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]
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...
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!
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.
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???
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.
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
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.
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!
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?
and John Ashcroft couldn't make it because he was busy whiting out the orignal copies of the Bill of Rights.
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.
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.
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.
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
No. All you do is create a false sense of security, because the terrorists will recruit and use people who don't fit your profile. (And you can't keep a profile secret, since if it works, you're hassling exactly the people you're trying to keep it secret from.) Then the guards wave through some elderly woman who happens to be carrying a bomb.
The falseness of your analogy is this: The prostrate cancer isn't watching the medical profession and designing ways to compromise its diagnoses. Evolution happens a lot faster in the human world.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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."
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
This is interesting. Right now I am traveling in Australia and New Zealand on business and the general impression I get here is that there has been a movement in America by the Republican party to take the country away from the people. There is lots of support for the American people, but very little for our government, and this is starting to cause problems with foreign companies wanting to work with US companies. Already we are having huge problems attracting foreign talent for projects in the US because of the visa restrictions that have been put in place and that is affecting more than just academia. It WILL trickle down into business and make the US less competitive.
I would hope that the Democrats start looking into this and do more than their standard "launch an investigation", because I would suspect this problem is a little more intractable because of the fairly strong partisanship in the US right now.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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.
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
>So if 9/10 terrorists are muslim males,
Point A: what percentage of Muslim males are terrorists? Remember, that's more than half a billion people you're talking about.
Point B: John Walker Lindh and Richard Reid would have sailed past racial profiling, and you can bet our enemies can figure that out and recruit Caucasian people for the next hijacking.
Point C: if you don't search little kids, a well-organized terrorist group could teach one to carry a dangerous object on board and hand it to his big brother.
>Doctors usually check black men for prostate cancer because they are 100% more likely to get it than white men. Is that racism?
Point D: a doctor who doesn't check a white man of a certain age for prostate cancer is committing malpractice.
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.
I knew the airport security system was doomed when they started searching 86 year old Medal of Honor recipients
Chip H.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
what about the next Tim McVeigh?
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
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
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!
It is racist. What you are debating is whether or not this racist practice is a good idea, from a security point of view. It is true that the threat from a person of Middle Eastern origins is probably greater now, but how long do you think that will last, especially of security is stepped up on those people?
Really, I don't think it would be that hard to find a few American sympathizers that Al Qaeda could convert. The US is a big place. They use female suicide bombers in Israel now because of just this kind of pressure.
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.
The handicapped thing of obviously out of line. The message if purposeful I think - 'nobody is exempt'. But screening based on race won't make you any safer. All other points aside about unfair screening, its just a feeble and easily defeated measure.
Insane? Yep. You can blame the spineless politicians who refuse to stand up to Islamic pressure groups, La Raza, etc.
You know, I really have a hard time believing that the political atmosphere in Washington right now would provide much resistance to 'Islamic pressure groups'.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
> 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.
Screening based on race will only make the procedures LESS secure. Why? Well, after you eliminate all the clean-shaven, blue-eyed, blond-haired, light-skinned men from the list, guses what? Those members of al-quaeda that look like that will be the next ones to bring a bomb on board.
Oh, so you didn't know there was plenty of aryan and northern european stock in the middle-east? Well, now you do. There are all kinds of historical reasons for it, not the least of which is known as "the crusades" - they didn't all just go home you know, and of the ones that did, plenty left a little genetic material behind. Just because the stereotype is "dark and swarthy" doesn't mean everybody looks like that.
Besides, even if no member of al-queada were blond and blue-eyed, it takes about 30 minutes with the peroxide and 30 seconds to pop in colored contacts and viola! Whitey-McWhite-White-in-a-box. Given a few years to develop a backstory, do a little identity-theft, and Azif Al-Hazred is now Biff Buffly sporting his new tan from his trip to the Bahamas and with all the right documents to match. Not a terribly difficult transformation, and we already know that al-queada knows how to do long-term planning. (Oh, don't even think of geting hung up over the "tan" either, 5 years of regular topical treatments with benoquin -- look it up -- will take care of that, no problemo. I even know a person who did it herself.)
So please, let's not pander to the racists *AND* reduce what pathetically little security the current system provides.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The obvious counter-argument to that would be that it's very difficult to "deter" someone who wants to die for his cause.
0 1 - just my two bits
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
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.
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.
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