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You'll have to start showing your gonads when you go to the airport. You won't have to show them to the people standing next to you. But you'll have to show them to the Transportation Security Administration. You'll stand in front of a machine that sees through your clothes. It will capture every contour of your body and relay this picture to a screen in a nearby room. In that room, somebody who works for TSA will study the picture, including your gonads. They'll study your gonads because that's where bombers hide bombs.
More here.
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According to a photo posted by ABC News, the bomb allegedly smuggled on board Northwest Flight 253 last week was a packet of powder sewn into the bomber's underwear. Note the packet's location: right in the crotch, where a TSA pat-down is least likely to catch you.
How do you find a nonmetallic bomb tucked into such a private place? By looking right through the bomber's clothing with a naked-body scanner. Check out the Washington Post's analysis of the available technologies for spotting a bomb like this one. The far-right column, "whole-body imaging," looks like our best shot.
Human Nature explained the naked scanners two years ago and again this year. In this year's piece, I worried about the TSA abusing the scanners. Flight 253 is a reminder that we face bigger threats than the TSA.
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Should baseball teams be prohibited from DNA-testing prospective players?
Here's the background, provided by the New York Times:
Confronted with cases of identity and age falsification by Latin American baseball prospects, Major League Baseball is conducting genetic testing on some promising young players and their parents. Many experts in genetics consider such testing a violation of personal privacy. Federal legislation, signed into law last year and scheduled to take effect Nov. 21, prohibits companies based in the United States from asking an employee, a potential employee or a family member of an employee for a sample of their DNA.
It looks to me as though the tests should be allowed in this case, but with certain conditions.
1. You can test for contractual identity fraud, not necessarily for medical conditions. According to the Times,
Major League Baseball said that it used DNA testing in the Dominican Republic "in very rare instances and only on a consensual basis to deal with the identity fraud problem that the league faces in that country." The statement added that the results of the tests were not used for any other purpose. ... The DNA test does not reveal an age, but it can reveal whether the player is the son of his claimed parents. Players have been known to find families willing to lend a younger child's birth certificate so that a player can appear younger.
2. There has to be a prior evidentiary basis for suspecting fraud. In this case, there is. "Dozens of Latin American prospects in recent years have been caught purporting to be younger than they actually were as a way to make themselves more enticing to major league teams," says the Times. Several years ago, "more than 300 players in the major and minor leagues were found to have falsified their birthdates, according to Baseball America."
3. Less invasive verification methods must be tried first. Baseball investigators "look into whether prospects are being truthful about their identities and ages," the Times reports. "If those findings are inconclusive, the player is invited to clear up the concerns by providing a DNA sample from himself and his parents, according to [a league] official." And DNA isn't the only way to check your story against your body: "Some players have also had bone scans to be used in determining age range."
4. All testing and records must be controlled by an independent party. Here's where the league has to change its policy. When queried by the Times, "[a] spokesman for Major League Baseball declined to say how many players had been tested and whether the results were stored or destroyed." Furthermore, in at least one case, a prospective player says he "provided samples of his blood, urine and feces to Major League Baseball investigators so they could assess his DNA and any possible use of performance-enhancing drugs."
These practices won't cut it. DNA tests for identity fraud should be permitted precisely because they aren't tests for predicting future health. The two practices have to be kept separate. To guarantee this, any DNA sample or records that can be used to make inferences about health must be either destroyed or retained by an agent who is not under the control of the employer. The point isn't that employers are never entitled to information about health conditions. The point is that such information, if permitted, must be sought and approved separately.
It won't surprise me if these issues end up in the Supreme Court within the next few years. And it won't surprise me if the ruling includes these four conditions.
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The naked body scanners are taking over.
When we first checked in on them two years ago, the scanners, which see through clothing, were being deployed at a single airport. ... TSA assured us that the scanners would be used only as a "voluntary alternative" to "a more invasive physical pat-down during secondary screening." Only a few passengers, the ones selected for extra scrutiny, would face the scanners. The rest of us could walk through the metal detectors and board our planes.
Surprise! TSA has revised its position. Everyone will face the see-through machines. Anyone who objects will "undergo metal detector screening and a pat-down." Show us your body, or we'll feel you up.
More here.
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I'm now going to depict an adult and a minor having sex. The adult is represented by the character on the left. The minor is represented by the character on the right. Here is my depiction:
&i
Have I just committed a crime punishable by 10 years in jail?
Under a ruling issued last week in Australia, it's quite possible that I have. The ruling, issued by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, affirms that a cartoon can be prosecuted as child pornography. Here's the background of the case:
[T]he plaintiff was convicted ... of possessing child pornography contrary to s 91H(3) of the Crimes Act 1900 (the Act) and using his computer to access child pornography material contrary to s 474.19(1)(a)(i) of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (the Code). The alleged pornography comprised a series of cartoons depicting figures modelled on members of the television animated series "The Simpsons". Sexual acts are depicted as being performed, in particular, by the "children" of the family. The male figures have genitalia which is evidently human, as do the mother and the girl.
The Australian laws in question define child pornography as depictions of a "person" or depictions of "a representation of a person." A related memorandum says such definitions "are intended to cover all visual images, both still and motion, including representations of children, such as cartoons or animation." But even without the memorandum, the court says child pornography laws are in part "calculated to deter production of other material—including cartoons—that ... can fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children." Accordingly, "The depictions and representations of persons to which the definition refers include a drawing (or, for that matter, a model or sculpture) and, hence a cartoon, of a fictional character."
Does it matter that we're talking about the silly-looking Simpsons? No, says the court: "Even a substantial departure from realism will not necessarily mean that the depiction is not that of a person in this sense." The court upholds the initial ruling that the characters "were indeed depictions of persons" under the law. The convictions stand.
You have got to be kidding me.
Look: If you molest my kid, I'll see that you burn in hell. If you take a picture of my kid and Photoshop it so it looks like a sex act with you, I'll use any law I can find to put you away. If you make a sicko cartoon and digitally alter it so it looks like my kid, I'll throw the book at you. But if what you've made doesn't look like anyone's kid—if it's just a revolting mockery of the Simpsons—I'm supposed to convict you of child pornography? Really?
What's happening to child pornography is what's happening on the Internet and in software generally: Technology is blurring boundaries between action and thought, public and private, real and fake. On this point, the Australian court quotes the Supreme Court of Canada: "With the quality of contemporary technology, it can be very difficult to distinguish a 'real' person from a computer creation or composite." This gray area unnerves us, so we prosecute it. Two years ago, then-Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., was forced out of Congress for soliciting teenage boys online, though there's no evidence he ever touched a minor. This year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ban on sexual images of children even if they're computer-generated or nonexistent. Apparently, more people are now arrested for using the Internet to solicit cops posing as kids than for using it to initiate relationships with real kids.
I understand why we do this: We're afraid that if we don't prosecute cyber-perverts, they'll move on to the real thing. But the danger runs both ways. How far will we extend felony prosecution into the realm of the private, the fake, and the abstract? If the Simpsons count as child pornography, what's next?
Actually, the Australian court has answered that question. Under the relevant child pornography laws, says the court, "a stick figure ... might well depict a representation of a person. No bright line of inclusion or exclusion can be sensibly described."
Well, then, come and get me. If there's no boundary between real and fake, between people and "depictions of representations," then prosecute me for my stick figures. Or admit it's ridiculous—and an insult to the real thing.