{"id":5264,"date":"2011-03-09T17:45:07","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T17:45:07","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T17:45:07","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5264","title":{"rendered":"Mobile backscatter machines coming to a street near you"},"content":{"rendered":"

DHS Conducts \u2018Drive-by\u2019 Surveillance. What\u2019s Next? The government flouts the Fourth Amendment in the name of security<\/a>, by Annie Jacobsen, describing Homeland Security’s contracts for mobile backscatter machines already used at airports and by Customs in ports and border crossings to inspect vehicles parked on the street.<\/p>\n

Now, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, has made public a series of government contracts that reveal that the Department of Homeland Security has been paying millions of dollars to develop and implement several radical programs that allow for an even broader, even spookier form of covert surveillance, namely \u201cdrive-by\u201d surveillance from innocuous looking vans. In its own words this allows the Department of Homeland Security to conduct \u201ccovert inspection of moving subjects,\u201d which includes people, places, and things.<\/p>\n

According to a former Homeland Security officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity, DHS has been conducting this \u201cdrive-by\u201d surveillance of American citizens since at least 2007, using a technologically advanced vehicle called a Z Backscatter Van, or ZBV for short. The corporation that makes the surveillance van, American Science and Engineering Inc. (AS&E), received a $17.5 million service contract from the U.S. government for the ZBVs in the winter of 2007.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system\u2019s unique \u2018drive-by\u2019 capability allows one or two operators to conduct X-ray imaging of suspect vehicles and objects while the ZBV drives past,\u201d says AS&E on its website. \u201cThe ZBV can also be operated in stationary mode by parking the system and producing X-ray images of vehicles as they pass by,\u201d it adds. Screening can also be performed remotely while the system is parked. \u201cThe system is unobtrusive, as it maintains the outward appearance of an ordinary van,\u201d says AS&E.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is not new. See my post from August 25, 2010 about a piece on Prison Planet<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}