Kashmir Hill blogs about EPIC’s lawsuit against DHS seeking suspension of full body scanners. The lawsuit has been cited previously on this blog. In particular, she focuses in on one of EPIC’s arguments, that the scans violate the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act. She writes:
The Act prohibits the filming of private parts — it makes an exception for cleavage — when individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy, even if they are in a public place.
The law specifies that it applies in “circumstances in which a reasonable person would believe that a private area of the individual would not be visible to the public, regardless of whether that person is in a public or private place.” So if people know that their private areas are visible, does the law apply? If there are representational avatars instead of real naked people — a software fix devised by scanner makers L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. and OSI Systems Inc. — does it apply?
Read more on Forbes.
And here’s more food for thought: 1 in 6 women are the victims of some kind of sexual assault at some point in their lifetime. Is giving a woman a Hobson’s choice of being exposed by a scanner or touched in a rough patdown of genitalia likely to retraumatize some women or cause unusual anxiety or PTSD symptoms? What is our government doing to us in the name of “security” when these methods are neither necessary nor effective?
And where the heck is the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that might have had something to say about DHS’s systematic and invasive encroachment on privacy and civil liberties?