TSA authorities can fine you $10,000 for leaving the airport

[Undertoad]

Good morning ladies and gents. Today we have a post, linked by BoingBoing, from a molecular biologist who looks at the TSA backscatter scanning machines and tries to determine whether they are safe.

http://myhelicaltryst.blogspot.com/2....html?spref=fb

It's hard to excerpt, but the bottom line is, "the jury is still out on whether these machines are safe or even could be made safe for this application."

This is a tough subject, because it is close to conspiracy theory when one actually questions the official line. I find most conspiracy theories to be near crazy. How could the Federal Govt possibly be using machines that could be unsafe? They SAID it was safe in official documents.

I don't think it's a conspiracy, except possibly at the manufacturer's level. There were two competing technologies for this I think, and we know that there was big money involved including millions spent on lobbying. The lesson from the Space Shuttle Columbia was that, in this era, the MBAs at the top are inclined to believe much different things than the engineers. They will force an atmosphere where their belief is the overriding one, because it's money involved. If they want it to be called safe, even if a 1-in-100,000 failure could hurt someone, it will be called safe.

After reading the original UCSF concerns, which I linked in this thread, and this post by the molecular biologist, there are pretty serious questions. It's not just a political tilt that now, I say, I would not go through these machines. I recommend you don't either.