Brian Williams MSNBC Bullshit Report: Claims scan machines really do see everything

2 Much Tribulation

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Thu Jan-07-10 07:01 PM
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Brian Williams MSNBC Bullshit Report: Claims scan machines really do see everything

Edited on Thu Jan-07-10 07:14 PM by 2 Much Tribulation

After a "demonstration" of a full body scan by a reporter using a human model wearing fake weapons, a plastic butter knife, facsimile plastic explosives of some unspecified kind, and a baggie filled with flour with the full body scanner claimed to show them all of these terra threats, the camera cut to anchor-dude Brian Williams, and he says he is (close paraphrase by me, transcript not available to me)

"...sensitive to the fact that there are a lot of families out there, but we want to say that this machine really does SHOW EVERYTHING."

I call BULLSHIT on Brian Williams and MS/NBC.

This is a sophisticated misleading of people, because the sensitivity Williams is invoking has an unclear referent (no matter what textual parsing might show, it's TAKEN this way by viewers), by "show everything" he could be referring just to the gonads and so forth, and he could also be heavily reinforcing the demonstration with the model, which did not fail to find any weapon. Except for the few who analyze this, it's both on the subconscious level of meaning, even though conscious analysis of "show everything" suggests the reference to showing gonads is slightly stronger, one can definitely not exclude the meaning that it shows everything in the sense of all weapons, all body parts, and does so with such clarity they can't show it all on a family show.

As Thom Hartmann pointed out a couple days ago, full body scanning machine will not detect a pound, or more, or less, of plastic explosives shoved up some bodily orifice, and the world has already seen a real A-hole bomber blow himself to smithereens around Saudi Arabia in an airplane - that's already a big step ahead of the Underwear bomber.

Do you think MSNBC could do free advertising for the corporations selling body cavity search machines? Those would come closer to "seeing everything" - but ultimately nothing's going to stop a surgically implanted bomb which wouldn't be detected by either of these existing machines.

The only useful inference from MS/NBC is their reference to the blurring the face of the model. No matter what the "safety" features or claimed limitations of full body scans are regarding facial features, there's one thing that's guaranteed about full body scans:

Without any doubt whatsoever, even if they have to be faked, a market will develop (perhaps a black market) for full body scan images claimed to be those of famous folks. And TSA/Homeland Security people at airports will be underpaid or disgruntled or horny enough to do it. Especially after a few months of commanding everyone to pirouette slowly in front of them and then seeing their nekkid bodies in the other room. Repetition does things to the brain.

I guarantee it will happen, I just can't guarantee who will start sharing or selling the images, fake or real, on the internet or elsewhere.

I can't guarantee these Microsoft-NBC (MSNBC) advertised scanners will run on Windows - but I have a suspicion.

Brian Williams MSNBC Bullshit Report: Claims scan machines really do see everything

"...sensitive to the fact that there are a lot of families out there, but we want to say that this machine really does SHOW EVERYTHING."

What level of false security do we want to pay for, today?