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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Ventura complaint against TSA - DHS airport intrusive screening as a breach of his Fourth Amendment rights has been posted online by KSTP.

This link.

It seeks declaratory and injunctive relief. It is a tightly drafted pleading defining its claims in fewer paragraphs and pages than some complaints in other cases that have been published online. The issue is quite direct, however, and an extensive pleading would not be needed. Ventura is using the Henson & Efron firm, the two lawyers signed off on the complaint being a litigation partner and an associate; see, here and here.

It looks as if Ventura is set for pursuing a sound test case, with experienced litigators.

Sibel Edmonds has been critical of the new screenings, as has been Ron Paul. See, e.g., here and here, and other posts on the Edmonds site.

Edmonds should try to schedule Gov. Ventura for one of her podcasts where he could discuss his decision to litigate. He, in turn, could have an extended presentation of her experiences in a segment or two of "Conspiracy Theory." Each might benefit from reaching new audiences.

For all I know Jesse might already have featured parts of the Sibel Edmonds story, Dennis Hastert, Brent Scowcroft, national security, foreign policy, secrecy and all. The Edmonds site and Brad Blog have detail. You might have to hunt around each site and check the Brad Blog sidebars, or visit the older Edmonds site to ferret out details, but it's a good story to know of. If not a true story it would be a fiction best seller. Quite probably some in the government can be found contending it is a fiction, or largely so. None of us were there to know for certain either way. I'd sooner believe in Edmonds' version of things than believe in an afterlife; both being articles of faith and belief, not of scientifically provable scope. Edmonds story makes more sense to me and seems to hang together better than mythologies do.

______________UPDATE_______________
This is no myth. Follow the money.

Apparently former DHS head Chertoff has meat in the fire, on the marketing of that body scan stuff. In context, a Q and A online post of Seattle Times, this excerpt:

Travelers will see one of two types of scanners, depending on the airport.

Twenty-seven airports are getting millimeter wave machines that use electromagnetic waves to produce a 3-D image.

Thirty-three airports, including Sea-Tac, are getting the more controversial "backscatter"' machines that use low-dose X-rays to produce nude images resembling a chalky drawing with facial features blotted out.

A traveler using the backscatter machines walks between what looks like two large boxes, and stands 5 to 7 seconds with hands overhead.

An inspector in another room views the picture on a monitor. If a screener sees something suspect — the scanners can detect shapes but can't tell what the objects actually are — he or she radios an agent on the other side to make a closer inspection. The scanners can't see inside body cavities. Critics contend that's a major flaw.

Q: Why are airports getting these scanners now?

A: TSA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have been testing advanced imaging technology since 2007. Congress approved the program for nationwide rollout after a man attempted to bring down an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight last Christmas by detonating explosives hidden in his underwear.

TSA says the scanners will provide a needed extra layer of security, but some experts question whether they would have caught the material.

Testimony by ex-Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff held sway with lawmakers but was later questioned after CNN reported that Rapiscan, the California company that makes the backscatter machines as well as cargo and baggage screening systems, was a client of Chertoff 's private security company.


Q: How much will this cost?

A: The machines cost $130,000-$170,000 each, paid for with federal stimulus funds. Estimates are the government will spend $234 million to $300 million overall on as many as 1,800 scanners by 2014.

Q: What are the health risks?

A: TSA and Rapiscan say the radiation exposure is equal to what passengers get in a plane for two minutes at 30,000 feet.

However, scientists, including a group of researchers at the University of California in San Francisco, have raised red flags and have questioned the quality of the safety guidelines TSA followed. Those guidelines were established by the American National Standards Institute, an organization whose members include companies that make the machines and the government agencies promoting them.

"While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high," the scientists wrote in an April 6 letter calling for a review by a panel to include medical physicists and radiation biologists.

"The risk of radiation emission to children and adolescents does not appear to have been fully evaluated," they said, and the "policy toward pregnant women needs to be defined."

Q: What about privacy?

A: TSA says its scanners don't store or save images, and emphasize that the screeners looking at the images never see passengers in-person. But the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington D.C. equates the technology to a "digital strip search," and has filed a suit to block use of the scanners.

[italics added] Chertoff's firm has an advisory cash cow. A big slice of a $230 to $300 million pie is to be paid to the client hiring Chertoff's firm.

Sweet. Old boys helping old boys. An old story.