Slashdot Mirror
Congress to Test Air Screening Program
unassimilatible writes "The Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday it will order airlines to turn over passengers' personal records in the next couple of months to test a computerized passenger screening program that could keep dangerous people off airlines, reports Yahoo/AP. The Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, would rank all air passengers according to the likelihood of their being terrorists. Suspected terrorists and violent criminals would be designated as red and forbidden to fly. Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening. The vast majority would be designated green and allowed through routine screening. But some say the project would violate privacy rights, while others are concerned it would cost the private sector too much money. The Air Transport Association, the trade group for major airlines, has come up with seven 'privacy principles' that it says the government should follow in implementing CAPPS II."
GO!
Would anything like this be possiable today if it wasn't for the Patriot Act because that does allow the police to have new priviliges and it does limit somethings like Freedom of speec ...
This signature was left intentionally blank.
Does this not open the door for racial discrimination? I would suppose that one wouldn't NEED documents to do this, but with a colour rating being put in place, it would be rather easy to put anyone with, say, iranian parents on a code orange warning.
Is this going to be similar to the screening policies that have old grannies being detained for possible terror threats? What gets me is what's going to happen when someone innocent is labeled as the uber-terrorist by this new system...there better be a nice little compensation package for those folks. Oh wait, we as the rest of the consumers will have to pay for both the system AND the compensation. Well, fancy that.
The dontspyon.us site is chock full of info about CAPPS II, TIA, etc.
This is double plus good, citizen!
No problems for me or my brown-skinned and turbanned brothers then?
Abdul Asif Hussein
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
"Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening."
:)
It just goes to show you should never rock the boat at an airport (or border crossing).
Crime, behavior, and religion are all personal choices that you must live with. If you choose to associate yourself with those who are known to be unsafe through your actions, then I, as an airline passenger, demand that you be investigated before boarding what is essentially a guided missile.
In this day and age where some elements of society have proven that they cannot be trusted with the freedom that has been so generously bestowed upon all American citizens, it is incumbent upon all of us to stamp out those elements. Whether we are the security guard performing the search or an innocent passenger cooperating with a guard, it is important to understand that these steps are taken to ensure safety.
I have been pwned because my
Wow - ask a question, get "reclassified" as more of a security risk. Sounds a bit McCarthyist . . .
Fast, cheap & reliable. Pick two.
I'm probably the only one who thinks this kind of thing is a reasonable, measured, fair response to new threats. The majority of you clowns will whine something about "eroding civil rights" while never, ever, suggesting a better approach to fixing the problem.
I dont know about anybody else, but as much as I dont like people invading my privacy, I would rather not be on a plane with a criminal.
I think that things like violent crimes and terrorist actions should be looked at when deciding who can fly. It's not the airlines fault that a person broke the law and might consider doing so again.
Now the problem is that these 7 "privacy principles" are probably not going to actually limit any of these types of people from getting on an airplane.
Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening
"Am I incorrectly inferring that if I voluntarily submit to a full body cavity search I get to go straight through to my seat?"
-Goatse guy
Am I the only one who read that as, "rubber glove and a handful of vaseline"?
You better hope the goverment doesn't find out about}&..}=3Dr}'}"}[NO CARRIER]
I would think that the "violent criminal" bit could be unconstitutional. This is assuming that they're refering to ex-cons; I don't think that a wanted violent criminal would be given a red flag, rather they'd have the police called on them.
The denial of access to public accomidations was refuted in terms of both gender and race. I know that it's constitutional to disallow felons sufferage, but I don't think that you can do much more to them (save monitoring them).
I think even Rhenquist and Scalia would be against this legislation.
Hit them where it hurts: don't fly. If you really want to stand up, then sit down. tell your favorite airline that you aren't flying until they promise passenger privacy. If you feel REAL civic, write your congresscritter and tell them, too. Money talks, and if enough "consumers" do this, someone will start/reform an airline to respect the rights of Those Who Pay The Bills.
What's that knocking? ^H^H^H^H NO CARRIER
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
But some say the project would violate privacy rights, while others are concerned it would cost the private sector too much money.
Reasonable people could argue those points if the damn thing could work, but it can't. (For discussion see this interesting paper.) And since it cannot be effective, it is complete foolishness to even consider this massive invasion of citizen privacy, not to mention waste so much money!
Time to stop using your Bank of Tehran MASTERCARD that has been accruing frequent flier bonuses.
Or start using your first and middle name and lose the ethnic surname of your immigrant grandparents.
--
All aboard Amtrak!
Everybody's has two columns, good and bad counts, next to your profile based on your personal conduct records reported by anybody who has had contact with you.
Then in a pool of passenger they do a Bayensian formulae to determine if that particular flight has a probability of terrorism, based on all passengers. To cut down the processing time, they'll only pick the 15 most interesting passengers with either the highest or lowest good/bad counts.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
So what about those terrorists who are 'unknown' flying for the first time?
They get a green light, pass through and drive themselves and the plane into the ground.
or like "gutanamo we reckon they are" dangerous ?
The EFF also has a good write up on it. A second opinion on things is always good.
Also see Why EFF is concerned about CAPPS II
In short, what's at stake?
" Your fundamental right to privacy and your fundamental right to travel without being forced to give up your constitutionally protected freedoms"
You lost the freedom for which you stand. You are not allowed to question anything. You are not allowed to sue the government if you miss an important appointment because you lose a flight. You have no one to complain. You have no way to complay.
Not true.
You can vote.
In Soviet America, the government questions you.
This paper describes how such a system actually makes it more likely that a terrorist cell can carry out a successful attack, when compared with random screening. The basic idea is that it is not hard to determine whether or not you are on the watch list, and then the terrorists can use hijackers who aren't on the watch list. Anyway, I know slashdotters aren't known for reading links, but the paper is actually quite accessible and worth reading at least some of.
I'm sure many many people are ready to start explaining why this is a terrible thing, but I (especially after reading the Myth/Fact list) have decided that, if they were to follow the procedures listed, this could be a very effective, and reasonably fair way of increasing air-travel safety. Plenty of issues may be raised about whether information privacy is threatened, or if certain people may become unfairly "flagged", but I believe that (aside from the perhaps unfair requirements placed on the airlines themselves), the ideas behind this program seem fairly valid. We'll have to just wait and see how it is carried out, I suppose.
> But some say the project would violate privacy
> rights, while others are concerned it would cost
> the private sector too much money.
It will also decrease security.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"As the Supreme Court notes in Saenz v Roe, the Constitution does not contain the word "travel" in any context, let alone an explicit right to travel. The presumed right to travel, however, is firmly established in U.S. law and precedent. In U.S. v Guest, the Court noted, "It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized." In fact, in Shapiro v Thomson, Justice Stewart noted in a concurring opinion that "it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, ... it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all."
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Those who are dangerous to the highway system lose their ability to drive on the highway system. It's called taking away ones driver's license, and it can be invoked for nearly any repeated moving violation, and for some it even comes on the first offense. But the thing is, in order for that to happen, one has to be convicted in a court of having committed the offense, or at least plead guilty by not contesting a ticket.
I have no problem with those who intentionally cause a security scare being barred from ever flying again, but they should at least have been convicted of an air-security related crime first. The reason why the spooks want to use a system that profiles and acts preemptively is because they say that the first crime they committ will kill everybody on the plane if not more. However, the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were already comitting a crime just by being in the United States of America. If we bothered to have security at the borders, we wouldn't need to be over-securing our airport to the point that some law-abiding Americans get locked out.
Just what does make a terrorist profile? They'll never get it to a 100% science, so what will happen is that there will always be some people who have done nothing wrong but spook the database who will get the red flag, and nearly any journalist who ever challenges the Department of Homeland Security will constantly invoke the yellow flag.
Security-by-annoying-everybody is not a working model. It might spend the allocated money and fool some people into feeling safer, but it really doesn't do anything.
Everyone boards nude. Luggage goes on a second, remote operated, plane.
I've heard it somewhere. Maybe even on slashdot. Sorry if it was you who said that.
On second thought, maybe it's not such a bad idea.
The problem is that we've lived with airliners for so long without recognizing them as the huge cruise missiles that they are. If our cultural heritage included walking around with belts of live grenades slung across our chests, we would resent a sudden requirement to leave them at the door. It isn't that there is any greater danger now, it's just that now we're aware of it and we have to deal with it. Rod Serling always felt responsible for inspiring airline hijackings with a tv episode he wrote, but sooner or later someone would have thought of it. I'm amazed we went so long before someone decided to use airliners to cause mayhem. The secret is out and it won't go away. Buying a ticket with cash and flying anonymously is an outdated luxury. Other things we take for granted will follow.
I live in Canada, the more the Americans pull stunts like this, the more people will migrate over to here (especially the educated ones). This will be great for the Canadian economy!
Well done folks! Keep pissing on your country and driving everybody off it.
Will they run the list through the program and see if it correctly picks out acts of terrorism ahead of time based on personal information fed in in a chronological sequence? I kind of doubt the program will be able to do it correctly. At first. But then they will tweak it to work, and they will claim success. But it will be biased at this point, they may tweak it not to spit out many false positives when run on the data given to them. If it does get put into practice, expect a lot of false positives. Expect civil liberties groups to be outraged. But there is currently a Federal do not fly list, and I don't think it is coordinated now any better than it was when it was first set up. People get put on the list, and no one can say why, or how to get taken off the list. At least if this list is centralized, there will hopefully be some way of clearing one's name if one does get on it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Passengers raise questions.
while
The government begs them.
You don't drive a plane, you FLY it!
How exactly will this improve security?
No, seriously, how will this help? This can go wrong in so many ways that it isn't even funny, is an enormous violation of privacy, but I can't for the life of me see how this will improve security.
Never mind we are focusing too much on front end security to begin with...
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
and so how does this system screen those individuals who are dangerous, but are using a 'green' assumed identity? ... like, say, the 9/11 hijackers who were found to be ALIVE after the event?
Unless it's changed recently, I'm confused as to why in the United States you can walk with the person(s) who is flying right up to the gate.
Here in Canada, anyway, you can't get past security, well before the gates. It's kinda sad because you can only wait with so long before they should be heading in through security and such. Also, when picking up, you're out where the baggage pick-up is.
Seems like a small thing but I think it's a rather cheap +1 to security.
The rest of us would appreciate it if people like you just stayed at home. Thanks.
Life in Orange County
I was at the airport a couple weeks ago. The system is in place, but they aren't doing screening. Anyway, everybody's getting a bright green color, then the person in front of me gets bright red and the system makes a buzzing noise. He stops and goes "what? what's that?" He was clearly upset. The person checking everybody in said not to worry about it and go ahead and board.
Of course, I knew what it was, and it made me nervous. Then, you wonder what coud happen with that guy on the plane.
They should implement it so you cannot see the screen. I guess a month from now they would pull him aside and get out the rubber gloves.
"BEHOLD, CORN!!" - Dr. Weird, ATHF
... the problem with these programs is that they are huge losses of personal liberty with absolutely zero increase in security. In fact, they decrease real security by falsely leading the security screeners into believing the program will identify the bad guys that they then will have to check more carefully.
The only real impact this system will have is a terrible loss of civil liberty, getting us more used to having fewer and fewer rights in our nation of freedom.
Would you be willing to let your sweet, virgin Anglo daughter fly on such an airline now?
these "dangerous people" traveling in the air are the fucking politicians making these ass raping invasive laws that OTHER people have to live with.
Fuck, ban them from air travel.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
....What just happened here?!?!
The White race will not survive, if what the census bureau is projecting turns out to be true. White men cannot keep their penises in their pants. They will breed with Asian females, and hispanic females, and in some cases, black females, until the white race is completely eliminated. Similarly, white women will continue mating with blacks, and latinos. The white gene is recessive and all offspring produced in such interracial unions will be colored.
I can't say that I'll be heartbroken about you guys' departure. But it's just something to keep in mind
The Israelis have been phenominally successful in keeping terrorists off of El Al. They do it by profiling the passengers. They ask a few direct questions and noting the patterns of responses. For a few it means additional scrutiny or denial of access, but for the majority, the system works -- and they don't confiscate your fingernail clippers. There have been no successful attacks on El Al airlines.
There was a fiction story almost exactly like this in Analog recently. The synopsis went something like this - first systems like this caught a lot of terrorists. The terrorists began to panic, but then they figured that eventually the system would turn on itself. Of course they turn out right - at first they catch terrorists, then they start yellow flagging people as suspected terrorists, and these people aren't allowed to go to concerts, board trains or any kind of public transportation, rent cars, etc. The filtering becomes broader and broader as those in charge of the program feel pressure to catch more people... and eventually the whole system destroys all freedom. Its sad to see the first steps already in place.
Did you mean biased?
Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening.
I misread this statement at first... because it seems to be true in that sense too.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
no
"I'm sorry Senator Kerry, supporters, and reporters not affiliated with Fox News, but we can't let you on this flight."
:-/
And to think that prior to Shrub/Ashcroft/Rummy/Cheney I would have thought that to be +5 Tinfoil Hat....
Airline security will be less secure because many security personnel will trust the software to do the job for them. Just like firewalls/anti-virus, it won't stop the people who really want to get in. It'll just encourage security to slack off of screening all people.
Terrorists will figure out all of the things that the system is checking for and find ways around it. Then, we'll be caught with our pants down when a bunch of 'green' passengers take a plane under control. After all, security was concentrating on the red/yellows. Those yellows/reds could easily be co-conspirators attracting attention away from the real threat.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
"The TSA says it agrees that privacy must be protected. A privacy officer, Nuala O'Connor Kelly, has been hired to make sure federal privacy law is upheld. The agency won't hold on to passengers' records, except for people who might be terrorists."
Wouldn't logic dictate that anyone *might* be a terrorist, hence the agency will hold on to anyone's records indefinitely?
Azurite is fine covellite is mine.
So if I complain about the Airline food will that mean that I am on the list and can no longer fly? How do I found our my rating? If I get listed at a nice person does that mean I get a better chance at first class upgrades?
i take it you're upset about this then?
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
You can reasonably demonstrate the implementation of privacy and low cost to me, but you can't do so with safety. Furthermore, the amount of higher safety I'll gain from giving away privacy is negligible.
Give me privacy first since it takes little from the others.
Give me whatever safety you can with reasonable prices and complete privacy.
Give me reasonable costs without playing silly games like "must buy return ticket and stay saturday night."
Keep the rest to yourself, I don't need that poison.
I mean, they'll be sure to ban everyone whose name contains 'al', right? 'Al Qaida', etc. So that means that the seat next to you couldn't be occupied by Al Gore!
Does everything include nothing?
Is this going to be similar to the screening policies that have old grannies being detained for possible terror threats? What gets me is what's going to happen when someone innocent is labeled as the uber-terrorist by this new system...there better be a nice little compensation package for those folks. Oh wait, we as the rest of the consumers will have to pay for both the system AND the compensation. Well, fancy that.
You forget one thing, there will be no mistakes.
Innocent people will never be flagged as threats because the fact that they are flagged as threats proves their guilt.
There will be no explanation, no due process and no possibility of appeal because that would compromise national security.
Oh, did I mention that once you're on the list, you'll stay there forever? That's right, once a terrorist - allways a terrorist.
Don't think for a moment that this is just another way for Bushcroft & co. to harass people they don't like by denying them transportation rights. No sir! This is the finest example of your taxes at work. You should trust your government, it only tries to protect the country against terrorists.
Now be a good citizen and vote for Kodos, or Kang, does not really matter.
A Black pussy is something you need to experience. Most Black women get wetter than Niagra Falls when getting ready to fuck, and their cunt is pure heaven. A willingness to suck you off at the drop of hat makes them even more desirable. So next time some Ebony honey hints she wants to let you into her dark cavern, go for it. Your dick will thank you.
So if someone is a wanted fugitive, yes, I can see using this to catch them. What if they have committed violent crimes and have paid for them, this prevents them from flying? Last I heard, the only thing you lost from being a convicted felon was your right to vote.
What is a "violent criminal?"
"The Political Safety Administration said Wednesday it will order parties to turn over politicians' personal records in the next couple of months to test a computerized political screening program that could keep dangerous people out of the government, reports Yahoo/AP. The Computer-Assisted Politician Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, would rank all candidates according to the likelihood of their being corrupt. Suspected corporate cheats and self-centered assholes would be designated as pig-fuckers and forbidden to vote or run for election. Candidates who have questionable stock or campaign contributions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening. The vast majority would be designated 'friends of Diebold' and allowed through routine screening. But some say the project would violate the corrupt and idiotic way of politics, while others are concerned it would just be another corrupt entity. The Supreme Court, has come up with seven billion dollars that it says will go to the best bid, and as always, companies who would like to bid to build and run the system may have any political or corporate affiliations they want.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Before we do this I would like to see the Congressional Responsibility Assessment Program (CRAP I) that would weed out cheats, liars, extremists, and criminals from Congress and the Executive branch. Then we might be able to make some progress.
And marks the appropiate people with a giant yellow star and the mark "JUDE."
Allow people to opt out, and put those people in the "extra scrutiny" queue. You can then choose whether to sacrifice a bit of your time or a bit of your privacy.
How many times have you been assualted or meanaced on an airplane? What's the reality of that threat? In hundreds of flights, the number of threats for me has been zero, if you don't count the kid kicking the back of my seat on a flight from Denver.
This isn't as much a question of privacy as reality. Does the reality of the threat justify the invasion of privacy? And how do you classify a violent criminal? If they haven't gotten caught, you won't know they're a criminal. If they've been sent up for violent crime before, what are the odds they're going to decide to repeat that behavior on your flight? Does a fist fight in a bar constitute violent behavior? Who makes that decision?
Liberty and privacy don't go away all at once. They get chipped away little by little. Always for a good cause. For the children, to keep violent people off airplanes, to make sure the people who just moved in down the street aren't terrorists.
If we continue to live in a culture of fear and sell our privacy for imagined threats, we'll still have the fear because we're not addressing the real threats and we'll end up living in a police state. We're not that far away now.
All because of some puss who's afraid the person in the seat next to them on the plane might be a criminal.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Say something someone disagrees with and you get marked as a "Troll.
Do it too many times and your karma goes down and you can only post two times per day at -1.
If thats okay, why is everyone getting their panties in a wad over this?
010 X=0;
020 IF $race="arab"
030 THEN x=1;
040 END;
050 IF x=1 then arrest_the_fucker=1;
that racism is alive and well on Slashdot
You are going on a commerical airliner owned by a corporation. You have no expectation of privacy. I say go for it, it sounds like a sensible plan. I would automatically do a +1 threat rating on all Muslims myself. I know, *gasp*, its not PC - but thats the reality of the moment. The group with the highest threat on an airline is Muslims.
. Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening
I wonder what would happen if one was to wear their "Suspected Terrorist" pin as John Gilmore did to a flight....
It should be somewhere on Bruce Schneier's personal website, in a fairly recent edition of the Crypto-Gram newsletter, IIRC.
Oh well, seems like a perfect time to quote this little tidbit that Packet Storm has had on a sidebar for quite a while now:
So, the price of liberty is enternal vigilence^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^ silence hmm ?
Way to go USA !
"Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening"
So if i don't like it and i start asking questions such as "who are you" and "what are you doing in my government" then i get screened? what if i just want to know where gate 15 is?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
So flying on commercial airlines is a special privilege? And the same can be said on the train, in the subway, on a bus, in the store, at church, etc etc... and all those places have potential for catastrophe as well. You support profiling everyone everywhere, all the time?
You don't live in Russia, moron, you live in the U.S. where we WORK F*CKIN HARD to be free. If you're too gddam laxy to figure out a way to be FREE and FAIR then go live somewhere else, but stop being an a55whole and offering to make the U.S. just another dumb nation state.
Don't be a "I don't know what else to do, so I have to do THIS GDDAM STUPID-ASS THING so I will at leats feel like I'm doing something" a55.
"Passengers' personal records"
"all air passengers"
"travelers' identities"
"a traveler's risk"
CAPPS II at a Glance does not use the word "you" even once
their followup page CAPPS II: Myths and Facts talks about you only twice.
(funny that its in the 'editorial' section of the site) Anyways, before waiving it off as semantics, consider how it would sound if every 3rd person reference to you was replaced with... you.
Under CAPPS II, airlines will ask you for a slightly expanded amount of reservation information, including your full name, date of birth, home address, and home telephone number. With your expanded information, the system will quickly verify your identity and conduct a risk assessment utilizing commercially available data and current intelligence information on you. The risk assessment will result in a recommended screening level, categorizing you as no risk, unknown or elevated risk, or high risk. Your commercially available data will not be viewed by government employees, and intelligence information on you will remain behind the government firewall. Your entire prescreening process is expected to take as little as five seconds to complete.
Not so benevolent anymore is it? The idea behind CAPPS isn't inherently flawed, its just that i doubt it'll be very secure. My guess is the CAPPS II database will end up getting passed around the internet faster than Paris Hilton.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The Constitution guarantees all persons born or naturalized in the US all the "privileges and immunities" thereof. Way back in the 1800's there was a case in which the Supreme Court tried to almost write this out of the Constitution. They said that "privileges and immunities" didn't include anything like voting or having a fair shot at government jobs or contracts, or getting to go to the same schools or bathrooms as other people, it meant only a few simple rights like the right to sail the navigable waters of the US and the right to travel from place to place. Seems like that ought to include the right to ride on an airliner, and they shouldn't be able to take that away from someone now without a trial.
Muslims certainly put the Basque seperatists on the back burner.Tim McVeigh possibly worked with a Muslim-John Doe Number 2. But those IRA Micks really upped the ante bombing those Australians in Bali,Spaniards on the trains,not to mention the World Trade Towers.
This means that someone who HASN'T been flagged as a threat won't undergo an extensive screening.
There was someone who wrote a paper on this, and was mentioned on slashdot awhile back. All the badguys have to do is send people through and see if they get flagged or not.
With random searches, there is a chance anyone will be searched, including newly recruited badguys.
And yes, this also erodes civil rights. There is no problem with the way things are. The only reason a hyjacker was able to take over a plane in the past, is because the pasengers thought they might live by co-operating. Now anyone trying to hyjack a plane will face 300 angry, scared people in a small enclosed space. All the FAA has to do is insure that no bombs go on a plane. Anyone trying to hyjack a plane these days is wasting their time.
when the phone # for the "Do Not Call" list is accidentally switched with the "Do Not Fly" list.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Wyatt Earp died on January 13, 1929. It is US goverment policy to seach all undead that board aircraft.
I notice your halfwitted rebuttal did not refute this at all. How many Tim McVeighs are there? One? And we fried that sucker as soon as we caught him.
Face it, Islamic Terrorism is the number threat to freedom in this world and you appeasing hippies can't deny it.
Read the full report on the Carnival Booth method here: http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/student-papers/sp ring02-papers/caps.htm
Anonymous to avoid Karma Whoring
Karma whorin' since 1999
Fascism (n.)
+ A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
+ A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
Oppressive, dictatorial control.
Europe has dealt with terrorism for years and has managed to not lose it in the way the US has. Everyone is so scared.
It saddens me to see a nation that proudly proclaims to be home of the brave, land of the free, to be cowering in homes, destroying civil liberties, rewriting laws and turning back the racism clock 100 years.
The terrorists are winning. My God they're winning big-time.
If they want to test this system out, why wouldn't they take passenger data from, say, January 2001 through, say, September 11, 2001 and run it through?
It seems to me they already know there are a few positives in that batch, arriving in the US from abroad during the year and on 4 domestic flights in September...
If this were additional and everyone "designated green and allowed through routine screening" were still subject to the same level of random screening then security would only be increased.
Also using "hijackers who aren't on the watch list" presumably isn't quite that simple as you make it sound. Presumably it's a bit more difficult to recruit a hijacker than that.
Certainly it's not perfect, but nothing is. There is no way to simply "stop" all terrorists but we can give them more hoops to jump through and make it more difficult for them.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Some family will be traveling together and will find that little jimmy has been flagged red and hauled off for a cavety search and an interrogation.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I think some people here have some rather amusing little repressed urges. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Mr. Rubber Glove Joke Guy. You know you'd love it if they pulled you aside for the 'special treatment.' You could still even claim you aren't gay!
They have explosive detectors, they wipe your clothes with a little paper disk, put it in a machine, and they know if you were even near explosives in the last day. Perverts.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"Ms. O'Connor Kelly practiced law with the firms of Sidley & Austin, Hudson Cook and Venable, Baetjer, Howard & Civiletti"
Sounds like she's half irish and half indian. Interesting choice.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I have constructed a foolproof algorithim for detecting hijackers that can be deployed with a 99.999% ratio given past hijacking attempts. Here it is: If Muslims don't fly, Americans won't die.
How do i get my name off the airlines' list before they have to turn it over?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If a person does not have any dangerous stuff with him/her, then what is the justification in forbidding that person to fly? After all a person may end up in that forbidden group due to many reasons, not all of which may be justified - say race, or intentional blacklisting - doesn't a person have the right to fly as long as any security is not breached?
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
If too many intrusive laws start building up in the states there's bound to be alot of people leaving the country, just like germany before WWII look at all the people that left to go to northamerica, those people knew somthing was wrong, boy where they ever right! AND not to be saying that if the US is against the muslims it will be like germany against the jews! Lets hope that doesn't happen!
This issue is not simply a matter of invasion of privacy. The screening will of course be automated. This means computers. The task of working out who is a possible communist, sorry, I mean 'terrorist', is uncomputable and therefore yet another totally idiotic use to try to put them to. Practical example for no reason: Consider credit card fraud. The heuristics run on my bank's computer have many times stopped me from making legitimate purchases but have twice failed to stop actual fraud. I have learned that I simply cannot rely on any of my credit cards functioning at any given time. Do I now have to get used to the idea that I might at any time be prevented from flying or be held without trial for being a 'terrorist'? Just because of an illconceived computer program? While I might consider giving up some of my individual rights to privacy for the general good, giving them up to governments who think that computers are up to the job of monitoring would... Aw, discussing it won't stop it happening. We're boned.
I can just travel on this one instead. It would make for an even more spectacular terror strike.
Well you technically have the right to know exactly what information the airlines have on you, and it must be accurate. Its probably just going to cross reference your credit card details with those on questionable accounts that regularly recieve money from dodgy places (so half of congress will be on there then). Any 'terrorist' worth their salt is gona make sure they keep their bases covered.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
This is getting ridiculous.
Why should the TSA need to see personal information in order for a person to travel by airplane?
Cockpit doors have been or are in the process or being reinforced to prevent unauthorized entry during flight. Passengers are thoroughly screened to prevent them from boarding with any weapons or materials that would jeopardize the flight or the safety of fellow passengers. So what is the point of the TSA wanting access to all passengers personal information?
Is it that they simply don't want suspected bad guys to fly? I don't either, but where does it end? And whose suspicions are now becoming the guidlines that deny us access to in this case air travel, but in the next case who knows what. Your EZ-pass not letting you onto a interstae highway? At what point are people going to be denied access to air travel based on a yahoo group affiliation or what books they have purchased from amazon.
And yes, I do fly often.
Islamic terrorism is a threat to life and limb but it is in no way capable of removing freedoms from those of us that have them, only our governments can do that.
Even if the ultimate aim of terrorists was to overthrow the west and establish islamic states they simply do not have anywhere near that capability.
All they can do is kill us, in relatively small numbers and infrequently.
Certainly they should be hunted down but we aren't doing ourselves any favours by overstating their importance and capabilities. It merely gives them more of the currency they trade in, fear.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Can anyone explain what threat someone who has been searched and has no weapons pose on a US flight today? The cockpit doors are locked, the passengers are ready to overwhelm anyone who tries anything, and there is probably an air marshall with a gun on board.
And there hasn't been a single hijacking attempt since Sept 2001. This looks a lot like a very expensive and intrusive solution to a problem that just doesn't exist.
A LOT of comments about loss of privacy, false positives, etc, etc
Ok....how would YOU do it?
If this is the wrong solution, what is the right solution?
I suspect that they will have nearly as much trouble filtering terrorists as we have filtering spam. On the other hand, my spam filter does weed out a lot of garbage, but also lets a lot through. I wonder if CAPPS II is just a slightly modified version of SpamAssassin?
As opposed to spending countless millions (billions?) on different systems to screen people every time they fly why not just require everyone flying in the U.S. to have a valid passenger's liscence. I don't like the idea, but i think this is a much cheaper method and I also believe there are much better things that the money spent on these new systems could be doing. IF you liscense everyone then you only have to screen them each time they renew as opposed to scanning through thousands of people every minute
Suspected terrorists and violent criminals would be designated as red and forbidden to fly.
Sounds great if you're an airline passenger, but what if you ride the bus?
Kind thoughts do not change the world
The authors described a system by which actual terrorists could easily use a screening system as a tool. By sending known terrorists and terrorists with no record on flights, terrorist cells could determine who will pass the screening, and actually be less likely to be searched in the future. Increasing their chances of enacting terrorism on a plane.
Open source sig, feel free to modify and distribute.
There have been many news stories documenting that the TSA has blacklisted political activists from travel, ranging from antiwar activists to environmentalists. What kind of government harasses and intimidates people based on their political opinions? Certainly not a democratic one. That is why we need to vote Bush out in 2004. Bush stands not for democracy but for hypocrisy and corporate greed. For in depth information about CAPS II, go to http://www.epic.org/
What does worry me is that the means by which the green/yellow/red designation is arrived at is classified, and it isn't possible to examine the data which led to it. So what happens if I'm one of the people incorrectly flagged as red? Do I have any means of redress, or setting the record straight? That doesn't seem likely, given that the data and methods are classified. It simply isn't possible to question.
Given that there will be false positives, what do those people do about it? Or are they just basically screwed, and have no due process? Are they going to be simply told that flying isn't actually a right, and they have been denied permission, so deal with it?
I'll wait eagerly for the first case of this happening, to see the reaction.
I have a horrible feeling that, shortly after the system is switched on, a small group of carefully picked selectees, who do in fact have violent criminal pasts (and that would be public data) are paraded before the media, in order to plant the meme that the system is infallible and has "made us all safer". I anticipate headlines along the lines of "CAPPS II huge success - stops several violent criminals from boarding aircraft on first day". Then, when an innocent person is selected, it will be presented as "there's no smoke without fire" and "the system knows something" but we can't be told what it is for "national security reasons". That way, the innocent selectees are doubly screwed, convicted and sentenced without knowing what algorithm was used, and shrouded in a cloud of suspicion they can do nothing about?
That leads to another important question - will the green/yellow/red status determined for an individual be protected information, or will it be accessible to, say, employers and landlords? And will there be any protection against other discrimination (besides airline travel) on those individuals? I'm thinking not. To do so would be to admit that the system is fallible. I'm not holding my breath.
This has to be the scariest system I've ever seen this side of the Berlin wall (when it existed). Even worse, it seems plain to me that it won't actually make us any safer
Krill
As pointed out in other posts, not only with this decrease security, apparently "behavior that may seem "too normal" might be flagged".
What self-respecting terrorist would carry out an attack involving an airplane in 2004? That's not only 3 years out of style, but it's all been done before. Blowing planes up from on the plane, blowing them up from the ground, planes just blowing up by themselves, blowing up things with planes, starting conspiracy theories about exploding planes, whatever. Nobody would be impressed if you did something with a plane these days (unless maybe you ran a successful airline that people liked). These days, trains and automobiles are much more in fashion, so airport security is entirely irrelevant.
Of course, it could just be random screening, but I that seems unlikely to me. I got selected the last few times I flew from Detroit.
Frankly, I still find the procedure somewhat humiliating. It's incredible how inefficient they are. There are always 6-8 TSA guards standing around waiting until the next guard can take over their passenger for the next step. Apparently collecting the documents from the passengers, waiving the next person through the metal detector, staring at the xray monitors, handing over the documents to the person doing the baggage searching, and doing the metal detector screening are all highly specialized tasks that require special skills so that it is strictly impossible for one guard to take over the responsibility of the next one.
Their metal detectors are so sensitive that they regularly "detect" the trouser buttons. Then you have to roll over over the trousers a bit, so that they can check more closely. Their baggage searching doesn't exactly make the impression of being undefeatable, to say the least, but at least that means that it doesn't take ages and they put everything back together as well.
Now imagine you started queueing 30 mins before your boarding deadline, and all this goes on and on, inefficiently etc. First some 15 mins in the queue, then you have to wait again until your baggage got x-rayed, then again for the metal detector checking. I think the worst thing is -- even if they seem nice, maybe I actually feel like chatting with them, then I start think, "Oh better don't, might get misunderstood", "Oh come on, they are humans, too, after all", "Better not, even if it just causes a delay, remember your flight is going in 15 mins". It's like being in an exam without knowing what you are being tested in.
Well sorry about my ramblings, many of you probably know the procedure yourself, but had to get this off my chest. But I would be curious if there is reliable information on whether this "selected security screening" is purely random based, or based on some sort of profiling.
CNN, Feb 2003
Among other interesting things the system uses to determine if you are a terrorist and should be denied to right to move freely about the country: Your credit rating. Remember, only terrorists miss a payment on their car.
Nice, because someone posts something raw with emotion it's moderated to troll.
This is why I browse at -1.
You don't need to keep the "dangerous people" off passenger planes any more. When someone stands up and rushes the cockpit and starts banging on the door, they get jumped by dozens of other passengers. 9/11 changed the whole hijacker/hijackee contract. Before that, it was understood that your best chance of survival as a passenger or crewmember was to cooperate. Not any more. The "trust" is gone.
The only way that the hijackers could hope to get control would be if they had a ratio of hijackers to passengers of something approaching 1:1, or if they had smuggled weapons on board that allowed them to incapacitate the passengers and crew. Security screening can stop the weapons, hopefully. I don't know how to stop a sleeper cell of 50-100 terrorists from all boarding the same flight, but I consider that to be a fairly improbable scenario.
If the terrorists just want to blow a planeload of people up, and not hijack it into a building, then there are much softer targets out there than an airplane. Trains would be the recent, obvious example. If they want to drive a plane into a building then a cargo plane with a crew of 2 or 3 would be an easier target, I would think. A year ago some guy smuggled himself onto a cargo plane by FedExing himself from New York to Texas!
Generals always seem to be planning today to win the last war. These $$$ spent on passenger screening systems may be helpful for that, I suppose. But perhaps the money would be better spent hardening some of the softer targets that are more likely candidates for the next battle...
...there is no right to privacy. It's been implied, but if I'm not mistaken several supreme court descisions have concured that no right to privacy exists in the constitution/bill of rights.
We're still struggling to stop something as *trivial* as SPAM. What makes you think this system will be any more successful?
-- jimmycarter
Based on the headline, I thought this was going to be an article about testing the air for bio-hazards, or maybe airborne by-products from explosives.
-Rich
I can already see the people pass the checkpoint, with a hockey-like light on a pole, going, green green green RED please sir step aside while everyone looks at the poor sap which has nothing to do with terrorism 99.9% of the time. Oh, the number of legal actions you will get for this, my head...
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
Except the Spanish cells of course. They must have been out when Osama rang.
Excuse my bluntness... but fuck privacy. People want to blow up planes or do shit? Then I say fuck 'em. I don't care how much I have to go through to fly if it means there's less of a chance some nutcase takes over the plane I'm on and does crazy shit, whatever it may be.
I don't care what anyone thinks about the president, or who or what is doing this stuff. The fact is people are doing lame things like blowing up planes and killing people. And it's not like this is the first time this stuff has happened, either. Remember that Pan Am 747? Way back in the day people could go fly with barely any security checks, and I'm sure if they had the kind of technology we had today, they would have already used it.
So track my finances, profile me, catalog my usenet posts, whatever, if it makes everyone else feel comfortable enough that I'm not going to randomly kill people. I have nothing to hide.
this is my sig
Whether you agree or disagree with the program, you can thank Gen. Wesley Clark for selling it to the government. He was the salesperson for the company that developed the program (I forget the name right now) last year.
When asked during the debates about CAPPS II, Gen. Clark said he'd never heard of it, even after the moderator reminded him of his role in implementing it.
Seems a little strange.
why has the tsa developped such a tool ?
1. the best solution is to scan everyone. every bag, every person and no exceptions. no one.
2. use a tool to "tag" some people and scan them.
solution 2 is what tsa would prefer because solution 1, which is the only valuable one regarding security, requires TIME and thus MONEY.
i would suggest to use solution 1. it will pay in the long term and save lives. and because everyone has to be searched, it will not raise as much problems as flagging a few.
this stupid program is just a try to avoid solution 1 to spend less cash and putting more risk on people that will die if something wrong happens.
and solution 2 will allow terrorists to do "dull runs" for years and once they're always taggued green and have a clean aspect like a family life, good job and education, they will be able to attack again.
most 9/11 terrorists were pretty clean. some had families, been living in the US for years, reconnaisance around the twin towers started four years before attack (as video founds show) and they had real papers under false names, issued by someone from the administration in Virginia that issued true driver licenses but under false names.
jump on solution 1. scan everyone, everything. solution 2 is just keeping the risk over people's life and they are priceless.
Air Cap 1: Hey, this guy looks a little funky but my AirSpamBayesianAssassin only gave him a score of 0.86 wtf? ...
Air Cap 2: Oh yeah, some mook yesterday mistagged a whole bus load of Japanese tourists so the system needs to be retrained again. Just edit your funk_factor = 0.8 in your user_prefs.js file.
Air Cap 1: Ah shit, that's the fifth time this week!
Air Cap 2: Yep, I'm getting pretty tired of getting the 80 year old blue hairs to bend over and wink just because some joker keeps mucking with my prefs
Anonymous twit Coward, obviously Slashdotters will weigh in on this important issue, into which we have much insight. Why not just submit "First P0st!" like any other useless moron, rather than inhibit people who might be intimidated by your empty mockery?
--
make install -not war
Those who are dangerous to the highway system lose their ability to drive on the highway system.
This is not the same thing at all. An equivalent senario would be people being banned from travelling in (not just driving) any vehicle on a highway if they were caught drunk driving. Banning someone from being a passenger on any aircraft is equivalent to banning someone from ever stepping into a car, bus or truck.
Of course as you note it is also different in that a court is involved at some point (i.e. there is some sort of due process) in driving bans but there are other differences as well. The people they are intending to ban from flying haven't done anything. It isn't like they have a previous conviction for hijacking an airliner so they are not allowed to fly on one again. It is that the government does like them in some way, because they are suspected of being a "terrorist", or for some other reason. Not only does stopping people from flying based purely on suspicion very bad, but it puts a huge amount of extra power into the hands of the government to persecute whatever people they don't like, as you note.
I have no problem with those who intentionally cause a security scare being barred from ever flying again, but they should at least have been convicted of an air-security related crime first.
This is a red herring though. Sure they might use this system to pick on such people but its main purpose will be to select people fitting a certain "high risk" profile. Who would "intentionally cause a security scare" anyway? Sure a terrorist group might phone in a fake bomb threat to cause disruption (its cheaper than a real bomb) but then you are not going to catch them are you. If this is going to be used to ban people from flying who are carry the wrong book or aren't grovellingly deferential enough to the security screeners then that is another big problem.
You are suffering from the "fetish" version of racism. You think "white" people, whatever exactly that is, are safer. Ask John Walker, or any other European descended Taliban. Or any of the other white people who kill, sabotage and terrorize. You're probably old enough to have met enough people who look like you, but don't act like you. It's bad enough that you distrust people based on where their families evolved. But your trust of those whose families evolved near yours would threaten us all, if you were calling the shots.
--
make install -not war
They should all volunteer to be classified as yellow. That way whenever a member of congress flies they'll if it's working or not. I'm sure Congress wouldn't mind doing this in the name of security.
I get "searched" all the time, and they never find the can of mace linked to a pocketknife in my coat pocket when I forget to take it out of my carryon coat's pocket. Except once (out of over a dozen trips) in Netherlands, and once in West Africa when they obviously just wanted to steal the knife until a baggage handler told them to quit jerking me around. The whole thing is a joke. It's just an excuse to hassle people by an impotent industry, rather than make actual changes to protect us from their incompetence. How many terrorists have been caught by airport security since 9/11/2001? How many passengers have been processed?
--
make install -not war
Why don't they just put a "DEPRESSURIZE CABIN" button in the cockpit, in case there's any doubt about monkey business behind the locked door?
--
make install -not war
"Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening."
I'm sorry...haven't RTFA, so I don't know what context this was said in, but if it's in terms of "questioning the security screening", (like being irritated that someone's crawling up your ass with a flashlight and asking them WTF they're doing.) That sounds scary.
we are flying on planes while under some sort of induced sleep like the people in the space craft in the movie Fifth Element? If all people on board are asleep theoretically there will be no one to hijack the aircraft... unless it's a member of the crew...
Quote " Myth: CAPPS II will track where and when I travel and will store that information.
Fact: For U.S. persons, information will only be kept for a short period after completion of the travel itinerary, and then it will be permanently destroyed. The prescreening process will be conducted anew each time you fly. " TSA myth and fact
Does this means that non US citizen will be "screwed" over and their info kept forever ? It seems that all their myth and fact only apply to US citizen and the other will be S.O.L...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The best thing is, if there is a terrorist attack, the government will say it is because the system isn't draconian enough and make it even more unfair, invasive and tougher.
If there isn't a terrorist attack, the government will say "hey it's working" and to make it work better we need to make it more draconian and even more unfair, invasive and tougher.
It's a win-win situation for the government either way.
Vote Libertarian. Otherwise just talking about this is a waste of time.
If it wasn't clear in years past, then it should be clear now. Those of you who vote for the Publicrats should be ashamed of yourselves.
If you think that voting for John Kerry will get you back any Civil Liberty... just listen to what he says he will do. Once in power he will sign the laws that the Republicans hand to him... sure maybe he will grumble and complain about some provision or another, but he won't stand for rights when they start lining up at the pork barrel.
So, maybe there are no good Libertarian Candidates, but at least show up and don't vote for the bad guys. None of the above = No Confidence.
The U.S., Israel and Nazi Germany. Riiiiight. Next?
Better yet, to win the war on terrorism compell a real peace in Isreal and the West Bank and get U.S. occupation troops out Islamic countries.
So exactly how the hell are we going to "compel a real peace" without "occupation troops" in a territory where the avowed goal of the pseudo-government of one ethno-religious group is to kill every last member of the other group? Unless by "compel a real peace" you mean "evacuate the entire Jewish population of the state of Israel," that is.
If the U.S. and Isreal stop humiliating the Palastinians in particular and arabs in general that will dramaticly reduce the ability of islamic extremists to recruit for and fund their movement.
Maybe if Arab governments stopped teaching in their schools that Jews were bloodthirsty sons of monkeys and pigs, then Arabs might not be so humiliated every time "the Zionist entity" kicks their asses in a defensive war. Or maybe if the totalitarian cliques running most Arab states would spend the millions of petrodollars we pay them on their populations instead of paying $25K per suicide bomber (not to mention building palaces at home and buying Swiss chalets for vacations), young Arabs might feel there was something more worthwhile to do with their lives than to kill themselves. Hell, maybe if Arab states would allow Palestinians and descendants who have been living in their territory since 1948 to naturalize and assimilate, both hosts and residents might be on their way to understanding that Israel ain't going anywhere.
Somehow Germany and Japan managed to get over their "humiliation", and we did a whole heck of a lot more damage to those two countries than we've ever done to any Arab state.
race has everything to do with it. they just have to trample on everyone elses' rights before they can get back to checking arabs only.
thanks liberals for making everyone else lose their rights instead of the people responsible for killing all those people at the WTC. "We cant search people of arab descent, thats racial profiling!'
People of arab descent should welcome being racially profiled..after all, they are on the same flights other nationalities are on. If it was black guys terrorizing the nation, I'd happily agree to all black people being searched, which would include myself..if it meant 1 life would be saved.
dont be so damn sensitive people. this isnt france or canada, quit trying to turn it into those places. they suck.
Seems pointless to me. The USA has already had a major terrorist attack via airplane. Nobody is going to organize *another* one ... they'll use something else, something less secure, something that we aren't prepared for.
...CAPPS II is, of course, a slight improvement from it's predecessor, the Computer Aided Reporting of Passengers System, which was deemed a little fishy, and a vast improvement over the original project, the Computed-Risk of Airline Passengers System, which was a bunch of bullshit, to say it nicely.
IANAC
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Sorry to tell you, but nobody is guaranteed a right to fly in the United States. Nobody. Flying is not a right. At all. Driving a car isn't a right either, and that's why they can STOP YOU FROM DOING IT IF YOU ARE A DANGER TO OTHERS.
I know that's beside the point, but some of you really need to realize it anyway.
I suggest this blog article by Steven Den Beste (and all the rest at USS Clueless, this guy is amazing). It doesn't start off by addressing your root cause response but it gets there.
Also, you don't respond to Moofie's statement that you quote, instead using it as a springboard for your own agenda. You guys might actually be in agreement politically.
Look like a terrorist.
Go for the full stereotype:
- Bin Laden look complete with beard.
- Turn to Mecca and pray right in the middle of check-in control (the hour is not really important, check-in control personnel won't know the right time either).
- Address all security personnel as "infidel" or "decadent american", preferably in Arabic.
- End all you sentences with "Allah Akhbar". (As in, "Here is my passport, officer. Allah Akhbar!" or "Where is the bathroom. Allah Akhbar!")
- Carry around a big folder with the title "Whitehouse attack plan" in big red letters.
You'le breeze through check-in control. They'll probably think you're either nuts of some sort of anti-racism or freedom activist.
PS: Avoid at all costs to look like a real muslim - the will land you on the "Body-cavity-checks-R-us" department for sure. What you want to go for is the full blown, in all it's glory, stereotype.
Howard Stern was removed from the airwaves indirectly by the FCC. However, he has no recourse because technically, he was removed by the Clearchannel, a commercial entity.
Same thing here: there will be no law banning you from flying, its just that the airlines will agree to comply with "standards" and won't let you board. Thus, you will have no legal recourse constitutional or otherwise.
This is the insidious nature of the changes happening in America which seem to inexorbly lead to a facscists nazi-style state that will have end badly.
"Last I heard, the only thing you lost from being a convicted felon was your right to vote."
ONLY your right to vote? It's THE most important facet of a democracy.
This is such a ridiculous, anti-democratic law I don't know where to begin. Seems to be a law created so those in power who unjustly punished someone else back in the day don't have to worry about those people coming back and turning the tables on them by voting them out.
Suffice to say that the obvious solution for a government bent on tyranny would be to convict everyone of at least one crime, no matter how small. Voter problem solved, wouldn't you say?
Visceral Psyche Films
By booking a flight for every member, al-queda will be able to find out which of their members get a green designation.
Sindri Traustason.
In Januari I went kayakking in Mexico and had the choice between:
I went with Lufthansa. I also did not buy any dollars, as recommended, but used Euro money.
With elections you vote every few years, with your wallet you vote every day!
"Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for temporal safety deserve neither to be safe or free."
- Benjamin Franklin
I'm perfectly happy with the fact that Israel defends themselves against invation/attacks but that's not the situation today. Today it is a situation where the Israeli occupation leads to more violence. It's not guaranteed that the attacks will stop if Israels decides to withdraw from the occupied territories but it is still the right thing to do.
30 years ago Israel could claim the moral high ground. They can't do that today. Dude, the hatred goes both ways. So does the corruption. Some of the Arab states are more corrupt than Israel buth that has more to do with the fact that they are poor. (If you check out the studies in this field you will see that poor countries are much more likely to be more corrupt because they are poor.)
And with the attitude that "Israel ain't going anywhere" they will loose sooner or later. The Palestinian population are growing much faster than the Israeli population. It's just a mather of time before they will be a minority in their own land. So sooner or later they need to realise that giving the Palestinians their own state is a much better solution.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Has anyone noticed that, with all the new precautions in place since 9/11, there has not been a single report of anyone connected with Al Quaeda even trying to take over a plane?
They haven't hijacked any planes in Iraq. They didn't do it in Bali, or in Madrid, or any of the other places where they have struck in the past two and a half years.
It's said that generals are always obsessed with planning for the last war, so that the next one always takes them by surprise. Looks to me as if anti-terrorist thinking is stuck in the same rut.
We do have the right to privacy for anything that can lead (easily) to personal private information - such as social security number, high school, college, mother's maiden name.
The airlines are asking for this information too. We have a RIGHT TO FLY without this information as long as we give general info and submit to searches.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
But I'd feel a lot safer if EVERYONE were allowed to carry weapons onto planes. I'd be damned if I'd let anybody sabotage my flight if I had a pistol handy.
Seems to me the only real solution is to level the playing field.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
I don't want ANYBODY to be classified for ANY REASON.
Aw, what a nice, pretty, rainbow-filled utopia you must live in.
Buddy, out here in a little place called "reality," law enforcement only has limited resources. Sure, it would be great if we could quickly and efficiently perform complete background checks and body-cavity searches on every person boarding every flight, everywhere. THAT would help reduce (but not eliminate) hijackings. But we don't have the people or the money to do that. So officials have to apply some intuition, training, and judgement.
If there are two people coming through your checkpoint, and you only have time to do a thorough check on one of them, which one would you scrutinize? The 65-year-old woman traveling on a shorthaul flight on a round-trip ticket, who keeps talking about her grandkids, or the 24-year old Arab guy who's got a cross-country, one-way ticket, traveling alone, who isn't saying much?
Now, of course, there's a 99.999% chance that both of them are harmless. By those odds, you could let them both through with no checks. But your job is to protect the other people on that plane, and the people on the ground. So who do you check? The Arab guy. Is that racial profiling? You bet it is. Is that wrong? Arguably. But the way to make it "right" would be to quadruple the funding and screen everyone with the same thoroughness. Until that happens, they're going to continue making judgement calls, and as long as I'm getting on the plane with grandma and Mohammed, I'm happy to let them choose who to scrutinize.
It's not pretty, but it's reality. It's a lot better than the alternative. The fair approach would be to screen everybody, or nobody. Since "nobody" is way too risky in this Post-911 World(TM), and "everybody" is simply practically impossible, they have to do the best job they can with the resources available. If they randomly selected who to screen, they'd be wasting their time screening people like grandma I just described, who is only a 0.0001% risk. Sure, the Arab guy might only be a 0.0005% risk, but comparably, their resources are better spent screening him.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Every time I pass through airports (and I pass through LOTS of them) I spend time thinking about how easy it would be to bypass the many security measures that are visible to the traveller. It is entirely possible to get 'sharps' through scanners or to bring components of something nefarious on board simply because the entire security process is VISIBLE to the user. Of course, I have no intention of doing any of this, but that doesn't make any difference to the level of security that I am subjected to.
What I like about CAPPS is that it makes the security process a lot less visible to the user, and that it will help identify who is MORE likely to be a problem. By itself, it doesn't solve anything, but it maay make life a little bit better for the 99.9999% of travellers who aren't an issue.
PS. European airports are far more rational about security than US ones. If I had to travel regularly within the US, I would seriously consider another job. There seems to be an officious panic which has made US TSA guards particularly aggravating to the traveller.
Citizen. Do not question friend computer.
::bzzzzt::
The flight you attempted to board requires Ultra-violet clearance. You only have yellow level clearance at this time.
You will be terminated for attempted treason and/or terrorism. Your clone will be commendated for your willingess to cooperate.
Been joking about this for a while, but soon we will indeed have a "Patriot Quotient" whether it is red/yellow/green or some other system. Eventually, it will show up on your credit records. What bank would want to give a loan to a red-terrorist, right?.
If you find you are yellow or red, then you will have to work with Homeland Security to resolve any issues. They will likely give you a set of Patriot Quotient Remediation tasks to perform in order to raise your score back up:
* write letters to the local paper praising your govt's effectiveness in fighting terrorism.
* tell on 3 friends who have perpetrated an unpatriotic act
* convert
* send a contribution to a re-election campaign
Democracy. Land of the Free. This is what it looks like, is it?
... sports events.
"Do you have your travel papers?".
We all know politians who extended temporary
taxes, or broadened policies. We've seen laws
extended to cover things they were never intended for.
Next stop: trains, state borders
Yellow's such a pretty color.
- AndrewN
Due to that event, every person with the surname Nelson and first initial of D gets stopped for extra scrutiny when flying. There are over 200 men in the US named D. Nelson who spend up to 8 hours before every flight proving they are not the bad guy because one bogus name is in CAPPS for a yellow/red classification. There are also a large number of women who get stopped for being D Nelson.
The problem with the passenger screening system is that once a name goes in, it can never come out. They say it can come out, but I will believe it when the D Nelsons of America are free again to fly the friendly skies.
Two problems with your theory. First, how do we add data points to the system? Wait for another airline terrorist act? Let's see, we currently have a data set of an unknown number of terrorists that hijacked three planes? There's a statistical nightmare.
Second, All it's going to take is one wrong hit on a 60 year old female (white, black, hispanic, asian, whatever) and the ACLU is going to go ape shit all over this plan. It will be declared discriminatory and unconstitutional after wasting BILLIONS of the taxpayers money.
Stupid idea overall, the American people will be all for it until the first guy taking his family to Disneyworld gets tagged and body cavity searched, the first terrorist slips through the net, or the airlines figure out that they are losing money due to their creepy security measures.
Find coupons in Greeley
"The U.S., Israel and Nazi Germany. Riiiiight. Next?"
As for the Isreal equivalency to Nazi Germany I'm pretty sure if you are Palastinian living in the occupied territories you would see the equivalence. About the only step Isreal hasn't taken is outright slaughter of Palastinians in concentration camps, which they obviously can't do due to the internal and external outrage that would ensue. The Isreali's do kill something like 3-4 times more Palastinians than Jews killed by suicide bombers. They are routinely women and children, a fact the western press routinely downplays while they obsess over every suicide bomb attack. Suicide bomb attacks are a horror but they are the only tool left to the Palastinians, facing an enemy with massive military superiority, whose goal is to do to them what was done to Jews thousands of years ago.
Isreal simply has to purge the Palastinians from Isreal one way or another or they will eventually become the majority and Isreali Jew's would have to institute apartheid to retain power.
The Isreaili's are well on their way to putting the Palastinians in to walled ghettos in the west bank, and effectively already have in Gaza. This will insure crushing poverty, humiliation and and no freedom for Palastinians for the indefinite future which will do nothing but breed suicide bombers who have NO HOPE and would rather die, and take Isreali's with them, than live.
As for the equivalency of Americ and Nazi Germany its certainly not evident within the U.S., yet, but again much of the rest of the world would see the equivalence. The U.S. is waging unprovoked aggresive warfare which is something not much seen since World War II. The U.S. has routinely, throughout this century, toppled one elected government after another to replace them with brutal right wing dictatorship which ARE indistinguishable from Nazi Germany in their internal repression, reference Guatamala, Iran under the Shah, Argentina, Chile, Haiti multiple times, Nicaragua, the list is almost endless. The Bush administration has been attempting to topple the Venezuelan government since Bush came to power in the U.S. Its almost inevitable they will start attempts to destabilize the new elected government in Spain since they fit the profile, socialist government very critical of the U.S. and the U.S. right wing simply can't tolerate governments that fit this profile, democracy be damned.
Today's U.S. is probably the first nation with a good chance of established a global empire, at the point of a gun, since the Axis tried it in the 1940's.
@de_machina
"Hell, maybe if Arab states would allow Palestinians and descendants who have been living in their territory since 1948 to naturalize and assimilate, both hosts and residents might be on their way to understanding that Israel ain't going anywhere."
So you are suggesting the Arabs and Palastinians should just give up and Palastinians should turn the other cheek to the fact they had their homes and land seized and were pushed out of their homeland, turned into refugees and stateless persons, or if they stayed in Isreal are subjected to constant, arrests, beatings, humiliation, unemployment and grinding poverty.
Here is a thought experiment to bring this issue home to American's. If Mexican immigration in to the U.S. were to accelerate and at some point they realized they out number gringo's and can overpower them. What exactly would you do if they seized your home and property and give to new Mexican immigrants. They push you in to Mexico and Canada without a visa and without any citizenship status. You would go from being secure in your home to being a destitute, homeless refugee and a stateless person. You go from having something to having NOTHING. I gaurauntee you would take up arms in a heart beat too. After a few years of desperation you too would lose all hope for the future and some of you would become suicide bombers too.
American's need to learn to see the world through the eyes of other people and walk for a while in their shoes.
@de_machina
Indeed, it has quite a good answer to one of the question raised in grand-parent...
Stubborn refusal to change is the safest long-term response to terrorism.
Something tells me that you will be a great parent someday. When your kid rebels against you, your solution will be to avoid change and to visit punishment for the rebellion. Nations work like teenage kids that way -- they're never going to see you as right if visit nothing but pain on them. Terrorism is as much a lashing out in frustration as it is a political tool. Changing your behavior is not necessarily (the much demonized) appeasement so long as it's not exactly what they want you to do.
Remember, Al-Qaeda's primary goal is the abolishment of corrupt Middle Eastern governments and the establishment of a borderless Middle East under the rule of sharia. Getting rid of US interference in the region is a key goal for that. The current problem is our form of interference, which breeds or supports the ability of the regional governments to foster hatred, oppression, death, and poverty.
If we want to get rid of terrorism, then we must get rid of hatred and desperation, for terrorism is the last act of the desperate. "Shock and Awe," the industrialized, government-backed form of terrorism will not rid the Middle East of hatred and fear of the US -- it will reinforce it and give justification to the poisonous litany of Al Qaeda and its supporters. Terrorism only works if it has support. Support comes from hate.
We must make the Middle East love (or at least respect) us, and anyone can see that our policy of unpopular overthrows and sloppy nation-building does nothing to further that end. I fear that the war in Iraq and other policy decisions have set this back for 20 years or more. We must make strides to end poverty and ignorance in the Middle East because a content populace does not support terror, and an educated one does not suffer tyrants and fundamentalists well. We must make genuine gestures to promote democracy in the Middle East by cutting the flow of money to despots like the Saud royal family. (Note that those the goals of ending poverty and ending support of tyranny are often in opposition and require careful balance.) We must pluck out the thorn in the side of the Arab world and negotiate a real Israel-Palestine peace accord that puts an end to suicide bombing, to military attacks on civillian targets, and to the economic stagnation that has ground down the Palestinians' hopes. Arabs all support the Palestinian cause, and ending their anger and misery in a supportive way would go a long way to ending a source of anger at the US.
Terrorism should have been a warning sign that something is desperately wrong about our foreign policy -- not a lash to drive it forward faster and deeping into the wilderness. It is a lesson lost on a half of America that would prefer to "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" about the actions of the country that they love. God help us all, because self-critique has long been abandoned as an American trait, and we've come a long way since having a leader that would recognize that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" instead of calling Orange Alerts and restricting the Freedom while mouthing support for the concept in press releases.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Maybe if Arab governments stopped teaching in their schools that Jews were bloodthirsty sons of monkeys and pigs, then Arabs might not be so humiliated every time "the Zionist entity" kicks their asses in a defensive war.
Totally with you here, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. A recent study in the palastinian population in the Gaza strip amongst kids in the 2-4 grade found that most of them (more than 87%) are suffering from anxiety, and wet their beds, and about 60% of them want to become 'Shahid' and commit a suicide bombing.
Any community that creates such an unbelieveable fu#&ed up generation does not deserve to be treated as nicely as they are right now. This is the result of ongoing and persistant brainwashing of kids who will have no purpose to their lives except for getting themselves killed as soon as they can.
I have see and heard some weird stuff recently, but this has really struck a cord with me, and as much as I appreciate the efforts that are underway to bring peace to that region, I can hardly see this happenning without some REAL leadership on the palastinian side that will pull these bad seeds out of the palastinial population and get some humanity back into these people.
From the headline of this story, I thought it might tell us that Congress is sampling breathable air quality for toxicity, either chemical/bio/dirty-nuke attack response, industrial pollution, or debris from collapsed buildings attacked by terrorists. But then I remembered how they haven't peeped a word about the Bush EPA under NJ's own Christie Whitman, when they blatantly lied about the poison in the air of NYC that once was the WTC. And how they haven't complained about the Bush FBI failure to find the anthrax or ricin attackers of their own offices. The leadership vacuum atop the Bush Republican Congress power structure will apparently now be bringing that attention to detail and consideration for the quality of American life to the issue of air travel security. It's time to clear the air of these noxious threats to our political atmosphere.
--
make install -not war
And why do you suppose they might see no other possible hope in their lives than to become suicide bombers? Could it be that all other avenues of worldly success have been systematically denied to them?
Incidentally, the last time I checked the average daily water consumption for a Palestinian living in the Occupied Territories was four toilet flushes' worth per day. You tell me how to farm on that, and I'll be impressed. If you want to find out more, do a google search for "average daily water consumption palestine" or, if you want more 'mainstream' sources throw in a limiter like UN or WHO or Red Cross.
People are far too ready to believe the "irrational hatred" theory when there's plenty of evidence for the "rational hatred" theories...
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
None of this passenger screening applies to the people in the Bush administration making the decisions - and they don't care about us. For example, John Ashcroft started taking private planes instead of commercial flights months before 9/11/2001. He redirected his family off the commercial airlines, too, as a matter of "security", but didn't warn or otherwise protect the other 300 million of us he's sworn to protect. With their asses off the line, these politicians are taking risks with our security and liberty that will destroy us all, while their first class cabins are untouched by reality.
--
make install -not war
If one is suffering from a gunshot wound, is the only course of action to disarm ones assailant? No, but it would be a necessary step.
Symptoms often become separate problems that must also be treated.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
"Any community that creates such an unbelieveable fu#&ed up generation does not deserve to be treated as nicely as they are right now."
The arabs didn't create this fucked up generation. Britain, the U.S. and Isreal did when the Jews siezed the homes and property of the Palastinians and pushed them in to refugee camps and grinding poverty for generations.
If schools for Palastinian children started singing praises of the U.S. and Isreal it wouldn't make any difference since those children would still go home to 50% unemployment, grinding poverty, refugee camps, constant harassement and humiliation at the hands of the Israeli military and hopelessness.
Britain and the U.S. likewise created the mess that is Iran today. After World War II Britain controlled Iran and gave British Petroleum a sweet deal in which they got 90% of the revenue from Iran's oil fields and the Iranian's 10%. A nationalist government came to power and seized BP's assets for the obvious reason the British were looting Iran's one path to economic prosperity. The British asked the U.S. to intervene. U.S. procrastinated for a few years, long enough for BP's claims to be forgotten. Then the U.S. toppled the Iranian government, installed a ruthless, oppressive dictator, the shah of Iran, and promptly gave the oil contracts to U.S. oil companies. After decades of oppression the Iranian revolution overthrew the shah and they hate the U.S. with a passion to this day. Waging war for oil is not a new tactic.
The Arabs don't hate Britian and the U.S. for no reason. They hate them due to a century in which Britain and the U.S. royally screwed them at every turn. They also have a long memory that goes back to one wave after of another of Christain crusaders who murdered their way through the middle east century after century.
@de_machina
U.S. to Test Program for Frequent Fliers
6 4. htm
LESLIE MILLER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants to begin testing in June a program that would allow certain airline travelers not considered terrorist threats to avoid extra security inspections at airports, a federal official said Wednesday.
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/82052
Due to TSA charges for baggage and person inspections coupled with high fuel prices for the airlines, their days are numbered. Note: United Airlines still can get out of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Car rental agencies use GPS and track where you have gone when you return the car. Source: Wall Street Journal. www.acxiom.com tracks all types of credit transactions on everyone. Check them out. So, what can you do? Drive your own car and pay cash for whatever you can. Go to the ATM weekly like I do: I then pay cash for things like gasoline, food, coffee, clothes. etc. If you think this is a Republican thing (I am a true blue Democrat), you are dead wrong. Technologies started before the Reagan years and continued unabated since then, especially during the Clinton years. BTW, if you want to get rich and or have your kids get rich, don't have them go to college to be programmers or accountants or architects-the Indians have that locked up-both here and India: Here are just some of the firms that use them: AOL, Dell, Microsoft, HP, the Wall Street firms, Accenture, and yes, the US Government and many more, like Linksys. Get you and your kids to be security types and tradesmen. I live in Northern, VA right next to Loudon County, the fastest growing security and defense industry county in the nation. You should see the money tradesmen make here-plumbers, electricians, carpenters, rug cleaners, home rebuilders, etc. make.
Islam is a religion, so, no, I am not a closet racist.
The fact stands, the vast majority of airline terrorist events have been carried out by Muslims.
Instead of resorting to a cheap ad hominem attack, why don't you try to refute the claim?
Maybe because you can't?