American Travelers Continue To Rebel AgainstTSA Body Scanners

American Travelers Continue To Rebel Against TSA Body Scanners Steve Watson Infowars.com October 26, 2011 Americans continue to direct concern, anger and derision toward the TSA over the agency’s aggressive presence in the nations airports, newly released records have shown.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has obtained 241 pages of passenger complaints filed with the TSA by everyday Americans, dating back to early 2010.

EPIC uncovered the documents via a Freedom of Information Act request as part of its ongoing lawsuit concerning the use of the radiation firing body scanners by the TSA. “The documents reveal that travelers are angry and frustrated about TSA screening procedures.”

EPIC states on its website.

“Travelers expressed concern about radiation risks to children, the elderly, and those with special needs.” the statement continues.

“Other travelers wrote the fact that the machines could capture naked images as unacceptable.

One traveler said, “using [the full body scanners] is an extreme invasion of privacy.”

Previously, in March 2010, EPIC revealed that there had been more than 600 formal complaints about body scanners the previous year alone.

The documents revealed anger at TSA officials for refusing to offer passengers a pat-down alternative, as well as forcing children to go through machines.

The TSA attempted to downplay the issue as insignificant, claiming that over 600 complaints about body scanners, which were at the time installed in just 21 airports in the U.S., was an “infinitesimally small” number.

The agency, aided by the establishment media, suggested that the scanners were being meekly accepted by a compliant public, when the exact opposite was the case.

Later in the year, in November 2010, the issue blew up again and the

1. ACLU revealed that it received a monumental wave of complaints, regarding everything from gawking by TSA agents to full on groping.

The TSA continued to claim that the overall public concern over scanners and pat-downs was minimal, even suggesting that a planned nationwide “opt out” protest had been a dismal failure.

However, it soon emerged that in reality the TSA had turned off many of its naked body scanners across the country, and scaled back the invasive searches for one day in a hastily crafted PR stunt to mute the impact of the protest.

In December of last year it also emerged that TSA workers were even complaining about the agency’s procedures. Concern among workers was particularly focused on the levels of radiation they were being subjected to in having to operate the body scanners.

Further documents published by EPIC in June of this year, revealed how TSA workers became concerned over a “cancer cluster” amongst screening agents at Boston Logan International Airport, and how the federal agency tried to cover-up the complaints.

As we have tirelessly reported, the machines continue to emit radiation that respected health authorities have warned will cause cancer. Despite agency claims to the contrary, the millimeter wave machines “tear apart DNA” to produce their image, while the backscatter devices fire ionizing radiation into the body.

Numerous highly respected universities and health bodies, including Johns Hopkins, Columbia University, the University of California, and the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety, have all warned that the health threat posed by the scanners has not been properly studied and could lead to increased cancer rates.

New Trials Show Body Scanners Have Up To 40% Error Rate Trials of invasive full body scanning machines in Australia have revealed that the technology has a huge error rate of up to 40%, yet government officials want to roll out the technology in airports anyway.

The Australian Office of Transport Security announced this week that of 23,500 scans carried out at Sydney and Melbourne airports during August and September, between 20 and 40% of alarms raised were done so in error.

Worse still, it is not even clear what caused the machines to set off false alarms.

As we reported in August, it is suspected that perspiration on passengers is a leading cause of the errors, though this still remains unconfirmed.

Despite the results, Office of Transport Security executive director Paul Retter told a recent Senate estimates committee hearing that the technology was improving “on a weekly and monthly basis”.

Despite repeated warnings from security experts that the machines cannot even detect explosives effectively, Retter maintained that the technology provides “the best chance in the world today to detect explosives, including home-made explosives”.

Retter also stated that though the government has not yet made a decision on whether to fully adopt the technology, he will recommend “a progressive rollout at eight international airports”.

“We would envisage that the rollout will start to occur from the early part of 2012,” he said.

Prior to the Australian trials, the German government decided to completely scrap plans to use the scanners after police described radiation-firing full body scanners as “useless”, following a 10-month trial.

According to a German federal police report, 35 percent of the 730,000 passengers checked by the scanners set off the alarm more than once despite having nothing prohibited about their person whatsoever.

The report noted that an alarm was set off without reason in roughly seven out of every ten cases, adding that the scanners struggled to cope with layers of clothing, boots and zip fasteners, and even the posture of passengers passing through.

The report concluded that the machines are too sensitive to movement and operate too slowly to be of any practical use.

Despite all these findings, the Department of Homeland Security in the US continues to roll out hundreds more of the scanning machines into airports across the country, claiming that the machine have passed rigorous safety and efficiency tests, in statements we have repeatedly highlighted as highly questionable at best.