Proof of Concept Trial report for airport scanners in Oz: 43% false positive rate [Warning, PDF]
travelsecure.infrastructure.gov.au/internatio...Posted Apr 23, 2012, 2:35 AM UTC
4015
travelsecure.infrastructure.gov.au
Security theatre will protect us all.
8
What the fuck? Did they actually detect anything worthwhile, or just get a few thousand false positives?
What a joke. Enjoy your cancer, and wasted taxpayer money on a completely useless technology.
8
What the fuck? Did they actually detect anything worthwhile, or just get a few thousand false positives?
23,000 test subjects, so around 9,890 false positives, and around zero true positives. Hopefully, no false negatives, but given the actual rate of people smuggling weapons onto aircraft in Australia, which is zero since the introduction of metal detectors, you'd probably have to test every passenger for the next century before you'd even have a hope of getting either a false negative or a true positive.
What a joke. Enjoy your cancer, and wasted taxpayer money on a completely useless technology.
Definitely a waste of money, and a waste of time, but in the interests of easing peoples' minds about the cancer risk, the scanners to be used in Australia are non-ionising THz scanners - they have less chance of giving you cancer than a mobile phone, and just in case that old myth hasn't been put to bed, the WHO has issued a thorough report on the matter that, while widely misreported by the press as claiming phones do cause cancer, only actually says "… IARC has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), a category used when a causal association is considered credible, but when chance, bias or confounding cannot be ruled out with reasonable confidence."
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Ah, I wasn't sure whether it was backscatter or THz scanners. Also, I love this bit for backscatter tech:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Ait_safety_demo.jpg
"A single scan using backscatter technology produces exposure equivalent to two minutes of flying on an airplane, but delivered in several seconds."
It's not like those who fly frequently have higher rates of cancer, or that ionizing radiation is a no-threshold dose kind of deal.
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lol 43%, whoever made them should kill themselves, that's not significantly different from coin flip.
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It's funny you should say that, given the passengers to be screened are likely to be selected by a "random selection mat."
4
This is bullshit. It is not a report of a trial at all. Ten pages with no real data makes me think it is just to 'prove' that if you've got nothing to hide, then it is ok that we take all of your privacy away.
I've never liked the full body scanners, primarily because it is final proof that people in government and administration are scared.
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Write to your representative and point out how unhappy you are with this. I wrote to mine, and got back something that referred to what I said, so it clearly wasn't a form response. It was a brush-off, but the more people who point out how unimpressed they are, the more likely it is there'll be a "backbench revolt" against it.
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I also liked the part where the majority of people who volunteered were happy with the process. As though those who volunteer are a good representative sample.
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They have to put them in to stop all the naughty people from doing naughty things. You know, all the ones they aren't catching that are doing nothing, that aren't all over the news all the time. Either that or we have to buy the scanners. Must buy scanners... or else.
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This means that 43% of passengers going through the scanners will require a pat-down to determine whether it was a fold in clothing, sweat, cargo pants pockets, or a zipper that set the machine off.
And according to the conclusion of the article, this is a great success - 6 times as many passengers are having to go through secondary screening, which presumably means we are winning the war on terror.
Think of how many more hairclips and tissues have been isolated before they can bring a plane crashing from the skies.
And, as stated in the report, its slower too. So, it's not as effective, it's slower and will come at a considerable cost - it is therefore the opinion of the report that the trial was a tremendous success. The report was written to support the conclusion they wanted.
How much are they costing and who's being paid?
$200,000 to $250,000 per machine for 20 to 30 machines, and L3 Communications.