This is the Shared Security Weekly Blaze for August 27, 2018 sponsored by Security Perspectives – Your Source for Tailored Security Awareness Training and Assessment Solutions and Silent Pocket. This episode was hosted by Tom Eston. Listen to this episode and previous ones direct via your web browser by clicking here!
Show Transcript
This is your Shared Security Weekly Blaze for August 27th 2018 with your host, Tom Eston. In this week’s episode: New TSA Body Scanners, Back to School Cybersecurity, and Instagram Hacking.
The Shared Security Podcast is sponsored by Silent Pocket. With their patented Faraday cage product line of phone cases, wallets and bags you can block all wireless signals which will make your devices instantly untrackable, unhackable, and undetectable. Visit silent-pocket.com for more details.
Hi everyone, this is Tom Eston, Co-host of the Shared Security podcast. Welcome to the Shared Security Weekly Blaze where we update you on the top 3 security and privacy topics from the week. These weekly podcasts are published every Monday and are 15 minutes or less quickly giving you “news that you can use”.
The city of Los Angeles California in partnership with the US Transportation and Security Administration jointly announced that the city of Los Angeles is purchasing body scanners that will be used to screen metro riders. This new body scanning technology will be used to help detect weapon and explosive device security threats on one of the largest public transportation systems in the US. The Los Angeles metro system is also the first transportation agency in the nation to purchase such equipment. The technology is similar to what is used at airports, called millimeter wave technology, but does not emit radiation and no anatomical body images are displayed. What makes this type of scanner technology different is that these work off of your body heat and can detect objects that are hidden when heat waves are blocked. The other big difference is that metro passengers just need to walk by the scanners and not stop to line up like you normally would going through airport security. The other advantage is that the devices are portable, meaning, they can be moved to a different area of a public transportation system if needed.
This news reminded of a scene from the 1990 movie “Total Recall” with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. There was a scene where passengers in the movie walked through a security system that was essentially an “x-ray” of their body. Skeletons of passenger bodies were displayed as security personnel observed passengers to detect weapons that might be coming into the transportation system. Back in 1990, most people watching that scene must have felt a little uneasy and concerned about the privacy ramifications of such invasive security technology. Funny that this was just a pipe dream back in 1990, but now, very much a reality 28 years later. Given the security climate since 9/11, this technology shouldn’t really be a surprise anyone. Come full circle, privacy concerns are still very real today. In fact, there have been many cases of the TSA screening passengers inappropriately and abusing technology like this by violating passengers privacy all in the name of “keeping us all safer”. Let’s hope that when this new scanning technology rolls out across the US, and I would assume across most of the world, we continue to hold the people in charge of these systems accountable to ensure our privac
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