© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

The Obama GrabTM

Everyone surely knows the whole body naked-scanning machines that TSA rushed into service at airports around the country immediately after the mid-term elections. These days they are impossible to miss while traveling.

If one were to wonder if safety was forgotten in the rush to field the machines as quickly as possible, here’s some food for thought:

• Boston TSA employees seem to be experiencing a higher than average rate of skin cancer¹
• FDA has not tested the full body scanners for safety²
• NIST has not tested the full body scanners for safety³
• additional action was recommended by the Johns Hopkins University to avoid exceeding the general public dose recommendation of 100 mrem per year⁴
• the units have areas where beam overshoot will expose bystanders to repeated doses; protective shields were recommended, but seem to not have been implemented⁵
• the systems were never studied for their cancer inducing properties using standard methods such as mutant mice⁶
• the often quoted comparison between cosmic background radiation received during flight and the scanning machines is inaccurate, because the energy levels of the radiation are orders of magnitude different⁷
• the dose estimations are likely to be inaccurate (too low), because the energy levels used concentrate more of the radiation in and near the skin, causing localized doses much higher than the “full body average”⁸

To be fair, the FDA responded to some of these issues⁹. Strangely, in the lengthy response nowhere does the FDA state that it studied the systems itself, or that the FDA has determined the systems to be safe. The response made reference to third party safety studies, but not only were these studies not performed on behalf of the FDA on the systems themselves, some of them pointed out issues that had not been addressed by the TSA¹⁰.

Further, a key study made by JHU was heavily redacted, making independent verification impossible. Not to mention that the characterization of the third party evaluations was at best questionable, as the FDA claimed NIST had provided “safety data”, when NIST states that it didn’t test the units for safety¹¹.

And last but not least, in a response to the FDA, it seems that the JHU report was inconsistent and in fact implies that the primary radiation was measured in a manner that provided a lower than actual reading¹².

Perhaps we should all just drive a car or resign ourselves to the Obama Grab^TM until we can all vote out the Dear Leader and his gang that brought us this multi-billion dollar skin cancer experiment.

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Central Intelligence Agency

The unintentional release of a confidential Transportation Security Administration (TSA) document by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “outed” a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program known as Worldwide Operations Meet and Assist Program (WOMAP) less than two weeks ago.¹

WOMAP is an interesting program, as it was not publicly known before the release. For example, Google showed no CIA related hits for WOMAP prior to the unintentional release.

Naturally over the past two weeks a large number of amateur and professional “investigators” have attempted to figure out what WOMAP really means.² As would be expected in the era of Google searching, without Internet leads little new information has been forthcoming.

While the CIA has not acknowledged WOMAP, and obviously is not responding to any inquiries, here are a few known facts and theories:

Q: What is WOMAP?

A: Unknown.

The program description in the TSA document includes terminology such as “foreign dignitaries” and their families.

It stands to reason that since this program allows bypassing of security by CIA personnel and whoever they may be with, it is a method for moving individuals by commercial transport in and out of the country without leaving an ordinary trace of the event when completing immigration and customs formalities. This also allows WOMAP participants to carry articles with them that might otherwise be prohibited.

Since the CIA also needs to accomplish the same goals when using private aircraft, it’s plausible that immigration and customs agencies have similar WOMAP-exception instructions, both for arrivals and departures.

A tongue in cheek interpretation of the WOMAP program is that it’s designed to allow US visits for Afghan warlords who might otherwise refuse to do so, as they ordinarily could not bring their favorite AK47 to sleep with at night.

Q: How long has WOMAP been in existence?

A: Unknown.

The apparent nature of the program doesn’t seem to dictate any particular time when it was created, however the tightening of border security after September 11 encourages the interpretation that it was launched to provide an official framework for bypassing security after September 11. Assuming WOMAP was not in place until September 11, it would mean that prior to that time an informal WOMAP-like program was utilized.

Q: What agency is involved with WOMAP?

A: According to the TSA documents, only CIA personnel is authorized for WOMAP transactions with the TSA.

Q: How does WOMAP work?

A: The TSA document states that CIA must notify TSA by email prior to a screening event, unless there’s less than 24 hours notice, in which case “verbal” (presumably this means “oral”) permission is acceptable. TSA is required to check the CIA badge and driver’s license (or other government issued ID) of the CIA escort.

We’ll provide additional details as they become available.

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

CIA Badge

What terrorist needs an intelligence gathering operation when it has the Department of Homeland Security doing what it does best: screwing up?

This time DHS decided to post a sensitive document — apparently not classified, but sensitive — online, detailing airport screening procedures, titled “Screening Management Standard Operating Procedures“.¹

While the contents of the document for the most part are obvious, it makes the search for potential exploits somewhat easier and less risky for a budding terrorist.

On the other hand, security through obscurity is never as secure as something that has been openly vetted. Perhaps DHS will now have the benefit of independent opinion on how to make their procedures better, though it remains to be seen how open DHS and TSA are to unsolicited input and opinions.

CIA WOMAP

For curiosity value the document details the existence of a CIA program known as the Worldwide Operational Meet and Assist Program (WOMAP).²

It’s unclear what the program is, as a standard Google search only had 9 hits, all of them after the SOP document was released.³ In any case, it’s likely the program will be renamed no later than next week.

The manual is also much clearer about what can be taken through security and what can’t. Naturally this list might change, but it reflects the status as of June 30, 2008.

Hazardous Materials

Update 1

It seems the document was first published by the The Wandering Aramean.⁴

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.