well. I can see it now; STEALTH BRITCHES!
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