How much radiation does this scanner actually emit? The numbers are meaninglessness without more information. Why doesn't the manufacturer just publish the hard numbers?
"Law enforcement officers operate the system in conditions of complete safety from inside shielded cabins." (Source: http://www.nethun.it/index_en.php?sez=security_en&sec=rm )
Don't miss this delicious advertisement video:
can be operated remotely from more than 1,500 feet
[Edit: the article also talks about scanning the inside of a house in 15 seconds. That's not going to happen if they drive up the van, park it, get out, walk 1500 feet away, scan the house, walk back... (Yes, I know, they can drive away and back in another vehicle. It's still not likely to be operated remotely in that usage - all the activity makes it too conspicuous.)]
The answer can even be ALWAYS, if remote controlling it is mandated by protocol.
>How often will it be operated remotely, and there's no other police in the immediate vicinity doing traffic control or some such?
That doesn't come into play at all. Do you think those kind of surveillance happens in busy streets with traffic control cops dancing around?
> They are not hard to spot. Watch the media entrances of events, where the on-location vans drive through. Look for where traffic is routed through a single lane. Inevitably they will route traffic past an unmarked van. Or, look for an unmarked van trolling any parking lots within any security cordon.
That "look for where traffic is routed through a single lane" makes me strongly suspect there's going to be traffic officers in the very near vicinity.
In that case those "traffic officers" will be further down directing traffic to the van, not in the van's target.
Please refer to the link I posted just above this for a study from MIT linking non-ionizing radiation to permanent damage to cellular DNA.
I think this is a really good point, actually. Do all these electronic devices need to be FCC approved? And if so, how do these vans' dosage gybe with any FCC regulations?
You're arguing against a strawman. HN commenters aren't idiots. The technology in question is using ionizing X-rays, which can have harmful health effects.
Having said that, this thread is dominated by commenters who refuse to do the math. X-rays sound scary but they aren't death rays; if you add up the numbers you'll see that it's not even worth to talk about them here. There's higher probability they'll harm someone by introducing more cars onto streets.
EDIT: oh, I forgot. The Chart: https://xkcd.com/radiation/.
Bouncing around in the back of a van, something goes wrong. Instead of a rapidly moving beam of x-rays that doesn't stay in one location long enough to cause problems, you get a focused beam.
It many not work that way though. Who knows? That's the problem with being secretive about the whole thing. They don't publicly release data on potential malfunctions.
One of my biggest concerns is the amount of training the operators receive on recognizing and reporting potential malfunctions. I suspect it's not sufficient, but again who knows? They won't talk about it because terrorists.
1. Even if this machine only gives off radiation equivalent to, say, a dental X-ray, I still did not give my consent for it, whereas I did give my consent for the dental X-ray. Consent is important. There are a lot of things that are OK with someone's consent, but not OK otherwise, and we don't have the right to make these decisions for someone. 2. Medical X-rays have positive expected trade-offs for receiving the dose of radiation. Compare this to an X-ray police van than I happen to walk past; there's not really any argument that can be made for why my exposure to this X-ray radiation is worth it for me. 3. The machine can malfunction, or be used improperly, and give off substantially more X-ray radiation than expected or designed. Safeguards are in place for other uses of X-ray to protect against this, e.g. you wear a lead apron to protect the rest of your body during a dental X-ray, and the assistant taking the X-ray leaves the room entirely. Safeguards of these sort aren't possible with the presence of an unknowing public.
There's also of course the entire privacy aspect that we haven't even delved into yet, but the health issues alone are concerning.
That's because scientists who know about this sort of thing have repeatedly warned the public that it can kill you dead in a very scary manner.
It might not be approved by the FCC, but if it's equivalent to something that the FCC would allow you to carry around in your pocket anyway, it's hard to justify being upset these vans driving around from the perspective of being exposed unawares to their radiation.
There are a number of other reasons to be upset about such vans, though.
I didn't expect HN of all places to fall into "radiation sounds scary therefore its bad for you" line of thinking.
But since you challenge me - I shined the usual ~5mW red laser pointers many times straight into the eye, and had strangers shine them at me as well. It's annoying, but it doesn't hurt. My vision is ok. I'm totally fine.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pointer#Eye_injury.
then don't do it.
a.k.a. "I didn't ask because I knew you would say no".
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416066/how-terahertz-wa...
Tell us more about bananas...
But for the sake of argument Ill assume you just care about ionizing radiation (UV, Xray, Gamma, Neutron, etc). In that case I agree consent should be needed for medium to high dose. It's unfeasible to get the consent of everyone for low doses (x-ray machine x-rays can travel for miles and theoretically infinitely far).
In this case it appears the dose is only about that of eating a banana. Hard to argue you need to consent to that for radiation concerns unless you also agree that everyone should consent to every xray scan that every hospital executes, or every time your colleague brings in bananas to work. Privacy concern is valid though. Radiation one is just fear mongering if OP is correct.