Homeland Security looked into covert body scans

Homeland Security looked into covert body scans

www.usatoday.com

The Homeland Security Department paid contractors millions of dollars to develop and study surveillance systems that could covertly track pedestrians and check under people's clothing with airport-style body scanners as they enter train stations, bus depots or major events, newly released documents show

A $1.9 million contract with Rapiscan Systems, which makes airport body scanners, asked the company to develop similar machines for "covert inspection of moving subjects"

(visit the link for the full news article)

These covert scanners never were put into production - not because of concerns about privacy and unlawful search and seizure, but because they could not get them to work. If they had developed a viable machine, the $1.6M would have been a $1.6B contract.

That there was no public discussion about the notion of having folks subject to covert scans and as a consequence unknown hits of radiation is troubling and underscores the level of distrust the folks in DHS have in the general population.

Flying is one thing, folks typically don't fly that frequently. With these covert scanners in places like train stations, you could easily have folks getting scanned twice a day to and from work with no knowledge. Quite possibly more than two times a day if someone needed to switch trains each day.

Disturbing to say the least that the government even contemplated a wide scale violation of rights under cover of darkness.

Instead of getting more toys to use to keep track of law abiding citizens, perhaps the folks at DHS should get copies of the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution and give those a read.

www.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

These covert scanners never were put into production - not because of concerns about privacy and unlawful search and seizure, but because they could not get them to work. If they had developed a viable machine, the $1.6M would have been a $1.6B contract.

i seriously hope there are people who are not naive enough to believe this statement for its face value..

come on now..

I am not necessarily certain of the validity of the statement, but it went something like this..., "The government always gets what it pays for."

It would be most comfortable to believe that they were unable to perfect the technology to achieve covert scanning devices. But I am certain the magnitude of the contract would have made it impossible to conceal once it had gone into production.

So I am inclined to believe it is possible these particular units, from this particular vendor, never went into production. But I am not exactly confident that the reason given is necessarily true; and I realize that the framework of the assertion does not exclude the possibility that another vendor may have produced it, having overcome whatever obstacle one company may have found.... probably profit related.

I have become more convinced that our technical and scientific limits are being understated to us... until they can be made suitably 'profitable' by circumstance or contrivance.

Doesn't HS already operate covert mobile vans that scan people on the street?