Slashdot Mirror
Defending The Skies Against Congress And The Elderly
theodp writes "After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father, forcing the frail and faltering 78-year-old to hand over his oxygen meter, stand at attention with arms spread for a wand search, take off the Velcro strap shoes that he'd struggled to put on, and strain to keep his balance as his belt was tugged repeatedly, a Newsweek columnist wonders: have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?" An anonymous reader writes "CNN reported that Kennedy wasn't alone in being listed in the airport watch list as reported in a Slashdot article. Rep. John Lewis, D - Georgia, a nine-term congressman, has been stopped many times because his name appeared on an airline watch list as told to Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on border security. He contacted the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security and executives at various airlines in an effort to get his name off the list, but failed. Instead, he received a letter from the TSA indicating he has cleared an identity check with the agency even though he might still be subject to extra security checks."
Airport security has gotten worse and worse. What next, peopel without arms and legs cant get on planes? Oh wait, that already happened.
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, and John Lewis... any republicans on this list?
Funny... not a one republican has been banned from flying yet... conspiracy, I wonder..
If you are a terrorist, it will not help your case to use the names of political figures as your aliases thinking that nobody would stop a Mr. Kennedy on his way to blow up JFK airport....
Terrorists would be stupid to try to hijack planes again. It was a tactic they could use once, and they did, and now the rules have changed. It used to be the case if someone hijacked a plane, they wanted to make a statement or go somewhere, and you'd probably live if you cooperated. Now we know they want to use them to hit other things and kill people. If someone hijacks your plane now, you're going to fight back. You're dead if you don't, but you have a chance of surviving if you do.
That's not to say we shouldn't screen for bombs and such. We should. They could still try to bomb planes. But I'd like to see more screening of pilots, and more attention paid to other possible forms of attack.
I haven't got on an international flight for around a year and a half now just because it's such a fucking hassle these days it's just not worth it.
Congress and old people do far more damage to this society (and me personally) than any "real" terrorists. This all sounds fine to me. *shrug*.
The terrorists aren't going around telling us "we're the greatest generation" all while bilking my generation out of enormous quantities of cash via taxes to give them free medical care, free prescriptions, social security, etc. And Congress... well... that one is obvious.
In Soviet America, the system shits on you! ... oh wait...
I guess you must not have RTFP(previous)A:
In Japan, Yoshiyuki Sankai has built a robot suit, called Hybrid Assistive Limb-3 (or HAL-3), designed to help disabled or elderly people.
For once our government is being proactive -- this time to guard against the dangers posed by the superpowered mecha-old-people!
Didn't I just read last week in the slashdot story about Kennedy's problems that the extra screening line is "where all the people with dark skin or funny clothes go"?
Every time this sort of thing comes up, someone says that it's all the people with "brown skin" who get targetted, but then they cry fowl when the TSA seems to make an attempt to fairly apply their searches.
So which is it? The brownskins? The US senators? Elderly men? People with "funny clothes"?
As an aside, I'll agree, to a point, that this type of security largely does nothing more than provide a false sense of the very same. But if a "false sense" of security, as it were, is what it takes to make ordinary Americans travel by air, instead of cowering in their homes (as many did after 9/11), isn't it fulfilling its its goal? The goal may not be security, per se, but simply preventing the entire US air transportation industry from collapsing onto itself (issues of privacy and anonymous air travel aside, for the moment).
You're right: we can't stop "terror" or terrorist attacks, almost by definition. But we can do our best to make people feel like they're being protected, and the people whose job it is to protect the public can do their best jobs trying. Simple as it may sound. (And no, I don't mean a police state or "Papers, please". I mean honest people, at many levels, legitimately trying to do their best to protect others. There's nothing wrong with legitimately good airport and airline security, for example...not saying everything the TSA does is perfect.)
An elderly man with medical devices that include metal components would make an excellent suicide bomber. The metal components of his bomb? "Oh, that's my pacemaker/air filter/cancer thingamajig." Bomb dog smells something? "Oh, I take these tablets of such and such for my heart." He's not suspicious in the least no matter how suspicious he's acting. Plus, he doesn't have much time and wouldn't mind as much giving up his life for some radical cause. Keep up the good work, men!
are the Republicans in power trying to scare/delay Democrats out of getting back to Washington? It doesn't make much sense to me, but it that's how it comes across...
I'd put my alias as George W. Bush. :)
:)
Let them know I changed my name, once I became a citizen, after our *great* president.
Pig'd love that, then I'd bomb their asses..
Good thing I'm not a terrorist.
I think it's really dumb that pilots are frequently stopped. My dad is a pilot, and sometimes he flies one way trips on other airlines. He has to do that in order to get to whereever the company plane is so that he can fly it. People with one way tickets frequently come up on security lists, so my dad and other pilots are searched very often. Shouldn't the pilots not have to put up with this? As much as he flies one way, it really annoys my dad...We need a separate system to deal with pilots and flight attendants.
look, when the next attack comes, he'll be mid 20's, arab, and answers to muhammad, achmed, or habib. oh yeah, he smell like camel dung from 7 weeks of not showering. this is a direct result of our hyper-sensitivities to damn near everything. if you're offended, get over it. i'd rather fly safely. and no, we're not harassing the shit out of innocent citizens. we're at war, like it or not. it wasn't our fault that we were attacked, and it isn't our fault that a handful of fanatics want to go back the golden years of the 7th century and live in a cave.
going back to 1979, every singe terrorist act against US interests has been conducted by arab muslims. (and don't mention oklahoma city. nichols and mcveigh spent a year in an al qaeda camp in the philippines.) and by focusing on a few select groups, we're becoming nazi germany. defend them all you want, they want to kill you too!!
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father, forcing the frail and faltering 78-year-old to hand over his oxygen meter, stand at attention with arms spread for a wand search, take off the Velcro strap shoes that he'd struggled to put on, and strain to keep his balance as his belt was tugged repeatedly, a Newsweek columnist wonders: have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?
If you're suggesting that there's any age, sex, race, religious disposition, disability etc that procludes someone from being a terrorist trying to get onto a plane then I'd like to see your evidence.
What would you say to the metaphorical parent of a victim of that terrorists acts when they said to you `why did you assume a guy in a wheelchair was not carrying a bomb`?
If the system is so friggin' easy to fool, just why is it being used??
I can only shake my head and wonder. It is not that I'm upset about a few people being harassed; what bothers me is that this is such a lame measure, which is easily fooled, and yet there are people who think it is useful. It is the presence of such people in decision-making roles is what really bothers me. If these people can't even see the problems with this system, are we expected to put faith in their abilities to spot real problems and design real solutions???
...that you are selling your dignity for illusion of security. Cheap.
-m-
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
First off, to all who were talking about it. No, Democrats haven't had a sense of humor in 15 years or more. That's also the reason you only hear of Democrats being banned is because they are the only ones whining about it. But remember they are the ones who decided you can't profile on anything. Searches had to be random. Sometimes the lot falls to the elderly and sick.
Brings to mind this apocryphal story linked to from Snopes.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
That's just what they'd expect us to expect them to expect us to do!
Good point. Y'know, there are people called "actors" who are trained to give convincing performances of people whom they are not. Just because someone looks old and frail, how do we really know? You remember how convincing Patrick Stewart was at playing a bumbling old Jean-Luc Picard in "All Good Things..."? A little bit of makeup and several months practicing and I bet you could get a normally young, healthy person to look and act very much like an elderly man. At least well enough for an overworked security screener who's been dealing with huge crowds all day long. Like brandon said, he's already got a built-in excuse for setting the metal detector off.
GMD
watch this
I just returned from a trip to the Middle East via commercial airlines - I was seached more times than I can recall, and I must have shown my passport to at least a dozen folks - the really stupid thing is that the people checking the passports are just going through the motions anyway - not one person actually compared the passport photo to my own face (which is an older photo and I had a beard then). I think that the collective airline security is in a ridiculous state - I doubt they could actually catch someone trying to do wrong without prior knowledge.
Hmm. It's not clear skimming through the article whether this guy had an oxygen tank or not (I'm not sure what oxygen meter refers to) but wouldn't an oxygen tank make an excellent explosive? Oxygen tanks always have warnings to keep them away from flame.
Is it possible to make a normal oxygen tank explode and if so, how powerful would it be? I expect you could blow a hole in a plane though that wouldn't necissarly kill anyone.
After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father,--8<--8<-- a Newsweek columnist wonders: --8<--"
And I wonder: why does it take a relative of this Newsweek columnist being hassled for said columnist to write a column about this? the TSA and its secret black lists, and the circus show that goes on in airports across the country, bringing nothing but the sense of security, aren't these enough to call this journalist's attention?
But no, apparently it's business as usual for reporters these days, unless what goes on in America *right now* affects them personally. If the Washington Post and other news outlets behaved 30 years ago like they do today, Nixon would have stayed in office until the end of his term.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Where can I find information about the number of hijackings (around the world) since Sep11?
I just don't think it's still a feasible tactic by terrorists, whether to use it as a weapon or to make a statement/request (like releasing prisoners).
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
There are a couple of problems here.
First, the TSA people on the ground have to use some freaking common sense. It kind of disturbs me that the people on the ground can't recognize someone like Kennedy. On the news yesterday, they said some other bozo has been using "Edward Kennedy" as an alias. I can see some lesser known people being stopped, but seriously... who hasn't seen Kennedy?
These people are stopping senators and grandmas, and letting people through that probably should be stopped, all in the name of "political correctness". If a guy is acting shifty and has a foreign passport, chances are the guy is just nervous about being in a foreign country's airport security, so ask the guy a couple of questions... not my grandma.
Second, these congress people have start getting to the airport AHEAD OF TIME, just like the rest of us. They pull up five minutes before flights, and expect to cruise right on through.
Maybe if they start getting delayed more, they'll authorize more money to lower the waiting times at airports.
What we're seeing now is exactly what they were trying to achive in the first place: scaring us into giving up our freedoms. Every time we increase "security" because of terrorism, we validate their actions.
This is one instance where ignoring* the problem really will make it go away, since terrorists lose if nobody pays attention to them.
*rather, mostly ignoring, but quietly fixing our intelligence agency issues too.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
As in the rest of our society, the people on the front lines of security at airports are trying to do a good job with an overwhelming amount of work for low wages under pointy-haired career bosses/bozos.
There are, however, a certain small percentage of self-important assholes who take sadistic delight in inflicting misery on innocent travelers. As with all bullies, their day will come. Meanwhile, I recommend a dinner of bean & cheese burritos and beer shortly before going thru a security point. "I fart in your general direction," is my motto.
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
and all the BS security checks, you have already sold out.
What if it was an elderly arabic-looking man? Who also was a cleric?
Blar.
Well now, terrorists will just 'disguise' themselves as intoxicated pilots to pass security then. What we really need, besides cockpit doors that lock and are really sturdy, are TRAPDOORS right in front of those lockable doors to the cockpit. PROFIT!!! and Fun too. A beowolf cluster of trapdoors.. hmmmmm
Heheh, as far as USA is concerned, the terrorists don't need to do anything right now. The Americans are doing a great job of terrorizing themselves, living in constant fear of being bombed and hijacked, putting each other on lists, watching and tracking each other... Just look, there is hardly a single article on /. where someone doesn't bring up the terrorists. All this fear and terror for free, whee!
Way back from Europe...connecting in Cinncinatti. We got off the plane, claimed our luggage, dragged them next door to a room with a belt. We didn't put on the belt. We piled them up. 100's of bags....2 workers feeding them to the belt. THEN we waited in line to go through the metal detector BS you get when you first walk into the airport AGAIN.
Fuck man, the only reason I'd fly international now is trips to Amsterdam.
Blar.
I can see fixing the security on planes (mostly by fixing the door so no one can get to the pilots).
But you're right. Any terrorist would have to be an idiot to try that again right now. If nothing else, the passengers would fight back this time.
This isn't about making anything "safer". This is about providing the ILLUSION that we are "safer" now because we are "taking these steps".
But illusions are not reality. Rep. John Lewis used to be tagged by the "security" issue. But he can bypass that if he registers as John R. Lewis. Which tells you how reliable that "security" measure is.
The "security" we've put in place is whatever is easiest for the "security" people to do. And that results in the stupid incidents we keep reading about.
The biggest deterrent to air terrorism has already taken place: 9/11. If a terrorist attempts to take over a plane now everyone is going to remember what happened to the Twin Towers and to the people on board those planes, and no matter what the terrorists say they're going to believe that they're the next barbecue up on the list.
I'd wager that any terrorist takeover attempt will last a few minutes at most, before the news travels the cabin and several hundred passengers mob the sons of bitches and do unto them before they can be done unto.
The 9/11 terrorists did more for airline security than the government ever could, or can: by forcing the passengers to realize that if *they* don't end the threat then death will almost certainly follow.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I haven't seen my mother in well over ten years. She lives in Dayton, Ohio, and I live in Seattle, Washington. I'd love to see her at least once more, before she finally kicks the bucket, but ...
See, I'm disabled. I'm stuck in a wheelchair. At the moment, I can still stand by myself, for short periods, I can even put my shoes on (Velcro is my bestest friend), I cannot, however, spend multiple hours waiting in line to be screened - MS has left my bladder very functional, but taken away my ability to sense "fullness" (and no, the drug that's advertised will not help. Tried that. Nada).
So, flying is out. Greyhound is even worse - those toilets are *not* very handicapped accessible. Amtrack? They keep cutting off routes because Congress won't give them adequate funding for anything but the East coast corridor. Driving? Ha! Got no vehicle that can carry my power chair, and I for sure can't drive myself any more.
So I'm stuck here in Seattle, likely until I die. Thank you, TSA, and your over-zealous "screeners" who really can't stop a determined terrorist (or even a half-determined amateur who wants to demonstrate gow ludicrous the "Homeland Security" really is).
Bah. A pox on all their houses.
Lemon curry?
...a Newsweek columnist wonders: have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?"
Is this from a member of the same media who seem to feel that President Bush is doing a great job and that the Patriot Act and Department of Homeland of Security are of no threat to the American way of life?
The same media who are holding on to their jobs for dear life instead of acting on their (and our) rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press? The same people who are hiding behind "what the public wants to hear" instead of "what the public needs to know". The truth.
It never ceases to amaze me how much people ignore these things until something inconveniences them. Then all of a sudden "Something MUST be done."
Who'da thunk it, but maybe the no-fly list is actually non-partisan. So much so that people who are used to special priveleges get none and may actually start getting pissed off about it.
Interesting. Very, very interesting. Can't wait to see who gets booted off or detained next.
I know it sounds awful, but it's true. If we don't use racial prfiling, then what we're really asking for isn't to stop targeting muslim males, but rather harass grandmothers and children. Because hey, no one wants to be biased.
People against racial profiling usually claim it's just racism. And by a narrow definition it is.
Or is it just playing statistics? Doctors usually check black men for prostate cancer because they are 100% more likely to get it than white men. Is that racism?
So if 9/10 terrorists are muslim males, doesn't it make sense that more scrutiny should be placed on them, rather than seniors with heart conditions? Security needs common sense, and if that hurts people's feelings then it's a worthy tradeoff.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Things like this (also: need for biometric data in passports, gathering passengers-data from airlines) prevent that i even consider a visit to the U.S. in this times.
And everytime someone brings up "giving up our freedoms" or other such rhetoric its seems to me like they are trying to scare us into voting their way. Its all scare tactics, just choose your flavor.
It sure is funny.
o n.htm
But it's fiction:
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/g/grammygord
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Is there a way to find out in advance whether you're on one of these retarded lists? I'm heading out the States at some point, if I can avoid spurious cavity searches at the airport by using a middle initial, that would be good.
Sounds like Tom Ridge and GWB got drunk one night and put all the names of democaratic senators they could think of on that list. Bet Teddy was #1. ... or not.
FLR
Just wanted to point out that this type of security happens only in USA. In other countries, most everybody just go through a metal detector and get their carry-on stuff x-rayed. No leaving luggage unlocked, no blacklists, no checking visas (on internal flights), etc.
All I can say is.. lighters and matches are not banned while smoking is, no one in the government has bothered to explain or do anything about this, that scene in Farenheit 911 where the guard says the woman can only have 4 books of matches just sums up the whole security thing. No one even talks about this!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Someone needs to mod this parent up. The refusal to profile based on race, country of origin, sex, and age explains the absurdities like this one. As much as I couldn't stand Al Gore, the fact that he was chosen for the full shakedown in an airport line in the months following 9/11 just shows the stupidity of random screening. What we need is TARGETED screening.
There are, after all, surprisingly few elderly, white, female Presbyterians on this list.
They should continue to screen suspicious passengers. The enemy will always attack you excatly where you think that you are safe. The terrorists would not hesitate if they were allowed the opportunity to take advantage of a security lapse.
OK, I am with you that Ted has some very questionable background, but I hardly see what it has to do with the no-fly checklists.
I also fail to see what your racist description of foreigners has to do with terrorism or, again, the topic at hand, the no-fly checklists.
The disturbing thing is that for reasons that remain unexplained, people opposed to Bush's policies seem to get added quite readily. Combine this with Ashcroft's recent defense of using FBI resources to investigate (aka harass) Bush protestors and it's not hard to imagine how such a system could and probably is being abused.
When all else fails, run.
Wow, you really believe all that don't you? You're far more likely to be blown up by a baggage handler or ground crew than your fellow passenger. And what's more, your far more likely to be killed by a mugger or the guy living down the road than a terrorist. Wake up and smell the BS.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
With any security system, including the limiting case of no security system at all, it is easy to point out problems. What is hard is to come up with something better. And, to put it bluntly, it does not matter even slightly if a given system suffers from obvious and huge problems if it is still the best system anyone has come up with.
So what are the alternatives to a watch-list or no-fly list that uses names? We could have no identity check, so even if someone called Osama bin Laden shows up for a flight he gets waved through with all the rest. Sound good? We could have a list that uses universal unique ID's. Sound good? We could try to mash together a database that combines all the various existing forms of ID, like passports, drivers licenses, birth certificates, etc. Of course that would be more expensive, more intrusive, and only slightly harder to fool. Sound good?
Feel free to suggest your own scheme.
Terrorists would be stupid to try to hijack planes again.
Yes, they would. They were also stupid to do it the first time, but they did it anyway. Everything terrorists do is, by definition, stupid. But they just keep trying.
Nobody's ever going to make us safer by overestimating the intelligence of terrorists.
Besides, if you read the 9/11 Commission report, you saw just how close we came to losing Flight 93. And there were only five terrorists on that plane. If they put a dozen terrorists on a hundred-passenger flight, odds are excellent that they could once again seize control of the plane. And those precious locks on the cockpit doors that so many short-sighted people fought for will do an excellent job of keeping the passengers and crew out of the hijackers' way.
I write in my journal
George: These democrats are really getting to be annoying. We must do something about them.
Dick: Let's put their names on the terrorist watch list so they can't fly!
paintball
As well as biometric passports, and biometric scanning until those are available, all visitors to the US from every countryhave to have their own passports regardless of their age.
So, whereas in the past, a family of British tourists to the US would have a couple of adult passports and one or two for the older kids, with the younger kids and the new baby travelling on one of their parent's passports, they now have to all have their own individual passports and all be photographed and fingerprinted on entry.
Now can someone please tell me how requiring babies to have their own passports adds to the security of the US? All this is doing (together with the treating visitors to the US like criminals before they've even set foot on US soil) is giving people every incentive to spend their holidays anywhere but the US. Watch whilst the US tourist industry takes a dive because of this bureaucratic stupidity.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I sort of agree. I doubt they'd ever use airplane as "missles" again, as people would fight back to prevent another 9/11.
But, it would still be pretty devastating to simply blow up an airplane, as it would take out the passengers and possibly the citizens below.
Personally, I'm shocked more isn't done with the Railroads. I've ridden the Acela Express from New Jersey to Manhatten about 6 times in the last year, and there hasn't been ANY security. What's to stop some psycho from derailing a train or cashing it into a busy train station? Nothing.
I like taking the train a lot more than flying for dozens of reasons; security causing delays is the main one.
By the time it get through the airport checkpoints, get on the plain, wait for the delays, taken off, landed, gotten a cab, etc. I could have strolled onto a train, had a quiet and comfortable ride, and end up a few subway stops from our Cambridge office, for about half the price.
But, you have to wonder, how safe are our trains.
I'm guessing I was a random target for extra security, but who knows?
As for seraching the elderly and children, smugglers have used such people before, and the successful terrorist groups look for loopholes in security before striking. For example, if knives and metal toy guns get caught too often in "dry runs", then they use box cutters instead once they know that they can get them past security.
Just look, there is hardly a single article on /. where someone doesn't bring up the terrorists.
That's because the terrorists have already won!
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
HA HA!
Well, seriously, I hope your over-paranoid laws won't spread all over the world. And I hope you are going to change the leadership of your country. Vote for democrats, goddamnit and if they keep on going like the current administration, then you are fucked!
When will people understand that government is not concerned at all with common sense. If it was the drug war would not have been waged, we would not be in Iraq right now, America's kids would get a much higher quality education, and some level of health care would be provided for all. Government concerns itself only with the personal opinions of those in power. Of course, these personal opinions are open to influence by lobbyists, campaign donors, religion, and of course plain old self-interest. Public-opinion for the most part only comes into the picture when it affects re-election, otherwise it is of little concern.
...in a parallel universe:
An elderly terrorist smuggles a bomb into a plane in an oxygen tank, murders 200 people.
"Why is this allowed to happen", whines a Newseek columnist. "Why don't they search these people for Pete's sake, it only takes a few minutes. What are they, lazy or incompetent? Whine whine whine."
apocryphal - of doubtful authenticity
apocryphal 1. Of questionable authorship or authenticity.
2. Erroneous; fictitious: "Wildly apocryphal rumors about starvation in Petrograd... raced through Russia's trenches" (W. Bruce Lincoln).
Well, in one sense, it is quite true, since if she could fly on her own, she wouldn't need Air France in the first place. However, since she was denied transportation only after her luggage was checked, it would appear that she could manage other forms of transport on her own.
I would hazard a guess that Air France is currently contemplating dropping off that particular employee mid-flight to allow him to demonstrate his particular ability to fly on his own using his arms and legs.
I'm certain that this would more than satisfy the poor woman who was so shabbily treated by Air France.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
>the really stupid thing is that the people checking the passports are just going through the motions anyway - not one person actually compared the passport photo to my own face
Maybe because they are more experienced than that.
If it was a fake passport the photo wouldn't be the give away sign (unless its horribly and obviously off) but other things would. Like your unconsious or uncontrollable actions. e.g. was the passport shaking when you handed it to them. Did you seem too calm/nervious?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
...pry it from my cold, dead hands which won't be too difficult given I'll be dead about 2 minutes after you turn off the valve.
I'm sure other threads will bring this up, but Bruce Schneier has a great term for this: he calls it "security theater".
Fortunately terrorism isn't a threat in the US. The chances of dying of terrorism here are less than the chances of being killed by lightening or many other things. We shouldn't worry about it.
Ok, here's a link about responsibility and human rights.
This reminds me of a news article I read. A politician and war veteran around the age of 70 (i don't remember his name) was travelling through the airport. He had his medal of honor with him, but since it had sharp edges, the airport security made him mail it back to his residence. Think of the risk of 70 year old war veteran takes over an airplane with a medal of honor!
leprkan...
"Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again".
Someone's face would be very red, if it did happen again and nothing had be done.
The old guy MAY be hiding a bomb in his oxygen mask.
On the other hand, if he wanted to destroy the plane, he's put the bomb in his checked luggage and the remote detonator in his cell phone.
This isn't about how convoluted you can make things. The real terrorists seem to rather simplistic and direct in their approach. The simpler the plan, the fewer things that can go wrong.
The problem is that we are focusing on the once in a lifetime and never to be repeated incidents rather than looking at the actual problem.
It's the ILLUSION of safety that we're pursuing here.
If the only viable attack method the terrorists have is some old guy's medical kit, then terrorism has long since been defeated.
They only bring up the terrorists regularly because they are cowards who can't live life with courage. In general, most of the cowards I've met in my life have been on the right end of the political spectrum. Not all, but most. Personally, have never had any fear of terrorist attacks from "illegal combatants" of foreign nations. I am pretty confident that any attack on U.S. soil that we see is likely to be orchestrated from inside the Whitehouse. That's why I'll be voting for Kerry in November.
Un-news
I knew an aunt, her name was Judy, and her mind was gone around the time she was 90 years old. She could not know if terrorist gave her a fanny pack to wear on a plane. Ass could have explode at any moment, sending crew and passengers into LETHAL nose-dive.
I suggest you read Slashdot
On another, related subject...
The worst part of the black-list that Senator Kennedy was complaining about? The committee he was talking to is not thinking about getting rid of the list, but rather moving it from airline control, as it is currently, to government controlled.
While I think that the airlines have bungled things up royally with it, am I really going to trust the *government* to do things better?
Of course Senator Kennedy was not able get anywhere talking to the airline. The airline checks its manifest with the government. The government says "This person cannot fly. It is your responsibility to deal with that." What can the airline do?
Getting a new driver's license takes me an entire afternoon. What makes me think that the government is going to make it easier to get off the black-list?
The problem with these lists (and the reason people are suing so they do not have to show ID at the security checkpoint) is that *we do not have a list of terrorists*.
I mean, Senator Kennedy was kept off the plane, but he was not arrested. The FBI did not come talk to him. Rather, he was put through more rigorous screening.
What does that mean? It means that the government realizes it will get innocent people with similar names, and that it is fine with that. It has no motivation for getting people off that list. Delaying people at the airport does not cost the government one cent. Indeed, they can use it as "proof" that they are doing something about terrorism.
So instead of using "T. Kennedy", Senator Kennedy uses "Edward Kennedy" and gets on the plane without problem. Yeah, the terrorists will NEVER think of that.
It is like the "Free Speech Zones" that Bush erects whenever he speaks somewhere. The reasoning? Protesters can cause problems, and we want to avoid those security and safety concerns.
Yeah, since people that want to cause trouble (be they protesters or terrorists) are not smart enough to realize they can get a lot closer without an anti-Bush sign.
No, as a frequent airline traveler, I can tell you that most of what the government and airlines have done since Sept. 11th. is "feel good security", designed to make it look safer, but really not improve things too much.
I have argued with a TSA employee at a security checkpoint when he overstepped his bounds. Have you?
We need to start speaking up, even if we worry we might not make our planes.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
...terrorists will start flying disguised as geezers and coma patients, corrupting the precious bodily fluids of our homeland. I say to the TSA: glove up and gape those grannies, if that's what it takes.
You're correct that there will never be another successful hijacking, as the passengers who died in Pennsylvania demonstrated on 9/11. The purpose of the TSA and the entire cabinet-level department of pretense and hand-waving was to head off the *real* danger as perceived by the government, which is that we might all realize that our safety can NOT be assured by leaving it in the hands of the people who brought us Amtrak and the Post Office.
Terrorism is a very diffuse threat, and the only practical response is that which Israelis practice every day: many, many citizens carry weapons, and when you hear about a terrorist attack in israel, you usually will hear that the perp killed two or three people before getting shot by passers-by.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The real war front is not in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is in our own societies: at the airport check in, the railway station, the stadium, anywhere we have to trust other people. If we lose on this front, we lose the power to even demand a stop to the violence in Iraq.
Such 'security' diminishes us as human beings. Why can't our leaders see that the terrorists WANT draconian security inside their targets. Our leaders are doing the terrorist's work for them. Distrust and alienation is fuel for terrorism, not a solution.
First step is to recognise the humanity in those around us. Next step is to break the cycle and recognise the humanity of those we share the wider world with.
I think Ted Kennedy should be stopped every time he tries to fly. Al Gore should be able to go though, he may be in a hurry, and after all, we want him to hurry up and get done inventing Internet2.
Thousands
Standing
Around
Think it through.
What do you think a Republican senator would do if they got hassled by being selected on every flight?
They would probably complain quietly to the TSA. They might get their personal problem fixed, or they might not.
But a Republican senator would be much less likely than a Democratic senator to announce the story all over the news media, embarrassing their own party in an election year.
Let it be said: I'm all for embarrassing the incumbent party in an election year, and for repealing the insidious liberty-destroying ineffective "No Fly" lists. I'm just pointing out a more likely reason why you haven't seen any prominent Republican politicians bitching about getting onto the no-fly list.
And for that matter: what do you think the outcome of this political storm is going to be? Is it going to be good or bad for the prospects of TIA?
I think that Ted Kennedy's announcement is going to weaken support among the voting populace for secret gov't databases. If I were in charge of the federal program to build TIA without alarming voters, I would take care not to include any nationally famous elder statesmen who can get on the television news any time they want.
I travel a lot - mostly to SE Asia and the US.
In the last few years, post 9/11, I've observed that the US went from lax to hyper paranoid and has now settled in what I can only describe as McSecurity ("you want fries with that?"). In short, in the US, a few "experts" try to think up all kinds of situations and then try script behaviour for the braindead morons who will then man the gates.
The metal detector gates themselves have been tuned up for maximum sensitivity, down to the point where a few coins will trigger off the sensors, and the braindead morons will then pull you out for the special scan. (In contrast, Singapore, Seoul, Narita, Hong Kong all have detectors which silently let you through if you have 5-10 coins in your wallet, which I believe is reasonable and the right thing to do. Not to mention they seem to be a lot better trained than the TSA drones - I've noticed that they watch your face very closely as you step through the gate. A little twitch, and you get more attention with the wand. I learnt that the hard way once when I forgot to take my swiss card out of my wallet and remembered just as I stepped through the gate. The damn thing didn't beep but they looked for and found it anyway. In constrast to the US though, they let me carry it on with me. The idiots in LA took it away.)
Coming back to the TSA special scan, the whole belt routine is obviously designed to catch someone who's trying to use a metal buckle to mask a weapon which might have been hidden in the trouser seam. I've watched (with considerable amusement), a TSA drone scanning and tugging at a corded belt - i.e. no metal. IMO, there's no difference between this TSA drone and the idiot at Mcdonalds asking me if I want fries with that. Or my current personal favourite - a checkout counter woman asking me if I needed help carrying 2 AA batteries to my car in a Bay Area supermarket.
Real security can't be scripted.
people forget that the events of 9/11 did not happen from a break down in security they were organized and carried out with items that were allowed. Security has lost the point, a weapon is not just something that is sharp and pointed it is intent. Take a look at your desk and think about how many items you have there that could inflict sever bodily harm. There needs to be a major reform in not only security, but the attitude that security is carried out with.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
You're far more likely to be blown up by a baggage handler or ground crew than your fellow passenger.
I am not convinced of that. Baggage handlers must undergo a federal background check, but anyone can walk into an airport, at least through the first door and into the ticket area, as a passenger and tens of thousands do each day. No, I think that passengers are more likely to be terrorists than baggage handlers.
And what's more, your far more likely to be killed by a mugger or the guy living down the road than a terrorist
I live in a rural area, so the nearest guy living down the road is several miles away. As for the muggers you can guess how common they are out here.
C'mon if the elder happens to have a bomb and blows up your relative, what?, would you you complaint about the lack of security?
Stop whining, get solutions to your problems, there is still something called T R A I N and C A R S (which you use on a H I G H W A Y), stop giving the goverment an excuse to continue this mayhem.
Newsweek each week looses credibility.
hell, I had more trouble explaining my ZIPPO lighter than I did all the other electronic stuff I carry.
You keep going until you die..."Me".
#1. Change the cockpit doors so the terrorists can't get into them.
#2. Rotate the first 2 seats in the plane to face the rest of the passengers.
#3. An air marshal with a pistol or uzi and rubber bullets (no hull penetration) sits here, facing the passengers.
#4. The air marshal has an intercom to the pilots.
#5. Improve training at the baggage inspectors. They are the first line of defense.
That way, a terrorist has to get past the first inspectors, get past the air marshal who will have alerted the pilot who will be calling in for emergency landing instructions and military support and then get past the door to get to the cockpit.
Defense in depth.
Weak old guys and fat senators don't pose any problems to that system.
Parent has a point; isn't the main objective of a terrorist to instill fear and terror - with or without actually doing anything?
Now you can fault the airlines or the government for having accessed all our private information just to train and calibrate the systems, but there's a more fundamental problem: they didn't usefully train or calibrate those systems at all. They just wasted time and money. And they give at least some people a false sense of security when all it really is, is mumbo-jumbo.
Yes, but economist's do it continuously and discreetly.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Fair enough. I'm just saying the "threat" is way overstated than it is real. Most folks are in more danger just going to work than they are when flying.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Come on! If you want to successfully search for that little amount of explosives that fit into a shoe, you have to set up a real police-state. In this scenario every passenger should attempt to check in 2 days before his/her airplane takes off (because of the long waiting line)...
I knew the airport security system was doomed when they started searching 86 year old Medal of Honor recipients
Chip H.
When will security at the airports protect foreign nations from GW Bush?
So WHY are senators and warthogs like ted kennedy on the list in the first place? How do they GET on the list? Someone has to put them there.
Why are they searching infirm 78 year olds?
Is it perhaps that the only point of all this is to "keep it in the mind of the american public?" The reminder that without their eternal vigilance and the smothering of your civil rights that osama bin laden would have your 78 year old infirm grandfather strapped full of C4 to blow up school buses full of parapelegic kids?
The article ponders the question, "Have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?"
The question assumes the purpose of the screening is security. It is not. The purpose of the screening is to build fear in the population.
Only a fearful population will sit back and do nothing while the gov't and its neo-cons pass laws like the Patriot Act and eviscerate the Bill of Rights. The corporate media plays into this fear-mongering, with everything from shows like "Cops" to overreporting crime issues and parroting whatever the gov't says.
One example: NYC (and some other areas) are supposed to be on a "High" level of terrorism alert. That's serious, right?! Yet it was just reported that NYC has dispatched dozens and dozens of police across the country to watch American citizens who might be coming to NYC to protest the Republican convention.
Given this, obviously NYC has all of its terrorism options more than covered, right? Why else would they be wasting their police manpower to send cops around the country to do 24hr surveillance on Americans with no terrorist background?
The emperor has no clothes. This terrorism hype is just like the airport security hype. They know there's little they can do to stop terrorism, so they are instead focusing on domestic issues and creating a fearful population that can be easily manipulated after the next inevitable terrorist attack.
Not to make assumptions that bite you in the ass. We know that there are wackos in this country, we also know that the radicals are trying to recruit white people. Thus it isn't valid to assume that a terrorist is necessiarly going to be Arabic. It's probably more likely, but it's not a sure thing.
Also, an old person would be a great tool for terrorists. They find someone who is facing death fairly soon and who's mind is not all there, and they manage to convince them to blow up a plane. So they load an oxygen tank with explosives. The old person doesn't need oxygen, so it's all a ploy. However everyone sees them, feels sorry, and doesn't do any checks. An hour later, there's a blown up plane, and everyone wants to know how a terrorist got through.
So I'm not arguing for PC BS, but you do need to keep an open mind. Security comes from being consistent and not letting your guard down. You start assuming that certian classes of people are no threat, you then run the risk of them slipping through.
Now as for recongising Kennedy, give me a break, there are thousands of people that represent us at different levels of government. No one is oging to know all of them. At the congressional level I know my two senators, my representitive, and a few of the loud mouths (like Orrin Hatch). I frankly don't care about Kennedy, so he's related to an ex President? So what? He doesn't represent me.
Yep, they wouldn't get far trying to take over a plane now.
But what about if one of them takes the pilot course, becomes a pilot, flies for a few years until he gets put on a route he can use and THEN flies the plane into a building?
Maybe he wouldn't be able to get a pilot job in the US. But what about from a different country? Fuel up the plane for the flight back and WHAM!
have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?
Hell yes. Generics in the form of "Initial. Lastname" are going to match many thousands of Americans for all but the most unusual names.
Its also worth noting that security still varies wildly from airport to airport. I flew from my home (DC) to Orlando and back in July:
Leaving Washington National (aka Reagan National), you must take off your shoes, empty your pockets and step through the scanner. If your pacemaker sets off the scanner, you get wanded. Period. And the scanner has been tuned so just about anything metalic sets it off. Any but the thinnest carry-on bag will be hand searched. They were very polite and decent about it, but they also missed the screwdriver I left in my backpack by mistake (I'm a computer guy. I always carry a pocket screwdriver with me along side my pencil and pen and completely forgot about it. Screwdrivers are currently banned what with them being pointy metal objects and all.) The folks both machine and hand searched that backpack, by the way. And they make one of my companions throw away his toenail clippers.
Returning from Orlando (destination: Washington National), there was no fuss about my shoes and my bags were OKayed with a simple run through the machine.
All of this BS because of 9/11, when the crux of the 9/11 security failure is very straightforward: Pilots were required to cooperate with would-be highjackers. Period. Try to be a hero and you would be fired, sued, and probably brought up on criminal charges. The statisticians said that the chance of survival was much better if you cooperated and by God that was what you were going to do. The pilot had no latitude to judge the situation at all.
DUH! The surprising thing was not that 9/11 happened, but that it didn't happen sooner.
The pilot, by the way, still has no latitude to judge the situation. He just has an alternate set of instructions. And its the same in many other sectors of critical industry, leaving us very vulnerable to the next errant requirement that those bastards can ferret out. Think of it like a real-life buffer overflow just waiting for the script kiddies, only in real life people die.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Go find our first the real reason Osama attacked us.r y/0,1 1581,845725,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/sto
Terrorists would be stupid to try to hijack planes again.
:-(
Good point. And if Bin Laden and al Queda have proven anything, it's that they are not stupid.
Sadly, I can't say the same for the morons running the US.
I've got a bit of inside view of the TSA and what is going on in the minds of screeners and their superiors. Without a little Q&A I'm not sure what people really want to know but I will put forth the following assertions that should not at all be surprising:
1. There are *some* screeners with sensibility about them, but they are seemingly outnumbered by a collection of morons who seem to enjoy causing people pain and discomfort. I've seen it too many times. God help the screener who doesn't follow the rules when I go to the airport because I'll cause them a world of problems.
2. The logic behind the screening process is that "Anyone could be a terrorist." The training is very "politically correct" and does not leave much room for personal opinion or feelings to come into play. This means that even when they are following the rules, they're often duty-bound to be assholes. That said, some people still go "above and beyond" and seem to love it too much.
3. I have been to other airports and even to another country... Japan in this case. Security wasn't all that different in Japan. (I managed to breeze through without incident.) I have also heard from other travelling TSA screeners who have visited other countries because we were interested to know how it is out there. Spain, in particular, was pretty rude by comparison to the U.S. security measures. I've also heard that certain places will not allow anything on board that uses a battery. I'm not saying the TSA couldn't use improvment here, but by comparison, the U.S. airport screening process is VERY streamlined and efficient while allowing people to actually enjoy their flight once they get through.
While people sit back and judge how bad things are with the broken system, I invite anyone to consider how it could be run without violating any non-discrimination policies. I think it'd be impossible to be sensible and non-discriminatory at the same time.
In my opinion, I think all flights should have two or more armed FAMs on every flight and they should all but do away with the detailed passenger screening that is being done today. Baggage screening is pretty much on-target but should be handled with more over-sight because too many bad things go on there as well. (Things like theft, damage and laziness are a bit too common in my opinion...especially when bagage screening goes on away from public view)
Ask questions and I'll answer honestly. I might be stirring up a bit of trouble for myself, but I don't think anything I've said so far would be surprising in the least to anyone.
The events that caused 78 year old Americans to undergo humiliating treatment at air ports have also caused Iraqis to have their country flattened - I wonder who has more cause to complain?
stop looking for easy people to pick on. Stop looking for fucking nail clippers and PROFILE!
I think that it's a very good idea to keep track of the flights of people who may be dangerous to other passengers. However, I think that the list should be much more selective.
IMHO, I think it would make more sense to put two classes of people on the list. Those classes being anyone who was not born in the United States, and anyone who has a criminal record which includes a violent crime or a felony. We're primarily watching for terrorists and violent people. To me, it makes more sense to watch the types of people most likely to be a terrorist or a violent person. When was the last time you met a 78 year old man who wanted to hijack a plane and crash it into something?
Also, I think it would be a show of good faith for Homeland Security to send a letter notifying people that they are on the watch list and why, thus offering them a chance to correct the issue ahead of time if they shouldn't be on it. Many would say that would just be alerting the enemy, but if they are really doing something wrong, and we know who they are, it won't matter if they know we know about them.
They should get a copy of the bill of rights, and have it scratched to their cornea, so that they can have a copy within sight at all times, but that's a totally different issue.
However, in this case, if they hassle or stop the a Senator or Representative of the House, that is literally unconstitutional. Unless they are charging him with a Felony, Treason, or Breach of the Peace. He can't be stopped and questioned in any place except the House he serves in.
It's the reason why members of Congress can't get a speeding ticket in Washington D.C. If they guy was on his way to Washington D.C. he's literally got constitutional immunity from this sort of thing. I'd much rather it be fixed in the general case, but in this particular case, I'd be curious to see what happens if he challenges it on a constitional basis.
Kirby
Nice how you got one sympathetic dipshit to mod you Interesting.
Please... I'd like to know... how does profiling stop a real terrorist from slipping something onto an unsuspecting victim for retrieval by an accomplice later? Hmm?
Dumbasses... here's a clue: get some real security measures so that you can appropriately pick out people who need closer review based on - here's a fucking unique thought - criteria that may actually be threatening, right?
Because random isn't good enough, and profiling is how stupid bigots answer problems. After all... white people could never be the enemy.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
In a strictly morbid sense, a train getting blown up in the United States wouldn't exactly terrorize the population. In order for there to be an effect that the terrorist would desire, the people as a whole need to be made fearful of everyday activities. For most people, going to work is an every day activity, along with driving a car or going shopping. Flying on a plane is something most people do occaisionally, perhaps yearly. Riding Amtrak is not something most people will ever do, so they wouldn't think of an Amtrak terrorist attack as something that could directly affect them. In order to have the desired effect, a terrorist target would have to be some type of place that everyone goes to sometimes, such as a mall or a large store. And from what I've seen, these types of places never have much security except for the mall cops whose primary purpose is to harass kids and pretend they are doing something about shoplifters.
USA has gone nuts. That is Usama bin Ladens ultimate victory.
The cockpit of a plane should be inaccessible via the cabin. An airplane should carry two pilots and two co-pilots, and they would board the aircraft from a different hatch than everyone else; a hatch which only opens into the cockpit. Hijacking problem averted.
Then we can return to our regularly scheduled NOT BEING SO FUCKING AFRAID OF EVERYTHING.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Former lawyers for the RIAA are now working for the Transportation Security Administration. It's a small step from suing children and the aged to strip searching them.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/3672459/detail
The report, compiled by the commission's staff, says 13 of the 19 hijackers applying for visas presented passports that were less than three weeks old, yet their visa applications were met with no increased scrutiny.
Two of the hijackers, the report said, lied on their applications "in detectable ways" but were not questioned about those lies. And all 19 of the hijackers' applications had data fields left blank, or were incomplete in some other way.
Three of the hijackers were carrying Saudi passports "containing a possible extremist indicator" present in the passports of many al-Qaida members, the report said. While it's not clear what that indicator was, the report added that it had not been analyzed by the CIA, FBI or border authorities for its significance.
The report is one of two staff addenda to the commission's final report, which was released last month.
The other report released Saturday analyzed the hijackers' financing.
It concluded:
- There is no evidence that anyone in the United States, or any other country, provided substantial funding to the hijackers. Most of the money came from al-Qaida.
- Gaps remain in the intelligence community's understanding of how the terrorist network moves its money. "Because of the complexity and variety of ways to collect and move small amounts of money in a vast worldwide financial system, gathering intelligence on al Qaeda financial flows will remain a hard target for the foreseeable future," the report said.
The commission officially disbanded Saturday, when its congressional mandate expired. The commissioners had not approved the final text of the reports.Everything terrorists do is, by definition, stupid.
I have to disagree. 9/11, while horrific and twisted, was still brilliant.
Nobody's ever going to make us safer by overestimating the intelligence of terrorists.
Yet everything they do is, in your words, "by definition, stupid"? Methinks you're underestimating them...?
Besides, if you read the 9/11 Commission report, you saw just how close we came to losing Flight 93.
If flight 93 crashing with the loss of all on board doesn't count as "lost", I don't know what does...
And those precious locks on the cockpit doors that so many short-sighted people fought for will do an excellent job of keeping the passengers and crew out of the hijackers' way.
If the passengers and crew can't get in, neither can the terrorists (at least, not without explosives or taking apart the door, but that'd make it accessible by the passengers anyways).
Funny that you accuse others of being short-sighted...
As a non-American who has travelled frequently to the USA for work since 9/11, I can say that things are getting to the point that my co-workers and friends are reluctant to travel to the States. I've suffered through the embarrassment of an extended search multiple times because I frequently have to book return flights at a moment's notice and often travel with no checked baggage. The last time I left Houston, the check-in personnel actually apologized for what I was about to be put through at security - having seen me multiple times that month. My wife refuses to vacation in the US because she's reluctant to apply for a visa, go through the humiliation of fingerprinting, and then suffer the indignity of being photographed when she crosses the border. Its sad, because I want the opportunity to introduce her to some wonderful friends and places in the country -- but I understand her feelings. We don't subject Americans to such treatment when they visit Europe. I think its time for the US gov't to rationalize security -- no New Zelanders, Irish, or Icelandic people have ever committed acts or terrorism against the USA -- so don't try to tell them they're "increased risks"
Take a look at this story of my parents' recent trip to Wichita Kansas.
Here's the link.
What's to stop some psycho from derailing a train or cashing it into a busy train station? Nothing.
Yes, but there are far jucier targets. Train derailments usually involve a lot of minor injuries but few major ones, and even fewer fatalities.
A small bomb in Times Square on New Years would be far more damaging (not to mention fear-inducing).
A passenger train wouldn't - but a train (or a truck) carrying hazmat would be an effective terror weapon.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I'd be okay using that as a method of dealing with terrorism if we had mandatory military service, too, so there's at least a little proper gun safety taught.
Particularly if you're mid-Eastern or from any country that doesn't use our alphabet. Your name can be spelt many different ways.
Yep, adding a drivers license number to the name would do away with false positives, but the terrorists will just use a different name in the first place and bypass it that way.
Names and documents are the easiest things to change.
Just the other day, I heard Senator Ted Kennedy, D - Massachusetts, had an issue with the same problem. His name was on the list as well. Funny we don't hear about Repulican congressman being on the list. Coincidence?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Only guys named Muhammad get searched? White guys can commit terror acts as well. And what better disguise for a terrorist than a sick old man?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Bruce Schneier has a great term for this: he calls it "security theater".
:-)
He hit the nail right on the head; that's exactly what it is.
Fortunately terrorism isn't a threat in the US. The chances of dying of terrorism here are less than the chances of being killed by lightening or many other things. We shouldn't worry about it.
Shhh -- you're not supposed to say that, no matter how true it is.
But no matter how true that is, it is not what the general population believes. And when you think about it, you can't blame them too much.
When night after night the news talks about terrorism and our vulnerabilities, it sinks into people. It should, it's supposed to. It's just like crime -- if you overreport crime enough people will lock their doors, feel frightened of blacks, and support ever-increasing police budgets and prison populations.
It's simple propaganda.
Due to liberal nonsense, it's the obvious people getting overlooked and the most unlikely getting scanned.
It's not about hurting the feelings of a few people....IT'S ABOUT SAVING LIVES. Ever take a trip on El-Al? They've been in this business for almost half a century, and have no worries about pissing someone off. If you look dangerous, you get searched.
Maybe you can 'feel my pain', and maybe you hug a tree, and you'll start a bar-fight 'cause some mook's throwing away an aluminum can, but it all comes down to saving lives. Period.
But then, liberal ideas haven't been good ones since the 60's. Now the 'equal rights coalition' is about hating men, not getting women better jobs, the 'environmental' movement is about getting in the way and ignoring the damage they cause, setting SUV's on fire to protest pollution. And black men are no longer encouraged to do well, they're told they deserve money and an apology- and by no means 'act white' (cause you might get a job, and no longer need these people!)
Hear me now and believe me later: Liberalism is all about attacking what's _right_ with America, not about making it a better place. Things like curbing religious choice, stopping capitalism, guaranteeing jobs/healthcare/beanie-babies/whatever and it's all foolhardy. Just ask any former superpower who undertook them. Russia, France, Britain, and so on.
Sorry. Sometimes this awkward monsoon of wrong-thinking is just too much to bear. It's like all these people are under a Cold-War era spell and can't THINK for themselves. They line up to be told what to do.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
They don't want you to know. Republicans are evil, George Bush is Hitler's secret clone, and there are no such thing as terrorists. *rolls eyes*
Being too calm is a suspicious sign? I hope it doesn't become a crime to be confident that you are not committing a crime.
On the other side... shaking? Nothing a little valium or alcoholic won't fix.
Not only america - I was travelling on the eurostar from london to brussels. I needed to take a pair of crutches back home to belgium and knew, given the current climes ( 6 months after 9/11) that I wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting them on the train had I not needed them. Therefore I (A 19 y/o Male in reasonable trim) pretended that I needed them and got through customs after they got X-rayed and I "hobbled" through the metal detector.
A little old lady in front of me, stereotypical really, had a pogo stick in a box all wrapped up ready for her grandson. Security refused to let her take it on the train because it could be a weapon.
I pondered this as I wandered off on my two 1.2 metre, very usable bludgeoning weapon crutches....
'There is no evidence that anyone in the United States, or any other country, provided substantial funding to the hijackers. Most of the money came from al-Qaida.'
That makes no sense. The money didn't come from nowhere. If if it came from al Qaeda, where did al Qaeda get the money?
I am currently a TSA employee. That said, I am a 19 year old university student earning a decent wage in one of the only locations possible to me in this crazy casino town. I honestly believe that the people I work with are crazy, with the exception of a few kind souls. They are also, in my opinion, mostly too old to be able to efficiently do their jobs. I don't disagree at all with the level of security; I do very thorough bag searches all day long, and honestly don't care if doing my job causes someone else to miss their flight. That said, I think that the people I work with really need to work on their skills concerning the attitude that they give off while they do their jobs. There is no reason why any medical disability cannot be accommodated. There is no reason why whatever crazy theory someone has (and I've seen my share of crazy) cannot be accommodated. Basically, there is no reason why whatever the passenger (who is a customer, even if not mine) wants cannot be accommodated. As long as we search both the passenger and the bag to determine security, we don't have to be jerks about it. Private screening is available at all times, although my collegues refuse to offer it. Alternative screening methods exist for just about everything (except laptops and other large electronics... only one choice there). Really, there is no reason why we can't make people happy. I think that random screening is a good thing. We are a smaller airport; not quite the middle of nowhere, but only a minimal amount of tourist traffic and a few international flights. We have found guns (about one every other week). We have had checkpoint breaches. However... I don't agree with 9 out of 10 calls that my supervisors make about whether or not some borderline maybe-maybe not prohibited item can fly. While I know a large part of my feelings about this are in defense of my good-paying job that's putting me through school, I do believe we need airport security. I just don't think we're going about it the right way.
AP - LaGuardia Airport, NEW YORK CITY, NY
Government and airline officials thwarted what is believed to be a hijacking attempt by John Smith of Bentonville, AK this morning. Mr. Smith, 98, had in his possession a quantity of nitroglyceride and a device capable of igniting it.
When questioned about his matches, Mr. Smith admitted he is a life-long smoker.
Mr. Smith is being held in a secure facility pending his arragnment.
In other news, the AP reports many airline passengers named "John Smith" are being delayed for increased screening.
India's former defense minister was strip-searched twice on US airports. He has vowed never to return to US. And you wonder why the world hates you.
Now I know why I've been having so much trouble at airports. I have the same name as a U.S. senator!
The real problem with airport security is that too many politicans (hounded by Islamic pressure groups) think that nationality profiling is "racist". There is nothing racist about (1) checking the bags and bodies of all non-American citizens from the USA and (2) performing a less intensive check of American citizens. The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
Unfortunately, because nationality profiling is considered "racist", the TSA has contrived an insane screening process whereby a handicapped American citizen, who could never be a threat to anyone, is subjected to an intensive check of all body cavities. At the same time, the airport screeners are forbidden, by TSA regulations, from intensively checking more than 2 Middle Easterners (i.e. without American citizenship) per flight.
Insane? Yep. You can blame the spineless politicians who refuse to stand up to Islamic pressure groups, La Raza, etc.
Common sense applied to airline security is that you *do* search everyone. Otherwise, how else can you say with certainty that you know what objects did and didn't make it on the plane?
This is old news - Bill Maher has been railing against searching old ladies for a couple years now. But of course, he's wrong. For one, terrorists could use these security loopholes to get things onboard. Two, you don't have to be a terrorist to get items confiscated. The old man could be senile and could be carrying a handgun just because he's a weirdo and likes to carry one.
The major problem with airline security is that it is run by uneducated ghetto kids making $9/hr. These kids don't have the confidence (or smarts) to dick people around like a bar bouncer would. Get real security professionals in there and you would have real security.
Anyway it is somewhat obsured that this elderly woman and senator Kennedy are on the list...but it isn't obsured to search her. I mean if you were planning a terrorist attack using airplanes would you be dumb enough to use young arabic men to do the work? And the best way to do it is to not let the passanger even know they have a weapon or a bomb in thier carry on.
stendec@gmail.com
This story really does not belong on slashdot. This is supposed to be a forum for technology news. If you wish to discuss new technology for passendger screening, fine... However, the moderators should do more to avoid turning slashdot into the political flamewar that is fark. Please, I beg you, no more politically motivated articles.
Why is it that only senators and congressmen of the Democratic party get "confused" for terrorists?
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
Then how about this: You are far more likely to be killed on the road by a drunk driver. I don't see cops with breath-alyzers standing outside of bars to stop people with blood alcohol levels over the limit from driving.
Nothing's done with the railroads because nobody rides them anymore, at least not in this country. Last time I took a train to get from point A to point B was over in Germany, years ago. For short trips (under 300-350 miles), driving is about as fast (probably faster, because you don't have to make a bunch of stops along the way), and is more convenient...you don't have to rent a car at your destination. For longer trips, flying is faster.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I can see changes that should have never had to have been changes but done out of common sense, bolt cutters and knives should have never been allowed on airplanes, it's common sense, either pack them in a bag that's being checked in or don't bring them at all. This whole random search thing does shit except add delays at the airport. Matches shouldn't be allowed on airplanes and yet they are, what will it take to stop that, a shoe bomber who sucessfully blows up an airplane. Probably. Sept 11th happened out of lack of commonsense, and Dept. not wanting to share information with each other.
There was a warning of a terrorist attack days before Sept 11th, just center on the wrong part of the world.
On Aug 19, 2004, around 1am EST, immigration computers stopped working at Logan Airport. Nobody could get through. About 30 people and the crew of the airplane had to stand in line for over 2 hours. There were no chairs, and it was very cold. Passengers with children asked for blankets, or to be moved to a holding area, but the requests were denied. There were no phones, and cell phones were not allowed to be used in that area, so nobody could contact family waiting to pick them up. Many people were quite agitated, although everyone was very nice, including the immigration officers. There was no backup plan in case the computers go down.
Just give everyone on the aircraft a gun.
:D
If one idiot gets up and says "I'm taking over!" then the other 240 passengers can take say "No you're not!" while training a nice red laser sight on the terrorist's sweaty forehead.
Sounds like fun!
Crazy moderators! And you did not even show any partisan slant at all, just pointed out a possibility...
Paul B.
If you go through the military weapons training you get a federal concealed carry permit. The training's free if you sign up in the US military or National Guard, otherwise you can pay the DoD or Guard for it.
The way capatalism is going makes me absolutly sick... I'm wondering if any of you have read Jennifer Government, and if you feel that the state of affairs presented in that book is virtuous in your opinion.
Now the terrorists use makeup or whatever disguising techniques to make up one of their number as Senator Edward Kennedy, since they know that they can get a supervisor type person to "visually identify" him, since he is so well known. That or any of a number of famous people.
You are correct, "recongizing" someone is not sufficient.
emt 377 emt 4
Hmmmmm.
Someone's a little bitter.
Nice metaphor by the way, make that up yourself?
Meanwhile, us "pussy liberals" are going to be busy out on the rifle range.
Overlooked that, didn't you? Yea, it's so much more convenient to stick to stereotypes and ignore the vast majority of liberals, like me, who hunt, eat red meat, fuck our girlfriends every night, and bench 200. I'd like to see you get off your fat ass and do some actual work. Ya know, with your hands. Maybe even work out.
60 years ago humanity sacrificed between 20 and 30 million people on account of this sort of governmental behaviour. This time around it's the other side being totally idiotic clots. Let us all pray that they don't do anything really silly before the regime change.
For me, I think I'll go around the world the other way next time I travel.
Why then not to teach everyone who wants (and who is not a felon,) and upon successful completion of the course give the concealed carry permit. That would be popular and effective.
One thing thats is prevelant while I have been traveling around the world lately is that many govt workers just dont care one way or another.
While in other countries I noticed regardless of position the person doing it knew checking the papers was something that was of utmost importance and it was their job.
The passport checker would take my papers look them over for about 3-7 minutes and then allow me to move forward, or in some instances ask a gentleman to the side for some sort of re-verification with someone else. People gathering luggage carts did it speedily and was smart enough to see that when someone needed one take it out if their train and give it to the weary traveler.
Upon arrival at LAX I noticed people asked to see various forms of ID while traveling through the terminals about 4 times before luggage claim, with each time no one even glancing at the paper they are asking for, but simply taking it and handing it back. As if passing time till next pay day. Cart gatherers would take carts and if someone needed one direct them to where they should get them, with a life sucks type attitude. No one around to provide information to foreigners on where to get a taxi or even where to proceed next.
Ever since the boomer generation and subsequent generations it seems no one cares one way or another about much of anything, Im beginning to believe my grandparents stories on how they had a work ethic over us. What we need is people taking pride back in whatever it is they do and I would say almost all the things that frustrate us daily would disappear.
Bush also has given himself the right to suspend the election if there is a terrorist attack before it! So attacks could well be in his interest, perhaps he would like to become life time president? He has already said thinks it would be easier if it was a dicatorship.
I liked Tony Blairs comment, about wanting a mature debate about what freedoms we should give up here in the UK to pretect us from terrorism. We have not had a bomb here for years so I think the security services are doing an ok job... So how about ZERO tony!
James
Are people put on this list randomly or are they checked randomly and if something is found, then put on the list? Answer me that one please.
acutly most Israelis don't carry weapons, the security there is achived by having security people everywhere (grocery stores, bus stations, etc)
...and change the slogan here from "News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters" to "Kerry For President, Republicans Are Evil, and Democrats are 100% Perfect!" I saw enough hate-spewing vitriol in the South Park article, so I know I'm burning karma by even daring post this.
The mean time before death or serious injury for a hijacker would be about 10 seconds.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
chechens live in the caucasian heartland (caucausus mountains), are white (auburn hair even) and are all muslim. many are terrorists.
Yes, let's bring on the racial profiling !
They were all very polite and efficient about the whole thing---I learned a long time ago that the surlier you are with the people handling you, the surlier they're going to be. The older fellow doing the bag inspection joked about the title of one of my books---"Absolute BSD". He said "I know what BS is, what's the D stand for?"
When I left the security area, I realized two things. First, that I was flying on a one way ticket, all the way down the Atlantic coast, on a ticket bought by a third party at nearly the last minute. Add that to the fact I'm male and below 40 and you've got a very close match to the warning-bells profile.
The second thing I realized was that they forgot to check under my hat! All this song and dance and I could have had anything under there!
On the whole, an ugly fact of modern existance. So why search septugenarian invalids? Because if you only search guys like me, then you're profiling, I guess, and that's racist and naughty.
Atlanta, I vote the worst and most obnoxious airport out there, security-wise. I've seen lines stretch all the way through baggage claim, past ticketing and out onto the sidewalk on Monday mornings.
This is not my sandwich.
The victory is not for the terrorists, but rather for the beaurocrats in Washington who want to secure their own power and positions for years to come by taking away power and freedom from those who oppose them. Does anyone really think it will get any easier to oppose the regime in years to come? If you cant beat em, join em I guess.
--------- I have no signature
Patience, that's phase two.
Beware blue cats moving at
A lot of people use the rails to commute, particularly to New York. Driving into NYC during rush hour is insane. When I take a NJ Transit to NYC, the cars are always packed.
Sure, not too many people go cross-country in trains anymore (at least, in the US). But a lot of people use the commuter rails.
Personally, I won't let the potential fear of something happening stop me from doing the day-to-day. But the rails would be easy-pickings for some real jerks.
I still haven't seen any evidence that hasn't already passed through unclean hands.
I don't trust people with an axe to grind when they tell me which OS is better, why should I trust them when they tell me who performed some heinous act?
Specifically, I find it very suspicious the laws that were ready to be passed within days of the 9-11 atrocity. And I'm not sure that those presenting those laws so conveniently pre-written are without guilt in the event.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
- Amtrak from Pittsfield, MA to Boston, MA: 4-5 hours.
- Car via I-90 from Pittsfield, MA to Boston, MA: around 2 hours.
Amtrak sucks.CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Wait until the "baby boomers" reach old age and start to collect on their social security, government pensions, Medicare, et cetera. This is the most well to do generation in American history, and either the largest or second largest (if the number of their kids exceeds their numbers) as well. When they retire, they are going to use their votes -- guided by their unequalled sense of entitlement -- to suck the country dry.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
http://tinyurl.com/5t5hw http://tinyurl.com/5lsr7 http://tinyurl.com/4ywjw
Where every male is in the service. You have to prove each year your ability to shoot.
Then again you can also own tank if you want.
Very peaceful there.
Of course the whole thing is devoid of common sense. It's the government.
What and this should be a surprise? You mean no one saw this coming? What a bunch of dunderheads Americans are. All this non-sense because of 9/11.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Amtrack sucks, but have you actually tried driving to some major cities during rush hour? The scenario has to be a common torture in Hell. Driving in traffic to get TO the city, and driving through traffic IN the city, every day can drive someone mad.
In some situations, driving is definately better. But other cases: horrible...
Car - Summit NJ to New York NY - 1+ hour to get to parking.
Amtrack - Summit NJ to New York NY - 20-30 minutes to Penn station.
The money has to come from somewhere. I do not wish to live on money stolen from legally disarmed victims (commonly known as taxpayers).
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
State issued concealed weapons permits should, of course, be honored everywhere in the US under the "full faith and credit" section of the US constitution - just like drivers licenses and marrige licenses. However, petty politics obviously trumps the US constitution any day.
Surely you remember Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, the guy with a British passport and a nice white-guy name? A Wall Street Journal reporter managed to get hold of a computer in Afghanistan that had a number of al Qaeda files on it, and many referred to Mr. Reid, and very specifically to experiments to see what a guy with a nice European Union passport could get away with.
This is not to defend the current extremely stupid no-fly list, but it seems that some people think that it would work to just harrass obvious Arabs and Muslims and let everyone else through. The bad guys would simply pick someone who does not fit the profile.
I'd be okay using that as a method of dealing with terrorism if we had mandatory military service, too, so there's at least a little proper gun safety taught.
I object to the draft on general principles. If you want to assure that someone knows what they're doing with a firearm before you sell it to them, that can be accomplished with much less drastic measures than requiring two years of involuntary servitude.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There is only real solution I see. Make everyone change into pajamas and sandles. Then proceed to do a quick search on everyone equally. Have bagage on a seperate plane(or a specially designed compartment). Then have laptops, tvs, and VoIP phones.
If thats not enacted, a little profiling would go a long way. Who group has the most history in hijacking planes? What group does gihadist clerics target? Islamic males. Disallowing screeners to act on that fact is ludicrous.
Is a three in four chance of passing unnoticed. So just get 5 guys instead of 4 and make sure they don't all stand next to each other.
I have no problem with completely doing away with all the passenger screening. Obviously, I also have no problem with relaxing them as any democrat sees fit. I don't fly near any of the high value areas. My little fucking tubboat of a state barely keeps up with it's own population, much less importing people to run the place. Bible Belt states are cool like that.
The Islamic Fundamentalists (hereafter, known as 'Islamists") aren't going to pose as some 78-year old guy that's on oxygen. They wouldn't dare pose as a pregnant female, an Orthadox Jewish Fundamentalist, or a Mexican. Nor would they send a child to do an adult's work, such as a suicide bombing. Life (people, in particular) are entirely too precious to them to do something like that.
We're completely impregnable with the safeguards that have been imposed. It's the fault of the intelligence community that the World Trade Centers were destroyed. I say we dissolve them, completely. Then use the saved money for Social Security and Latino Immigrants.
Also, we need to do away with the Department of Defense. The Coast Guard and the Department of Transportation is all we really need, in this day and age.
"also, had the people on the planes been aware of what was going to happen I doubt they would have let that happen"
"100-200 pissed off people would OWN 2-3 terrorists with box cutters"
You seem to have forgotten about United Flight 93, on which the passengers did just that.
Once the hijacking got underway on 93, some of the passengers were tipped off by seat-back and cell phone that three other planes had been taken over for suicide attacks and they logically concluded that their flight was due the same fate. While insufficiently armed to take control of the aircraft back from the terrorists, they were sufficiently armed enough (with a food service cart, it has been theorized) to deny the terrorists their mission.
In so doing, the Flight 93 passengers also forever changed the paradigm of hijacking aircraft. The message has gone out that if you try anything, there are going to be passengers and crew who will stop you.
We cannot continue with this embarrassment of the hardworking TSA. I suggest law enforcement-like ID be issued to every member of congess. Of course that privilege will have to be extended to their senior staff members. Eventually appointed federal officials will have to be included. Also all federal judges. And on and on and on.
Senator Kennedy has gone up a notch in my opinion. He flies on a public airline. Amazing. I was so sure he flew on corporate jets like most of the other senior congress members do.
Don't go to public schools, drive on public roads, call the police when you are robbed or have a medical emergency and you can keep all of your money.
~S
Amtrak: transports thousands of people each day far more efficiently and cheaply than any other mode of transportation. Absolutely critical in the NE urban regions. Has received virtually nothing in subsidies compared to the airlines.
Post Office: Cheap, efficient, gets the mail to virtually every address in the US, no matter how remote, unlike all the private services. Has been turning a profit for years.
So explain again why the people who brought us those two services are so inept.
Living in a rural area, the chance of a terrorist attack on you is also pretty slim.
May I ask another, after this one?
Why do we complain about these things instead of doing something about it, like voting with our money?
I stopped flying after 9/11/2001 and I honestly don't think I will ever fly again. Not until the airlines can offer me a service that appeals to me. I would have let them all go out of business, which recent reports suggest is where they are headed anyway, even after our multi-billion dollar bailout.
To me this is like supporting terrorism, by having inherently insecure and obviously dangerous technology available to the public. I don't mind living dangerously, but I refuse to give up my freedom so some cowards can feel a little safer. Even on 9/12/2001 I did not feel threatened by the possibility of terrorist strikes via commercial airliners. I felt more threatened by my neighbors and how I knew they would be voting and thinking while watching the various "news" media they had access to. This news and how it affects us blissfully ignorant masses is the only thing that scares me.
I was in India for a month in 2001, before 9/11. The security at every airport I was at was much greater than at any post-9/11 American airport I have been too. Luggage went through bomb detection macchines as well as being scanned normally. EVERYONE was patted down prior to boarding the airport, men by men, women by women, and in curtained off areas. Batteries were removed from electronics, and carry on baggage was searched.
It was very quick, very efficient, and I had no complaints. Everyone had the same treatment. I don't see why people get so bent out of shape over security at US airports.
Care to explain this statement to a madrilenian?
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
I recently took a trip to Scotland. On the return leg the woman at the check-in desk was convinced that I had already check in. I told her repeatedly no, that I had not check in. It turned out that they had mistakenly checked someone else in as me (both our last names have 'Van' in them, I commonly have this problem, everyone who is Van* is lumped together in the dim-witted minds that run the world's bureaucracies)
Eventually they sort out the problem, and my wife and I board the plane. We find our seats and get comfortable (well, as comfortable as one can be with 19 inches of leg room). A few minutes later a women stops at our row, and claims we are sitting in her seats. I profer my boarding pass, which shows me in the proper seat, she looks at hers - it has my name on it!
Now think about this. We were stopped and our IDs compared to our boarding passes at no less than 3 check points in the airport. This woman managed to get on the airplane with a boarding pass that not only didn't have her name on it, it had an obviously male name on it. She was quite obviously not male.
The entire system is badly broken. In my situation at least three different employees utterly failed to perform the most basic component of their job - validating ID. I have absolutely no confidence in our airline security systems. If they ever catch someone in the act, it will be purely accidental. My sole consolation is that, as others in the thread have noted, the 'evil-doers' of the world have most likely abandonned hijacking as means to whatever nefarious ends they seek, as the passengers are no longer likely to be so compliant as they were pre-9/11.
-josh
acutly most Israelis don't carry weapons
But they do have the option of doing so, openly.
Security is still not being taken seriously. And this just proves that the wrong things are being done.
The Federal Aviation Administration still has not upgraded the basic pilot license to a photo id. I know this because I have one.
You are ill informed. The ValuJet fire was caused by improperly deactivated oxygen GENERATORS, not TANKS. The smoke came from the fire ignited by the oxygen generators. Your own citation tells you that.
Big difference. Oxygen generators work via a chemical reaction, and can be quite dangerous.
Oxygen is non flammable. Check an MSDS sheet. It supports combustion, which is a different thing than combusting.
At times, I wonder if Bush is fighting this war because he's aware of the gap, has decided that being a global asshole is the only way to make sure (Western) industrial civilization can make it through the impending shortfall, and after considering the consequences of both sides decided this is the lesser of two evils... but I don't think he (or Cheney) is that smart.
Too much of modern civilization relies on the irreproducable proprties of plastics. Biodiesel is the only alternative source for generalized plastic feedstocks. If we're lucky, we're looking at a nasty problem by 2015 when the Hubbert curve peaks. If we're not lucky, the problem started in the last few years, and the nerve signals are about to reach the petrodinosaur's brains.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The real security flaw that the 9/11 hijackers exploited was our social condition to "comply and everything will be alright."
Airline passengers (all, not just Americans) had been conditioned to do exactly that. 'Sit down, be quiet, and eventually the plane will land somewhere. Make a scene, and you get shot.' Almost all previous hijackings followed that formula.
"security theater".
The administration[1] must be seen to be 'doing something'. Unfortunately, attacks on western assets have happened. Performing the possibly ineffectual 'nail clipper check' at the airport does not mean that they aren't doing other stuff behind the scenes. Things that might actually have an effect.
Fortunately terrorism isn't a threat in the US...We shouldn't worry about it.
If the WTC were still standing, I might agree with you. If the USS Cole didn't have a big hole in the side, I might agree with you. If the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were still in one piece, I might agree with you.
They're not.
The chances of dying of terrorism here are less than the chances of being killed by lightening or many other things.
Do you go stand under a tree when there is a threat of lightning? No, you don't. Are you saying that we should just accept the fact of a group of people blowing up random buildings from time to time?
"No big deal...it probably won't happen to me".
[1] Administration = Not just Bush & Co., but any and all ruling parties. The populace would scream bloody murder if they didn't.
The only safe passenager is a nude passenager.
Until and unless we have universal ID numbers (and I hope we never do have them, for various reasons), we use names to identify people. Now, the problem with names is that they're not a 1:1 mapping. John Smith may have other names - and more to the point, there are many John Smiths in the US.
Now, the point of the watch list is that you put the name of someone your looking for on it. This will allow you to find the person your looking for, should they travel, but it also will match everyone else with the same name when they travel. The system gets false-positives by design.
Everyone involved knows perfectly well that when you add the name John Smith (or T Kennedy, as the case may be), you're effectively flagging hundreds of perfectly innocent people along with the one person your actually interested in. That's a given from the moment you put the name on the list.
Now, if an innocent John Smith flies, and is flagged, and then complains, that isn't in any way, shape, or form a reason to take John Smith off the list. You knew when you put the name on there that there were innocent people with the same name. Equally, the fact that one of those innocent people has now complained adds zero new bits of data about whether the name should or should not be on the list.
The fact that Lewis's name is on the list doesn't mean that anyone thinks Representitive Lewis may be a security risk - and the fact that he is, presumably, not a security risk does not mean that the name shouldn't be on the list.
If your going to have watch lists at all (and I question whether they're really useful), then removing a name because someone who shares it complains is a profoundly stupid idea. If you're willing to remove the name without uncovering any new data, you should never have put the name on the list to start with.
Now, if we had universal unqiue ID numbers, the situation would be different. We'd no longer get any false positives unless the info was wrong, and if your ID number did get on the list, and you wearn't a threat, then of course it should be removed. But when we use names, that is NOT the case, and I find it most annoying to see our elected representitives attempting to pull strings in a fashion which decreases security. Well, decreases security if you accept the premise of watch lists at all. But if you don't think they add to security, the correct response isn't to try and pull strings to get your name off, its to legislate a better solution.
That the screenings are not needed. Sure we need to keep guns and explosives off of planes, but that's it.
The real security was put into place on Sept 11. The security system was installed flight 93 on that day. Once we learned what the hijackers where going to do the strategy failed. As we saw on Sept 11 and since then is that passengers are going to take action if threatened, because they know it's there best shot at surviving.
I say cut back on the screenings a tad, we are only hurting the innocent.
Simple.
1) It conditions people to permit people without lawful authority to submit to their arbitrary demands.
2) It takes a whole lot of people off unemployment and gives them "Productive Jobs". Small Government My Hairy White Ass...
3) The Assholes mentioned above get an opportunity to get off fucking with people they resent. (Cause they didn't go from unemployed to some shitty-ass job standing around PRETENDING... They know they're PRETENDING. Why do you think they're pissed.
We'll THEY'RE not going to Disneyworld, so why shouln't you need to jump through some hoops to make their day a little more interesting?
Well, it's not so simple anymore... It's like the EVIL FUCKS SET IT UP THAT WAY ON PURPOSE...
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Change your name. Senator Kennedy should just legally change his name to something else, get some new ID, and his problems will be solved. If that's too much trouble, he could always buy or make a fake ID and use that... :-)
I play Nerd-Folk!
CNN reported earlier today that the 9/11 commission has published a couple of monographs exploring two issues: what laws did the 9/11 terrorists break when they acquired visas, passports etc; and how did they get funded.
I think that in about a year -- when it finally sinks in what has been going on -- that this "airline security" reported in the article will be viewed for what it is -- ineffective.
But the specifics on the "visas" monograph seemed to me to indicate something much more interesting -- that rather ordinary diligence using existing tools could be more effective than shaking down elderly people and congress critters.
More effective, but less visible. I think one of the biggest criticisms I have of the Bush Administration is that it has taken steps in the name of national security that is largely ineffective. And it seems to pride itself in a "bread and circuses" concept of national defense. Don't you feel safer watching some smuck getting shaken down?
The media appears to have an agenda. The definition of what is news has definately changed. No, they are far too busy tracking down G.W.'s service receipts than paying attention to stuff that actually matters.
"But no, apparently it's business as usual for reporters these days, unless what goes on in America *right now* affects them personally..."
You mean like most humans? People aren't too good at thinking ahead. I should think that long term solutions for terrorism should include things like taking the money away from these bastards by not buying their oil and QUICKLY finding ways to do that.
But no... That's a solution WAY too forward thinking. We'll need several more attacks here before anything intelligent really happens.
"If the Washington Post and other news outlets behaved 30 years ago like they do today, Nixon would have stayed in office until the end of his term."
Hardly. The power of the press has been doing everything possible to unseat Republicans. Nixon would never have made it past the election. Proof? The popularity of Fox News should give you and everyone else a clue.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Defending The Skies Against Congress And The Elderly
What ever happened to treating all men/women equally?
I was in Israel a few years ago. I was in a market two days after it had been bombed and the place was full. They don't live in fear the way we do. Tons of random people carrying uzis isn't what makes them secure. By law, every public building has a security gaurd in front. That's a huge step from where we are now.
The post office is the best deal in the world. What else can you get for 40 cents? Neither Amtrak or the USPS is a government agency.
-B
Airport are insecure, period.
Look at Chicago or Orlando were the runs "T" with freeways or better hundreds of low buildings.
Simple low tech things can stop a plane, from a tower or phone pole in the flight path to a car spring cross bow. Let alone a single sucide bomber driving though the fence and under a fuel filled plane. Drive a little faster and under a know fuel loaded plane at a gate (just loaded) and multiplle planes should go because the wings nearly touch.
Take that same car and drive though those big double doors and down to the gate. Remember no stairs because of the infirm.
Another is a SWAT truck (Ocean 11) pulls up can 10 armed men run into the building and through security to a gate where a plane fueled and ready to go.
And we have not started on inside jobs (Read Clancy).
The best thing to do is:
1) Consumer strike, no passagers, no airlines or TSA.
2) Remember it is not safe to cross a street, let alone fly. Ask NASA and they use things that can equal Nuke going off.
It would take years to design and certify new planes or new variations with such large structural changes, and decades to finish phasing them in for the entire fleet. Hell, it's taking years just to get reinforced cockpit doors.
Now, in your solution, would you allow flight attendants to communicate with the flight crew, e.g. to tell them there is a fire in the cabin, or someone is having a heart attack and they need to divert? Because, if so, what flight crew will ignore terrorist demands if they start killing all 400 passengers one by one? Maybe a robot flight crew, that's the only one I can imagine. But then you still have the problem of not being able to inform the robot that the situation requires a change in the flight plan (fire, heart attack, etc). Or, if you allow that to happen, even via the ground, you still have the problem of the terrorists killing off the passengers while taunting the guys on the ground. Maybe you think officials on the ground can stand up to that pressure. I don't.
And, would you allow axes or other heavy tools in the cockpit to use in case of a crash landing? If so, do you really think your reinforced and doorless cockpit wall is going to stand up to them without weighing enough to cut the payload in half?
Yep. And think: If there's a nice lock on that door, you, as a passenger, would be extremely likely to notice a few guys trying to force entry into the cockpit, giving you time to react and subdue those men (with the help of others). The lock is there to buy time, not to be impenetrable.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
is the second guy got himself off the list because he ADDED HIS MIDDLE INITIAL to his name!
Think about the stupid programming!
All a terrorist has to do is add something to his name and he drops off the list!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Your tax dollars at work!
If this doesn't prove that the whole thing is purely a) for show and b) to increase the government's ability to harass the citizenry for no reason at all except to prove they can, I don't know what does.
And, yes, some morons say some of the 9/11 terrorists used their own names when they traveled. What does this tell you? They weren't terrorists, that's what. Either that or the names they used weren't actually theirs and the FBI/CIA is too stupid to determine their real names.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
when it comes to passenger screening?
FUCK YES WE HAVE
If they're brown, pat 'em down. Simple as fucking that.
Bush also has given himself the right to suspend the election if there is a terrorist attack before it!
I thought that idea got smacked down. I remember they TRIED it.
Common sense suggests that Ted Kennedy isn't going to hijack a plane. Common sense suggests that an elderly American man isn't going to be a terrorist.
The thing is... Common sense suggested, until a few years ago, that no one would want to deliberate crash a jet into a skyscraper.
Sure, common sense would say that an elderly man isn't going to be a terrorist. But do you really want to stick to conventional common sense, which, arguably, blinded us to forseeing scenarios like 9/11?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?"
We've lost our common sense as a nation.
"Mad dog ideology"
and the sad part is,
we don't even have our
"backs against the wall."
"Future generations will wonder what for"
[for those who pride themselves on obscure lyrics]
It's those accursed Liberals who put the lime jello on the menu in the first place!!!
Although the original poster was generally an idiot, he's right about this. If there is a lock on the door, and pilot who decides to do this is virtually guaranteed success. Further, it leaves things wide open to flight attendants causing problems, unless the cockpit is kept sealed through the entire flight, which is a very different suggestion which entails other problems.
The reason that the locked/reinforced doors are a mistake is that they add the problem of a pilot being able to easily ram whatever he wants but solve no problems in the process. We are already basically guaranteed that a terrorist cannot take over the cockpit and do bad things with the plane because the passengers know the risk and will rise up and kill anyone who tries that (unless they can't get through the cockpit door).
This is one of the many tactics that the feds use now to keep us safe from terrorists. And as we all are sheep, we will take it and smile. Since 9/11, this country has willingly allowed the feds to chip away at our liberties, under the guise of "keeping us safe". WE have no one to blame but our selves. So, sit back, whine, bitch and moan and I'm sure we will all feel better.
Doesn't mean there's a fireball.
:)
There are many stories where a plane comes down safely, but not exactly pretty. There are plenty of times when a passanger must secure themselves for a harder than usual impact but due to a pilot's skills, are not going to die.
For example, a planes breaks might go out, forcing the pilot to make large circles on an open field. Or a plane must make a belly first landing. In those situations, a passanger has to secure themselves in the fetal possition and exit the plane rapidly.
I could only imagine the media if everyone on the plane was saved except for a handicapped person, because no one would strap in that person.
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
missread the title as 'Defending the skiddies?'
i sat there for a couple minutes wondering why someone would defend script kiddies...
Go on, be afraid. Encourage the terrorists
Sounds to me like someone who doesn't like all of the new "security" measures has hacked the list to include people important enough to effect some change. Why else would two prominent congressmen be on a security watch list?
-Jem
Terrorists would be stupid to try to hijack planes again
Not if there goal is to instill terror. If they hijack half a dozen planes and kill everyone on board in some grisly way, they will have been highly successful in that goal. It will once again lead to the grounding of the aviation fleet for at least several days, inflicting billions of dollars in costs. And if the planes can be brought down over populated areas, so much the better.
Taking steps to reduce the chances of such an attack is very much worthwhile. And part of those efforts are maintaining watch lists and checking people more carefully who are on those lists.
Look, it's been almost three years since 9/11 and there have been no more major terrorist attacks on American soil. Is that just coincidence? Is Al Qaida just taking a nice vacation, satisfied that they have accomplished their goal? I don't think so.
The reason for the delay is because the measures which have been taken have made the attackers' job more difficult. That's the only reasonable explanation. You can criticize the U.S. foreign policy and domestic security measures all you want, but the bottom line is that they have worked so far. Even though eventually there will probably be another attack, the fact that we have had so many years of domestic peace and tranquility is a testament to the success of the current policies.
> The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
1) No it isn't. There are other nuts out there (think McVeigh, etc.) who might consider such attacks. Moreover, there are other folks who have betrayed this country and won't appear on this list simply because they're the not from one of the "terrorist" countries.
2) Any system which focuses our attention on "more suspicious" people can be abused by adversaries who plan ahead to be less secure than random searches. This has been proven mathematically; it was reported on Slashdot & elsewhere. It has also been published in reputable journals.
Thus, it is irrelevant whether the system you propose is "racist" or not--it only works to make us less safe, and is therefore should never be deployed if we want to be safer.
Our politicians may be spineless, but not implimenting this controversial and ineffective screening system is not something to complain about.
No. Airplanes would be the perfect target. Nothing is perfectly secure. Attacking something that is seen as secure and "terrorist-proof" would be the ideal way to make Americans all the more fearful, unfortunately.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
mythbusters worked on that one a while ago [yes, i know, blatantly unscientific, but this particular one was pretty sound]; they took an old 707 and pressurized the cabin to 30K' equivalent, then put a 9mm round through the wall - sure, air leaked out, but it certainly wasn't explosive decompression; IIRC it wasn't even anything the cabin pressure system couldn't deal with. bullet holes are small, and the pressure differential is usually a few psi, so there's not much ruckus there. now, when they strapped a pound of HE to the wall, that was a different story - one of the coolest things i've seen on TV in awhile.
anyway, putting a JHP into a terrorist is a guaranteed stopper, rubber bullets might just piss them off more.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I've been sitting here, ove rthe past few days, thinking about how much the world I live in has actually changed since September 11, 2001. And you know? For a long tiem I was pretty happy. Things had, on a personal level, been looking up for me.
Recently, though.. I started thinking about how I went ABOUT my day to day life.
I've adopted a real hatred of air travel.
Everyone I know has.
We drive everywhere, we avoid airports and suggest to people they do the same. Why? Nothing to do with terrorism. It's the hassle of dealing with security around the airports. I live near a naval/air base and the local international airport has been in high alert ever since. Beautiful, freshly rennovated facilities are being entirely unused now, which I find rather amusing.
Security has skyrocketed. And none of it is out of a concern for safety. It's all flexing muscle and trying to look important, as if they have a reason to justify their existance.
Nobody REALLY gives any effort to it. It's all about shifting the grief of the job off on someone else.
So.. Yeah.
I'd hate to use the 'if we do such and such the terrorists win' cliche but.. well.. wake up, Grandma's dead.
They DID win.
Funny, ain't it?
It's not about the airplane. It's about the people on board. They will fight back. What are they going to do? Kill me? Wooo, like that wasn't the plan anyway.
He IS the CINC and is well within his legal rights to order our boys to die for just about whatever cause he sees fit, specially since congress authorized him to, and IIRC he's never been sworn so he's never committed perjury. i'm no huge bush fan, but jesus - get your shit straight, kid.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I notice you posted anonymously. Afraid of something?
This is exactly the reason why, whenever a pilot goes to the bathroom, a flight attendant goes into the cockpit to sit in the vacated seat while the pilot is in the bathroom.
All of these screwups are part of the plan to push through National ID card/internal passport. That's the solution that they will soon be offering.
However, they can't simply refuse service because someone has no limbs. That's discrimination. Granted, they won't have much of a chance in a crash, but those are the breaks.
But when you factor in the long history of baggage handler related terrorist incidents you have to acknowledge that.... oh wait.
Nevermind. They don't plant anything in your luggage. They go through it looking for something to take.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
If every Muslim man under age 40 has to get a colonoscopy before flying, I don't care. I want racial and religious profiling and I want it yesterday.
For that matter, white skinheads ought to get the same treatment.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
The Americans are doing a great job of terrorizing themselves, living in constant fear of being bombed and hijacked, putting each other on lists, watching and tracking each other...
Are we? Did I miss a memo?
Or maybe I got on to somebody's list early...
If you flew back in the sixties (yes, I am old enough to be authoritative about this) you were fed decent meals and lavished with extreme courtesy by very well turned out flight attendants. Just generally you were dealing with a high end, high cost transport method and that's how you were treated. It was fun and it was interesting and it wasn't all that expensive, though I can't say it felt cheap. Throw in a limo at both ends and we're talking something to truly look forward to.
Sadly, today we're dealing with a low end, cut-rate, cattle-call transport method and that's how you're treated. Aside from some extremely misguided women's liberation / political correctness bonehead moves attempting to reject and/or hide femininity, most of this is IMHO due to government interference with the airlines. Deregulation on the one hand, and over regulation on the other.
So some of the makings of a decent conspiracy theory seem to be there.
However, after quite a bit of consideration, I've decided that it is probably stupidity on the part of the government, rather than any organized attempt to destroy the industry. Mainly, this is because I can't figure out why they would be trying to do so - no matter how clear it is that they are doing so.
But I'm not closed minded about it. Not everyone in government is an idiot, clearly, so maybe there is a conspiracy. Anyone have any wild ideas to flesh this out? The government might want to destroy the airline industry because... ???
As an aside, mainly because of what a lousy experience flying is these days, I don't take planes any longer; I drive. I've renewed an interest in high performance cars and added fun gadgets (like street-level mapping GPS, XM Radio, scanners, ham radio, radar and laser detectors, some pretty extreme car audio) and turned my steadily more-and-more annoying business travel back into a perk. Now all I have to do is avoid speeding tickets, which so far I've managed to do. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
don't get me wrong, we need international goodwill to be a player on the global stage and to be able to interact with other countries in any way other than through intimidation...BUT...we don't need the goodwill of the rest of the world to be a superpower..you know why?
'Cause we got the bombs, that's why.
Two words, Nuclear Fucking Weapons, okay?!
Russia, Germany, Romania,
They can have all the democracy they want.
They can have a big democracy cake,
Walk right through the middle of Tienemen Square,
And it won't make a lick of difference,
Because we got the bombs, okay?!
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
"Heheh, as far as USA is concerned, the terrorists don't need to do anything right now. The Americans are doing a great job of terrorizing themselves, living in constant fear of being bombed and hijacked, putting each other on lists, watching and tracking each other"
/. where someone doesn't bring up the terrorists" ............ Come live in any major American city. It would soon become obvious we are hardly scared of terrorism, no more so than being scared of dying in a traffic accident.
What the hay, I have the karma to burn
As a 26 year old american with brown skin (I could easliy pass for middle eastern, though I am not), and a frequent flier, I do get extra screening each and every time I go through the airport. I am okay with that, because I cant remember the last time a Scandinavian, Frenchman, or German hijacked a plane.
As far as terrorizing ourselves, living in constant fear, yadda yadda, I just dont see it.
Im guessing you dont live in America, because despite these sensationalist slashdot articles, we are not living in fear. quote: "Just look, there is hardly a single article on
I've been to places that actually do live in fear. 99.9% of America does not live in fear of any sort, compared to many other places one could live.
sorry for the rant, I just feel all this America bashing is unfounded. Sure, our leaders aren't great. But compare to the rest of the world.... you think we are oppressive? Hardly.
I bet if they all used Linux it woudl make for safer skies!
See New GNU/AirPortScanner Knows its a old harmless man and lets him go right through.
Yet stops eveil looking guy in a turbin!
And Makes Coffee!
Please. We have to put up with this studpid crap when we elect republicans to the government
A lot of this would be unneeded if they just went back to using statistics to weed out those that need to be searched like this. Of course, then someone will get pissed saying it's racist or some other -ist and sue until it gets changed.
We can't use common sense anymore. We have to be politically correct now.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I suspect, at least in the case of the Senator and Congressman, that this is just another case of the Republicans doing anything they can to make life difficult for those who oppose them. I can picture Karl Rove, Tom Ridge, and Dick Cheney sitting around laughing, saying "Which Democrats should we add to the watch list this week?". I'd love to know all of the elected politicians that are on that list, and how many are Democrats and how many are Republicans. I'd guess that there are far fewer republicans than Democrats.
How do we reduce the frequency of arson? Not purely by making it physically impossible, that's for sure. Instead, law enforcement derives its effectiveness by being able to identify the criminal(s) and bring them to justice. For the most part fireproofing is designed just to prevent accidental fires.
Terrorists can attack just about anything; airplanes are just one fairly juicy target among many. Trying to prevent terrorist activities with the TSA is akin to trying to prevent arson by forcing every building in the US to adhere to extremely rigorous fireproofing standards -- a ridiculously expensive measure that, pathetically, still doesn't do all that much to achieve its objective (any fixed set of standards still has a weakest point against which an attack is still probably realistic). Instead, the solutions lie in the direction of Brin's Transparent Society, with the NSA being the stopgap we currently have available.
I cannot believe no prominent politician understands this.
So you complain when congresscritters get special treatment that regular citizens don't, and you complain when the system treats them exactly like any other citizen.
Make up your mind.
We have come up with the brilliant idea that you can stop creative, imaginative rule-breaking terrorists by coming up with a strict set of rules and following them like robots.
Nothing wrong with that. That exact model works against bad guys in the computer world.
The rules suck and they're being followed in exactly the wrong places.
My mom is in no danger of dying. She's 61, and unless a miracle happens and a job opens up for a sweet, clueless older lady who has no real work skills, she's likely to "retire" early. She'll likely last another five or ten years. With luck, I'll be able to get there, somehow, by then.
As to the delays at SeaTac, the news keeps talking about waits being measured in hours, plural. Add that to the hour-long bus trip, and you can see that I'd need to be fully dehydrated to even think about it.
I can't drive - I have no vehicle that can take me and my Jazzy 1113 chair. Plus, I cannot drive, as my whole right side is about useless. No use of my right foot makes accelerating hard, and the stress from driving would bring on yet another attack, making my situation far worse.
A diaper? That'll hold me for, hmm, three, maybe four bladdersfull? Remember, I'm disabled, and changing my diaper would take a whole lot more ability than I have, even now. I think I'll save that option for when my mom IS dying.
Lemon curry?
Ya ... that's right, more jesus and more guns, that'll fix anything. *rolleyes*
I know you were being funny but why the heck don't we arm Pilots? Almost all are ex military and know how to handle guns and they can be given guns with rubber bullet ammo or other ammo that is less likely to puncture the airframe. I'd feel much safer (not that I really worried) with armed pilots.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Security in Israel has been achieved? That's news to me!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Keep in mind that what you see on the news is driven by what news consumers want to watch, rather than what's actually important.
For example, some New York City subway stations now have radiation detectors. How do I know this? From reading the New York Times? Nope. From reading MTA flyers? Nope. From an article in New Scientist, talking about a letter in JAMA, from two doctors who had a radiotheraphy patient who set off the alarms multiple times.
For another example, did you know that the Post Office retains images of all the envelopes it carries (return address + sender address)? The news that they have this capability came out during the anthrax investigations. Besides helping find the Anthrax mailer and the next Unabomer, this capability will help the FBI do affinity mapping of political protestors.
Leaving off the malapropism at the end, I think President Bush was right when he said that terrorists are always thinking of novel ways to terrorize, and defense agencies are always trying to out-think the terrorists. And neither side is interested in publicity.
I've always thought the most fear inducing terrorist attack would be a bomb set off in a downtown of a smaller city, or the main street area in a town. If terrorists started attacking targets of little importance at random I would be scared shitless because I could be next.
" I am okay with that, because I cant remember the last time a Scandinavian, Frenchman, or German hijacked a plane."
Richard Reid (the inept shoe bomber) was a jamaican. Jose Padilla (the supposed dirty bomber) is hispanic. John Walker Lindh was as lily white as they come.
There was an article just yesterday about how Al Quada was recruiting in south america and the philipines. It has been known for quite a while that Al Quada is also recruiting in the prison system where there are millions of angry black people.
So it looks like we better start profiling everybody. Al Quada knows that we are looking at every arab with a skewed eye.
"99.9% of America does not live in fear of any sort, compared to many other places one could live."
I live in America and I call bullshit. People are afraid. They are uneasy and they are angry. Look at how divided this country is and look at the intensity of the hatred towards each other that we have. The fear is manisfesting in some unexpected ways but it's there. I bet 50% of the people who vote for bush are voting because they are afraid and think Bush will protect them.
evil is as evil does
I agree with your comment that people in the US are not living in fear. However, imagine that you plan to fly overseas in a few months (as I plan to do) and then imagine the impact appearing on the "no fly list" would have on your plans and your trip. (Phone call to foreign university: I cannot give my scheduled lecture because they refuse to let me fly.) While this is a very very low probability event (I hope, ... but I am a Democrat), it does cross one's mind.
The real issue is whether we have the freedoms we expect and are used to having, not how we compare with the rest of the world. In this regard, our freedoms are reduced and it is not clear that we are any safer.
When I travel, I see a badly designed security system in our airports. It *is* better than it used to be in many respects, but it is also worse. The no-fly list and mistreatment of elderly is a start (wonder if someone will eventually sue under the ADA).
The problem isn't that security has gone too far, but that it has been implimented in a way which leaves open the possibility of political harrassment or retribution, and offers very little security as a result. I am sure terrorists would have an easier time attacking our airports than in most third-world countries (they might not be able to attack the planes, but then it might not matter if they can cause massive economic damage without doing so).
What we need is an open and public political discussion about *how* to secure our nations' airports (except JFK, which is probably fundamentally insecure, at least in some terminals). We need to also recognize that if we can provide proper agility to our security measures, we can beat the terrorists to their attacks not with no-fly lists but by recognizing that they require *years* of preparation to launch any large-scale attack anywhere with the possible exception of places like Afghanistan where sufficient chaos exists to allow them to more or less freely operate in many parts of the country.
Once we identify weaknesses, we can count on havint at least a year, possibly three or more, to actually find and impliment a fix. As in computer security, we need to have a wide community of white-hats disecting the security of our nation's infrastructure looking for exploits.
No government can completely protect the public against terrorism by security measures or war (examples include N. Ireland and Israel). But we can ask our government to look for ways to reduce its impact. This means real, robust security at the airports which still respects civil rights, and it means the cultivation of "white hat" security communities who publically discuss the security or lack thereof to our nation's infrastructure. We can also ask them to make our country safer by pursuing a two-pronged strategy in combatting terrorism. This includes:
1) Hunting down terrorists and bringing them to justice.
2) Looking at the reasons why individuals might choose to support terrorist organizations and see how we can change our foreign policy to rob them of support (for example, we should start mixing actions with words regarding at least the Israeli settlement and assassination issues-- the words of opposition are simply not enough). Pursuing #2 should not mean that we stop working on #1. It means that the actual terrorists have no victory because even if we play against their rhetoric, they, as a group, still lose in the end.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Now imagine if an airline decided they wanted to do this. They'd need their own airport, and they'd probably be violating a dozen federal laws.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm torn on the issue. On one hand, I wish the military weren't necessary. On the other hand, when it is necessary, I'd like the people sending other people into combat to have served themselves, so they understand what's involved.
Apparently you failed to note that the discussed hypothetical was about train derailments.
I'm glad that you're not saying that everything the TSA does is perfect. But you're implying that they are generally competent or well-meaning. Not so.
I travel by air at least once every two weeks. My impression is that, at the passenger level, TSA is a very poor joke. I have seen plenty of incidents that can only be explained by their incompetence or malice.
Your smellier point is one that they and their supporters often bring up. The broad, inane claim is that liberals are forcing them to be politically correct, search people at random, wave bin Laden through, and strip search a random number of US Senators and quadruplegics so as to avoid discriminating against dark-skinned young men. The reality is that liberals have NO power in the USA since September 11th. They fear to seem unpatriotic, so they stand quietly by while the TSA and its supporters do whatever they wish.
I will not buy the line that liberal political correctness is a driving force behind ANYTHING that TSA inspectors do or don't do. That line is NEVER used to try to improve passenger safety, it is ONLY used to silence dissent.
There is no smackdown possible. During an "emergency," the president can suspend any and all of the people's rights (e.g., freedom to travel, to own goods, to be pressed into a work gang, etc.). The last national emergency lasted from 1933-3-9 to 1976-9-14 (Google Public Law 94-412 for more info).
The current "emergency" began in 2001-9-11, with no end in sight. All the Shrub has to do is sign a piece of paper and you get all your property and posessions repoed by Uncle, and you & your family get a one-way ticket to joining a work-gang, clearing shanty-towns along the Potomac for as long as his Shrubness desires!
Isn't that neat how this works?
Yeah, right.
If there is a lock on the door, and pilot who decides to do this is virtually guaranteed success.
There's not much you can do about it, locked door or no. Bash the co-pilot on the head and there's no one else to notice - the passengers certainly won't until it's too late.
Further, it leaves things wide open to flight attendants causing problems, unless the cockpit is kept sealed through the entire flight, which is a very different suggestion which entails other problems.
IIRC the new laws post-9/11 require the door to be locked at all times during the flight, no exceptions. So, flight attendants aren't a problem - they don't go into the cockpit.
The reason that the locked/reinforced doors are a mistake is that they add the problem of a pilot being able to easily ram whatever he wants but solve no problems in the process.
Besides the problem of terrorists simply opening the door and waltzing in, you mean?
Pilots can crash the plane if they want - remember that Egypt Air flight that went for a nosedive into the ocean?
We are already basically guaranteed that a terrorist cannot take over the cockpit and do bad things with the plane because the passengers know the risk and will rise up and kill anyone who tries that (unless they can't get through the cockpit door).
That, finally, I can agree with you on. Still, I'd prefer the door locked than unlocked. Just in case the plan was to do something like spray sarin gas into the ventillation system or something, then sieze control with everyone dead.
well duh!
:) the first question you'll be asked is "and how old is the person who requires an ambulance?"
Most people are the sickest they've ever been leading up to their deaths, regardless of age and so of course they will require more care.
May the last thing you hear when you are carted into the emergency room of a hospital be "nah. it will take too much money to give this person a new lease on life...".
Who knows, maybe in the interests of prioritising calls to 000 (911 for those of you in the wrong hemisphere
okay. i'm done now.
quite literally, on my way to disney with my 2.5 year old... HE (yes my toddler) was the target of a screening. what was that commercial from the government about terrorists winning if you let them change your way of life????? can i ask what part of searching a 2 year old isn't different?
That reminds me of the perpetuum mobile principle. Although they claim that all perpetuum mobiles will inherently stop at some point in the future, I believe that I've found the one unstoppable perpetuum mobile: perpetuum mobile terroris
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
there are millions of reasons why this would be a bad idea, but howabout giving everyone on a plane a gun. single shot, not reloadable, but a gun nonetheless.
the x-ray machines would instead be used to make sure you were carrying your gun (a la the nra meeting on the simpsons).
I pity the fool who tries to hijack that plane!
People do not live in fear in the US; I am considering going to Jordan and Isreal within the next two years. I do not think about security (from terrorists) in the US (nor when I am in Europe). I do think about the "cost-benefit ratio" of current security procedures, however. Making worthless lists and keeping people from flying has no bebefits and many costs.
The War on Terrorism is nothing more than a War on American Freedoms. Just like the War on Drugs, but terrorism is something everyone can get behind, even a patient with glaucoma.
The terrorists of 9-11 were trying to force the point to the American people and the US Government to what the Islamic fundamentalist believe is the desecration of there holy land.
Since Desert Storm American troops have been stationed in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Wanting the US out of Saudi Arabia wasn't news to our government, but certainly wasn't front page news here. Bush said that the terrorists hate our Way of life and our freedom. I believe the Terrorist of 9-11 failed in thier attempt to awaken the American people to their cause. And I guess Bush would be danmed if he was going to tell us or maybe he doesn't know himself.
The terrorists haven't lost anything in Iraq. Since the remote possibility of a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda was little to none before we began our assault on Sadams regime. Sadam was a military leader and would have been one of the last places AL-queda, a religious fundamentalist group would have turned too.
The only place we have done any real damage to terrorism was in Afghanistan. Where it is estimated that we have killed over 5000 Afghan people and with the use of our depleted Uranium bunker busting bombs the totals should escalate for many many years after we are gone....oh wait thats right we don't have an plans to leave do we? (Anyone else check to see where most of the 9-11 terrorists came from)? Saudi Arabia, Egypt both nations on our friendly list. Why didn't we attack them, even policially?
The American People have lost a few lives to Terrorism on 9-11. But most of the damage has been done by our very own government. Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and the continuation of the State of Emergency enacted on 9-12-01 by Dictator Bush himself and renewed every anniversary since then.
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush are voting because Kerry wants to make friends with terrorists instead of destroying them.
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush vote because Kerry would have us be nice to the terrorists so they don't hate us so much.
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush because the veterans who served with Kerry in Vietnam say that he can't be trusted to lead the country.
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush are voting because Kerry would turn over our national sovereignty to organizations like the UN, which allowed Saddam Hussein to enrich himself with the thoroughly corrupt oil-for-food program.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
"Fortunately terrorism isn't a threat in the US. The chances of dying of terrorism here are less than the chances of being killed by lightening or many other things. We shouldn't worry about it."
To further emphasize this point. 3K people died on 9/11. 3K people die from smoking EVERY WEEK.
evil is as evil does
Just in case the plan was to do something like spray sarin gas into the ventillation system or something, then sieze control with everyone dead.
You've been watching way, way too many movies.
But beyond that, your arrogance is disappointing. You're committing exactly the same sins that we all committed before 9/11: you believe it can't happen. You believe that there's something, some attack, some threat, that simply can't come to pass.
You've established a big ol' blind spot for yourself.
Use your brain for a minute. Think about it. It just wouldn't be that hard for a small group of determined and single-minded men to take control of a passenger plane in flight. It doesn't seem like a wise idea right now to lay out a game plan for how such an attack could be carried out, but suffice it to say that if you think about it for a few minutes, you'll understand. How many aisles are there on a plane? How many passengers sit in first class? How hard is it to control movement around the cabin? How many people would you need to utterly control a jet cabin filled with people who were trying their damnedest to kill you? The number is much smaller than you think. Hell, you can fill the plane with armed special forces troops if you want--that's how the people in charge of our security run their scenarios--and the number of terrorists required to control the front cabin is still depressingly small. Less than a dozen if they're even moderately well-trained, a bit more if not.
Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting. You should know better than to express admiration for mass murderers. That kind of thing just isn't okay.
I write in my journal
have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?
Yes.
Until we dispose of political correctness and start simply searching all Arabic males from 14-54, silly shit like this will continue.
But no, we continue to search handicapped Norwegian grandmothers. How many of THEM have blown up planes?
-Styopa
I could easliy pass for middle eastern, though I am not
O'Grady: "Is that what they do in Arabia, Thorny?"
Ramathorn: "How the hell should I know?"
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
They (Al Qaida) plan for years.
"Even though eventually there will probably be another attack, the fact that we have had so many years of domestic peace and tranquility is a testament to the success of the current policies."
I think this "tranquility" arises, in part, from the fact that they have not tried to do much in the US. I do think going into Afghanistan was the right thing to do but I wish we had put more troops there and removed the warlords. There was no good reason to go into Iraq (but i am glad Saddam is out of power and on trial).
I stopped flying way back in 1993. Between TSA
and DHS and FBI, flying couldn't be any more
pleasant these days. HOWEVER, when ALL flight
crew and passengers are REQUIRED to wear paper
slippers and hospital gowns BEFORE boarding a
flight, I MIGHT consider flying again, if only
for the comic relief.
I mean seriously, Law Enforcement is now fucking with rich old white guys just like they have the minority community forever.
All of the minorities who were singled out of unnecessary attention in previous years are now ignored. People are pretending like it never happened. All of a sudden a few rich old white guys get bothered by the same treatment that minorites have come to expect and it's time to raise hell?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's probably going to come out in a few years that al-Queda is down to a dozen guys with cell phones, making calls once in a while to rattle the US.
Incidentally, if you haven't read bin Laden's writings, do so. His stated plan was to use terrorism to make western civilization more oppressive and thus less attractive. Bush is playing right along.
citizens getting harassed by "security" (US Gestapo) while Osama's family flew out of US just after 9/11 with 100% immunity. I refuse to fly - airlines, please starve and go away. The USA *was* great, now it SUCKS!
You've been watching way, way too many movies.
It was to illustrate a point (as I don't know what agent would be effective in that type of plot) - obviously, the full body chem suits for sarin would be a bit suspicious. Doesn't mean it's completely impossible.
But beyond that, your arrogance is disappointing. You're committing exactly the same sins that we all committed before 9/11: you believe it can't happen. You believe that there's something, some attack, some threat, that simply can't come to pass.
Not true, but I do think it's far more likely for someone to sail a nuke in a container on a ship up NYC harbour. Less posibility for detection, and a hell of a lot more damage.
Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting. You should know better than to express admiration for mass murderers. That kind of thing just isn't okay.
Brilliant doesn't imply any judgement on the morality of it. Hitler's blitzkrieg was a brilliant military move, no matter how repugnant the reasons and results.
Admiration? Hardly. Admission of the audacity and success of the plan? Yes.
Yeah. Because we in America have such long memories.
Thank you for making my point. Somebody has you so scared that you'd vote for anybody who would "kill the terrorists".
evil is as evil does
they happily add more rows to squeze a few more thousands of dollars out their passangers knee space, so doing this shouldn't be a big deal at all.
Exactly. Because when you post anonymously on slashdot, the terrorists have already won.
"I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush because the veterans who served with Kerry in Vietnam say that he can't be trusted to lead the country."
It is interesting that veterans for Bush cannot be trusted to tell the truth and are contradicted by the official records, their previous statements, etc. Those veterans are certainly experts on knowing who to trust.
This is O/T and only tangentially related to what the parent said, but I love it when people complain about postal rates. If someone asked you to bring a letter from Maine to Alaska for 37 cents, would your response be anything less than "go fuck yourself"?
NOOOO!! You can't say these things!! You might give the terrorists ideas!!
The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American
Hey, couple of trick questions:
What race was Timothy McVeigh?
What was his nationality?
Fanaticism isn't a monopoly of the Middle East you know. Give yourself a nice listen to a bunch of Bible belt holy talk someday. It can be a most refreshing learning experience as to what some of the religious right would do if there wasn't a constitution preventing them.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
I have been to other airports and even to another country... Japan in this case. Security wasn't all that different in Japan.
Then I can only assume the only flight you boarded in Japan was one back to the US. Japan is "cooperating" with the TSA measures as far as flights to the US go, but domestic flights are more or less the same as they were five years ago: no shoe removal, no random searches, no opening your luggage, no "only one carryon bag"--they make noises about it but I've never seen them actually stop anyone with multiple bags--no anything. To be honest, when I went to visit family for Christmas last year--the first time I'd traveled to the US since 9/11--I was taken aback at the "security" they forced on me, though the Japanese screeners were polite and apologetic enough to deflect my anger; the screeners gave the impression that they don't think much of the TSA's measures either.
Let's see... how many years was it between attacks on U.S. soil that can be linked to Al Qaeda? Eight. So by your logic, our policies were working from 1993 until... oh yeah, Sept. 11, 2001. So much for that theory.
Hurry up and figure it out folks: Americans think a 30 second commercial is a long time. Al Qaeda plans attacks for YEARS. It could be several more years before they decide to show us that our policies have not accomplished shit.
"Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting. You should know better than to express admiration for mass murderers."
You, sir, are an idiot with serious reading comprehension problems.
The poster was NOT expressing "admiration". 9/11 was a brilliant stroke that changed the world. It was also morally repugnant.
It's a complex world out there, you see, one that you are clearly ill-equipped to deal with.
I fear for your family, and pity your employer.
"I live in a rural area, so the nearest guy living down the road is several miles away. As for the muggers you can guess how common they are out here."
Well, if you don't go near airports, then you don't have to worry about either muggers or terrorists. However, if you ever venture near civilization, both are a problem, although muggers probably orders of magnitude more so than terrorists.
Your original statement :
There is nothing racist about (1) checking the bags and bodies of all non-American citizens from the USA and (2) performing a less intensive check of American citizens. The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
Broken down into two parts :
There is nothing racist about (1) checking the bags and bodies of all non-American citizens from the USA and (2) performing a less intensive check of American citizens.
Probably a reasonable precaution, although the costs of doing it may be much higher than the security value it provides. How would you like to pay 90% tax on your salary to feel "safe" from random terrorist acts, that occur no more than once every three years in America.
Btw, as a non-American, I would qualify for this checking.
The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
And there is your racism.
Your initial statement makes all non-Americans a potential threat. Now you choose to selectively identify a segment of non-Americans, based on race alone, and declare that only they provide a threat. So which is it, non-Americans, or non-Americans from the Middle East ?
Now you know why I'm not going to visit America in the near future, because (a) I don't want to visit a country where I'm considered suspicious, without any grounds, and (b) I choose not to associate with racists.
Please don't visit where I live (Australia), people like you aren't welcome.
Then again, if you do, I'm sure we can come up with some genetic trait we can use to prevent you coming in. Got blue eyes ? Brown hair ? Talk slow ? Loud ? Fat ? I'm sure there have been terrorists with any one of these traits in the past.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Plenty of American's say that when they visit, it would appear that you haven't been here yet.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
We're always going to have nut-cases running around and there's no way we can stop them from killing people. Sometimes a lot of people.
But! Statistically, they are less of a threat to you than your own family. More people in the US are killed by family members than by terrorists.
The only reason the terrorists seem like such a threat is because our government plays it up and the media constantly harps on it BECAUSE it is so unusual. So the public's PERCEPTION of the threat is far greater than the actual threat.
So the public allows their freedom to be erroded for the ILLUSION of safety.
I heard it was terrorist lymphoma. You never know when those evil commie terrorists are going to try to sneak in as a terminally ill senior citizen.
I don't care if they aren't happy about it. It is very visible security for the passengers.
And I'd have the salary of the air marshals funded by the airlines.
How much money are we talking about anyway? Per ticket. $5? $10? $20? It sounds like a lot until you break it down per ticket sold.
If they keep all the Congresscritters from flying. They might have to stay in Wasington and actually do their jobs.
If brains were dynamite, no one in Washington could blow their nose.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
it was my 10th birthday, I will remember it forever because it was the day that I personally figured out that the world is not a happy place....
1. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
Have you noticed the one similar thing in airport security screeners? They are all non-white! Now who do you think they'll stop for a screening: a Wayne Brady or a Mike Brady?
Amtrak isn't, but the USPS is. Well not in the same way that, say, the Department of Defense is, but its 100% owned by the federal government and its board of governors are appointed by the President.
This is likely flamebait or trollish but hear me out....
Fed up with the insanity and indignities of airport security after 2001-09-11?
Simple solution to this mess....
Boycott the airlines--all of them--even the package delivery services that use airplanes.
Stop sending stuff by airmail through government postal services.
Contact the above and tell them you refuse to use their services until air travel security measures are returned to the way they were before 2001-09-11.
Once the airline and package delivery industries have lost enough money, they can put pressure on 'the powers that be' to get airport security back the way it was before '9/11'. Money talks!
You cannot have perfect security in a free society!
Although El-Al's security methods are quite impressive and should be used as a template for real airline security measures throughout the entire airline industry....
It's nice to know that this attitude will be the downfall of democracy. Harassing a 78 year old, who's about to die because he might suddenly pull off his rubber face mask and turn into a combat-trained terrorist...
Only in the movies folks.
Whoever makes up these rules needs to get their head out of their ass.
Amtrak: transports thousands of people each day far more efficiently and cheaply than any other mode of transportation.
Guess again. Amtrak's ticket prices are low, but the cost to the taxpayers of keeping them afloat are ridiculous.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Post Office: Cheap, efficient, gets the mail to virtually every address in the US, no matter how remote, unlike all the private services. Has been turning a profit for years.
The USPS is a Government-protected monopoly, so we don't have any way to find out what kind of service a private, first-class mail carrier might be able to accomplish.
The one example I know of, delivered mail within Washington DC, normally with same-day delivery, for twenty cents (when the USPS was charging twenty-seven cents, IIRC). They were doing a fine job, and had many happy customers on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, until the USPS called in the thugs to shut them down.
So explain again why the people who brought us those two services are so inept.
They are inept because they are insulated from the consequences of their incompetence. Next question?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Considering people like this, is there any wonder that the US government has the rules in place that they do?
Je ne parle pas francais.
You can not have perfect security.
You can not have perfect security.
You can not have perfect security.
Period.
Security measures are designed to either:
Where do you think the current airline security measures fit?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
But what good would individuals carrying weapons be against, say, an NBC weapon smuggled into a major city? By the time anyone notices, it will probably be too late.
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
Nobody with 500 channels straps a bomb on. People with air conditioned malls don't want to breed a generation of martyrs, they want to breed a generation of consumers. We win this thing by making nice, not by making more terrorists
I suggest you go back and study the demographics of Al-Qaida or, for that matter, the social structure of palestinian suicide bombers. Surprise! Many are well todo middle class with a future. And then they go to war.
Over 3K people die from traffic accidents each month, every month, and have since well before 9/11.
We have spent vastly more on our "War on Terror", the most compelling incident of which killed 3k people, than we have been spending on research to improve the safety of the vastly more dangerous automobile. If we had taken the many tens of billions of dollars that we spent on invading Iraq *alone* (and we'll leave off the question of why exactly invading Iraq was part of the "War on Terror") and instead put it into, say, computer-guided automobile research and possibly deploying experimental support systems (like transmitters or indicators along roads to help cars guide themselves), we would have saved *far* more lives.
Iraq is a classic case of an administration being able to sell people on stupid abuses of budget because it allowed them to have direct Executive Branch control over funding and funnel money to companies (Halliburton, as always, being the most infamous offender).
May we never see th
just how STUPID some the stuff they sign into law really is - first hand at that. Serves them right.
Personally, I'm afraid to fly. Yes, I know it's unjustified, but that is the deal with most peoples fears - they are irrational.
... You could only rebel against it by secret disobedience or, at most, by isolated acts of violence such as killing somebody or blowing something up. )
Sometime in my life however I'll have to fly. Honeymoon, business, something will take me in the air. But another problem I have is rage. (think Punch Drunk Love) I'm Bi-Polar, and a liberal. Enough to blacklist me from any flight.
Now, I'm not saying that I would, but I think I know what I'd want to do if this happened to me. If I had to fight with the government, especially because I did nothing, I'd want to go crazy. Not just cursing Tom Ridge out crazy either. I'm talking hijacking, shooting Homeland Security employees, and homicidal mania crazy. When faced with a huge obstacle like that many people will get just as mad as I would.
Imagine you are trying to fly to Tucson to see your daughter get married. Some guy won't let you on the plane even though you've never hurt anyone in your life. Likely the cause would be a bill you didn't pay in 1972.
What would you do? Would you ask yourself what would Jesus have done or would you get medieval on their asses?
My point? This system will make someone so mad that they will want to take revenge and hurt a lot of people in the process. People who don't have control have nothing to lose. It is that simple - people will not stick up for this "saftey" crap any longer when it stops them from seeing a dying relative or getting their job done. (BTW, why do terrorists, of any type, use terror? It is their last resort. 1984, chapter 5: the Party was invincible.
The worst thing is that if we get four more years of Bush he'll push this system off on trains and busses too. Next thing you'll know you won't be allowed on the highway if you didn't get a doctors check-up in the last six months.
Get your Unix fortune now!
If the post office is the best deal in the world, why is it illegal to compete with the USPS?
To Osama they have all the cards. With a friend of theirs in the White House he knew that he couldn't shake them. But let's get something straight. Osama isn't against them because they are secular, it is because he can't stop them. The Saudi's are worse than the Taliban because we literally look the other way when they act secular and execute people in the name of Islam. His beef with them is deep. They invited us to stay. They treat their people like crap. I know this is hard to believe but humanitarian efforts are one of the key aspects of Islam (as well as fair treatment of animals and the like).
It isn't Israel. It has nothing to do with them, its all the actions of the Saudi's alone. His family is very close to the Royals and they don't use their influence to better their nation either. They are all in it for the money. Bin ladin doesn't seem to be in it for the money however. His goals are much higher.
I know it's lame (see my nick) - but here goes:
What do you do if your biggest enemies are unstoppable? Anything. Its the same reason McVeigh did it, it's the same reason the IRA does it. Their enemies are too big to simply fight against them in the traditional sense. I'm not saying that Osama is completely sane, or that he is noble in his efforts. But you must understand where these thoughts and actions come from. It comes from a lack of control. He can't do anything - the IRA can't, McVeigh couldn't. When faced with a Goliath you may only be able to sling a stone, hopefully you hit him good. Osama did just that.
One mans barbarian is another mans freedom fighter.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Terrorism is a very diffuse threat, and the only practical response is that which Israelis practice every day: many, many citizens carry weapons, and when you hear about a terrorist attack in israel, you usually will hear that the perp killed two or three people before getting shot by passers-by.
Is that really the only way?
Funny 'cos I see alot of countries with no terrorism and no commoners with weapons.
The only way to stop terrorism is to make sure the possible terrorists have something to loose.
...they'll have to shoot you dead before letting to the plane, just in case.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
in USA, business owners can't discriminate
on the basis of disability,
so all publically accessible something something
like restaurants etc etc AIRLINES
have to be built to be handicapped
friendly
so the cost of doing business is spending
some extra money upfront to be handicapped accessible, but that cost is well known
and inescapable (its' part of the building codes,
and you can't get a permit unless handicapped accessiility is part of your plan, so its starting cost of business)
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush are voting because Kerry wants to make friends with terrorists instead of destroying them.
News for you: "destroying terrorists" has generally not worked well, because you can only oppress people to a certain point before you just get someone else willing to die. See Israel, see Ireland. The United States wiping out terrorism makes as much sense as Microsoft wiping out open source. It just doesn't *work*. There's no single organization. What say you manage to kill off every person currently in al Quada? Then you have a lot of angry people. It's been demonstrated that it only takes four guys who know each other willing to die with knives to take over an airplane. And, heck, that's a pretty elaborate plot. There are much easier routes -- make a fertilizer bomb, or release nasty chemicals next to building air intakes. As long as you have a lot of people who perceive that the United States is oppressing people and culture, there will be terrorism.
The US is good at marketing. Why can't we work in projecting a "the US is a bunch of good guys, not something you want to fight" image?
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush vote because Kerry would have us be nice to the terrorists so they don't hate us so much.
I don't think so, though I wish he would (well, "present a more appealing image to the Middle East", rather than "be nice to the terrorists", but pretty much, yes).
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush because the veterans who served with Kerry in Vietnam say that he can't be trusted to lead the country.
[shrug] Some do, though the people in his boat disagree. Frankly, they knew Kerry years ago and knew him in the capacity of a combat boat commander. I'm dubious as to how well that reflects on Kerry's ability to be a government administrator (or acrobat, or sign painter, for that matter). I *know* that I've just lived through four years of the Bush administration, and I *know* that Bush doesn't do a very good job. There are a lot of times when what I wanted the US to be doing very much different from what Bush had the US doing.
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush are voting because Kerry would turn over our national sovereignty to organizations like the UN, which allowed Saddam Hussein to enrich himself with the thoroughly corrupt oil-for-food program.
(a) No president has ever had interest in "turning over our national sovereignty". That's absurd. If you mean "might have listened to the UN when they were condemning us for invading Iraq", I have to point out that that's a long way from "turning over national sovereignty", unless there are no other nations left in the world.
(b) The food-for-oil program was corrupt, yes. It was a mechanism of buying off the leaders of the country. We do the exact same thing (and have, for many, many years), with the same degree of corruption, by use of "foreign aid" for years. It keeps foreign administrations nicely in check, and it's cheaper than fighting wars.
May we never see th
...that these added "security" measures was NEVER about security. The 9/11 terrorists all had valid tickets, ID's and airline boarding passes.
These measures are all about CONTROL. With that said, I really doubt that these excesses are santioned by the government. These are clear cases that prove if you give someone a little power it soon goes to their heads and you end up with "a bully with a badge".
change the slogan here from "News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters" to "Kerry For President, Republicans Are Evil, and Democrats are 100% Perfect!"
I don't agree one bit. If anything, Slashdot has a Libertarian slant.
Disliking Bush as President certainly does not have to be because of party lines. I know one *very* ardent Republican who benefitted greatly from Bush tax cuts. He *hates* Bush -- Dubya is, frankly, a lousy president.
Now, McCain (or anyone more moderate, less violent, and more competent than Bush) could probably garner a lot more support on Slashdot -- I haven't seen much criticism of McCain, and the few times he's come up it's generally been pro-geek stuff. But as long as Bush insists on being:
(a) a religious fundamentalist, determined to hammer a traditionalist Christian value set down every American's throat by use of state powers,
(b) an ardent militarist, to the point of making poor and ineffective foreign policy decisions,
(c) a man who surrounds himselves with men like the *extremely* militant and probably corrupt Cheney, the militant Rumsfeld, and the religious and uber-pro-expanded-police-powers and reduction-of-civil-rights Ashcroft,
(d) stupid (I mean, come on, even when Bush ran the first time, the image he projected was someone that would have a comptent cabinet to listen to)
(e) anti-research,
(f) anti-condom (the largest weapon in the fight against AIDS in Africa, and the cheapest and most practical way to keep birth rates under control),
(g) anti-gay,
(h) anti-environment,
(i) pro-large-corporation, anti-consumer (as in the HMO lawsuit restrictions),
(j) pro-PATRIOT-Act,
(k) pro-Iraq-invasion (there still has bee no apology to Iraq for invading them based on what was, in the most positive light, incorrect intelligence information)
I and many like me are going to be extremely unhappy with the way he's going. Some of these points are unavoidable; I doubt I'm going to see a President that perfectly agrees with me on every issue. However, nobody wants to have a President of the United States that goes against them on just about every point out there.
May we never see th
Really? Look up 'Baader-Meinhof'.
Although the European communist revolutionary terror organisations have largely faded away, there are still large, well-organised and very dangerous terror groups in Spain and Ireland.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Comments like "The US electorate needs to wake up" only piss Americans off.
Really? Last I looked, a lot of Americans (and the majority of ones on Slashdot, if you consider the generally non-religious, college-educated, young status of the bulk of folks on here) aren't really pleased with Bush.
Guess what? Most Americans don't really like your spineless fucking governments either!
When, exactly, was the last time Bush showed "spine"? Was it when he sent a bunch of young men overseas to fight a war (much like the one he dodged in Vietnam) to overthrow a bunch of religious types that we put in power in the first place? Was it when he decided to send more young men to kill off a bunch of vastly outgunned and overmatched Iraqis? It seems to *me* that he was telling other people to attack those people that might pose a potential personal risk to him. I'm not sure what part of that requires spine. I'll give you that after those young men were (mostly) finished killing and being killed, he did fly over for a photo op in a military outfit. Of course, his trip was kept secret, so that he wouldn't be exposed to any risk, but I guess that maybe he thought he was -- I mean, the risk of the pilot that ferried him to the carrier screwing up and crashin is probably vastly greater than a typical American's risk of being killed by a terrorist aboard an airplane.
How would you feel if your country was attacked and the rest of the world told you that you can't do anything about it?
I don't believe anyone said "you can't do anything about it". They said "Invading Iraq because a bunch of Saudi Arabaians killed some of your people is stupid and makes no sense." The US has been one of the most terrorism-free nations *ever* -- I remember that a huge theme of Oklahoma City was that significant terrorism had *finally* hit the United States. Yet places like South Africa and Indonesia weren't very interested in supporting the United States' invasion. I'd say that that's an interesting data point.
How would you feel if your friends were dying because they believed in the cause of liberating Iraq and Afghanistan and trying to secure the world from terrorist groups like al-Qaeda?
I'd be very angry at the man that fed them propaganda and sent them overseas, producing more terrorists than they killed and caused their blood to be shed for oil. I wouldn't really give a damn whether some random French guy condemned the guy that did this.
Because they supply arms and material support to our enemies.
The funny thing is that you have this almost entirely backwards -- a huge chunk of the arms floating around are actually from the United States. We directly supplied bin Laden with weapons and supplies when he was attacking the USSR. And Iran/Contra? *We've* been dropping weapons off with militant Islamic groups for a long, long time.
Then when we really needed the Germans and the French, they backed off.
You mean to invade Iraq? Seems to me that France and Germany ended up being right about the invasion, and us wrong -- why would we criticize them? Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9/11, didn't have weapons of mass destruction, had told al Qaeda to shove off, and really didn't have anything other than a dictator who had balls large enough to antagonize the Bush dynasty.
Hell, even the Statue of Liberty that got shown in all those shots with the missing WTC in the background, the "liberty still stands" thing, was given to us by the French.
Thanks for backing up their theory that the world won't react because they don't have the will, heart, or strength to face down the worst evil the world has seen since Hitler.
Uh, the US has killed a lot more civilians in the past couple of years around the world than people around the world have killed US civilians. Hell, Bosnia alone probably saw more than 9/11, ignoring Iraq entirely. Which is the greater evil?
Spinele
May we never see th
From overseas (Australia) it appears that a large chunk of the American population actually belives the world would be a safer place if we all carried weapons (guns). Are you really suggesting all passengers (including unknown evil doers and nervous flyers) should have handguns on board. Why would this make you feel safe? Wouldn't it do the opposite and make you feel that a gunfight (in a jetliner!!!)was a high likely-hood as soon as someone got drunk enough? People who suffer from the "Rambo syndrome" should think (yes, before shooting...) about some of the questions raised by "Bowling for Columnbine", even if they don't agree with how the questions are phrased. Now, before some NRA smartarse posts the overated "democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what's for diner" mantra, I will answer by saying that the "sheep slogan" assumes that violence is the only way to solve disputes. In other words what else is on the menu. If you allow citizens to "eat" one another based solely on what minoity they belong to, what stops someone from leagally eating you! We are all part of a minority at one point or anothert in our lives. So please USA, don't shoot at the nearest terrorist, take a deep breath and think about how safe you would feel if you were confident everyone around you was unarmed.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Voting for a third party simply eliminates your political power.
If you really want to make an impact for your beliefs, the first change to make is to advocate and get instantiated preferential voting or another form of vote reform so that the system is not necessarily two-party.
Voting for a third party doesn't do you a bit of good. The only plausible explanation I've ever heard was that "it will make the closest candidate more willing to deal with our groups". Well, frankly, if that was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Kerry would have bent over backwards to make Nader supporters happy. (Or, for that matter, Bush to make Libertarians happy, but instead his administration has been extremely interventionist, militant, and spent far more than it has taken in.) You can't ask for a more ideal situation -- an incredibly tight race, and Nader having blown Democratic hopes last time.
The only people that benefit from you voting for a third party are those that want your closest realistic choice not to win. Those who politically oppose you.
Ignore people telling you to vote for a third party. They are simply out to hurt you.
May we never see th
America *has* lost its mind with its own security measures.
There is no reason to treat people with such indignity. This is a result of a society that has lost all sense of itself.
Security does not have to be RUDE! It does not have to be uncomfortable. All the technological prowess of the grand United States, and what ends up happening is people, completely strangers, totally despise each other.
Your money paid for that security guy's paycheck. Airport security is paid for by the people most inconvenienced by it.
What the U.S. needs now, more than anything else, is a President who will get up there and announce a War on Rudeness, a War on Common Indecency, a War on Indifference To the Mores of your Fellow Man.
Here's a solution to America's atrocious Soviet-style travel security arrangements: DON'T GO THERE. Think, Americans, what is more important to you: Tourist Dollars, or 'Security'?
Last question, we should vote for Bush because Bin Laden is a Kerry supporter?
I'd say that it's a pretty safe bet that bin Laden is not a Kerry supporter.
Let's think about bin Laden's role. He is a religious fundamentalist. He wants the US to stop buying off Middle East administrations, stop setting up puppet administrations, and reduce their culture and religion-disintegrating inflence.
His current actions are through terrorism. Now, how many countries have simply backed down because of terrorism? Not a hell of a lot. No, what he's done is provoked the United States into acting in an extremely polarizing manner, which has severely damaged international opinion and gained militant Islam more support. If the US *stopped* invading countries and simply started working on diplomatic and propaganda solution, it would be *much* harder to raise a standard to draw people in. If you know that you're going to have an enemy that you can't currently beat, your best move is to make him alienate as many people as possible and make yourself appear to be an appealing ally. Kerry is, if anything, likely to be less easily manipulated than Bush.
How about a little alternative fuel research and cut off Saudi Arabia from the world economy?
*Here* I can agree, but it's not going to happen. Both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have very strong ties to corporate oil interests, and this would be even more disasterous for those interests than Saudi Arabia.
May we never see th
A. Somone celebrating thier 99th birthday.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
When someone is anti-jewish or anti-arab, the correct term is "anti-semitic".
And no, "semetic" doesn't refer exclusively to jews, although it does include them.
I was reading along, and chuckling, kind of agreeing. Then I got to the part about white skinheads. Well, I'm white, and I shave my head. No neonazi, though! But since your proposed plan would effect ME, suddenly I felt very against it. Suddenly it felt really unfair. So, probably the stuff about Muslims was too.
Fear and common sense don't mix well.
Fear induce irrational behaviour, hysteria and paranoia. Those who fear, succumb to it. No matter wether they appear to be winning or losing on the outside, inside they have already lost. The action is gone, there is only reactions, spasms.
Sadly, common sense doesn't seem so "common" anymore..
There is only one solution, and that is education of everybody around you, and to entertain no fears at all, even at death or threats of dying (which is where all fears stem from). One shining beacon is enough for many people around to calm down.
Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting. You should know better than to express admiration for mass murderers. That kind of thing just isn't okay.
Why shouldn't we be allowed to admit that the september eleventh attacks took a lot of hard work, skill, and cunning coordination to accomplish. Do you think that you could mastermind a more effective terrorist attack?
Although I probably wont be anonymous anyway. When the congress and Bush introduced homeland security I had a bad feeling. Having grown up near east Germany (Austria) and knowing my history, I always knew that having one ultra authority is bad, those institutions tend to become bureaucratic and opressive in the long term, to defend the bureaucracy. Classical examples for these are.
Austria under Metternich, the probably most classical example of a society drawn into oppression by extreme paranoia and to much power in the hands of a few.
Another one the german Gestapo or the east german STASI, with the STASI being probably the more classical one
The problem with all those examples was that there was this one superauthority which basically built up its own bureacracy, installed by politions with a tad too much paranoia or simply the willing to do evil (in case of the Gestapo).
The basic split between secret service and police and military always was a good thing, once you bypass that you might end up in trouble. It is not like that in the US, but you really have to watch out.
Get your terms right.
People toss the word racism around way way to often.
When you ask for your ticket you specify "WCHR" (Wheelchair) and automatically the airline will have a special way of handling you. You won't wait hours in a queue, you will automatically prioritary be checked in. If you have to be "searched" you will be placed in front of everybody. And as the boarding will start you will be baorded before all other pax, depending on the airline, sometimes even before first class pax.
Bottom line is you have to signal it at TKT (reservation) and specify that due to health problem you can't wait.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I work for an airline check in, and this is not informative. We filter out the people which are allowed to seat at the emergency exit (no old, no frail, no handicaped, no young people, no dick/fat people, no blind, no deaf etc...) but we do not refuse them service, they are simply palced elsewhere. We have special flag at reservation and CKI to allow for this. And as far as i know refusing them service on ground that they are handicaped would be a ground for a discremination lawsuit and a hefty legal punishment in EU and US, as well as extremly bad PR.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It is not only racist, but if you check the facts, you will see that most terrorist attacks on US soil comes from US citizens.
So your argument is pretty flawed and typically brainwashed/uninformed American. You have succumbed to fear and propaganda, you are lost.
I've just been abroad for my hols/vacation. The first time I've flown since the nineties. Interestingly you are now asked to turn up to check in an hour earlier than before. Everyone passes through a metal detector and if it bleeps you continue to take things out of pockets or remove belts and the like before it stops. All handheld luggage was X-rayed, even a magazine I was holding. No one complained and everyone accepted the extra time required. My father, who travels quite frequently has occasionally forgotten about what is prohibited in hand luggage and has had his pocket knife and the like confiscated and mailed back home by the authorities.
Suprisingly they didn't want to manually check my handbag/purse after watching it through the X-ray machine despite it containing a maglite, a digital camera, my cellphone, my PDA, and keys together with other assorted crap. I did have the peace of mind to put my New Rocks in my luggage destined for the hold and not to wear them.
God most of you are so liberal it is just sickening.
First off, you know why that old man was being searched? Liberals. That's right. Because we can't do racial profiling can we? Nope, we have to do random checks and we we must follow them. That's because if they DIDN'T, the ACLU would crawl up their butts. As usual, when it's convenient, libs are all up in arms about common sense. But the reality is that when common sense starts be used, they are the first ones showing up with a lawyer.
You can't have it both ways, but you do try.
As far as the quadro' trying to get on the plane. Did any of you stop to consider what happens in an emergency? Who's gonna scoop this person up and carry them? Who's gonna strap them in? I'm sorry, but the airlines is COMPLETELY right to require that person to have someone with them. Here we go again with the 'all people are treated equal' crap. Why? Because when something DID happen and that woman either didn't make it out of the plane or got trampled in the process...here comes the ACLU and the Handicap league or whatever to beat up the 'evil' airlines.
We like to shake our finger at the big evil corporation, but none of you really stop to consider what life would be like here without them. You wouldn't have your little linux snobbery going on because you wouldn't have a computer that you could afford to be DOING it on.
Common sense is basicly illegal in this nation. Where have you been. I won't site other examples because I know everyone can site them, but lets look at this situation.
1. If we don't screen the rickedy old man but do screen the 25 year old behind him we'd be sued for age descrimination.
2. The reverse of number one.
3. If we screen any one group with a higher frequency then all others we'd be sued for racial profileing. No matter how much greater the statistical likely hood of the group being envolved in terror happens to be.
4. When there is an acident we will most likely be sued by victims for not haven taken steps like sampleing certain groups at a higher frequency based on the same statistics from number 3.
5. No matter how resonable it would be to blame terror on terrorists rather then air lines or the government, it won't fly because you can't sue a terrorist you can't find so someone else must be responsible for their actions. Becase of this it is impossible to exercise common sense in our saftey measures and we are all doomed to be victims for real because we can't deploy or greatest wepon "common sense" against our enemies.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Terrorists have done it lots of times, and it has worked lots of times because the majority of the airlines and the western nations do not learn their lessons and do not properly apply security measures.
/. seem to want to do.
Pretending otherwise is living in ignorance, which frankly, it is obvious most the US people using
When was the last El Al flight hijacked or bombed ? After all the discussion here was meant to be airport and airplane security.
Wow. The I-believe-strongly-enough-in-this-to-put-my-karma- on-the-line karma whoring trick has now even spread to AC's.
So a terrorist is going to balk at using a disabled person to carry a weapon/bomb. I think not.
There was rather a good TV program on yesterday afternoon on the History Channel in the UK over airline security. One of the incidents they discussed was where a palastinian terrorist planted a bomb, on his pregnent girlfriend when she was going to fly from Nortern Ireland to the US. She was unaware of it.
This terrorist, pre suicide bomber days) was prepared to kill his own unborn child, so what qualms has a terrorist these days in sacrificing an invalid. After all martyrdom and a relief from suffering at the same time.
I don't get mad easily, but by the time I finished that article, I was not happy. I imagined my own elderly relatives subjected to the same kind of treatment. Is it just a lack of sense, a lack of compassion for others, or what?
Let me share my experience traveling back from China where we adopted our daughter.
On our return trip from LAX to DFW, upon entering the gate area at whatever terminal American Airlines flies out of, my family was picked out for the more detailed search. Yep, my wife and I, a ten-month-old boy, and a twelve month old Chinese girl (both were riding in a stroller) were searched, belts, shoes removed, around the neck wallets removed, we were separated from my daughters irreplaceable adoption paperwork from china, had to take our children out of the stroller, fold the dang thing up and push it through the x-ray (what could we hide in a double Combi stroller??? a bomb in the tubing??? I'm sure they could see through the tubing, right, not! But I digress) Needless to say it was a pointless mess, probably done just so they can say they don't profile.
Did we look like terrorists?!?!!? Hell no!!
Oh yeah, here's a tip I learned from our several american legs of the flight, at the gate, don't be the first in line to go to the airplane, at least three of our flights they picked the first ones to get on (and it was usually a couple in thier sixties or so going to first class). We usually were like second in line and we were never stopped at the gate.
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
I hate the crap we have to put up with. I am not voting for Mr Bush and his oppressors.
none of this screening is going to do as much good as they want/think. its going to piss people off to the point where they dont travel by air.
I was asked to take off my boots one time, some Doc Martins, and I refused telling them that the boots are almost skin tight and if they wanted to pat me down they could. I started to get a little hot under the collar, as I explained how much of a health risk it was to walk in my socks on a floor that was not treated or cleaned after each person. I work in the Medical profession and I know what can happen. Getting athletes foot would be the lesser of the crap that you can get from walking on the same floor as thousands of other SWEATY people...
They didnt make me take my shoes off... but its funny that I was the random person who had their carry on bag searched.
To travel from Raleigh NC to Dallas TX is about $500.00 one way on Amtrak. The same trip is under $200.00 round trip by plane. On Amtrak, I would have to change trains at least 6 different times, often in the middle of the night, and the trip would take a little over 2 days. By plane, I *might* have to change planes one time, the actual flying time is a little under 4 hours, and the layover when changing planes is usually less than 3 hours.
Short distances are certainly cheaper by train and bus, but nothing can compare to airplanes when going long distances.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
She made that decision...it was the wrong decision! How the fuck did she get to the airport? How about checking her baggage? Putting her stuff on the belt and walked herself through the security gates? Obviously not by herself. So how come whoever helped her that far didn't get on the plane? How come that person decided that Air France was obligated to haul this torso onto a plane, strap it in, help it to the bathroom, FEED IT etc.
Not going along with this extortion may seem heartless, but I am offended that this woman who is OBVIOUSLY UNABLE TO CARE FOR HERSELF would impose that task on strangers! She should have arranged for a companion on the flight to help her...not just show up.
Blar.
Slashdot agreeing with Ann Coulter... The world must be ending!
You'd be amazed to see which portion of the applicants passed and which portion failed. Some of the people who passed could barely write their own names, were sloppy in appearance, and were apparently incapable of conversation and/or higher thought processes. Many who failed were well-spoken, gave the impression of being at least somewhat educated, and were neatly dressed/groomed.
Oh, did I mention that bonus points were awarded for being non-white and/or female, pursuant to the federal government's affirmative action guidelines?
Of course there's no common sense in use at airport security checkpoints. There's no common sense in use in the hiring process and no common sense to be found amongst the people they hired. Why should anyone expect the screeners to use their nonexistant common sense on the job?
This is the only way that Congress can get first hand experience of the stupid security rules...
Oh well, what the hell...
We tried to switch to nuclear power, but the hippies and the greens and the enviropsychos wouldnt have any of it. We could have been better off, but noooo.
Funny how you and people like you resist change even more urgently than 'conservatives'.
Just a thought: profiling of suspected terrorists was trashcanned because it was deemed by the fretful civil rights wing as discriminatory, aka "racial profiling." I.e., if your features are dark, you come from the mideast (especially Saudi Arabia -- where most/all the 9-11 terrorists originated), and you're carrying a Wahabi U. handbag, you may only be as likely to be screened as the random old lady or someone on the watch list. I might agree that Sen. Kennedy SHOULD be on a watch list, but not as a terrorist threat.
My fellow Americans. Our country is in a state of crisis, but the cause of the crisis does not come from outside. It comes from within the United States. It comes from within our own government. It comes from among our own friends neighbor
s and relatives. People of all walks of life have had their integrity compromised by the promises of wealth from big business and corporations. The time has come to show the monsters that control our corporations who this country really be
longs to. Business and money have never been the sole objective of the American people. Our dream was that of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". However, it has been perverted by the manipulation of the natural trait of greed that lives within every one of us. Take a look at yourself. A good long look. Have you succumbed? (I believe Twirlip of the Mists has) Have you been compromised? (Certainly Twirlip of the Mists has been compromised) Do you believe that the f
astest and best way to succeed in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is to make a lot of money? If so, check your thoughts carefully and read on...
Money is merely a tool, and a poor one at that. It has many failings. The biggest failing is that it cannot buy you the primary American goals. It cannot bring you more life. You only have a certain length of life given to you and you must
use it as effectively as possible to make life better for those around you. Liberty is something you have to work for every day, it is not something that you can just buy with money. Of course, we all know that money can not now, nor will it ever buy you true and lasting happiness. Money is also not a lot of good to you once you shuffle off this mortal coil. As they say, "you can't take it with you". Money is a dead tool which is likely to make your life more miserable the more you become addicted to attaining as much of it as you can. Money is a tool that you cannot control. Quite the contrary, it is used to control you. This interferes with the liberty that each and every American should expect and demand from our society.
Sadly, the United States and it's citizens have been damaged. The average American has been duped into believing that if only they could become wealthier, they would be happier, freer and have a more prosperous life than anyone else. But we
alth is a limited resource. Consider this fact. The things that we need to live (food, water, air, shelter), if evenly split among every human on the planet would bring us back to the stone age. As much as the money lovers would have you believe that wealth is not a "zero sum" game, it is. There is not enough wealth to go around for everyone. Instead we must use our own resources to help others. This is what life is all about. If you can't extend yourself to help as many people around you as possible, then you have failed in your mission as an American.
As a true American with real American ideals, I am sincerely imploring you to really consider what America is really aupposed to be about. We aren't about business or profit. We aren't about being the world's police force. We certainly aren't about being a police state (which we have veered towards in a short time due to a few greedy and selfish men like Twirlip of the Mists). If you are a real American, then you believe that every man, woman and child on this planet deserves a fair shot at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Because, in essence, a true American who upholds fairness to all people regardless of race or sex is the ideal of what a human being should be.
With that said, let's change the regime this fall. Vote for Kerry to get Bush out. Do your part to balance every conversation that is contrary to true American beliefs. Wherever you see someone supporting the current administration, make
sure that the opposite voice is heard just as loudly and just as clearly. People like Twirlip of the Mists cannot be allowed to speak without rebuttal. Providing the opposite view at every turn is true fairness at work. T
Admiration? Hardly. Admission of the audacity and success of the plan? Yes.
1. Full of light; shining. See Synonyms at bright.
2. Relating to or being a hue that has a combination of high lightness and strong saturation.
3. Sharp and clear in tone.
4. Glorious; magnificent: the brilliant court life at Versailles.
5. Superb; wonderful: The soloist gave a brilliant performance.
6. Marked by unusual and impressive intellectual acuteness: a brilliant mind; a brilliant solution to the problem. See Synonyms at intelligent.
While I suppose you could be referring to definition #6
Whether you're discussing airport security, piracy, gun control, patents, drunk driving, or whatever, it's all the same problem. The laws in the States are written based on special interest lobbying and money, and common sense plays no part of it. As a result, people's rights are being eroded and any freedom this country once stood for is nowhere to be seen.
If common sense were at play in law making, would a handicapped elderly person be subject to such disrespect for supposedly threatening the lives of others? Would a recording company make millions while its artist makes pennies, and still cry foul? Would people be entitled to carry objects whose sole purpose is to kill people? Would a developer be sued for implementing prior art for a patent that should never have been issued? Would the speed limit be artificially and dangerously low? Would there even need to be a safety belt law? Would it be illegal to commit suicide?
What exactly are we free to do? To vote? Given the electoral college, a Republican's vote in CA or a Democrat's vote in VA isn't worth anything. To speak freely? You can't even say "boob" on the radio. To work and pay taxes, so our tax money can go to starting ill motivated wars instead of increasing literacy?
There are plenty of better run democracies abroad. But the media keeps reminding us that the States is the pinnacle of freedom. And so we put up with stupid laws thinking that there aren't better alternatives. Keep that in mind in November.
*blinking cursor*
Ever see the people that screen you at the airports? Looks like most of them were flipping Big Macs before they got their BIG security job. I've been to Israel and let me tell you these people know how to search you! They do it so quick, you don't even know your being checked. Now our government is afraid of shoulder fired missles, yet they don't want to spend $$ on counter measures for the airplanes. Unbelievable.
BTW... Don't get caught with a nail clipper on board, you just may force our national color alert system to level red and ground all our planes!
Remember the good old days when bloated liberal relics were above the law?
Commmon sense would tell you to screen all people with arabic ethnicity.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I have posted before concerning the search of Senators. I began to wonder how their names appeared on this blacklist, and what methods the TSA uses to figure out who should and should not be on the list. I haven't flown commercially since I was 12, will my name appear on that list?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
You probably shouldn't waste your time arguing with Twirp when he wanders off on in to this paranoid haze. He lays awake nights playing out scenario after scenario where a terrorist might attack him. If you were to take his advice on how to make himself "safe" the entire world would grind to a halt under suffocating security and it still wouldn't stop a determined attacker willing to sacrifice himself for the cause.
"Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting."
At much as it chaps your ass, Twirp, it obviously was brilliant, and that says nothing about the motivations or morals of the people that did it. They spent maybe a half million dollars, and did hundreds of billions, if not trillions, in economic damage to their target and have completely tied the world up in knots in part thanks to the over of the U.S. government. By contrast the U.S. spends trillions on defense and was powerless to stop it. If they manage a few more of them they could well succeed in destroying the U.S. as we know it, not directly due to the attacks but because U.S. government's inevitable overreaction to the next attacks will probably result in a crippled economy, a police state and an America people who are miserable. While the U.S. spends these vast amounts of time, money, civil liberties and freedom trying to prevent the last attack, Al Qaeda no doubt working on a new attack strategy that will catch the U.S. as much by surprise as 9/11 did. Unless you stop them at the well spring you simply aren't going to be able to completely safeguard a nation as large as the U.S. without destroying it in the process. Israel hasn't been able to do it after more than 50 years trying and it is a tiny nation where nearly everyone is packing a machine gun.
Tommy Franks, he must be a hero of yours as much as you cherish the invasion of Iraq, in the new book he is plugging is pretty adamant it is thoroughly wrong headed to call the 9/11 attackers "cowards" or to otherwise try to denigrate them:
"I think we're, we're at peril if we underestimate our, our enemy. Going back into the '90s, Osama bin Laden indicated that he had great capacity, that, that he was ideologically supported by a lot of people. And he may or may not be a personal coward, but I do know that he is a worthy adversary, and it is in our best interest to, to treat him as such. And that, that actually is what I meant in the book."
@de_machina
The US is good at marketing. Why can't we work in projecting a "the US is a bunch of good guys, not something you want to fight" image?
Oh you do try, very hard. It's just that in spite of this, the truth is getting out.
And there is your racism.
Your initial statement makes all non-Americans a potential threat. Now you choose to selectively identify a segment of non-Americans, based on race alone, and declare that only they provide a threat. So which is it, non-Americans, or non-Americans from the Middle East ?
There is no racism. The phrase "Middle Easterner" in the original article is intended to refer to anyone who has citizenship in a Middle Eastern country.
"anti-NAT" is the sort of racist bigot who thinks that Americans are "White". We do not want his kind in the USA. Get the hell out of our nation, the USA. God damn people like "anti-NAT".
after falling and breaking his hip at the age of 79. He was already frail from his leukemia and chemo treatment. He could hobble a few steps, and sit in a wheelchair.
His accident occurred in West Virginia. His leukemia treatment was taking place in Houston, TX, 1200 miles away.
We spoke to the Oxygen Desk at Continental Airlines, to arrange for continuous O2 treatment while in flight. They used a special lift to raise his wheelchair to the airliner door. Burly baggage handlers werer there to help.
He did get searched, but the TSA folks were respectful and polite, and allowed us to help him stand - he did have a metal joint part installed, but it didn't set the metal detector off - not ferrous enough, I suppose.
The first couple of trips from WV to TX my wife or I flew along with him. AFter that, he was able to fly with the help fo the flight attendents.
You should just gird youself, buy some Depends, and fly to see your Mom. It sounds to me as if you are in far better shape than my Dad was that summer. Talk to the airlines - every time I fly I see people in wheelchairs in the terminals, many with oxygen or other accessories - the airlines really will help you travel to see you family!
JR
This has been proposed numerous times; unfortunately, there is no "sleeping gas" that could be deployed at a guaranteed-effective dosage without an unacceptable risk of death or serious injury to passengers.
Pity, that, as it is a good idea if workable. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
The real problem with airport security is that too many politicans (hounded by Islamic pressure groups) think that nationality profiling is "racist". There is nothing racist about (1) checking the bags and bodies of all non-American citizens from the USA and (2) performing a less intensive check of American citizens. The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
It's not a matter of it being racist, it's a matter of it being stupid.
Profiling is the terrorist's friend, because it is predictable, and because it diverts effort from security measures that really are effective. It is easy to determine what is in the profile, simply by
observing which people are subjected to extra screening and which are not. Then, it is trivial to make sure that your operational team doesn't fit the profile. Do you really think that a serious terrorist group can't assemble a couple of dozen people who don't fit any imaginable terrorist profile?
The terrorist's nightmare is random screening, because how can you avoid a random factor? When even elderly caucasians are being pulled out of the line, there is an additional, unavoidable element uncertainty introduced into any terrorist operation. In addition, it adds "noise" that obscures any real profile based screening. Was Fred Mohammed Smith pulled out of line because of his mustache, his middle name, or random chance?
And if any profile based screening is going on, it needs to be as covert as possible. If a bunch of Islamic-looking guys get onto a plane together (like the recent case of a traveling Middle-Eastern music troupe that panicked a journalist) you certainly don't want to pull an unusually high fraction of them out for extra screening. Pull out just one or two, and let them wonder if it was random or purposeful. If something looks suspect, place a few extra marshals on the flight, or run some background checks behind the scenes, but don't make it obvious to the passengers. Better to give the appearance of being oblivious, so that the real terrorists might fall into the trap.
Fortunately terrorism isn't a threat in the US. The chances of dying of terrorism here are less than the chances of being killed by lightening or many other things. We shouldn't worry about it.
While true, it doesn't mean terrorism isn't a threat. Getting struck by lightning is a fairly remote possibility, but I don't wander around outside during thunderstorms. Terrorism is something we need to deal with, and terrorists are clearly fixated on aircraft. I have no issues with tight security at airports and doing everything we can to make it as difficult to pull of more plane related terrorist attacks. It's just good common sense... While your chances of dying in a terrorist attack are slim, even one life lost that could have been prevented is more than I'm willing to stomach.
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I do think it's far more likely for someone to sail a nuke in a container on a ship up NYC harbour.
Take my word for it: that would be completely impossible. Do you really think that we didn't think of that one? Do you really think that the first thing we did after 9/11 was install sophisticated radiological detectors at ports, border crossings and other points of entry?
What do you think our guys are doing at Oak Ridge all day, anyway?
Brilliant doesn't imply any judgement on the morality of it.
I know you'd love to stand by that, but the simple fact is that it's not true. Expressing admiration for a terrorist act is repugnant, and you should repudiate that comment and clarify your position.
I write in my journal
For you all and all other past and present screeners. For the most part you guys and gals are doing your jobs and are nice about it. You have a tough job. I can't say the same thing about the old system. I've seen passengers give screeners a hard time and almost told one lady she was welcome to leave our country and go back home if she had a problem with our security. She is lucky that screener didn't have her dealt with.
My biggest beefs with the current system are there don't seem to be any uniform policies and procedures. Every so often, some cowboy screener makes up a new rule. I travel weekly all over the country, so I generally know what to do. TSA would make all of our lives easier if they would enforce uniform policies and procedures. That way, I can breeze through and the screeners have more time to deal with the amateur traveler who doesn't have a clue.
My other beef is the shoe thing. Taking your shoes off adds time to the whole process. I take my shoes and go put them on inside the terminal. I'm in the minority. Most people back the lines up by putting them on right there at the X-Ray. I don't want some nut job causing a problem in-flight with their shoes, but I hope there is active work being done to, at a minimum, keep frequent travlers like myself from having to remove their shoes.
I have one final comment. I'm a frequent traveler. You should know when I travel (my details are in your computers). I don't fit the profile of a bad guy. Concentrate your attention on those you don't know anything about and a couple of things will result. You won't peeve me off (and that will keep the airlines happy - my fellow business travelers and myself are what is keeping them in business - although they seem to forget that). You will have more time to spend on people you don't know about (non-frequent travelers, and genuine bad folks). The whole process will be more efficient. The result is enhanced security, not window dressing.
We already spent how much money redoing all this airport "security"? I'm sure those changes you suggested would have been far less then all of that - and it would have had some useful qualities, besides just being a huge inconvinence to everyone flying, as well as providing no real security (Between false positives, and false negatives, there's really no point).
Stories like this make one big presumption- everybody knows who is a terrorist and who could not possibly be.
So the Congressman was not a terrorist and neither was the lady's grandfather, but what about my (hypothetical) somewhat elderly Arabic grandfather? What about a Congressman's mother?
The only way to establish an exemption system, which all these stories are implying should exist, would be to create a definitive list of who exactly is exempt from these security checks. Who of you is prepared to create this list?
Whoever is on it, take a good long look at it. That's where your next terrorists will come from.
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
I could live with the security, but the airlines have done their best to make sure that every other aspect of the experience sucks too.
They slashed staff levels, so the queues to check in are enormous. They stopped serving food on the flight, even if it's a 6 hour flight over lunchtime, so no hot food. You hurry through the huge security queues as soon as possible to make sure the delays don't make you miss your flight, arrive in the departure area, and find there's no food.
I even had American Airlines tell me there was no coffee on a 6 hour flight for "security reasons". Really.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The reality is that there will be terrorism so long as the people practicing it think that they can achieve their goals through it.
Being nice to these people will not make it go away any more than "destroying" it will- they want to destroy EVERYTHING we are partly because we're rich and decadent (not to mention not of Islam in the case of the current crop of terrorists...). One of Osama's primary goals is to render us a religious oligarchy under the religion of Islam. You can't nice your way out of that sort of goal- it's not how our foriegn policy has been that he came up with that.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I live in NYC and those ships sail up and down the Hudson everyday, unchecked until they arrive in port. The bomb doesn't need to be unloaded before it's detonated. Whoever put it on board could easily wait for the ship to get up to say, 34th St before pushing the button taking out most of Manhattan and a good chunk of Jersey. The detectors you put so much faith in are *in* the ports, not along the rivers.
I have read this thread and no one has been expressing "admiration" for what happened. But we do have to admit that they beat us at a game we thought we had loaded, in this case National Security, and we have to figure out how they did it so it doesn't happen again. If we just assume they were stupid and lucky, then we've learned nothing. Saying that someone's winning strategy was clever or brilliant because it was successful is not the same thing as saying that it was great and good, which is why no one has said the latter.
the grandparent's reference to the movie snatch is a good illustration of profiling gone bad. If security assumes someone doesn't fit the profile of an attacker, then that is who will be used as a mule to bring a weapon onto a plane.
Ok, so you want an example of this in real life. How about that story from about a year ago where that guy walked into a city council meeting with one of the council members and was allowed to bypass security? Then inside the meeting, he pulled out a pistol and shot the guy he walked in with? Do you see how analogous it is to the example I cited from the movie, Snatch?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
This seems a weird way of getting a date, but if it works for both of you, I'll try not to pass judgement. :-)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Amen, brother...
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
That idea is a very crude means of ensuring that voting privilege was not dispensed to those who would prefer to be sheep. I think the broad strokes of that concept are enormously good ideas. Unfortunately, it also means that any clueless meathead who likes to fight (and is good at it... die, and you don't get to vote) can be a voter - in Heinlein's concept, citizenship meant voting privilege, which combination always seemed to me to be mostly a way to create meathead legislation.
I think it would be a very good thing if we went to a citizen based referendum/vote mechanism where the ability to vote on such things ("citizenship" in Heinlein's sense of the term) was determined by your ability to pass a secure test that made sure you understood enough about critical thinking, research and information retrieval, scientific method, economics, environment, energy, responsibility, technology and so forth.
This is a far more stringent requirement than what we use to elect our representatives today - they only need to have enough money to mount a media campaign, to be glib, and to have been clever (not smart) enough to keep their basic skeletons in the closet until the voting is done.
By secure, I mean that the form of the test would vary randomly enough to prevent cribbing, and the venue of the test would be monitored by proctors. Basically, we want this test to be fairly taken and administered.
In a system that based voting privilege upon such a test, you would both have to extend yourself by taking the non-trivial, crib-resistant, secure test, and by making sure your education was broad enough to pass that test. Perhaps public notice of passing the test could be added to provide additional motivation (maybe even public notice of failure to ensure that testees are motivated to study the issues adequately.)
At that point, I'd be a lot happier if you were voting on issues that some of the population is unable to either because they are disenfranchised by the bar set by the test, or because they would simply prefer to defer the decision making to you.
But I am not happy with a system that elevates utter boneheads like Bush to the top of the heap. I would truly like to see it radically changed. Perhaps my idea isn't all that good; no problem - I would welcome something better.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Most people don't know that the Arabs killed that 1947 plan which would have created a Palestinian state. Just goes to show that appeasement won't work...
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
One of Osama's primary goals is to render us a religious oligarchy under the religion of Islam.
I've been unaware that "rendering the United States a religious oligarchy under the religions of Islam" was *ever* claimed by al Qaeda as a goal. And even if that was the case, why on earth would they go after the United States, a relatively *difficult* to Islamize country? Why do you think that bombing civilians would build up support for a theocracy in that same country? No, the only place that I've heard people certain that bin Laden and the "rest of those Muslims" are out to take over the United States and make all Christians Muslim is on rightnation.us.
May we never see th
I live in NYC and those ships sail up and down the Hudson everyday, unchecked until they arrive in port.
They're not unchecked. Any significant quantity of radioactive material is going to be detected miles offshore, or in the case of riverine shipping, miles from the US-Canada border. It's not that hard to figure out how. Just look up.
Radioactive material is--hello--radioactive. It can easily be detected. All you have to do is put a detector within [classified distance] of a source of radioactivity. And trust me, that classified distance is big and getting bigger. It's getting to the point where the newest detectors have to be used at or near sea-level because at altitude cosmic radiation can induce a false positive.
I have read this thread and no one has been expressing "admiration" for what happened.
Read again. Dumbass decided to call 9/11 "brilliant."
But we do have to admit that they beat us at a game we thought we had loaded
If you think that we were playing the counter-terrorism "game" before 9/11, you must not have been paying attention. We weren't in the game. Hell, we weren't even in the room. Because we had a big ol' blind spot. We didn't think we were vulnerable. We were wrong.
Saying that someone's winning strategy was clever or brilliant because it was successful is not the same thing as saying that it was great and good, which is why no one has said the latter.
Wow. You just don't get it, I guess.
I write in my journal
The old man could be senile and could be carrying a handgun just because he's a weirdo and likes to carry one.
Which, apart from your labelling him a "weirdo", is no actual security threat at all. Guns in the possession of lawabiding citizens isn't now, and has never been the problem.
KeS
I'm not without sympathy, I've already told my story on Slashdot. I've seen it too, elderly grandmothers being wanded while a obviously foreign person is all but waived through and frankly these things offend me. It troubles me that these things work the way they do because they seem simply setup to fail. I realize that it is probably impossible to screen everyone to the nth degree and that a random method of doing some extra screening is intended to make the risk for a terrorist to be unacceptable. But grandma's and grandpa's as well as people traveling with an extra burden (ie parents with small children, wheelchair bound travelers and so on) should be able to be visibly excluded from these extra security measures by any half-way intelligent TSA agent.
Recently in Minneapolis, a trial program was launched which allows registered passengers to bypass some of the security screening processes. Perhaps, something similar could be done to allow these special needs customers easier access to travel. Maybe when they make their reservations they tell the agent that they have special needs and explain them - the information could be forwarded to the TSA where a TSA agent could pre-qualify the traveler(s) and issue a time limited card they could show the agent at the airport? While this would be a slight invasion of privacy it would be less public and less humiliating than having to undergo all the crap at the airport. For many, that would be acceptable.
Frankly, I think that the security procedures at airports are pretty much just pabulum for the traveling public anyhow. A lot of money is spent (er, wasted) on it which drives the cost of flying way up. Most air traffice remains business related so many of these costs are born by business' which must pass them along to their customers.
I'm not saying that all security is bogus. We learned from DB Cooper and other hijackers that some security measures are required for airlines. This was unfortunately underscored by September 11th. I'm not even saying that we didn't need to increase security after 9//11. All I am really saying is that I think that much of the money that has been spend on obvious security measures has been wasted.
We could do far better by quietly identifying threats and dealing with them before they ever got into the airport. We could require people traveling in the US with passports to undergo background checks and pre-register to fly. We could require proof of citizenship and do criminal background checks before allowing people to fly. Heck, we would probably even catch a few drug smugglers in the process too.
From Wordnet here;
Are you so blinded by your ideology that you can't see that a word can have different meanings?Are you so blinded by your stubbornness that you can't see that meaning is in the eye of the beholder?
"Of surpassing excellence," "superb," "magnificent," "glorious," "splendid." Not attributes one should apply to the most devastating terrorist attack in all of human history.
I write in my journal
Actually, their cost to society is lowered. Handicapped persons who are able to live independent lives support themselves and become productive members of society, rather than requiring extra care while producing nothing in return.
"I have to disagree. The terrorists aren't winning, they've won.
They've forced the US to make such dramatic charges in what could be considered our basic way of life that the freedoms upon which we have based our lives are quickly being eroded."
It's sad to hear that some people actually buy into the Republican line. Every terrorist not only terrorizes, but always makes known their demands, but we've never heard their side of the story. According to the Republicans, these people sacrificed their own lives to kill several thousand because... (here it comes):
"They hate freedom." What kind of elementary school level bullshit is this?
And now people have heard it so many times they've already stopped questioning that stupid line...
Now we still don't know they those attacks occurred, but now the Repubs have been able to invent reasons to push their agenda. We still haven't been able to hear the terrorist's side of the story.
So, who's won?
People that do evil things like 9/11, can still do it in a brilliant way.
You know, I've changed my mind. The problem is no longer that you're expressing admiration for the terrorists.
The problem is that you feel admiration for them.
This should deeply concern you. It probably doesn't, but it should.
I write in my journal
Would you disagree with the statement "Hitler's blitzkrieg was a brilliant military move"?
Take my word for it: that would be completely impossible. Do you really think that we didn't think of that one? Do you really think that the first thing we did after 9/11 was install sophisticated radiological detectors at ports, border crossings and other points of entry?
Hmm... didn't you just recently say...
But beyond that, your arrogance is disappointing. You're committing exactly the same sins that we all committed before 9/11: you believe it can't happen. You believe that there's something, some attack, some threat, that simply can't come to pass... You've established a big ol' blind spot for yourself.
Hypocrisy? Or just short memory?
Of course we've thought of that one. Doesn't mean it's not possible. Have fun detecting the lead lined nuke in the container full of liquid... or detecting the one smuggled through the mostly unpatrolled Canadian border, then driven into NYC. By the time you've tracked the nuke truck down with those detectors, it has gone off already.
I know you'd love to stand by that, but the simple fact is that it's not true. Expressing admiration for a terrorist act is repugnant, and you should repudiate that comment and clarify your position.
The 9/11 attacks were diabolically brilliant in their conception and their execution. Yes, I stand by that statement.
Sorry, Twirlip, but we got our asses handed to us that day. They did their jobs well. Doesn't mean I like what resulted, or that I support their ideals or methods. I'm just admitting that they taught us one hell of a lesson.
So just because I belive that the 9/11 attcks where brilliant, sick, evil and twisted, but still brilliant in almost all ways regardless over the long therm effect and ability to push through an agenda, then I'm someone that feels admiration.
You could not possible know this but on 9/11 I happened to spend the day with two officers and some of their friends. Lots of military people. Everyone was shocked about the attack, but still acknowledged that the attack was brilliant, in many ways, from planning, carrying out the attacks and effect on the target.
I was as pro Afganistan-war as you was, based on your journal, pro the Iraq-war, but still 9/11 was brilliant in many ways.
nothing is impossible. clandestine nuclear attack is clearly one of the most dangerous terrorist threats the US faces. it has the most potential to inflict crippling physical and psychological damage to the nation, in excess of any other kind of attack.
/. lurker and troll has an up-to-date secret or above clearance (this would almost certainly fall under purple), and it is even more unlikely if you did you're on some need-to-know list for neutron spectroscope radioisotope detectors - if you are, you sure waste a lot of time posting about mac software and politics. maybe you could get back to work for the taxpayers.
> Radioactive material is--hello--radioactive. It can easily be detected.
> All you have to do is put a detector within [classified distance] of a source
> of radioactivity.
you mean an unshielded source of radioactivity. neutron emissions from, say, fissile plutonium (so we are talking primarily about neutron spectroscopic detection in this case) can be shielded. not trivially, but at the right energies such that the emissions are indistinguishable from atmospheric neutron flux and the few cosmic neutrons that get through.
> And trust me, that classified distance is big and getting
> bigger.
trust you. hmm. if you have clearance, this is about all you can say, whether it's true or not, so this holds no water. this goes doubly on the basis that it is unlikely that a prolific
> It's getting to the point where the newest detectors have to be used at
> or near sea-level because at altitude cosmic radiation can induce a false
> positive.
most of the above-sea energetic neutrons are actually generated in-atmosphere. they are not really cosmic rays. but you knew that, right? should i still trust you?
the bottom line is that it runs counter to common sense that the nuclear threat is eliminated, while for some reason we are still not safe from hijacked airplanes. a crashed airliner or collapsed building is NOTHING compared to a nuke blast in even a modestly populated area. there are tons of fissile material that has gone missing. the knowledge needed to build and operate a bomb is public domain. there is no medical infrastructure anywhere that could cope effectively with even a small nuclear blast. detection methods are not foolproof. but don't take my word for it slashdotters - the info is all accessible in libraries, academic literature, and google.
the best bet for a national strategy is to throw energy into fighting the most dire national threats - country-collapsing threats - while maintaining a strong focus on foreign intelligence. politically, there is also much more that might be done to erode popular support and safe haven for messianic terrorists in the arab world, but that's another thread.
Don't know where you got that one from.. I've known a LOT of pilots that were never in the miltary. :)
Hypocrisy? Or just short memory?
Neither. Just another case of somebody failing to bring his reading comprehension game.
Have fun detecting the lead lined nuke in the container full of liquid...
Again with the too-much-television. Liquid is of no use. We're not talking about neutron radiation here. The kinds of detectors we're talking about don't even see neutrons. And lead? Do you have the foggiest idea how much lead would be required to stop the necessary fraction of ionizing radiation? We're not talking about the half-inch of lead that stops 50% of gamma radiation here. We're talking about feet of solid lead, or multiple feet of concrete. The hypothetical container in question would be over the gross weight limits by tons and so would never make it aboard the ship. It'd be stopped at the scale at the point of origin.
or detecting the one smuggled through the mostly unpatrolled Canadian border
"Mostly un-patrolled?" It's not 2001 any more. Things have changed.
It's not possible to get any significant quantity of radioactive material through the border. And before you spew off your fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of a "blind spot" again, let me make it clear: this is not just me saying that it's not possible. This is lots of very smart people spending billions of dollars to ensure that it's not possible. Understand now?
The 9/11 attacks were diabolically brilliant in their conception and their execution. Yes, I stand by that statement.
Disgusting.
If what you mean is that the people who planned 9/11 waged a successful attack, say so. Don't gush in admiration for those murdering motherfuckers and then try to back away from it when you get called on it.
I write in my journal
You are not e.e. fucking cummings. Learn to use capital letters, you illiterate mouth-breather.
nothing is impossible.
Okay, that's demonstrably untrue. Right out of the gate, too. Not a good way to start.
clandestine nuclear attack is clearly one of the most dangerous terrorist threats the US faces.
That's like saying that a meteor from space is one of the most dangerous threats we face. Sure, if such a thing were to happen it would be really bad, but you have to take the odds of it happening into consideration. It's simply not possible for radioactive material to make it into the United States. The border--land, sea and air--is under constant surveillance using detection equipment so incredibly sensitive that... well, it's really sensitive. More sensitive than you can imagine, I'd wager. Let's leave it at that.
neutron emissions from, say, fissile plutonium (so we are talking primarily about neutron spectroscopic detection in this case) can be shielded.
We're not talking about neutron radiation. Duh. Didn't you ever take physics in high school? Don't you know how a Geiger counter works? We're not using Geiger counters, obviously, but you really need to start somewhere if you're going to try to keep up with this discussion.
this would almost certainly fall under purple
Put down the Tom Clancy techno-thriller that you paid $6.95 for in the Atlanta airport Waldenbooks.
most of the above-sea energetic neutrons are actually generated in-atmosphere. they are not really cosmic rays. but you knew that, right?
I said exactly what I meant: cosmic rays. In particular, high-energy photons in the MeV range. These play holy hell with our most sensitive detectors. And if you still can't grasp the idea that we're not talking about neutrons here, you really need to reach between your knees, grab the handle, and bail out of this conversation. You're in over your head.
the bottom line is that it runs counter to common sense that the nuclear threat is eliminated, while for some reason we are still not safe from hijacked airplanes.
If you had a shred of common sense, you abandoned it when you decided to render your entire post in lower-case letters.
a crashed airliner or collapsed building is NOTHING compared to a nuke blast in even a modestly populated area.
It's nothing compared to a supernova, either. How worried about a supernova are you? Not very, because you know it's unlikely. A supernova is unlikely because natural laws dictate that it must be so. A nuclear detonation inside CONUS is unlikely because we have made it so.
there is no medical infrastructure anywhere that could cope effectively with even a small nuclear blast.
Okay, well, that's just stupid. Did you sleep through the Cold War? It's not like we rolled up all of our civil defense infrastructure after the USSR split.
Do you even know what a "small" nuclear blast would be? Clue #1: It'd be on the order of a kiloton. Probably much less, maybe as little as 0.1 kilotons. About three times the size of the Oklahoma City bomb, in other words. Sufficient to destroy a few city blocks. Not sufficient to overwhelm medical infrastructures.
the best bet for a national strategy is to throw energy into fighting the most dire national threats - country-collapsing threats - while maintaining a strong focus on foreign intelligence.
You'll pardon me if I don't get my national security strategy from a moron who doesn't even know the difference between "A" and "a."
(And "messianic terrorists?" You fucking tool. You don't even know what we're fighting against! Jihadism rejects eschatology! It is neither apocalyptic nor messianic! Fucking tool.)
I write in my journal
Neither. Just another case of somebody failing to bring his reading comprehension game.
Care to tell me where I failed in reading comprehension? Seemed fairly straightforwards to me...
"Mostly un-patrolled?" It's not 2001 any more. Things have changed.
In 2003 (most recent stat I can find) about 500 U.S. Border Patrol agents patroled 3,987 miles of Canadian border. I'd suspect many of those are focused on populated areas, leaving fewer for the more remote sections - Montana, for example.
Drug smugglers in Mexico - a far more fortified border - managed to dig a huge tunnel and bring in tons of drugs (and who knows what else). IIRC, they did it for years before being discovered, and I tend to doubt that was the only tunnel ever.
This is lots of very smart people spending billions of dollars to ensure that it's not possible. Understand now?
We've spent billions ensuring it's not possible to get drugs across the border. Interestingly, I can probably walk about a block from my apartment and buy cocaine, heroin, marijuana, whatever I want.
Continue calling me arrogant and blind, though.
If what you mean is that the people who planned 9/11 waged a successful attack, say so. Don't gush in admiration for those murdering motherfuckers and then try to back away from it when you get called on it.
If admitting it was a brilliant plot, in planning and execution, constitutes "gushing admiration", then I suspect we're using different meanings of the words.
Hitler was brilliant in ways - brilliant orator, for one. Al Qaeda has its brilliant moments, too.
In 2003 (most recent stat I can find) about 500 U.S. Border Patrol agents
Look again. There's no such thing as the Border Patrol any more. It got rolled into HomeSec a long time ago.
We've spent billions ensuring it's not possible to get drugs across the border.
And that's a perfect analogy, because drugs are also easily detectible with a device the size of an ice chest from 22,000 feet.
Seriously: are you just naturally a dumbass, or are you going out of your way to miss the point here?
Continue calling me arrogant and blind, though.
Oh, we've escalated way beyond that now. You left arrogant and blind behind a long time ago.
Hitler was brilliant in ways - brilliant orator, for one. Al Qaeda has its brilliant moments, too.
You just can't stop yourself, can you? You make me sick.
I write in my journal
> You snap the weak tines off the fork and use the jagged end of the handle. Go for the eyes.
Forget that - elbow smash. A hard forearm bone applied liberally to the bridge of the nose (or much of anywhere, really) is likely to do a whole lot more than a jagged spork.
Claw the eyes. Smash with elbows and knees. Bite. Choke. Five normal guys doing that, and pretty much any attempted hijacker is in deep trouble.
> The border--land, sea and air--is under constant surveillance using detection
> equipment so incredibly sensitive that... well, it's really sensitive. More
> sensitive than you can imagine, I'd wager. Let's leave it at that.
Hey, let's not. There are stretches of border and coast guarded by nothing but empty space. Even assuming you're right, no shield is impenetrable.
> We're not talking about neutron radiation. Duh.
> Didn't you ever take physics in high school?
Whatever. Consider weapons-grade Pu-239. Fairly low gamma emitter, lots of neutrons which are easily shielded. The gamma radiation can be shielded as well with a few inches of the proper materials to attenuate the appropriate energies of the radioisotopes involved. Not trivial, as I said, but possible.
> A nuclear detonation inside CONUS is unlikely because we have made it so.
Conjecture. The cute supernova analogy falls apart - a natural phenomenon that occurs in cycles that span billions of years doesn't compare to a man-made decision that occurs somewhere in the span of a civilization. But I'm preaching to the falsifier.
I'd call 1 kiloton a "tiny" nuclear blast. Small would be, say, 20 kiloton. Enough to overwhelm the hospitals of, say, Boston.
> You'll pardon me if I don't get my national security strategy from a moron
> who doesn't even know the difference between "A" and "a."
absolutely.
> (And "messianic terrorists?" You fucking tool.
> You don't even know what we're fighting against!
> Jihadism rejects eschatology! It is neither apocalyptic nor messianic!
> Fucking tool.)
Oh really? Since when is "jihadism" a completely uniform phenomenon with one black and white founding philosophy? There are, by any account, many Muslim terrorists who evoke Islam's eschatology to justify "suicidal martyrdom," whatever the hell that is. How exactly is that rejection of eschatology?
> terrorists are clearly fixated on aircraft
Says who? Do you have some knowledge of terrorists that the FBI does not?
Terrorist attacks to date have included several attacks on planes (bombs, missiles, hijacking), but MANY more attacks on the ground (suicide car/person bombs, gun attacks, knife attacks).
As terrorism goes, aircraft are a blip on the radar. If we get tunnel vision on airplanes, we'll get shocked out of it by the next major terrorist attack coming from our huge blind spot.
> While your chances of dying in a terrorist attack are slim, even one life lost that could have been prevented is more than I'm willing to stomach.
Are you agitating to ban horses, then? They've killed more American civilians in the last 30 years than terrorists have.
I'm sure you're always hassling car companies about safety issues, since more Americans die on the roads in two months than from terrorists in decades.
Tobacco, I'm sure, is something you've written many a letter about. And alcohol. And slippery bathtubs - those kill _far_ more Americans than terrorists.
Or are you just irrationally fixated on terrorism? Are you another one of the mindlessly over-reacting sheep that's dragging this once-great country down into a mire of unjustified terror?
THINK about the risks involved - if you want to save lives, terrorism is LOW on the list. Hell, 1/3 of Americans were lacking health insurance at some point last year - fixing _that_ will save more innocent lives than expensive, foolish fretting about terrorists could hope to.
If you don't care about saving American lives, though, and you just want to quake in simple fear at The Bad Men, feel free to continue not thinking rationally about the situation. It's up to you, really.
Oh you are so full of crap. While it IS useless, you 'conspiracy' people are just funny. The public IS stupid and if they did nothing, would probably refuse to fly. Everyone demanded the government do SOMETHING. I don't see any brilliant ideas in your accusation (this is normal from libs). So please, crawl back in your hole. And you morons that modded him up go with him.
There are stretches of border and coast guarded by nothing but empty space.
No, there are not. Why would you think that there are? Do you think that the people in charge of HomeSec are idiots? Or are you the idiot? Which is more likely?
The gamma radiation can be shielded as well with a few inches of the proper materials
Wrong. A "few inches" of lead will stop a sizable fraction of gamma radiation, but in order to stop enough of it to avoid detection, we're talking about tons upon tons of lead, or even more concrete. Definitely possible, but a bomb thus shielded would be impossible to transport.
I'd call 1 kiloton a "tiny" nuclear blast. Small would be, say, 20 kiloton.
Thing is, though, that a 20-kiloton bomb would be the size of a Volkswagen. Shielded to avoid detection, it would be the size of a shipping container, but it would weigh as much as a jumbo jet. It's just not possible to get something like that across our border. And if the weapon were unshielded, it'd be impossible to get it across the border undetected. And if the core were removed somehow so the bomb could be assembled here, it would be impossible to get the core across the boarder undetected. It just can't happen. We're defended in ways that you, evidently, can't even imagine.
Since when is "jihadism" a completely uniform phenomenon with one black and white founding philosophy?
Since 1996. But beyond that, you're either sadly ignorant of or completely ignoring Islam itself. Islam is not a messianic or an apocalyptic religion.
There are, by any account, many Muslim terrorists who evoke Islam's eschatology to justify "suicidal martyrdom," whatever the hell that is. How exactly is that rejection of eschatology?
Okay, at this point it's obvious that you are using words without understanding what they mean. This is par for the course for Slashdot, but I don't think that's a very good excuse.
Martyrdom means sacrificing one's own life for a greater cause to ensure entry into Paradise. Eschatology is a system of beliefs regarding the end of the world. Messianic and/or apocalyptic cults (there's some overlap, but they can also be distinct) carry out acts of terror (Aum Shinrikio) or mass suicide (Heaven's Gate) with the belief that doing so will trigger the coming of a messiah or the end of the world.
Jihadists are not messianic or apocalyptic.
You are a fucking idiot. I really wish you, like all the other spout-offs here, would just shut the hell up about a subject about which you know nothing at all.
I write in my journal
Thanks for that.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I'm all for some kind of process to ensure the electorate has at least half a brain. One of the many embarassing things to me of late is the reflection that many of those with the right to vote in the US simply by dint of birth would likely fail the citizenship test all wannabe citizens have to pass. Could we not institute something similar before people could register? If an aspiring voter doesn't know who the current president is, for instance, or doesn't know that it's the electoral college that gets final say (two of the items on the linked sample test), should they really be given the power to help determine the leader of the country?
An uneducated and ignorant populace can only be expected to make uneducated and ignorant voting decisions. I recall with dismay talking with one young woman before the 1992 elections, when she said she had decided to vote for Bush "because he has better hair." Whatever your political leanings, this seems to me to be a very poor criterion on which to choose a president. And this is no isolated instance: the media are all very aware of how much minor details of appearance can sway the public mind. There seems to be little understanding of the old adage about books and covers, or awareness of the importance of actual policy, let alone an understanding of the ramifications of the few policies that are actually talked about during the campaign process.
So before we go into any drastic overhaul of the election system, I think we need to prioritize educational reform. For that matter, prioritizing education in general (instead of, say, building prisons) strikes me as a very good idea indeed.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Precisely. As I just posted over here, I fear that a significantly large part of the electorate could not pass the basic test for citizenship. I suspect that most folks born in the US (i.e. those who haven't had to work for their voting rights) take their citizenship for granted, but in doing so, lose sight of the responsibilities inherent in being a vested member of a democratic system. Instead, they rely on occasional media exposure to "inform" them of the issues, sometimes never deigning to scratch beneath the surface of what the candidates look like.
Here's an idea -- if someone can't pass the same test immigrants have to pass to be citizens, they can't register to vote. That strikes me as a relatively fair yardstick. Provided of course that there's some way of ensuring that the test itself is fair (hint: education can go a long way towards this end).
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Gee, nor have I. That might explain why I'm still in Japan...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
"You are a fucking idiot. I really wish you, like all the other spout-offs here, would just shut the hell up about a subject about which you know nothing at all."
Your the lead spout off here, Twirp, and you really don't seem to know what your talking about half the time, refuse to admit it or to change.
Glad to see you are back to your good old, "If you don't agree with me your an idiot and shut the hell up rhetoric".
This is a free country Twirp, everyone is free to express an opinion as much as you obviously hate the concept. Why don't you for just once in your life engage in civilized debate and refrain from the viscous personal attacks. They just make you look like a sick old man who can't cope with himself or anyone else.
@de_machina
"There's no such thing as the Border Patrol any more. It got rolled into HomeSec a long time ago."
Once again you are being a pedantic dick, Twirp. There was a name change for the umbrella agency to Customs and Border Protection, thats what bureaucracies do, change acronyms when they can't think of anything worthwhile to do.
But the people that patrol the border within that agency still call THEMSELVES the Border Patrol. Here is their web site.
You can admit you are wrong now, though I know you find that psychologicly impossible to do.
"You just can't stop yourself, can you? You make me sick."
Well now you know how the rest of feel when we read your stupid little rants.
@de_machina
Rant appreciated, but . . .
Here's a Scandinavian hijacker (foiled), Zacarias Moussaoui is French, as is Willie Brigitte, and here's a whole bunch of German terrorists for you to learn about. And I won't even begin to go into the Irish side of things . . .
Let's not forget that the second most deadly terrorist attack on American soil was carried out by a white-skinned, red-state voting, midwestern farm boy, Timothy McVeigh. If you think its only gonna be the "brown" people trying to kill Americans, take a longer look at the history of the world circa 1965 and up.
Oh, and on other thing, just to keep you thinking: Now, thanks to this administration's unwillingness to reestablish the assualt weapons ban, and Ashcroft's unwillingness to use gun ownership databases to keep potentially dangerous folks under observation (that whole "well regulated" part of the second amendment so often overlooked), it's trivial for any wannabe terrorist, white, brown, or black to purchase weapons rivalling or exceeding anything a law enforcement agency can carry.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
" When was the last El Al flight hijacked or bombed ?"
There was an attempted shoot down in 2002, but El Al routinely fits IR jamming to it's airliners.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
"western nations do not learn their lessons and do not properly apply security measures."
/. seem to want to do."
And eastern, unless you're classing everything as western to prove a point.
The main point is that airports are suited to handling bulk travel, have low waged people in positions of trust, are usually run with corporate interests in mind (that's the bottom line rather than safety, which has to be regulated) and are very sensitive to the feelings of the people who live around them, assuming that government doesn't override it.
" it is obvious most the US people using
What was it you said about Socialist Worker in another thread? I hope you don't mind me surveilling you, it's just that so far your comments have been _really_ funny.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.