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."
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.
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.)
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???
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
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!
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?
If the US Government can't even decide to clear their own Senators for air travel, I sympathize with anyone who has anything negative to say about the government. "I realise that you're a senator, privvy to confidential information, on the board of various committees, but I'm just not sure if I can trust you to get on an airplane."
This is due to intentional malice, disorganization, stupidity, or any combination of the above. You'd think, though, at the very least - they'd remember to clear at least some of their more influential employees. I guess not.
Then again, it's all too often that those in power selectively choose which laws they are subject to, or get special treatment -- so it's refreshing to see some of them inconvenienced by the same laws they thought were good enough to create.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
RTFA.
There was more to it than that, the article ended with a comment on how we should at lest treat people as human beings. I think that would be fair. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty in this country for a reason: everyone deserves to be treated the same. You start to judge people in any way (including being disrespectful) you have taken a piece of their freedom.
There is no perfect system, but there needs to be a bit more common sense in it all. For example: Did the guy need to almost yank her father over when he examnined his belt? Could he have asked real quick, or said "Can I see your belt buckle?".
Just RTFA real quick (its not that long) and says what I think needs saying: "This system is insane, lets tweak it."
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
I have to wonder if this is not a more important victory for the terrorists than 9/11 itself.
Isn't that what they always dreamed of, making american lives a real pain ? Destroying the "American Way of Life" and all that ? Making american citizens misable ?
I have to say that they were very successful. With a lot of help from USA government.
morcego
1. Not all Muslims have dark skin. White people can be Muslims too, you know. I know half a dozen people that fit into this category, so that's your racial profiling screwed right there.
2. Not all terrorists are Muslims. Timothy McVeigh wasn't. The Unabomber wasn't. So assuming the threat comes from only Muslims is just as short-sighted.
Frankly, the odds of a September 11th-type terrorist attack happening again are a million to one. The rulebook on what to do if you're on a hijacked aircraft have totally gone out the window. Whereas hijackers could expect cooperation from passengers and crew, nowadays they can only expect suicidal resistance. The fate of the fourth aircraft hijacked on September 11th showed that.
The bottom line is this: hijacking a plane and flying it into a building is virtually guaranteed never to happen again but assuming that any other type of terrorist attack will only be perpetrated by dark-skinned Muslim men is the kind of dumb, short-sighted and frankly moronic thinking that had the CIA "100 percent certain" that Saddam Hussein was sitting on a large stockpile of WMDs that were in the field and ready to be used.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
With a lot of help from USA government.
While I agree with you that the terrorists are winning, I would like to point out that a lot of Americans are quite in favour of the U.S. government doing this in the name of protecting them. Since these are the voters, they will keep electing a government that says they can protect them from terrorism. Unfortunately, nobody can really be protected from terrorism, but most people can't accept that.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
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.
Except that you don't make to 78 by having suicidal tendencies. At that age a radical cause is getting the lime jello off the menu.
But I'll go out on a limb and say that yes we should pat the old people down once in a while. Just to stir things up. You know these are the people that are making most of the stink about security. What, you want us to just frisk people who don't look like you? Nice try, pops.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
You just got it over all wrong. Osama didn't want to destroy American Life. His sole intention was:
1. So that American Troops will get out from Saudi Arabia, since for him, it is a sacred land.
2. Stop backing off Israel in term of every military movement they do against Palestine people.
Now what is the difficulty in at least taking the troops from Saudi Arabia??
Just so that Saddam won't attack Saudi Arabia? Nah. If Saddam ever did that at that time, it only takes several hours for several F-16 and B2 to go to Iraq and kick his butt. Or so that Saudi Arabia won't stop their oil production, so that there won't be any oil crisis like in the 80s? If that's the case, it is much better to reassign the budget for the troops that stay in Saudi Arabia for production of new fuel and new engine that doesn't use any fossil fuel, eg: bio diesel.
Unless the American's start looking themselves at the mirror, the Islamic people will always hate us.
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.
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.
You're missing the point of the parent post. No one is saying that terrorists are winning any physical fight against the USA. The whole point of the post is that the terrorists have acheived their goal of "terrorizing" us, in making people fear them and spend billions on redundant defense measures. Of course, SOME kind of security is needed in airports and whatnot, but whether we have gone to far is up for argument. The point is, the whole goal of terrorism isn't to kill a few people, the goal is to use the killing of a few people to make huge (economic) impact for millions of people. It doesn't matter that there hasn't been another big terrorist attack on our land, we are still playing into their hands by making such a big deal of the terrorist attacks so long ago.
"If the US Government can't even decide to clear their own Senators for air travel,"
Have you seen the US Senate lately? It seems the only think keeping half of them out of prison are constitutional priveleges against arrest!
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
Note to Michael Moore:
Don't bother flying.
Get serious. He'd make a movie about the idiocy of airport security and revel in how he had to jump a freight train like a hobo to get to his latest film award ceremony.
You propose to consign handicapped people to a life of dependence. How would another person help if hot coffee fell on the handicapped person? They couldn't do anything flight attendants couldn't already do. Anyway, the airline coffee system is designed so that coffee doesn't fall on people because, able or not, that's a lawsuit.
This woman knew the risks of flying alone, and decided that she was capable of doing so independently. Will you tell her otherwise? Her brain works just fine, and she's able to make choices for herself. In the US, we used to have a system in which physically handicapped people were virtually prisoners of institutions designed by able people. Handicapped people have rejected that system, and instead prefer to get the help needed to live as independently as their bodies allow. This comes at no higher financial cost to society.
The Disability Gulag, by Harriet McBryde Johnson is one of the articles that made me start to think seriously about these issues. I hope it will open your eyes too.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
This comes at no higher financial cost to society.
This is not strictly true. All ramps, elevators, extra parking spots, wider isles etc. don't come free or without costing extra resources for everyone.
That is not to say its a bad thing. As a civil society I think its is important for everyone to do that little bit to help the disadvantaged members. This is true of all forms of inequalities, not just able-bodied vs handicapped. For example, everyone pays a little bit to have public transport systems even in the suburbs, without which peuple who can't afford a car would be completely paralyzed.