SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A government surplus vendor has Rapiscan Backscatter Body scanners listed for sale on ebay. The price - just $8K. Brand new they were $160K. These are the same units that were affectionately dubbed "porno scanners" before the TSA bowed to public pressure and yanked them out of commission. You might remember Rapiscan as the company that hired former Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff as a way to guarantee their place at the trough full of sweet, sweet tax dollars.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
belief, n:
Something you do not believe.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday December 06 2014, @04:58PM
As noted in TFS, the guy making the decision to buy the things, then-DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, just happened to have a financial stake in the company who made them. That I'm sure had nothing to do with the fact that we paid millions of dollars for machines that were useless at best, criminal at worst.
In a just world, Chertoff would be up on corruption charges right now. But it's abundantly clear these days we don't live in anything remotely approaching a just world.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 06 2014, @06:17PM
Actually Chertoff left the DHS before the decision to purchase the pornoscanners was made. But his connections to the agency clearly made it easy to close the deal.