[Skybird]

It seems that the latest systems do not need operators looking at the real video footage. The systems trigger an alarm all by themselves if they find something, then draw an artifical human figure on a screen with a symbolic markingat the location where the suspicious find is. Then the finger-search begins right there.

This would allow to dismiss any concerns about privacy and "naked scans" (in German they are indeed called "naked scanners", not body scanners). the pics we got used to showing skin silhouettes reminding of X-ray photographs are already a thing of the past with the new generation of systems.

However, I think that technology gets overestimated here. As I already said, the bad guys already have started to hide things inside their body. and in another thread somebody said - correctly, imo - that all this control stuff cannot compensate for human intelligence operations, human infilitration, human information gathering inside the networks of terror, in short: classical counter espionage and counter terrorism operation.

I find it ironic that in economic discussions time and again some people tell me how little politicians can be trusted to regulate financial business and the precious market in anglosaxon, classical understanding of capitalistic economy theory - but when it comes to giving these same politicians all the tools to x-ray society and private people, and giving them the tools that could be easily used to erect a totalitarian police state and an absolute control of the one and the many, and to sneakingly abandon basic, fundamental rights and freedoms - then there is surprisingly little criticism.

One could be lead to worrying cobclusions, when thinking about that. At least of one claims to stand up for "democracy" and "freedom". As far as I am concerned, I think that in the West "freedom of the individual" possibly gets massively overestimated even when it does a lot of damage to the interest of the community. We are as much off balance as is the Chinese society, maybe, with its prioritizing of state and collective and society. we are both extremists, but at different poles of the spectrum.

Maybe we should start thinking about models located somewhere inbetween the two.