Google Street View has caused a lot of consternation around the world.
However, even if they did “slurp your wi-fi,” they didn’t hit you with a backscatter x-ray as you drove down the street:
As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.
Perfect.
Check out the van in action:
Anyone remember this:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
But Duane, what about the motor vehicle exception?
Fine, let’s look at that. First off, there has to be probable cause to suspect contraband. These folks are just driving along the street in some of these scenes.
Secondly, what about this:
It is not lawful for the police in undertaking a warrantless search of an automobile to extend the search to the passengers therein.
Are they making these vans so that they don’t screen the people inside? No.
“It’s no surprise that goverments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”
AS&E’s Reiss counters privacy critics by pointing out that the ZBV scans don’t capture nearly as much detail of human bodies as their airport counterparts. The company’s marketing materials say that its “primary purpose is to image vehicles and their contents,” and that “the system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, sex or age of the person.”
Though Reiss admits that the systems “to a large degree will penetrate clothing,” he points to the lack of features in images of humans like the one shown at right, far less detail than is obtained from the airport scans. “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says.
Seems they violate the Fourth Amendment.
These things are fine for security on private property or government installations, where people have given consent for their property and persons to be searched, but to just have them driving down the street, peeping into people’s cars is a bad, bad idea.
