By Darryl W. Perry
Chair, Boston Tea Party National Committee

In July I wrote, “As long as a government is able to “get away” with “minor” intrusions such as traffic cameras and airport body scanners; they will try to get away with greater intrusions of privacy and greater violations of our guaranteed protection from “unreasonable searches and seizures.””

Now Forbes reports, “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.

It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)

“It’s no surprise that governments 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.”

Rotenberg says that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” he says. Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure, he points out. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.””

It seems AS&E as well as DHS and many other government agencies are of the philosophy “Why object to surveillance if you have nothing to hide?” Digital Meeting Center reports, “Law enforcement agencies in America are getting an “upgrade”: Minority Report style computer programs which are able to predict who is going to commit a crime before it happens.”

When you add this new “pre-crime” technology and technology such as SigardTM to the Z Backscatter Vans and NSA’s warrantless wiretapping ability – the “land of the free”is becoming “one nation under surveillance.”

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In Peace, Freedom, Love & Liberty,
Darryl W. Perry
Chair Boston Tea Party National Committee

http://BostonTea.us

Managing Editor Free Patriot Press

http://FreePatriot-Press.com

2016 candidate for President of the United States of America

http://dwp2016.org