The evidence of the TSA’s fakery is now obvious thanks to the revelations of a letter signed by five professors from the University of California, San Francisco and Arizona State University.
RESPONSE TO THE LETTER FROM DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES OF OCTOBER 12, 2010
There is Still No Rigorous Hard Data For The Safety of X-Ray Airport Passenger Scanners The problem remains that the safety of the X-ray airport scanners has not been independently verified. Recently the NIST report on the ‘Rapiscan Secure 1000′, the most widely deployed person X-ray scanner, and the Johns Hopkins report have been made available. However the Johns Hopkins report, which is the more detailed and significant because it refers to the widely deployed Single Pose system, does not hold to critical principles of scientific reporting. The document is heavily redacted with red stamps over the words and figures. In every case the electric current used which correlates one to one with X-ray dose has been specifically redacted. Thus there is no way to repeat any of these measurements. While the report purports to present the results of objective testing, in fact the JHU APL personnel, who are unnamed anywhere in the document either as experimenters or as authors, were not provided with a machine by Rapiscan. Instead they were invited to the manufacturing site to observe a mock-up of components (spare parts) that were said to be similar to those that are parts of the Rapiscan system. The tests were performed by the manufacturer using the manufacturer’s questionable test procedures. Although the doses from Compton Backscatter screening are potentially low, the dose rates are very high, comparable to dose rates in CT machines. These dose rates far exceed the limits specified for the ion chambers that were used in both the JHU measurements and the field measurements using the Fluke 451 reported by the TSA. There are also issues related to the incomplete coverage of the ion chamber by the flying spot of the backscatter machine. The data given in the Johns Hopkins report indicate that there must be something wrong. The very large exposures measured for scatter radiation in the JHL report, 36% of primary exposure above the cabinets outside the direct beam path and 19% of primary exposure in the entrance and exit regions, strongly suggest that the measurement of primary exposure is too low. Scatter exposure is usually at most a few % of the primary exposure, which is consistent with the fact that only a few % incident X-rays are Compton backscattered calling into question the validity of the exposure measurement as well as the validity of this test equipment for a (intense) spot scanner. The report was apparently summarized by the JHU APL; however, without signatories, there is no accountability for the document. Thus, important information has not been provided to the public regarding the beam intensity under operational conditions at airports [X-ray photons per unit area per unit time (because it is scanning)] and/or the related quantity – fluence (being the total energy delivered per unit area, which is equal to the intensity multiplied by the time the spot remains on a given area), values that would be especially useful in calculating the dose. Also the X-ray tube current used in the tests or in the airport setting, that correlates directly with X-ray intensity has always been redacted. read more
None of the Rapidscan tests have been available to be subjected to peer review. They are quite literally secret tests using secret techniques engineered by secret researchers. We the People apparently have no right to see the data, nor the methodology, nor even the names of the researchers who supposedly carried out these safety tests.
There shall be no independent testing whatsoever
The TSA adamantly refuses to allow independent testing of the radiation levels being emitted by the machines. The agency is using the cover story that “terrorists might be able to circumvent the technology” if anyone is allowed to actually test the machine.
