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Comment by Steuard | Hacker News Reader

Or rather, after reading the article, some naked-image scanners to be removed, and then promptly replaced with others from a different company. No big news here, as far as I can tell.

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They're getting rid of the machines that expose people (especially TSA workers) to ionizing radiation. That's news, although the headline is misleading.

Well the TSA workers still have to worry about their baggage x-ray scanners. There have been scattered reports of them malfunctioning in the past and potentially exposing employees to radiation.

Malfunctioning is one thing, working as designed and still exposing people is another.

The replacement scanners are not backscatter radiation units and they display an icon of a person with a little dot that lights up to highlight where the little icon man has an anomaly.

They may do a better job of protecting travelers' privacy than the backscatter units, but they still strike me as being on the wrong side of the same line.

And for all I know, a highly accurate 3D representation of my body is being stored in a database for future identification.

I realize that's bordering on tin-foil hat land, but it's why I opt out every time, and will continue to do so...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20012583-281.html

They told us they wouldn't store the images on the previous scanners, but it turns out they were.

The generic government response to criticism of these scanners has been that they aren't stored, but (as far as I know) the only agency that has out-and-out said they aren't storing them is the TSA. In this case (the article), the U.S. Marshals Service was storing the images at a courthouse security checkpoint.

1. Did the U.S. Marshals Service claim that they weren't storing the images prior to this discovery?

2. Do you know of any examples of the TSA storing the images (in opposition to what they have claimed they do)?

Why exactly do you feel you have to make lame excuses for the government? We live in the information age and information now is the ultimate power. The high level politicians and bureaucrats are clearly maniacs when it comes to power. IMHO there is no doubt that all information that can potentially be used in a power struggle, such as Rapiscan scans, is not destroyed, but stored by some government agency. Those scans can be used to reliably identify tents of millions of people.

>Why exactly do you feel you have to make lame excuses for the government?

Why do you feel the need to base your entire argument on a slippery slope fallacy? Either they are, and proof is required, or they're not.

The fact that we're talking about the government does not reverse the burden of proof!

>Those scans can be used to reliably identify tents of millions of people.

Have you seen the image output from a backscatter machine? While invasive (ostensibly because they include the genitals), they don't show very good detail. Somehow I efficacy of backscatter machines being used for mass identification purposes and the existence of such a program.

I'm not making lame excuses for the government. At no point did I say that it was ok for them to store the images. My point was that this statement:

  They told us they wouldn't store the images on the
  previous scanners, but it turns out they were.

was disingenuous. Saying that 'they lied about storing the images' has no basis in truth here (at least without presenting other evidence that I'm unaware of).

I don't know about you, but I don't think that there's any reason to make misleading statements in order to present the case that these images shouldn't be stored.

Right, CIA and NSA never said they are not going to store the images, so it's perfectly fine with you ...

The point is that making misleading comments (or outright lying) is only going to hurt your cause. People will ignore the message (no matter how right it may be) and attack your methods.

Looks like the cousin or the college friend of some Congressmen is about ready to start a company that makes "new and improved body scanners".

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