LA Times:TSA ends contract with Rapiscan, maker of full-body scanners
Jan 20, 2013, 11:22 pm
#91
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There is an obvious explanation here. L-3 offered them more money.
Jan 21, 2013, 5:45 am
#92
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They keep calling ATR "privacy software" as if that was its purpose. But it's not - ATR stand for Automated Target Recognition, which is a fancy 3D version of the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software you find with many desktop scanners. OCR looks at a scanned image and detects shapes that it thinks resemble letters, then outputs a text file with those letters in it, creating an editable text document. OCR has been around for 20 years or more, and is getting pretty good, though it's still pretty glitchy.
ATR does something similar; it examines the raw scan returns from a MMW scanner, and notes any returns that don't match the "expected" return values. In theory, this means that any scan return that doesn't match human skin is noted, and an alert is put up on the Gumby panel in the corresponding portion of the anatomy. In reality, the ATR software leads to far higher rates of false positives than a human operator, because the human operator would be able to tell by the shape, in most cases, whether someone has their ID and BP in their pocket, while the ATR simply flags it as an anomoly which must be resolved.
In practice, the higher number of false positives don't seem to be slowing the process down, since there is no shunting to the penalty box to wait for an Opt-Out Specialist to arrive from the airport coffee shop; ATR anomolies are resolved (mostly) with targeted area pat-downs that aren't as invasive or time-consuming as a full-body grope, and are performed by the machine operators right there at the exit.
It's a definite improvement over the original NoS, but I still hate the fact that false positives subject so many people to these target-area gropes.
ATR does something similar; it examines the raw scan returns from a MMW scanner, and notes any returns that don't match the "expected" return values. In theory, this means that any scan return that doesn't match human skin is noted, and an alert is put up on the Gumby panel in the corresponding portion of the anatomy. In reality, the ATR software leads to far higher rates of false positives than a human operator, because the human operator would be able to tell by the shape, in most cases, whether someone has their ID and BP in their pocket, while the ATR simply flags it as an anomoly which must be resolved.
In practice, the higher number of false positives don't seem to be slowing the process down, since there is no shunting to the penalty box to wait for an Opt-Out Specialist to arrive from the airport coffee shop; ATR anomolies are resolved (mostly) with targeted area pat-downs that aren't as invasive or time-consuming as a full-body grope, and are performed by the machine operators right there at the exit.
It's a definite improvement over the original NoS, but I still hate the fact that false positives subject so many people to these target-area gropes.
Jan 21, 2013, 8:20 am
#93
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The exact wording of the statement from Bloomberg is fascinating. TSA have some sort of contractual arrangement with three companies, not necessarily the same arrangement for all three, and it's for new machines which "must have" (implied future tense) privacy software.
What it does NOT say is that TSA have agreed to purchase/deploy scanners from all three companies. Nor does it say that all three companies have scanners now which meet TSA's requirements.
What it does NOT say is that TSA have agreed to purchase/deploy scanners from all three companies. Nor does it say that all three companies have scanners now which meet TSA's requirements.
*IF* the government has done that with this contract, then the language is fully understandable.
Again, I don't know whether this contract is written that way, it may or may not be, but the language seems to conform with that kind of deal.
(It's also possible that the management of TSA is dumber than a bag of hair, and still believes that the x-ray scanner is harmless and can be made to work with ATR. I'm not discounting this option.)
Jan 21, 2013, 11:26 am
#94
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I have to laugh when I see an 'anomaly' detected on bare skin (someone's elbow, for example, or on someone's face), and the groper looks and still feels it necessary to touch the area indicated.
Last edited by chollie; Jan 21, 2013 at 11:34 am
Jan 21, 2013, 4:36 pm
#95
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