GLOBAL POLITICAL AWAKENING: Big Sis Caught Lying To American People

Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano, now forever known as Big Sis – a reference to George Orwell’s 1984 – has been caught telling some big lies in an attempt to quell an enormous public backlash against the full body scanning technology and invasive pat-down procedures that have been implemented by the TSA in airports nationwide.
In a blatant propaganda piece published by USA Today, Napolitano describes the scanning machines as safe and the pat-downs as “discreet”, in the face of a flood of complaints from scientists, pilots, flight attendants, privacy groups, parents, Muslim groups and everyday passengers, all rebelling against over the top security.
“AIT machines are safe, efficient, and protect passenger privacy.” Napolitano writes in an article in which every single claim she makes can be easily disproved and revealed to be outright lies.
Lie: The scanners are safe
“They have been independently evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who have all affirmed their safety.” Napolitano claims, expecting the public to simply swallow the claim that NIST and the FDA are somehow “independent” of the federal government.
As for Johns Hopkins University declaring the scanners safe, tell it to Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at the Johns Hopkins school of medicine. Love told AFP two days ago that “statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays”.
“…we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner,” he added.
So, unless you count skin cancer as safe, Napolitano is lying to you.
According to other numerous real “independent” scientists who continue to speak out over the health hazards associated with the x-ray technology, the body scanners are far from safe.
John Sedat, a University of California at San Francisco professor of biochemistry and biophysics and member of the National Academy of Sciences tells CNet that the machines have “mutagenic effects” and will increase the risk of cancer. Sedat previously sent a letter to the White House science Czar John P. Holdren, identifying the specific risk the machines pose to children and the elderly.
The letter stated:
“it appears that real independent safety data do not exist… There has not been sufficient review of the intermediate and long-term effects of radiation exposure associated with airport scanners. There is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations.”
The TSA has repeatedly stated that going through the machines is equal to the radiation encountered during just two minutes of a flight. However, this does not take into account that the scanning machines specifically target only the skin and the muscle tissue immediately beneath.
The scanners are similar to C-Scans and fire ionizing radiation at those inside which penetrates a few centimeters into the flesh and reflects off the skin to form a naked body image.
The firing of ionizing radiation at the body effectively “unzips” DNA, according to scientific research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The research shows that even very low doses of X-ray can delay or prevent cellular repair of damaged DNA, yet pregnant women and children will be subjected to the process as new guidelines including scanners are adopted.
The Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety concluded in their report on the matter that governments must justify the use of the scanners and that a more accurate assessment of the health risks is needed.
Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, according to the report, adding that governments should consider “other techniques to achieve the same end without the use of ionizing radiation.”
“The Committee cited the IAEA’s 1996 Basic Safety Standards agreement, drafted over three decades, that protects people from radiation. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,”reported Bloomberg.
Scientists at Columbia University also entered the debate recently, warning that the dose emitted by the naked x-ray devices could be up to 20 times higher than originally estimated, likely contributing to an increase in a common type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma which affects the head and neck.
“If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with X-rays then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk. The population risk has the potential to be significant,” said Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University’s centre for radiological research.
Lie: The scanners are effective
“…the weapons and other dangerous and prohibited items we’ve found during AIT screenings have illustrated their security value time and again.” Napolitano claims in her propaganda piece.
In reality, the machines would not have prevented the Christmas Day bomber from boarding Flight 253, according to their designers, and other security experts who have dismissed the devices as “useless”.
The imaging machines cannot even detect explosive material, so claiming, as Napolitano does, that they are “our best defense against such threats” is misleading at best and at worst a complete lie.
If the machines had detected “dangerous items” “time and again”, rest assured that the DHS and the TSA would make sure it was all over the news – such success stories have been decidedly absent from the media, unless you count “dangerous items” as baby milk, tubes of toothpaste or contact lens fluid.
The idea that the machines are effective flies in the face of the viewpoint of surveillance experts who note that the scanners will do nothing to make air travel safer.
Lie: The scanners cannot store/print/transmit images
At first we were asked to believe that the imaging machines did not produce crisp images of naked bodies.
In an effort to downplay the intrusion of privacy they really represent, the TSA routinely claimed that the images produced by the scanners are “ghostly” or “skeletal”.
The passenger’s face is blurred and the image as a whole “resembles a fuzzy negative,” the TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee told the media last year, prior to the underwear bombing attempt.
After months of researchers, reporters and everyday travelers outing this as a complete lie, the DHS/TSA abandoned that approach and instead claimed that, although they were detailed naked images, it’s fine and dandy because they cannot be saved or transmitted.
“The imaging technology that we use cannot store, export, print or transmit images.” Napolitano claims in her latest propaganda piece.
Again not true. As we have previously detailed, the images that show in detail the naked genitals of men, women and children that have passed through the scanners can be transmitted and printed.
As reported by Declan McCullagh of CNET earlier this year, “The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.”


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