Slashdot Mirror
Airport Security vs. Cyborg Steve Mann
CompaniaHill writes: "The New York Times (free reg, etc.) has a story on University of Toronto engineering-professor-turned-cyborg Steve Mann's recent run-in with humorless airport security. Apparently his preplanning and documents were sufficient to get him through the Toronto airport security on his way to St. John's in Newfoundland, but not sufficient to get him through the St. John's airport security on his way home. Two days later, after strip-searches, forced removal of implants and x-raying and other ill-handling of delicate hardware, he returned home in a wheelchair. Mann's lawyer is attempting to recover the cost of the $56,800 in damaged hardware, while his doctors are studying his body's response to the removal of the implants, some of which he has had for over twenty years."
That they destroyed his equipment and pulled off is electrodes was wrong, and they should be held accountable for this. No airport security agent should ever be unprofessional like that (which is why I support the federalization program currently in progress in the US). But the guy had to be inspected.
sulli
RTFJ.
Still not satisfied, the guards took him to a private room for a strip-search in which, he said, the electrodes were torn from his skin, causing bleeding, and several pieces of equipment were strewn about the room.
Man, that's not just bitter, that's just savage. I'm really disturbed just reading that. I feel that there is a lawsuit here based not only on equipment damage, but also on humiliation and emotional abuse. I mean, how can they possibly have the right to do that? I understand that you give up some civil liberties when there is suspicion at an airport, but those guards cannot cause you harm for no reason, I cannot believe they'd have that authority.
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With the possible exception of the X-ray issue, I point out that the bomb/drug-sniffing equipment is there for precisely that eventuality.
Let's give the drooling fucknozzle behind the counter the benefit of the doubt for a moment and think about what would have been reasonable.
At most, they should have stripped him to check where all the wires/electrodes went, and run the sniffer over each electrode to make sure nothing naughty was concealed beneath the electrode, nor anything else that didn't get X-Rayed.
Upon finding no explosives and no drugs, they should have let him put his clothes on and travel.
All of which is beside the point, which is that the goon should have started by reading the goddamn papers Prof. Mann was carrying, that authorized him to carry the gear on the flight.
(...and called his supervisor when he realized he couldn't understand the words with more than one syllable, and let the supervisor make the call.)
What if a person required such tools in order to move, breathe, or even think? Would this not be the equivalent to destroying an experimental respirator which has already been O.K.'ed by a doctor?
Don't get me wrong, NOT searching would leave the possibility for a person claiming to be sick to be used as a bomb - but to RIP electrodes from a person's skin is reactionary, cruel, if not downright monsterous.
They could have just denied him access to the plane instead.
Ryan Fenton
"Any old damn thing in the name of security"?
Let's think about this hypothetically. You're a security guard. Your job is to ensure that planes don't blow up. Six months ago thousands of people died because security failed, so there's pressure on you to be extremely careful.
So this guy shows up at your post and the metal detector goes off. The guy says he can explain, and pulls up his shirt to reveal wires all over his undershirt leading into a couple of boxes, also concealed underneath his clothing. He then helpfully informs you that he's a cyborg, and that he has a letter from his doctor.
Personally, if I was in this situation, I'd have two concerns. First, this guy's telling me he's a cyborg, which frankly gives me doubts about his mental stability. Second, he's got wires and batteries and all kinds of crap concealed under his clothing. Sure, he's telling me that it's a computer, but it looks like a bomb to me. The boxes are screwed shut, so I can't see what's inside them, and he won't let me run it through the X-ray. These are also custom boxes that look like no computer I've ever seen.
Now, how're you going to determine the truth of the matter? I seriously doubt a security guard is keeping up on the state of wearable computing, so you're not going to recognize Steve Mann. Mann's got a note from his doctor and other documentation about this equipment, but you have no reason to think that these documents are credible. Maybe you call your boss to see if he knows anything about this, and more likely than not your boss hasn't been informed, because the message has been lost in the corporate fog. Or maybe he has been informed, but he's in the bathroom and you can't get him on the phone.
So you're standing there at the checkpoint, with a man in front of you whom you have many reasons to believe might be wearing a bomb, and you have only his word that it's a computer.
I don't think anyone in this situation would just let him hop on the plane. Maybe you disagree, and that's fine. But in that case I sure hope you aren't working in airport security.
Monkeytreats
I just saw a 90 minute film on Steve Mann called Cyberman at SXSW in Austin, basically he has for about 20 years now hooked up a camera and video screen to his glasses. I believe his setup can now zoom, playback and bring up a crude command line prompt, he also has a single hand keyboard for input, and yes he walks around with this all the time. He also has renegade antennas setup around his city to stream video from his head to the web.
However a few times they showed him going into retailers like walmart and gap with a consumer video camera (just to start shit). When an employee asks him to not bring the video camera in, he starts being a little smart ass about it. like "Well don't you have video cameras in here, why can you video tape me and I can't video tape you", "What if I told you that my glasses we're a video camera, would that be ok?". generally not agreeing with the store and making a jackass out of himself.
I also saw him take off his glasses constantly, he would slip them off to do something, then put them back to walk around (then look around like a space cadet ), but it did not seem that he was in any way disoriented without his gear. So I don't buy that all of a sudden once his stuff was busted up by the security guards (which we're just trying to do there freakin job) that he started bumping into things, or at least not more then normally.
I think what happened at the airport is that for "I'm cyberman" reasons he opted to keep his gear on, got shit from the security guards, proceeded to be a complete smartass while thinking, "if they fuck with me, I have it all on film", but when they broke his gear and is alibi that's when he really god pissed. I'm sure he was already expecting shit, but maybe hoping he could have covert footage of it to show the 8 o-clock news as well.
-Jon
this is my sig.
Or would you hijack a terminal and fly it into a plane? I don't know...
Personally I'm convinced this is the most absurd crap I've heard in a long time (not your comments, I mean the whole security-at-airports thing.) I went through Boston Logan a few weeks ago, which has taken the stunning step of outfitting its security people in militaristic uniforms as its first defense against evil terrorists. Right.
And as I accidentally forgot to take my watch off before I went through the metal detector, I got subjected to the full search. Have the wand waved over you, take your shoes off, be patted down several times, shoes going through X-ray, etc. This pointless charade was made a little more bearable by the fact they were similarly tormenting some woman in her seventies next to me - they obviously were searching anyone.
And I put my shoes on, wandered to the bar, got myself a pint of Sam Adams, served in a plastic glass because, well, those nasty terrorists could abuse cans... and pondered in how many ways I could have circumvented security right then.
A shard of glass in my hair would have gone unnoticed. Probably would have in my luggage too. But the kicker I thought was the stuff that's clearly not a weapon that could have been in my bag ready to be turned into one. Have you ever taken an empty Cola can and ripped it in half? Makes a "box cutter" look like something you'd let a three year old play with doesn't it? Can you see Boston Logan security telling anyone to get rid of the can of cola in their luggage?
The solution has been staring everyone in the face since 9/11, and nobody wants to do it because, geez, we'd have to add $10 to every airticket, and that's taxation, and everyone hates taxes right? It's the air marshall system - put an armed guard on every flight, well trained, no nonsense, plain clothed for what extra security that gives. And while you're at it, train the crews.
But instead we go for crap like this - we search everyone, uselessly, pointlessly, invasively. Some go through saying that, gosh, they feel so darned safe now! And the rest of us go through counting the number of weapons we could have sneaked through. And the terrorists... well, if a complete idiot can see how to get semtex on board a plane, and by all accounts, the individual who did just that last Christmas was just that, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out what the future entails.
The only reason we haven't had a hijacking since 9/11 is because the terrorists know that the passengers of any plane hijacked will gladly give their lives to get the plane out of the hands of the hijackers. They learnt that forty-five minutes into their first attempt, over Pennsylvania. No amount of extra scanning, body searches, and roughed up suspects, will make a difference when the terrorists strike next, only whether the terrorists believe they can get away with it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Letters from doctors and airlines mean nothing. Their pieces of paper that are easily forged.
No rational security guard or "manager" doing their jobs would have the knowledge or authority to make the kind of exceptions to security procedures that this guy expected.
I am highly concerned he was let through Pearson security so easily. Ripped from his skin? Disoriented and couldn't walk straight? Half a million dollars of equipment? Whatever. Cyborg? If it is that bad, he should not have been flying, not without a Transport Canada ruling, like are needed for other highly exceptional circumstances.
Give me a break. The "article" as well as the Slashdot lead in all sound *HIGHLY* one sided.
I give this side of the story a credibility rating of 2 out of 10, and the possibility that Professor Steve Mann is a pompous jackass a 7 out of 10. That the people in St. Johns did their job as we've requested them to do? 8 out of 10, losing points for putting his video glasses in with the baggage and not keeping track of his possessions.
You forget, this is Canada. You have no rights.
The only reason it's not a playground for fascist
butchers is that they're all acting like Doug and
Dave MacKenzie.
Now in the U.S., you'd get the twice the brutality,
but you would have the comfort of knowing that it
was illegal, although of course no court in the land
would give a flying wahoo about that.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
You're right, but only half right. I wouldn't
expect him to be able to just walk through security, for exactly the reasons you describe.
The $10 an hour guy can't make that decision.
The problem his the report clearly states he
spent two days escalating to many
non-$10 an hour people who at some point should
have been able to verify his story, and figure out
a way to get him on the plane.
Let's also be real here, what terrorist is
going to spend two days escalting up the food
chain to hijack a plane.
The thing that concerns me the most here is
the lack of consistency. Anyone who travels has
seen this for years, both pre and post 9/11.
He had no major issues in one airport, and major
problems in another. If we're going to have
security, there should at least be an expectation
that if you were able to fly somewhere you can
return in the same state, and that's far from
the case.
Military doctrine is set based on the expected threat.
Before 9/11 the US doctrine towards hijackings was to cooperate, get the plane on the ground, then negotiate. Needless to say, no one ever anticipated that particularly horrific use of airplanes (mainly most people felt that training a pilot for a one shot mission was silly).
Since then, airports and airplanes have been slowly attempting to adapt to this new "reality" and are trying to make it more difficult to get weapons on board to prevent a hijacking.
They are NOT trying to prevent a random/terrorist nut job who decides to walk into an airport and start shooting. (Just look at the Arrivals area of ANY airport and you see that there is little to no control of the entrance/exit.)
Rome and Istanbul *ARE* worried about terrorist/freedom fighters/seperatist groups that want to shoot a whole bunch of people. Because of this they have different doctrine.
Personally, I'd hate to see someone trying to use an M16 to stop a single individual. Automatic weapons are designed for filling a space with a lot of lead, not for target shooting. (Ask any Army person about "grazing fire".)
So, they're trying to adjust to the new threat and are slowly coming up with ideas that will work.
BTW - The possibility of another incident like 9/11 is almost nill. The whole operation depended completely on the element of surprise, the fact that the fourth plane failed once the passengers knew what has happening shows the difficulty of pulling off such an action.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
The solution really seems quite simple, and it's definitely not the one they chose:
Don't allow him to board the plane yet, get him to stay for some days until management can confirm his documentation (call the universities, for example), then personally oversee his boarding the plane a couple of days later, after a reasonable, non-intrusive search.
Don't they have to do something like this when someone with special needs of medical attention/equipment needs to travel anyway?
If the guy happens to be famous enough to appear on the media, you might want to pay for the hotel and new airplane ticket just like when the airlines resell your ticket. But that's strictly a PR move.
Most likely, he takes charge of the extra expense on his trip, security takes charge of the extra expense of making a couple of phone calls and personally overseeing him for 20 minutes when he finally boards the plane.
No strip search, no destroyed equipment, little wasted time for other passengers and most likely no lawsuits.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...