Ok, this is a big WTF

Organs of nuclear workers secretly harvested for 40 years, report finds

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... finds.html

BTW, whoever wrote this article needs to take a writing class. How many one-sentence paragraphs can we write?

Creepy. Well, the UK isn't exactly a beacon of civil rights these days. They rank near Russia and China on the most recent ranking of Privacy International, as an 'endemic surveillance society'.

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

(scroll down to privacy index)

Belgium does surprisingly well, probably because our government has never heard of cameras and the internet.

what blows my mind is that they seemed to be harvesting these organs for no purpose whatsoever. It's just bizarre. Why!?

Lol at the privacy index. Nice, the Philippines scored better than the US. No surprise, really.. warrantless wiretapping and border searches without a warrant ftl. And how about the naked machines at the airport and the aggressive TSA "grope your groin" policy. I'm torn between going to the airport in a kilt and commando, or just winking and making kissing faces at whoever grabs my crotch.

Speaking of which, great video:


totally awesome. Some great comedy in there.

ÜberLOL at the video.

Haha, that's awesome. I did some more searching tho, and found this clip



The guy refuses to go through the body scanner, then is told he will be padded manually in a separate room and doesn't want the security guy to search his crotch. So he is refused access to the plane. He also apparently has to pay a 10k fee, but I'm not sure if that's because he interrupted the security process or because he did something weird (gotten aggressive) afterwards or during.

Two things:

1) I'm not going to the US any time soon because of this, and I sure hope that not too many European airports will implement this BS device.
2) I find it extremely worrying, the whole 'after the story chitchat' of the reporters, the fake casual tone and everything. "Yeah he didn't want the scan and went for the body pad so...you know what's gonna happen *apologetic smile*" Wtf?!! Aren't you people fucking journalistis? Maybe QUESTION this BS a little? No, they just go "you see what happens when you don't listen nicely folks". Wtf³

Same with this crap story I found:

http://www.jaunted.com/story/2010/1/6/1 ... n+Naked%3F



Jeez what? Are these people for real? Nobody gives a shit about what some random stranger thinks they look like naked for 2 seconds, except for some fucked up body image people. What I fucking care about is how this is just another step in the erosion of personal rights.

hmmm... I see a lot of other news spinning this into a big problem. Whatever... maybe it depends on the news outlet. Personally, I'm never going through one of those body scanners. They can suck my enormous manwich.

So you're going for the pat down? Yay for male touching!

And I'm sure there are media outlets that are critical of the scanners, but these guys clearly didn't feel like kicking up a fuss about it.

I wonder what Fox News says about it. There are basically 2 reactions I can envision:

- THE TERRORISTS ARE GOING TO WIN IF YOU DON'T COMPLY WITH THIS
- THE GOVERNMENT IS EVIL AND SO ARE THESE SCANNERS

Since the current president is a democrat, I'm betting on the latter.

Funny you should mention that... my work plays fox news on our TVs and it had a story that was at least covering the controversy. I'm not sure if their take was positive or negative, but at least joe sixpack is aware of it. I had several arguments with my coworkers, many of whom thought that body scanners were a good idea. I made my arguments.

Strangely enough, one suggested wearing a kilt with no underwear (as I did above), but he added that you should smear your crotch with peanut butter to really freak the guy out when he reached up there.

To be fair, I'm on the oposite side of the fence.

I'd rather be seen naked for a couple seconds and know that some jack ass isn't taking something on to the plane that may lead to an accident - note, I'm not on about terrorism here, I'm on about idiots who might just cause something stupid unintentionally. Of course, the added lack of explosions is always nice.

Still, *flame proof suit*

That's what a lot of my coworkers urge.

To quote one of our greatest historical figures.

Benjamin Franklin

This won't have much weight with anyone not in America, of course, but I agree. Freedom and liberty are, to me, more important than perceived security. I would rather die in a fiery explosion than have my freedoms (and, more importantly, the freedom of my descendants) removed. Slippery slope and all that.

Still, I've learned there's little point in arguing, so I respect your opinion, but must disagree.

Don't worry, I can see what you are saying - but I'm more of a "there is a line" kinda person. Just because it was Benjamin Franklin, doesn't mean he wasn't wrong!

To me, the line would be if they start doing cavity searches instead of using scanners, or worse cavity searching your children.

But that's just another form of personal invasion, not really THAT much worse. I think me (and Satis?) are more worried about where these measures are leading to than about being cavity searched/scanned/poked with a stick/have a gerbil examine our intestines for bombs.

For me it's mostly the principle. I don't want to live in a society ruled by fear just because some fuckheads want to blow shit up. The reality is, there really aren't THAT many people that are considering bombings and other BS. I read someone saying something like "the reason that there aren't many planes getting bombes is not because security is so much better, but because there simply aren't that many people who try to bomb planes". Which rings true. Consider this: I take an intercity train service between (Amsterdam,) Antwerp and Brussels every day, on a double decker high-speed train. In theory, all you need is to bring machine guns and starting walking through the train during peak hours and pick off people. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There is absolutely no security control or anything to board the trains, just walk into the station and hide a rifle under your coat or in a suitcase, board the train and you're good.

Now, obviously this is not something I would like to see happening (god forbid) but I have entertained the idea that is theoretically possible and really easy. I'm aware that it's not exactly the most high-profile target but Brussels has a lot of symbolic meaning in the world and Europe, at least as much as Madrid where shit was bombed too. The only reason why shit isn't getting bombed everywhere all the time is because there really aren't that many people fucked up or stupid enough to do it.

Of course the police should try to snuff them out and stop them, but not at the cost of me having to go through a whole fashion show at the airport just to get on a fucking plane.

Btw Mole, what kind of unintential bombers are you referring to? Like people with electronic devices?

Yea, Ox and I are of a similar mind. I'm not going to go off on why I hate the whole concept, but basically it seems they're not really effective at stopping anything, and they're not really necessary. Metal detectors, bomb sniffing dogs, and competent security are plenty. It works for Israel, who I think we should really be relying on for pointers on security.

In reality - the "electronic device" stuff is very unlikely to cause any kind of problem with the plane's system. I'd wager money that a good number of people leave their mobile phone's on and searching for a signal durin flight. However, it's not unusual for flights to be grounded do to some idiot with some kinda 'device' or even just a bottle of pop due to all the safety rules.

If they are scanned on the way in, this no longer happens. It then also leads to the prevention of weapons, explosives or chemicals making it on the the plane. I don't see as such a huge thing has to be made of this though? Surely they can just have a manned walkthrough scanner in the queue - so that you're just scanned as you're walking along. Keep the screen obstructed from the public view, the only person that will see it is the guard and they'll only stop you if you've got a gun shoved in your pants.

well, the pictures these scanners make are very revealing. They're also recorded, despite the lies that many people have made. They've been proven to be lies from numerous leaks and other things... so, even if your picture is 'fleeting', it's not, it's stored forever on some government hard drive. Lastly, these TSA people are not security experts. They're just normal people hired into a boring, low-pay job. There've been instances of convicted felons being hired by the TSA. Do you trust these people to be professional? I don't.

On the other hand, I'm ok with x-ray machines. But an xray machine won't be showing my enormously huge junk to some jealous child-molesting ex-felon.