February 10, 2010

Movie star is confronted by a printout from the airport scanner that showed his genitalia.

And he autographs it.
“I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You’ve got to see them. It makes you embarrassed – if you’re not well endowed,” said [Indian actor Shahrukh] Khan....
On the downside: Airport personnel are going to be looking at all of us naked and will have the power — if they choose to violate official policy — to print out pictures that could be distributed and displayed anywhere. On the upside: Shahrukh Khan is well endowed.

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's cold in London! There was shrinkage!

DaveW said...

Why are these machines set up so they can print pictures?

I understand they need to be able to save an image for evidence, I guess, but it seems like it would be fairly easy to set up some safeguards in the software to prevent employees from printing out pictures.

ricpic said...

None of these scanners are going to stop the breast implant bomber.

Moose said...

Whew. Thank god he wasn't wearing shorts...

Anonymous said...

You can bet your hopey-changey booties, the children of Miranda are coming.

Beta Conservative said...

The Canadian MRI strikes again.

tim maguire said...

Is anybody tracking the proportion of beautiful women among the "randomly selected" passengers? I predict the percentage will jump dramatically once these scanners become common.

Nice to know security personnel can print out their favorite scans for more careful viewing later in the privacy of their home.

Fred4Pres said...

Sadly, most of us are no longer print out worthy...sob.

TWM said...

Egads, that means the old sock in the underwear trick is kaput.

Susan said...

Why are these machines set up so they can print pictures?

Seriously. I don't even understand why they'd need to print them out as evidence; wouldn't the contraband itself be sufficient evidence?

Scott said...

Signing it was smart. I would think it would kick it up a notch, chain-of-evidence-wise.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Great. As if there weren't enough travel delays, now I'm gonna have to start signing autographs.

As John Edwards says, there are two Americas, and I live in his.

Thorley Winston said...

The story appears to be bogus:

bagoh20 said...

I've read 3 of these stories now and none of them have any facts. Just repeat what he said and tells us who he is. News media sucks.

At least I'm glad I'll never be famous. I'm a super secret super hero, but keep it on the down low.

Kevin said...

Good thing that scanning women in burkas is perfectly acceptable to Muslims...

michaele said...

Come on...wasn't this particular article a joke? The UK Transport Secretary's name is "Lord Adonis" and we're talking well endowed males? Hmmm, I feel a Google search coming on.

Lynne said...

Is anybody else amused that this story is being cited by "Lord Adonis"?

Very Monty Python.

michaele said...

OK, Google search completed and he is the Rt Honorable Lord Andrew Adonis and does hold that position. Joke's on me.

kentuckyliz said...

Won't this story make people aware and resistant to being machine-ogled and printed?

When will we decide that we've had enough?

Franco said...

Janet Napolitano has to post her scan online (not that I want to look). Otherwise, no deal TSA. You show me yours, I'll show you mine.

Ralph L said...

My guess is they were having trouble hiring security people at the wages they wanted to pay. Now we dirty old men are lined up to work for peanuts.

Paul Kirchner said...

Is this scanner going to keep Muslim women from flying, or are they going to get a private strip search?

Are they going to run 13-year-old girls through these things?

I doubt if the machines print out copies. I assume people are discreetly copying the files onto a memory stick.

Unknown said...

As they say in show biz, "No publicity is bad publicity"

Ann said...

Airport personnel are going to be looking at all of us naked and will have the power — if they choose to violate official policy — to print out pictures that could be distributed and displayed anywhere.

Question for you, Madame.

Since Louis Brandeis manufactured a Right to Privacy at least as much out of whole cloth as the Fourth Amendment (which gives us the right against unreasonable search and seizure, IIRC, which isn't the same thing, I'd say) and the TSA seems to be free to run roughshod over the property rights of the American traveler, what are our rights in such a case and how would we procure redress of grievance?

The Right to Privacy, since it's not really codified, is anything anybody wants it to be (or not to be), given that it's up to the whim of interpretation. Do we have a Fourth Amendment right here?

Douglas2 said...

Oh for goodness sake, people!

The question was asked in jest on a late night humourous talk show, and answered in jest as well.

If someone said that on the Craig Fergeson show would you think that he really had that experience?

Undertoad said...

Why are these machines set up so they can print pictures?

They aren't.

"However, a BAA spokeswoman said the claims were “completely factually incorrect” because the body-scanning equipment had no capability to print images. She stressed that images captured by the equipment could not be stored or distributed in any form."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/bollywood/7203872/Airport-denies-body-scanner-photo-claim-by-Bollywood-star-Shahrukh-Khan.html

Joe said...

Best part is these scanners won't improve our security and safety one bit and will likely actually decrease it since it lulls the idiots who run security into thinking it's sufficient.

William said...

Last trip I took only a few people were asked to go thru the scanner. It says here that celebrities and politicians will be given a pass on this machine. These are the only people whose scanned images hold any prurient interest. I'm as depraved as the next guy, but scanner porn just doesn't look very salacious....Worries about this machine are as overblown as reassurances that this is an answer to security threats.

Ralph L said...

Maybe they're preparing us for the next step--everyone flies naked.

save_the_rustbelt said...

I will likely be described as the short lumpy guy arrested for suspicious of carrying a bazooka.

Just saying........

Cedarford said...

First, the story smells. But...

DaveW said...
Why are these machines set up so they can print pictures?

I understand they need to be able to save an image for evidence, I guess, but it seems like it would be fairly easy to set up some safeguards in the software to prevent employees from printing out pictures.


DaveW - I don't think you understand computers, I/O, accessing digital data, ability to bring something to work that plugs into a scanner machine and gets data on flash memory stick, your MP3 player, cell phone, etc.

================
Undertoad - "However, a BAA spokeswoman said the claims were “completely factually incorrect” because the body-scanning equipment had no capability to print images. She stressed that images captured by the equipment could not be stored or distributed in any form."

The spokesmodel likely has no idea.
Clearly, the capacity to store and print pictures exists. It is implicit from the sample photos the companies hoping for the billion dollar contracts put out. And the "you cannot be too safe" contingent of the rightwing and "Heroes of Security" say will be preserved for "evidence" in "criminal cases".
And of course that anyone knows that the monitor on the scanner machine itself is just a external output device the computer is sending digital data to. So, for sure, any geek or even a simple layman like myself knows that somewhere, it just needs a plug or card replaced or paralleled and you can put 6,000 or so passengers images on a simple 4-6 GB memory stick media....

In all likelihood, the machine does have a writedisk or flash memory slot that needs a high level supervisors code to write from the hard drive and store or print images that will be "used as evidence" - but no such safety code has to be entered to get monitor images.

And it is pretty easy to set up a concealed digital camera at a scanner site so you take good facial pics of each person you select being scanned - to get around the "facial blurring problem".

Then of course you can join the scanner image with the face and photo process the two and add realistic flesh tones, pubes, etc to your really really naked front and back views of a celebrity or VIP you can get 5-6 times the annual pay of TSA "Hero" for selling.

Many celebs of course go by private jet domestically, but except for the most elite of elite Gov't officials and A-listers with 10s of millions - they will settle for 1st Class "commercial" when doing International Travel or Hawaii.

So if I was a couple of lowly TSA Heroes out to make a few 100 thousand, I'd set up on those sort of screening areas in LA, DC, or NYC.

And with talk of the vendors pushing Congress to set up "you can't be too safe!" scanners in other venues - possibilities arise for other naked pic goldmines, like future scanner stations at the White House, opening ceremonies at the Olympics, Oscars or Golden Globes....

Undertoad said...

Cedar,

Ever heard of Occam's razor? Cos he's got not just a razor, but a spinning glaives, that say you're full of crap.

Anonymous said...

Even if there's no way in the current security system to store a body scan photograph, I don't know what's to stop someone from using her cellphone camera to make an image of the screen and then sending that to a printer, a friend or the whole wide world.

Rockport Conservative said...

I haven't seen it mentioned here yet so I guess I will have to be the one who brings it up (no pun intended!) but do we have anyone's word, besides his, that he is, in fact, well endowed?

DaveW said...

Cedarford, I understand computers *fairly* well. There's no reason for a custom built airport security scanner to have any access ports at all. It isn't a desktop.

I presume TSA has an office on location, a computer network and a supervisor. The machines could have been built to save the images securely on command by the agent doing the examination, then accessed only by the supervisor or a designee.

It is not at all inevitable that agents at the gate could print this or have any access to it other than viewing the images as they come up.

Of course, as someone just pointed out someone could snap a cellphone image of the screen, but the screen could be hooded also.

I find it difficult to believe they considered this, evaluated the technology, designed the suites required to use it and purchased and installed these machines without considering the obvious privacy issues and setting up safeguards to guard against abuse.

Synova said...

Sounds to me like an awful lot of faith in people going on there.

Safeguards would be set up? Well, of course they would. There would be rules to follow? Well, of course they would.

After all, the TSA and equivalents are entirely trustworthy people.

Yehudit said...

He was the actor who did that famous "dancing on top of the moving train" Bollywood video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaiyya_Chaiyya

Joe said...

I find it difficult to believe they considered this, evaluated the technology, designed the suites required to use it and purchased and installed these machines without considering the obvious privacy issues and setting up safeguards to guard against abuse.

I've been a computer programmer for 30 years and find it very easy to believe they didn't consider jack shit; all they saw was neat new shiny things.

amba said...

How appropriate that the complaining gov official was Lord Adonis.