No…this isn’t about Japan. It’s about SeaTac and American travelers:
The Transportation Security Administration is re-analyzing the radiation levels of X-ray body scanners installed in airports nationwide, after testing produced dramatically higher-than-expected results.
The TSA, which has deployed at least 500 body scanners to at least 78 airports, said Tuesday the machines meet all safety standards and would remain in operation despite a “calculation error” in safety studies. The flawed results showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.
You know who is going to be gloating over this, don’t you?
I, for one, will refuse to allow my daughter through one of those scanners, and will refuse to walk through one myself. […] I mean, honestly… would you trust TSA to bombard you or a loved one with ionizing radiation?
You know who is laughing over this, don’t you?
The “terrorists”. You know…the ones who “hate our freedoms.”
“They” have scared the living shit out of politicians, driving them to a state of frenzied security overreaction. It isn’t just the trillion dollar wars, the costly military build-up, the absurdly bloated domestic security infrastructure…those things that have drained our coffers with little substantive return on investment. It isn’t just the disgrace of our government getting caught committing torture in our names and starting wars under false pretenses that have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
For our dignity, it’s also a “death” by 1,000 cuts. We’ve succumbed to ludicrous restrictions and procedures for air travel and we’ve accepted those increasingly invasive inspections.
We’ve taken it to the extreme of “mainstreaming” the use of full body scanning using ionizing radiation administered by non-radiologists on equipment that, it turns out, was being inspected erroneously.
Ultimately we, the American electorate, by putting up with this shit, are self-terrorists.
I always opt out…and go for the free TSA massage.
Update:
Commenter Oxbrain takes me to task for fear-mongering. I’ll respond here, because I believe it will add some clarity to a post that was minimally about radiation and more about overreaction to terrorism.
“Your title is “Radiation “emissions are 10 times higher”” Taking the quote out of context as it is, this is a blatantly false statement that is obviously intended to strike at a fear of radiation.”
The title is not a statement. But I understand the point. The title is alarmist…I mean, given the context of concerns over the situation in Japan. But the purpose of the over-the-top title was to draw eyeballs. Incendiary titles are a tradition in blogging. I just wish they could all be as good as “Asshole inflamed over anuses”.
“I can’t imagine the mental disconnect required to try using an irrational fear of radiation as an argument against our irrational fear of terrorism.”
I appreciate your point, I really do. But what is rational about fear of radiation is that mistakes can, and will, happen. (Yes…even by a government agency.) That the particular mistake (one of several) highlighted in the article was not a radiation health threat, as the article made explicit, isn’t much comfort. It was still a mistake. The tests yielded numbers 10 times too high.
Apparently, someone at the TSA charged with reviewing the test results from the contractor, wasn’t surprised, or even curious about readings that were, apparently, ten-times too high. That’s not good.
And that wasn’t the only mistake. The TSA report cited other problems with the inspections:
- Lack of notation for the latest calibration date for the machine being tested or the most recent calibration date noted had expired on survey meters
- Information missing regarding warning labels and required labels
- Calculation errors not impacting safety
- Missing survey point readings
- Inconsistent responses to survey questions
- No reading of background radiation noted
- Missing other non-measurement related information
(For context, I’ll just note that a missing placard on an aircraft renders it legally unairworthy.)
These errors add poignancy to Goldy’s question: do you trust the TSA to expose you to ionizing radiation?
So…yeah, I think it works using the irrational fear of radiation as an argument against the irrational fear of terrorism. Clearly people’s irrational fear of terrorism is so…well, irrational, that people succumb to it over their irrational fear of radiation and their rational fear that mistakes can happen.
What is ionizing radiation? How does it compare in terms of risk with an x-ray or CT scan?
Did you even read that? The tests that are giving the 10x higher result are the flawed ones.
“Rapiscan technicians in the field are required to test radiation levels 10 times in a row, and divide by 10 to produce an average radiation measurement. Often, the testers failed to divide results by 10, Horowitz said.”
The test data on those machines show 1.5-4urem per scan. Even if the 10x number were accurate, it’s still many hundreds of times less than you’re getting by flying. According to the EPA, a typical cross country flight gives 2-5mrem, or 2000-5000urem.
The TSA is stupid, but so is baseless fear mongering.
“Self-terrorizing” … an apt way of putting it. The terrs have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in making us spend trillions of dollars to counter the 20 bucks they spent on box cutters. When it takes a billion-dollar weapon to fight a one-dollar weapon you know who wins …
YellowPup,
Ionizing radiation.
x-rays, CT scans and backscatter machines all generate the same type of ionizing radiation.
oxbrain @ 2,
“Did you even read that?”
Did you even read my post? It wasn’t really about the levels of radiation. It was about overreaction.
Roger Rabbit,
“When it takes a billion-dollar weapon to fight a one-dollar weapon you know who wins …”
Nicely put!
@6
Your title is “Radiation “emissions are 10 times higher”” Taking the quote out of context as it is, this is a blatantly false statement that is obviously intended to strike at a fear of radiation. You continue by mentioning how goldy didn’t want his daughter scanned due to a fear of radiation, and conclude your post with a comment about how the equipment was being inspected erroneously.
I can’t imagine the mental disconnect required to try using an irrational fear of radiation as an argument against our irrational fear of terrorism.
Stick to facts. Invasion of privacy, cost, and the stupidly low success rates are enough to argue against the TSA.
““They” have scared the living shit out of politicians, driving them to a state of frenzied security overreaction.”
Our politicians didn’t have the living shit scared out of them by freedom-hating terrorists. Rather, “they” have provided our poiticians and corporatist masters the opportunity to use these very specific fears they would intill in us to further pursue their ceaseless quest for power, money and control. I’m sure you’ve noticed how it’s all been working out quite well for them.
Vigilance. That’s all we have that’s in any way effective.
There is NO defense against an attacker who is willing to die in the process.
Yep, Steve nailed it @9.
Steve @ 9,
But it comes back around. The Bush administration peddled fear for political power. But the American people bought it, and a state of overreaction has become the new normal. Politicians do it because they perceive people want it. Even after Democrats took control of the Executive branch, the House, and (to some degree) the Senate, we still have this overblown, costly, and intrusive war on terrorism.
oxbrain @ 8,
I’ve updated the post with my response to your comments.
@Darryl: I’m actually with oxbrain on this one. Usually the eye-catching headlines on this site are so over-the-top with hyperbole or are funny enough that no one could mistakenly assume that they’re accurate reflections of a news event. In this case . . . well, we live in a society that’s increasingly likely to just read a headline and go off half-cocked, and in this arena, in particular, there’s a lot of bad information and fear.
I guess while I undertand why you went with the title you did, I wish you’d gone for a little more clarity and a little less sensationalism. I expect this kind of thing from Drudge, or Breitbart, or Fox, but not from HA.
That’s much better, and I like the direction you’re going with one irrational fear overriding another. I may steal that for a facebook post.
Stories like this actually make me trust the TSA more, with regards to that equipment anyway. Better to have transparency and see the problems than for them to hide everything.
Xar @ 14,
” I wish you’d gone for a little more clarity and a little less sensationalism. I expect this kind of thing from Drudge, or Breitbart, or Fox, but not from HA.”
Thanks for the comment.
I don’t read enough of Drudge, Breitbart or Fox to say for sure, but I suspect that their stuff doesn’t start out with an explicit confession that the reader has been mislead, as I did with “No…this isn’t about Japan.”
The other point is that FAUX News (with which I am most familiar of the three) doesn’t just throw out the occasional sensationalized misleading headline. Rather they use headlines as part of propaganda campaigns. Hence, the famous, “Terrorist Fist Jab” verbal headline, which was feeding into their “Obama is an foreign-born outsider with a Muslim father and a radical mother who sent him to school in a Madrasah in Indonesia where he learned to hate America, and got his political start with the aid of a terrorist, and converted to an American-hating form of Christianity” meme.
I was pushing my own agenda, but it wasn’t a “hit piece” on back scatter machines. It was about how terrorism has turned Americans into submissive bed-wetters.
Unfortunately I already used the most appropriate title: The pussification of America.
@16: You’re right, in part because Drudge doesn’t generally do his own content, and in part because neither Breitbart nor Fox have much interest in the truth. I appreciate the fact that you clarified in the first line, and I do expect most HA readers to go past the headline, but there’s a certain segment of the population that won’t. I don’t really care so much about them, but I do worry about what they tell their credulous friends.
I don’t think you did anything wrong, but I think it’s harder for us to complain logically about things that the right-wing media does when we do it ourselves.
@16
I didn’t see anything wrong with the post and got what you were getting at the first time around. And I’m not exactly a nuclear scientist or anything…
Hm. Where are the Tea Party “Patriots” getting all bent out of shape because nowhere in the Constitution does it say the federal government can force us to be subjected to ionizing radiation simply because we choose to engage in commerce with an airline?
Subjecting Americans to ionizing radiation is reserved to the states. STATES RIGHTS!
I mean, if the STATE of Washington forced me to be irradiated, that would be ok… but not the feds. I mean to say… Well, yes, though the phrase, “states’ rights” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution… I mean…
Oh shit… being a conservative hurts my brain pan…