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Airport Screeners could see X-rated X-rays
AdamBomb writes "Think airport security is bad enough already? Well, the Department of Homeland Security is now planning on rolling out new machines that will allow screeners to actually see through clothing. Could be bad news, though privacy advocates are obviously fighting it."
It's time to get a job as an airport screener!
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
We don't see any saucy pictures. Just so you know.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
This technology has been around since the early 80s.
But you lot will take it lying down just like you do with everything else.
I checked the picture, it is not good quality. So don't stop your breath. No need to apply for jobs at airport.
Oh the pain... the humanity... of the war on terror! -_-'
1. Where do I apply
2. How do I get put in charge of the 'Hot Chick' section
and oh yeah, something about "my rights are being taken away and freedom is dyin...blah blah blah"
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Have you seen regular people in society? like 1/3 of people are overweight and many people are OLD..... yeah it would be nice when a euro female soccer team comes thru but UGH I would not want to see the normal 40something soccer MOM (or dad)!
What if this means we won't be padded down anymore?!
Sample this!
I can't imagine X-rays being used as porn, but whatever.....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
What, and the machine operators are supposed to become more vigilant and effective while watching this peep-show?
Now how do I get one of these new jobs?
"Could be bad news, though privacy advocates are obviously fighting it."
At least all the ugly ones are.
Here's a sample of what they see:
http://www.freedomisslavery.info/index.php?p=1138
Now I'm gonna need to visit a fluffer right before I walk thru the gates.
Most bad government has grown out of too much government.-Thomas Jefferson Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
Somehow I don't think the screeners will be having much fun. Sure, once in a while they'll get some hot sauce, but when I walk through? They'll get an overweight 6' tall fat guy, with a prince albert. Take that!
You'd have to be a pretty big Pollyanna to believe that removing all security at the airport will result in safer air travel. There has to be some balance as to what is acceptable security and what is over the limit.
This falls on the "acceptable security" side for me. This, paired with a metal detector would mean almost 100% transparency with regards to body-carried weapons. Even ceramic items like knives or a Glock would be caught by the X-ray whereas the metal detector alone would have missed them.
There is a chance that some perv would get the job as x-ray screener, but that's a chance you take in any position (ask someone you know who has worked at a fast food restaurant what kind of nasty stuff goes on there).
This can only result in faster screening, less intrusive body searches, and greater security. I can't see what anyone could complain about. (That's a lie, I can see plenty of Chicken Littles finding plenty to complain about)
When can we expect the retail eye-wear version of this technology to be mass produced?
</obligatory>
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
www.airportexxposed.com
i don't care if people see me naked, but thers always the argument of "i don't want a random stranger seeing me naked" or what if he stores it ?
you NEVER know. the sooner you come to grips with that, the sooner you can live for real.
I'm amazed with all the crap that one goes through that airlines are still in business.
I reached the "I'll walk instead" point a while ago.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
What a job !
See ppl naked and get paid ! wah!
I want this job badly !
Why does yahoo do this
I remember reading a story about this, people were given the choice of going through a see through screening machine, or going through more intensive screening procedures, and they were allowed to see the images of themselves. Still, this is far too intrusive, how long before there are no other screening procedures, and only this machines that see through clothing? Although, I guess all the terrorists are going to start getting fatter, thereby heightening their chances of diabetes, early death, etc., not to mention reducing their ability to go through those training camps. As well, this'll make them buy 2 seats next time they feel like crashing a plane. So, in a way, maybe this will be a good and effective tool after all.
News updates have been slowing down at slashdot. Has this got to do with the recent layoffs at OSDN? I'm suprised slashdot hasn't picked up this story yet:
n ghorn/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/26/dotnet_lo
Y
my wiener?
Wife's breasteses?
More the second. That's something i want to hide from people who aren't me or baby.
Maybe not a repost on slashdot, but I remember reading about this in Time over a year ago ( 2 years ago? ).
This is old tech, and while privacy is a concern, I'd rather have someone checkin' out my jimmah if it means weapons have a lesser chance of getting on the plane.
As an asside: I don't think tighter passenger security is where we should be headed: I think we should lock down the air planes. The cockpit simply isn't accessable from the main carrage of the plane, there would literally be a seperate entrance externally. Further, I favor undercover armed guards on every flight. Police officers, if you will.
I think this would go a long way in making our flights more secure, without having to resort to privacy encroachment methods.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The human in me thinks this is a twisted invasion of privacy , the man side thinks woo naked chicks sweet job. .I know its wrong and a body is just a body but that is still not a belive that everyone shares and people have issues about this.
However the human side wins out here , this is totaly unacceptable . they will have to have seperat entrances for men and woman as people are uncomfy with a member of th oposite sex seeing them in the all together(not everyone mind you)
If i want sweaty security gaurds seeing me in the buff i will get a website for it , I don't want to have this foist upon me by over zelous national security.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Presumably this will be called "Debbie Does Dulles"? And terrorists can no longer wear thick clothes to disguise weapons- people will see through that straight away!
"Well, you'll see basically everything," said Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate and technology consultant. "It shows nipples. It shows the clear outline of genitals."
now we can't get the majority of our nation to understand our generation's rules and what should and should not be allowed - nor can get get them to differentiate between a file swapper and a copyright infringer, but they know when their johnson or kitty is being exposed and they'll fight against that.
I don't care, really - as long as I get my thumbs up and a smile from the scanner after I pass though, and then perhaps a little high-mile club action
do you have shinyfeet?
The city of chicago followed next, installing 3000 camera's. They can look inside cars. They can tell if you're smoking a joint. They can tell if you're talking to a prostitute.
The city of naperville is installing fingerprint machines in order for people to use the library.
The United States Congress is pushing for a national ID card, with biometrics.
Lets face it, people will soon be tracked, it will be impossible to just slip into a city. The police will know who you are and where you are at all times.
They will soon take your DNA, without your agreement. Anyone hear about DNA dragnets being used in towns? And it is easy for them to get it. They pull you over in your car, they take you down to the station with a bogus charge. They take your picture and fingerprints. They then tell you, we'll we made a mistake, sorry, you're free to go. And as you leave, they vacum up the hair that fell out off your head. Now they have all the information, and there is nothing you can do about it.
So what if they can see you naked? Big deal. That should be the least of your worries, that Officer Friendly can see your wee-wee. What would worry me more is he can keep a tab on what your reading at the library.
Databases are here to stay, and in the future your whole life will exist in a database, somewhere.
It sucks, but that is the preperation for the revolution. If you're not willing to work 50 hours a week just to cover your rent, you will be labled a terrorist. Cuba is waiting for all who complain.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
If you've got nothing to hide, why is the need to be concerned?
You're right. In fact, unless they're terrorist, why would people wear opaque clothing at all?
my wiener?
Wife's breasteses?
And this being slashdot, probably your own moobs.
If you've got nothing to hide, may I see you naked?
No?
How about if I screen you every time you walk through my front door with something that allows me to see you essentially naked, no matter what you feel about that?
Forget asking nicely, get fucking naked, now. I need to make sure you're not carrying anything like a nail file, or a pen.
Does it really matter? All that is seen (judging from the article) is a monochrome fairly artificial outline of the body. If you really think that someone who has to view hundreds of such images a day is going to "get off" on them, you're sadly mistaken.
Unless someone particularly shapely comes through, they're not going to bat an eyelid. Most people's shape is apparent when clothed, and seeing through to the true surface isn't a problem.
Clearly, I'd be much less happy about an actual strip search, but imaging techniques don't bother me.
Ydco co
Typically, I like to keep my winky hidden. When good days come, he still likes to stay hidden, just not in my pants...
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
"What if this means we won't be padded down anymore?!"
What?! You want to feel their touch?
Which airports get this first, and are they accepting applications? :-O
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
you security workers, save a few scans and share them with me on http://shinyfeet.com/ (though the file manager of unlimited online storage)
Repeat after me:
Glocks are not undetectable ceramic weapons. Glocks are relatively normal guns with lots of parts in them that will set off metal detectors.
Keep repeating this until you have learned it.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Now if they just figure out how to spread the contracts to 40 or more states, it's the perfect government project.
The fact is, the perps have already given up on hijacking airplanes. Within a month of 9/11, they'd already switched to trying to shoot down planes with shoulder-launched heat seeking missles.
The only purpose of the whole TSA is to keep people docile, lest they realize that expecting government to keep them safe is pointless, and take appropriate measures for self-defense if they feel the need to do so.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This falls on the "acceptable security" side for me.
That's great. Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying to enjoy what rights we have left, ok?
Having "nothing to hide" is the real problem....
Now we have a line on who the wee wee-wees are at Slashdot. I doth protest! I but emerge from cold water!
There are two types of geeks. scrawny geeks and fat geeks.
I'm a scrawny geek
I like to keep the trouser python hiden untill special occasion, like being extremly drunk ...
Seriously though , i don't want people looking at me naked . If they want to see me naked then they can pay not me having to pay for the privilidge of having my privacy absued just for a short trip
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
This falls on the "acceptable security" side for me.
What then would be unacceptable?
It is thinking like this that would amount to a slippery slope when it comes to fighting the great (and greater) govt.
So today it is more intrusive searches on 100% of all passengers for the sake of reducing body cavity searches for that unfortunate few, does that mean that tomorrow it'll be ok to have cameras in every single home just because "some home is harbouring terrorists"?
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
They're trialling this scheme at London Heathrow airport for a while now. They still have the standard metal detectors, but they pick people at 'random' for the body scanner.
I usually avoid Heathrow like the plauge because of the long queues and usually use London City Airport as you can check in there 20 mins before take off. However, one day I had to fly from terminal 4 at Heathrow and while waiting in a 40 minute queue to get through security I noticed that they always seemed to pick the slim and reasonably attractive types for the body scan. So either that was coincidence or there was a few pervs there.
If you want safer air travel, then lobby for some measures that would actually help. For starters, let any peace officer carry his off-duty piece when boarding a plane.
For a long-term solution, let anyone who's proven his or her ability and willingness to train to carry a weapon aboard an aircraft do so. Attempting to disarm everyone simply discards the natural advantage of good people outnumbering bad people.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...for airport security, honestly!", Thus spoke the geek inventor of the device he affectionally calls "the incredible peepshow machine". "It took quite a bit of tweaking to get the part of the nipples and genitals outlines right though"
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Finally, there's a career option as airport security officers, which would make it possible for slashdot dwellers to see a woman naked. I'm all for it!
Lemon curry???
security guy: Please step aside sir!
guy: Who me?
security guy: Yes you with the cock ring
Sample this!
What then would be unacceptable?
Gloved finger in the ass, which is what we have now.
A chip to the forehead is up next. I'm not worried because I'll be living in a Muslim country. Lotsa freedom there.
Are they just shooting x-rays at people without any protection? Isn't that kind of dangerous? As in it could cause cancer?
If that's the case, I'm walking to Europe.
Get the Nkd pics of anyone who ever flew through a US Airport after year 2005 !!
Contains Actors,Actresses,Political Bigwigs & more.All for $30 / year.
Blink . Blink.
Will that happen?
Why does yahoo do this
Bad news for me?
No.
In my current obese state it's bad news for the poor sods who have to look through the device.
"If you've got nothing to hide, why is the need to be concerned?"
/ 25/2116250&tid=215&tid=126&tid=103&tid=218&tid=219
This one of the most common fallacies with regards to infringing upon peoples privacy.
Did the Nokia representatives have anything to hide when they were denied their rights to attend the IATC Meeting for supporting Kerry in the last election? http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04
Its noones business what I feel I want to hide.
What if i'm wearing an "evolvefish" necklace hidden under my clothes when i'm a member of W's administration? What if i have "Hells Angels for life" tattooed on my ass from when I was 14 and drunk? What if I have a non contageous skin condition that causes the security staff (or whoever else manages to access the imagery) to treat you differently.
It. Is. None. Of. Their. Business.
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
. "I have a beautiful 29-year-old daughter and a beautiful wife, and I don't want some screeners to be looking at them through their clothes, plain and simple," he said
The operators of the scanners are only allowed to scan people of the same sex as themself.
Underholdning.info
Hmm what keeps someone from storing plastic explosive up their a$$ ? Releaving themselves of it once they get on the plane... Maybe everyone should have full cavity searches before entering the plane... I mean why not, whats a little cavity search when your securtiy is at stake.
What keeps people from filling the metal tubes of their cary on luggage (shoes anyone ?) with explosive, pointy weapons. Lets outlaw any metal framed carry on luggage!!!
There are lots of ways around this and so the advantage is minimal, and the disadvantage is screeners seeing your wife/girlfriend/daughter naked...
No thanks. I take my chances driving on the highway, which is more dangerous than a plane trip, I think we are more than safe enough. Thanks but no thanks.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
To the author of the article (a "professional" writer?): the proper gerund of "backscatter" is "backscattering"; "backscatting" means something entirely different (musical or scatological, take your pick).
To all the readers, if you want to see thousands of nude bodies parading around (in color), go to a nude beach. I think you'll soon appreciate the custom of wearing clothes, and you'll see that we don't wear clothes to prevent lust and desire, but to create and enhance them. Clothes allow even people with fairly unattractive bodies to look decent; as geeks, we should all appreciate that.
I pity the screeners that have to look at thousands of average human bodies without the protection of clothing.
If people didn't want to hide anything then it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper and more effective to just ask them to walk through naked. Try to keep some grip on reality: most people want to hide stuff. If you don't then that's interesting, but it's just you.
Pedophiles everywhere must be excited about this.
Work for the government, get paid, and get to watch naked kids all day long...
There is relly no need to encrypt your files, after all.
I'm just waiting to see how long it will be before someone start posting those pictures.
Well, I like it.
What we should do is open up the airplanes for anyone to fly, without background checks, without any searches (except looking for bombs). Send the dogs through the luggage holding section. I would feel safe, those dogs are good.
Let me take a gun on an airplane. Let Joe Sixpack take his shotgun on an airplane. Let the little old grandmother pack a glock in her purse. Nobody will know who is armed. If some terrorist decides to hijack the airplane, they will get blown away. They won't even know what direction the shot will come from.
I know what most are saying, shoot a gun on an airplane and you could blow out a wall.
There are things that can be done to stop this from happening. Force airplanes to have steel reinforced doors to the cockpit, and to keep sections seperate. What reason does someone from coach have going in first class? Throw up some locked steel doors. If one section gets blown open, the plane can still land. Second, have a good steel skeleton, so even if all the walls come down, the plane can land. And bolt the chairs down.
If the airplane has a steel skeloton, and all the chairs are bolted, nobody will get sucked out. And since the blow out will only affect one section, the other 4 sections of the airplane will be unaffected. The pilot will land as quick as possible. It will be a bit scary, but everyone will survive. And that is the worst case scenereo. If airplanes limit guns to .22's, it will still be enough to kill a person but it won't blow a hole in anything.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Im a big fan on privacy, and im not gonna lecture on and on about it. Xray to see through clothes to come out mainstream. Im sorry but how awsome is that? 1. Comeon guys.. hotchicks galore, am I right? (jk) 2. If this is what it takes to stop someone from blowing me up then in all means do it. 3. How cool is xray vision, just wait till it become s a public "toy" :)
In other words, okay so whats the worst taht could happen? You could be a transvestite, or someother weird thing. Its not the workers job to pay attention to your "areas of privacy" its to reduce what goes through airports, trains, and other means of public transportation.
I do not mean to offend anyone if you were.
This was on Talk of the Nation today (link goes right to the story; RM or WM, sorry). They had a TSA guy on, who alleged that the results are fuzzier than the stories make them out to be, and that they've developed algorithms to only show the concealed weaponry and such.
And what if those x-ray pics of you get posted on the internet ?
Moreover, "having something to hide" is an obvious derivative of the notion of privacy and of individuality.
If a male has nothing to hide, that's exactly the reason why he is concerned to be seen naked.
Let's see, what are my options?
Maybe plastic letters that I wear on my undershirt that point down and say "suck it, dickhead." And plastic bra and undies for my girl with a sign that says, "instant access! free! we just need your credit card for age verification!"
But seriously -- I'd harass them. Make them waste time on searching me individually. I'd do because this is ridiculous.
I'd rather risk the 0.00001% chance of dying than have to subject myself to any more security. The threat of violence is a reality. But I don't lose sleep over it. It just isn't worth it.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
And complete video surveillence of the passenger section and stream it live to the ground where it's recorded. It would not only give crucial video of what happened but would also be one more thing the terrorists had to disable. Or sleeping gas that only gets pumped into the passenger section too.
Or something, the point you make is the best: There's lot's more that can be done before you have to resort to some dehumanizing and intrusive invasive scan.
Shh.
You should become a writer for Family Guy. It is exactly the kind of stuff they use. Most people wouldn't get half of what is packed in those 2 sentences. Most won't get what Dulles is (or who he is). Most won't get what he did while working for Eisenhower. If someone does figure out it is an airport in DC, that is about all I would expect. And Debbie, man that was the first porn I saw as a kid. I loved it. And a Texan. LOL. Add in the weapons joke.
Dude, that was one of the most gifted and funniest posts I have seen on Slashdot. It was insightful, and most people will not get it.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
This is great demo use of this device because gun shootings on planes are like daily occurances. Thankfully we will finally be able to see the people that bring guns on planes.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
For the brits...
Camellia Parket Bowles and/or Johnny Vegas walk through then they'll change there minds
Jaj
"that's going to be impossible for regular people. criminals, terrorists, or whoever are going to find a way to get fake IDs, fake fingerprints, and so on. "
Fake DNA?
Hey, even though the levels of X-ray emission are very low -- won't this cause cancer in the state of California? I mean -- just about everything else does!
:-)
I live in NZ and almost *everything* I buy that comes from California carries a little warning label informing me that if I lived in California, this item would cause me to die a slow and lingering death from some form of cancer.
Don't Californians live in a constant state of fear because of this?
I would think with a little AI you could have the machine automaticly look at the image and examine it for anomalies. If it foudn something then it could display it for the screener otherwise it woruld just say it was working.
If you notice in all the pictures the guns and explosivies really stand out aginst the outline of the human body.
If they want to see my hairy ass for five secons, that's fine with me. Just don't ask me to take off my fucking jacket and shoes and go through the metal detector three times.
I don't even perceive this as invasion of privacy. If airlines (or TSA) were smart, they'd run both "old fashioned" and "X-ray" things in parallel. X-ray line would move much faster, so people would be going there even though this means showing someone their hairy asses.
What Would John Ashcroft Do? Oh, the dilemma!
the 10th of May, I was to get on a plane in San Francisco airport, and I was picked up from the security line; I was told to enter in a new security machine that looked like a blue telephone booth with GE logos on one side; I got inside, doors closed, then there was a burts of pressurized air, and then my fingers started tickling... I dont know if it was exactly the X-ray device that is in that article, but sure it was eery. And, no, I could not peek at the security screens, they wont let me do it, neither they would explain what I was subjected to.
If you've got nothing to hide, why is the need to be concerned?
Thank you for your comments, Mr Goatse. Always a unique perspective on the issues of the day.
who don't mind dying could take over an airplane. unless the passengers spotted it quick enough. One guy with a high explosive supository (I Am Not An Airport Screener but ... a small amount of high explosive spread amongs a few passengers would look like writst watches) could take down an airplane
However, these measures have to do with falling Republican poll numbers, as did the Homeland Security alerts.
Time was, you used to have to work at Abu Gharib to see this sort of thing.
...or not.
1) Muslims are more concerned than most people about their privacy;
2) Less of them will fly
3) Safety!
"let anyone who's proven his or her ability and willingness to train to carry a weapon aboard an aircraft do so."
Guns + Planes = Cabin depressurisation
Specialised weapons are required for planes. So letting every dirty Harry wanabee to take a gun on board is hardly sensible.
How do you tell who is a terrorist and who are the "good people". Better to get rid of all the guns. That is why I feel safer in the UK.
My little Linux and tech blog
Milhouse: Check it out, Bart, X-ray specs!. Hey, these don't work!
Shop Owner: Ah....err...lead shirt!
Milhouse: I'll take three pairs!
One good turn - gets all the covers.
I can't wait until it's combined with this tech from Iatia http://www.iatia.com.au/investors/press/2004-09-23 .asp
The last one viewing reality in the visible spectrum is a loser!
http://www.rapiscansystems.com/sec1000.html
What happens when "Pat" (think SNL -- i.e. someone with ambiguous gender even upon asking probing questions without actually coming out and asking 'are you a dude or a dudette?') arrives at the airport, or what if they get someone that's part way through gender reassignment? Will they have special operators for those cases, too?
Anyone think about the fact that Small Kids (under 18) ride on planes?
What do you do about that?
Could't this be seen as child porn in some sence? What if the X-rays were to get out?
I know that if it was my kid I would go crack some skulls.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
--Abraham Lincoln
Quack, quack.
Very good solution - the terrorist only have to pull of a scam and inpersonate an peace officers to get arms onboard and hi-jack a plane.
Just saying it like it are.
FALSE!
A plane will not explosively decompress due to a gunshot.
The shell is strong enough and windows are a thick glass/plastic material.
Don't you watch Mythbusters?
...that the "best ones", i.e. hot chicks and celebs, escape onto the Internet, like the "Flash Mountain" site (which, for the uninitiated, contains pictures smuggled out of the Flash ride where people have, well, flashed).
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
1) The images released to the news are intentionally blurry. The real images are much sharper. You can also see e.g. the shinbone as the backscatter radiation penetrates not only clothing, but skin.
2) The amount of radiation received is portrayed as being low. What they neglect to mention is the dosage per UNIT TIME. Sure, you get more on an International flight, but it is amortized over a number of hours, not minutes or seconds. For example, a bone marrow recipient has the old defective marrow killed off by radiation over a couple of days; the same dosage would be fatal if given over a short time period. You also have to add in the cumulative effect of being scanned now in ADDITION to any other radiation you already would receive. If you fly frequently, this may be alarming.
3) This still does nothing for explosives smuggled internally, or for the 95% of unscreened checked luggage. It also does nothing to protect people standing in lines for tickets or at the terminal.
For instance, imagine the TSA actually catches a suicide bomber strapped with explosives. Well, he or she can take out hundreds of people in those parallel security lines, from a combination of different flights...
Thus, all the screening they have added is NOT for protecting people, but for protecting PLANES. Planes are expensive.
Finally, remember in Israel they made it very hard to hijack a plane. What happened? They got suicide bombers every OTHER place instead. Night clubs, restaurants, cafes, on buses, in traffic, everywhere. If you don't want suicide bombers, you have to prevent people from WANTING to do it in the first place. Trying to catch them in the act is going after the symptom, not the root problem.
Airplanes are more secure now for one reason only. The passengers now know to fight back.
We aren't going to see another hijacking for that reason alone. However, there are numerous ways to sneak items onboard which could take out the plane. And it is trivial to leave an unattended package in a crowded line, and an incident at a major airport will shut it down and snarl traffic across the country just as well as if it were on a plane.
It is impossible to stop 100% of determined attacks. The best defense is to avoid having enemies that hate you to that extent in the first place.
The Government seems to be spending a massive amount of money on fancy technologies at airports that really in the end dont increase security THAT much if there is a determined individual, someone willing to blow themselves up I would classify as determined. Spending all this money does not solve the problem of terrorism, even if we were able to make airlines secure it does nothing to stop the threat to other targets. I suggest everyone who is interested check out Bruce Schneier's peice on it conversations, http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail119.htm l .
He is one of the only people I have heard who uses LOGIC and RATIONALITY when talking about security. Basing security off of irrational emotions might make us FEEL better, but it does not in fact make us safer.
It is almost certain to happen and most likely there will be no legal recourse against the screeners who leaked them. You can't get them on invasion of privacy because there is no expectation of privacy. It might be a violation of their employment contract but that is grounds for firing, not a lawsuit or criminal prosecution. Heck, I wouldn't be suprised if the airport deliberately sold them to make money since there are no laws against doing so.
- Plastic pistol up your ass.
- Ingest explosives.
- False body-parts.
- Extreme obesity.
Seems there are plenty of ideas. I'm sure you will come up with more. That's probably why they're not soo much convinced that this is the panacea to all security dangers.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
From the artcicle: "X-Ray Specs! See Thru Clothing!" blares the copy, which is illustrated with a cartoon of a drooling geek wearing the amazing toy goggles and leering at a shapely woman. Now, any kid with half a brain knew that X-Ray Specs were a novelty gag that didn't really work.
Crap. I've been buying a pair a year for the last 30 years hoping they'd FINALLY get it right.
Screener: Well I can see you don't! Mwahaha, look at that guys! *pointing the screen*
Man: Look, I have nothing to hide!
Screener: If I were you I'd sure would keep _that_ hidden! Mwahaha!
Man: Look, I have nothing to hide!
Screener: There's no need to get so... excited! Eww what a perv!
Man: Look, I have nothing to hide!
Screener: Euch! Well you should have!
They'll try to ban P2P networks for "distribution of child porn".
They had one of these terahertz scanners on trial in the airport. They were chosing people "at random" from our queue and asking them if they'd mind being scanned.
The guy nearly chose the brown person next to us but you could see him balk and chose the white person behind him.
When asked if he'd mind being scanned, the man said, "What happens if I refuse?" The answer was, "Then we don't let you on the plane." So off he went to have his genitals photographed.
The rest of us were frisked and went through the metal detector.
Stick Men
Mythbusters busted the explosive decompression myth, but if a bullet did pierce the body of the plane, it would be very uncomfortable breathing until the plane descends to a lower altitude.
Because if they want to use this shouldn't they still be held accountable? What if it was you're daughter? We all know what a good job they do of screening their empoloyees. I feel safer already.
This has been some of the worse pork-barrel politics I've seen and its being done in the name of all those people who died. What a shame.
Quack, quack.
...they will make the machine small enough to fit in sunglasses.
*copying down key words of this for future torrentspy search*
There're a few people whom I wanna view naked.
Wow - dozens of posts and so far nobody has mentioned the subtle advantages of tin foil lined underwear...
rofl the name of the manufacturer is Rapiscan? That is awesome
Guns + Planes = Cabin depressurisation
Guess again.
Hollywood isn't very big on getting the physics right. If you put a bullet through an airplane window, people do not get sucked out to plummet to their deaths.
So letting every dirty Harry wanabee to take a gun on board is hardly sensible.
I think you missed where I mentioned that one should have to qualify to carry a concealed weapon on an aircraft.
How do you tell who is a terrorist and who are the "good people".
You can't, that's the point: If you try to disarm everyone, you lose, since the bad people won't comply. When that asshole shot up the train on Long Island in the mid 1990's, he was able to reload twice before the passengers on the train realized he wasn't going to stop, and jumped him. When someone goes berserk like that, the thing you need the most is a rational person with his own weapon, who is prepared to use it.
Better to get rid of all the guns.
Better still to simply rewrite the laws of physics so that firearms aren't lethal, but that's not going to happen either.
That is why I feel safer in the UK.
Do a bit of research: Ever since your government made your local criminal element quite certain that you're unable to defend yourself, crime in the UK is way up.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
How about 10 terrorists posing as peace officers can have a shooting "contest" 50 thousand feet in the air with maybe 5 or 6 actual peace officers to see who can outgun each other. All this while there are hundreds of other passengers onboard. Now that's what I call 'safety'
A friend of mine works in airport security. She says that wehn the men spot a fit looking woman they give her the nod to pull her over and search her. After all she could have anything concealed in that bikini top. I'm sure you will agree that with people of this calibre on the job there is no need to worry at all.
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
the terrorist only have to pull of a scam and inpersonate an peace officers to get arms onboard and hi-jack a plane.
They can do that already.
I will also point out, that if a terrorist succeeds in getting a firearm aboard an aircraft, the chances of there being an Air Marshall on the flight are very slim, unless it happens to be an El Al flight.
Israel actually spends the money to protect each and every flight, since they're actually interested in security, not just the appearance of doing something.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Airline security is so strange. No metal cutlery, no pen knives, nothing vaguely weapon-like in hyour hand luggage, advanced scanner technology everywhere on boarding.
But can I take these four bottles of duty-free vodka which can be turned into extremely sharp weapons in about five seconds in my hand luggage? Of course you can sir.
Sod the privacy, what about the health risk? Since when did a bunch of renta-cops get to zap us with ionizing radiation. Medical x-rays are carefully controlled for dosage and done by specialists; who's regulating the security use? What about frequent fliers?
I've fucking had it. I'm going to walk through every one of those with the biggest hard-on. Maybe a strip of electrical tape up the backside of my underwear or "hey moron" written in grease pencil.
I'm tired of being treated like a criminal in my own country.
Quack, quack.
An excellent long-term solution. No one in their right mind would want to fly with armed lunatics on board itching to exercise their right to bear arms, airlines would all shut down and thus there would be no hijacking problem.
Until that happened, all a hijacker would need to do to get a weapon is follow a civilian with a gun bulge showing to the bathroom, whack him on the head, and now you have an armed hijacker. If the pilots don't cooperate he can just shoot out some of the windows and crash the plane.
I've been able to hide my elongated penis in my pants for far too long. Now the world will know and fear me!
It's a pity that the images are only black/white!
They will soon take your DNA, without your agreement.
This is already the case in California. Get charged or simply arrested for a felony, get your DNA added to the dbase. Done deal. Doesn't matter if you're guilty or not. An arrest is all it takes.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
> For starters, let any peace officer carry his
> off-duty piece when boarding a plane.
Right. So any Hijacker can impersonate an officer in order to carry his gun aboard. Or even better, identify any officer (or the disguised designated armed flight-guards) and take over his gun..
Allowing firearms (or other ranged weapons like crossbows) aboard a plane is a very bad idea. Not only you can pierce the planes hull with it by accident, but also its much more difficult for unarmed forces (the passengers!) to overcome an opponent with a ranged weapon.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
is that a gun in your pants?
Anonymous Coward
Officer: Would you mind walking through this scanner, sir?
Passenger: Is that one of those scanners that allows you to see through my clothes?
Officer: Yes sir, it is.
Passenger: Hmmm. Tell you what, I've got a better idea.
(Passenger strips totally stark naked)
For best results, arrange for a couple of hundred fat ugly people to do this one after the other.
I passed through Heathrow about 2 months ago and got chosen to partake in a new screening process that they were rolling out. I asked to see the pictures afterwards and was taken 'behind the scenes' to where a small rat looking guy was staring at my naked butt!! What's worse is that my girlfriend went before me!!! Taking your clothes off in front of a trained medical professional is bad enough, doing it in front of a kid getting paid to stare at you naked is just not on!
Well, that was prop 69, not 62. It passed with 62% of the voters. My mistake. Still scary.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
How long will you be staying on Mars? Remember that? In the movie there was an X-Ray system already like that. Copy Cats!!!
No, it just means it'll catch weapons that look like weapons. Considering all the metal and hard plastic junk people carry on board -- phones, laptops, not to mention attache cases and framed bags, it'd be an evening's work to make a weapon that breaks down into innocuous parts. See or read the original Day of the Jackal for instance.
And as TFA states, all you need is a fat person to hide stuff in the butt, under the breasts.
Anyway, since 9/11 no knives or even guns are going to be useful to a hijacker. Plenty of passengers will choose to attack the hijacker regardless of personal risk, given the alternative is no hope at all.
It's just security theater, as Bruce Schneier calls these stunts that fulfill the need to be seen to be doing something regardless of effectiveness.
Brings a new meaning to those top shelf DVD movies I guess :p
http://shinyfeet.com/
...I'm fine with that. Better still, how about enforced nakedness on the plane? ... Or I store the plastic explosive up my arse/ass?
Technology's not the answer. The USA not behaving in a way which leads people to hate it so much that they're willing to die for the cause IS.
Hahahaha! you fucking moron! You complain about improper use of apostrophes and then not only incorrectly USE an apostrophe in the subject line, but you misspell the word as well! LOL!
Most people including me don't think this is a smart idea. Not even if this means no frisking at the airport and shorter delays. I'm hoping Honda, Sony and a whole lot of Robotics manufacturers fill the world with Robotic security guards with a mind of their own. And then, we can leave security to the "machines." (I wouldn't know which is the more scary option.)
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
Frankly id rather take the fucking risk that terrorists will hijack another plane, than have to be put through and have my girlfriend put through this peep-hole. Unless, and this is the only exception: EVERYONE goes through it, and that means Bush, Blair, their families, important business people & Hollywood stars (yes even if they have a private jet or Air Force One they still go through this), and the Saudi Royal Family (who so graced America with their early exit after 9/11). Oh and theirs no exception for pregnant women (if its going to be harmful to them then I ain't taking the risk with me) and children - pedophilic security operators? well you should have thought of that before - no exceptions.
This will start out at airports, it will start out as optional, but sooner or later it will be mandatory for flying, then for entering many buildings, schools, trains, and eventually it will find its way to the street.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
They just had to call it "Secure 1000"?
It's obvious from looking at the pictures what may or may not be a dangerous object. This is a perfect application for AI based pattern recognition. When the system says that someone needs looked at, then it could be viewed by human eyes, followed by a strip search if deemed necessary. If done like this, it would actually be much less invasive than current body patting and be quite safe.
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
All you paranoid, fucked up Americans (read: citicens of the US of A) should simply stop leaving your houses, close your borders and glue yourself in front of your televisors. Then you will be saved from all Evil. Land of the brave and the free my ass :P
We've been on this road for a while. I'm suprised you can still wear your own clothing on a plane, I figure by 2015 you'll get issued a suit of disposable paper "security clothing" when you pick up your ticket. And they'll still scan you with the naked rays when you go to get on the plane.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Can you quote some before and after statistics to back your claim that crime in the UK is way up ?
Bear in mind that (a) crime is broken down into many categories so car crime could be down, personal assaults could be up and burglaries could be down (b) the way that crime is recorded in the UK has changed which has indeed produced an increase in the number of recorded crimes. afaik it used to be 1 crime recorded regardless of the number of victims whereas now it is 1 crime recorded per victim. Michael Howard (the Conservative Party leader) tried to make significant capital out of that during the last General Election and was very unsuccessful.
If you're not able to then your comment is just another inaccurate generalisation about crime in the UK.
As I was standing in line at zagreb airport that day, to x-ray my luggage and pass the checkpoint, there was one lady in the other line, who's got her luggage going trough x-ray machine at the moment. The policeman at the machine called his coleague to check something on the screen. He called him out loud so all of us could hear it clearly.
I'll tell you what he said in Croatian, I'm sure you'll be able to understand it regardless your language:
"Dodji vidi, mali vibrator!"
Are they really going to be allowed to pull this off? I would think there would be a public outcry but I guess no one cares anymore.
No not Dubya's wife, his mother.
ARRRGGGGGHHHHHH
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
No unreasonable searches.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Need I say more? You can even get a matching hat. Kinky eh?
No one in their right mind would want to fly with armed lunatics on board itching to exercise their right to bear arms, airlines would all shut down and thus there would be no hijacking problem.
Just this once, how about trying to argue without hyperbole?
. If the pilots don't cooperate he can just shoot out some of the windows and crash the plane.
And, while you're at it, how about trying to make a cogent point instead of citing hollywood physics?
The question at hand, is how to deal with the problem of armed criminals on an airplane. Whether on an airplane or anywhere else, the most effective way to counter an armed criminal is with a trained, armed population. We've gotten far too used to the idea that the government is mommy and can protect us, which is hopelessly naive.
If the perps were still trying to take over aircraft, then the only effective countermeasure is to see to it that they're outnumbered by people who will shoot back.
Of course, this is moot since the perps have already given up on hijacking. Now that people know that they have nothing to lose by attacking the perps, nobody's ever going to succeed in hijacking a passenger plane again.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There is however, a significant increase in the number of violent crimes and gun-related violence since handguns were banned. Let's face it, the only people who handed in their handguns during the amnesty were, by-and-large, law-abiding folks who wouldn't have used them in a criminal act anyway. Now, the only people who have handguns are the criminals, and they were never going to obey a ban in the first place. Speak for yourself, but I certainly don't feel any safer walking the streets after dark in the UK, and for the record I don't even live in a city where traditionally crime is supposed to be higher. Anti-social behaviour is on the up, gang-related violence is on the up, casual muggings and violence is WAY on the up - and yeah, car crime is on the up as well. The UK justice system is in a horrible mess, with a lot of prisoners getting better living conditions behind bars than they do when they're on the streets - no wonder they do their level best to get put back inside as soon as they're let free. The European Human Rights convention is the biggest problem for us because it basically pulls the rug out from under the law and restricts the available punishments for offenders. I could go into much more detail, like the changes I'd like to see, but I really can't be bothered.
A few years ago, I was at a helicopter convention and one of the exhibitors was a manufacturer of "FLIR" systems for police dept. etc.
;-)
http://www.flir.com/imaging/
They had a system set-up on a pedestal to show off its capabilities.
The sales guy would put a plastic bag over his hand and place it in front of the camera, and volla, there is his hand on the screen!
Myself and my friend Benny then started to play around with it and it didn't take long for us to notice that it had the same effect on synthetic clothing! Any as it had a great zoom we could check out the cute girls from all over the hall
We got a nice crowd around the stand before the sales guy figured out what we were uo to!
__
Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
Somebody Mod this insightful please.
Releaving themselves of it once they get on the plane...
WTF... why is holding a stinky bomb in your hand better than having it stuck up your ass? (I mean, not that I want it up my ass)
Unless it is a hijack not a suicide bombing...
bah, planes suck.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
and I don't mean mine.
/. isn't up in arms about the uber gay 'type in this code' image thing, it sucks.
Right, well 2 things: The original images could NEVER leave the box, but edge detected and fake colored images could be shown, ONLY if a possible threat is detected automatically.
Secondly, it could be voluntary and people could wear protective wraps that bounce the shit back.
Personally I would get a boner and waggle my eyebrows conspiratorially towards the (female obviously) scan checker (I don't think guys should get these jobs) and await for her witty response to my concealed weapon.
"Sir, you are going to have to check that package, we have size restriction for carry on 'weapons'"
Some witty repartee later, and I get to see HER naked! Woooo! Cavity probing airport security styleee!
*click*
Shit I was dreaming again. I am surprised
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
As a company that cares about security, I think we should get one of those. Do they sell them to normal businesses.
Look, I've already been subjected to the security gropefest a couple times. I'd take the X-ray *any* day over that. In my mind, this is a restoration of some of my rights ... I don't have to worry about being fondled.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I'll take one flight and the airport screeners will be begging "Make it stop! For the love of GOD make it stop!"
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
... wondering why everyone is worried about their wives, daughters and mothers? Are all airport employees men? Are men shameless? Are none of the male employees gay? Is everyone avoiding a discussion about the size of the male reproductive organ?
:p)? I think it is fairly safe to assume that most Slashdot readers are either male or pretending to be, so I expect no trouble there.
Or does everyone secretly hope that the technology will be realized, given the remote chance that you'll ever get your hands one of the scanners? And are none of you gay (Before someone points out that I am making the same mistakes
Can you quote some before and after statistics to back your claim that crime in the UK is way up ?
Of course I can, but why don't you go ahead and spend five minutes with google yourself?
Try searching for "UK Crime Increase". The fourth hit is what you're looking for. That essay cites " Crime Victimisation in the Industrialised World: Key Findings of the 1989 and 1992 International Crime Surveys, van Dijk and Mayhew, The Hague: Ministry of Justice, Department of Crime Prevention, 1993.", among other sources.
I do hope that the people of the UK get sick of this, and demand a restoration of the Rights of Englishmen as set forth in your 1689 Bill of Rights, which enjoined the sovereign from infringing the right of free men to have "arms for their defence."
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Ah.. this is the classic "do something really really bad so you can do the lesser bad with people applauding you for it" system.
As a frequent traveller, I refuse to use them. I'm not personally concerned about being seen naked, although it would be a big deal for me if this happened to my wife or female relatives. I am however hugely concerned about the radiation exposure. On average, how much time does this take off my life? It appears that this has not been adequately assessed.
Wow what a fitting title for the product... though Im sure they pronounce it differently than I do.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
I think it's time for a career change!
While I realize that the machines are supposedly low-output, to me it just seems like one more source of ionizing radition that is really about the last thing people need these days...
SSL Certificate
Who thinks this is a good thing?
I am not a nudist but I see no shame in the human form, secondly given the choice between appearing a bit nude to a security gaurd or herterling balls first towards the ground at 600 mph straped to the remaining half of a 747 I think I know waht I prefere.
No one ever complains about there doctor, are gynacologists to avert there eyes now?
Also it's not like the whole plain sees your sinful dangly bits.
Privacy is a privilage not a right people, for the most part we in the west are privialged to alot of privacy, there are times when this privilage must be traded for security.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
So no stats from you then, just the usual gun lobby crap.
You've been reading the Daily Mail too much. Crime in the UK has gone down in the past 10 years. Fear has gone up.
No idea why neither the post nor the article mentioned it but they surely don't use X-rays.
From what I've read about these machines before, they use the far infrared, which probably goes through most clothes (even near infrared goes through many). No idea what the exact wavelength is.
If they used ionizing radiation, I'd prefer to strip down instead of walking through these scanners and needlessly increasing my radiation dose.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no independant studies verifying the safety of these devices for regular scanning.
;)
As far as I know, pregnent women may opt to NOT go through the trial devices at heathrow. This to me implies that there is a level of risk involved that I am not prepared to accept.
There are also no clear guidelines on vetting the staff that will use these. Sure, you can only scan people of the same sex, but that doesn't exclude homosexual screeners. The whole point of same-sex screeners is to remove any sexual element from the scan, but it doesn't do that at all.
And let's not forget the 'Think of the children' angle of course
I guess this is just one more reason for me to keep my foreign investment out of the USA and take it somewhwere else. This does completely fuck up my 30th birthday plans of course, but I'll find somewhere else to go.
> Hmm what keeps someone from storing plastic explosive up their a$$?
The Darwin Awards?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
NPR also mentioned that they're developing viewing systems that produce outlines, not full-blown nude shots-and solid-colored objects, like guns, knives, bombs, etc- are clearly labeled. Instead of stirring controversy with an incomplete story, do your research, not fish for pageviews.
No, I showed where to find the stats. You, on the other hand, offered nothing but knee-jerk insults from the cover of anonymity.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The thing that is of concern if that of course this technology will get out of the airports and in the streets (party fun!), and if it will have medical consequences if you fly and lot and end up getting zapped several times a week... although having a lot of sterile executives and upper/middle managers doesn't seem like a bad thing :P
Reminds me of the futurama scene where Bender points a X-ray gun at Fry's balls and he yells 'Ouch, my sperm!'. In a later scene Bender does it again, and Fry says 'funny, it didn't hurt that time'. Classic.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
Only Eunuchs will be allowed to operate the X-Ray machine! ;-)
Anyway, since 9/11 no knives or even guns are going to be useful to a hijacker. Plenty of passengers will choose to attack the hijacker regardless of personal risk, given the alternative is no hope at all.
Exactly!
That's why the entire TSA is a farce. It's purpose has never been to increase the security of the travelling public, but rather to preserve our conditioned docility in the face of the obvious fact that government can not protect us.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Are they even X-rays? Seems T-rays would be a more
realistic choice. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6118
Were that I say, pancakes?
The person stating the facts should have to back them up, your suggestion that we go and "prove" you arguments is lame at best.
A us gun lobbyist (KC3) is not really the best source for UK gun stats.. try some UK sites. Trust me those you find will obfuscate the truth as much as the US sites do (from both angles) but at least they are stats frompeople here, with info
As for the bill of rights, it is a completely different document here due to common law superceeding ancient statute.
bah!*@%!
to go along with that tin foil hat.
Try http://www.police999.com/stats/ and it wasn't a knee jerk insult. I thought about it first.
Hell, the third position they scanned us in was a lunge. Those wacky airport security guys eh?
Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh. If you had of stayed at school maybe you could have found out in 20 seconds like I did (don't feak out, it's a joke).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
We all have something to hide - of course. It's called privacy.
Rather than being afraid of "scary things yet to come", if that has an overtone of "don't panic"..., have a look at this excerpt from a scholarly article (and that's by a Professor of Law) on what was known the technology could do more than half a decade ago already: Froomkin, The Death of Privacy, p. 1499-1501 (p. 39-41 of the PDF).
Resolution 1 millimeter even back then, with drastic explanations of what that means.
Now... panic!
People without weapons make their own. The weapons tend to be psychological, and kids do get hurt.
Two years ago, my kids elementary school had open gates during school. Some crazy in Nara kidnapped a girl and killed her and now there are copycat attempts everywhere, and the kids' school has cameras and guards and locks the gates.
My wife tells me about a young high school girl about her age (okay, this was a little while ago) crossed a yakuza sugar daddy and was found in the burned out wreck after an explosion in an apartment parking lot just down the road from the train station here, not three miles from her parents' house. She heard the explosion, IIRC. This is moderately upscale neighborhood.
And there's the sixth grader in Suma, cut off a third grader's head and hung it on the school gate there, four or five years back.
Kids get thrown off roofs of schools for being different, or hounded until they jump themselves.
Gun control only hides the violence.
Finally a dream job.
Gun crime is up by about 2%. I would struggle to call this "Way up" oh and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4071363.stm
Should clarify the situation regarding self defence in the UK
I don't know about you, but I look dead sexy under x-ray. Let's have it!
That's an argument for an Unconditional Citizen's Income, not an argument for making prisons more unpleasant than they are already.
Female Prison Rape in NY
I can see all the citizens being convinced that this trash is good for them. I can see several people I know telling me: "But its for safety. We must do it!" Does anyone notice that these changes are incremental? They are forcing us to do things a little bit at a time, for "safety"reasons. If we allow this, it may not be much longer before we have people being stripped down naked. A person being told to do so may think, "well, they already saw me naked. Might as well." And then from there, we will get full cavity searches. But then a real terroist will figure a way around it all, and laugh as he passes all the naked citizens on his way to blow up their airplane and restrict their freedoms even more. The things we do for safety.
Tired of Apathy? http://apathyonline.net
>Just this once, how about trying to argue without hyperbole?
You mean you were serious? Anyway, my point stands. Maybe you would feel comfortable knowing armed vigilantes were in a plane; not me. I think the chances of passengers being killed are astronomically greater from this than any terrorist attempt.
If the pilots don't cooperate he can just shoot out some of the windows and crash the plane.
>And, while you're at it, how about trying to make a cogent point instead of citing hollywood physics?
Of course, in your world we use bulletproof windows in all airplanes. Transparent aluminum no doubt.
Whether on an airplane or anywhere else, the most effective way to counter an armed criminal is with a trained, armed population.
If X-rays keep nutcases like you from coming on with your guns, perhaps it's not such a bad idea.
I think he was refering to the fact that a few years ago Glock was building a plastic gun 'for law enforcement' that specifically could go concealed though normal metal detectors and it got into the publics mind that glocks are plastic.
I don't believe the made very many, but I do remember a friend in law enforcement (who happens to be a little unstable at times...he was this way before going to the academy and I think he joined up simply because it gave him a sense of power...other times, he's as normal as can be and truely wants to do good)...anyhow, this friend brags that he's working on getting a federal permit that would allow him to use one of these undercover (regardless of the fact he is a standard patrolman). I don't know if he ever got ahold of one of these, but if its that easy for a police officer to do so, imagine how terrible difficult it would for someone with pure malintention to do so...it wouldn't be.
I think thats all the poster was refering to...
Where I live, one is far more likely to be attacked by a rabid animal than by an armed criminal.
Disarm the honest folk and that could change real quick.
I feel much safer in the UK knowing that only criminals have guns.
While the decline from '03 to '04 is good news, the significant figures are those that include the period from immediately before the adoption of the UK's victim disarmament law until the present day.
For the overal historical picture, see "Guns and Violence: The English Experience"
In a nutshell, crime in the UK was on a fairly steady decline until the proponents of victim disarmament started to get their way in the 1930s. It all really hit the fan in the late 1990s, when the gun ban precipitated a sharp rise in gun crime.
When a government is willing to imprison an innocent man for defending himself from criminals, you should certainly expect a jump in crime.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Do the math and you'll find that waiting for airport security, in terms of cumulative wasted 'life time' exceeds, by orders of magnitude the 'life time' lost to all plane crashes, let alone the small number of 'terrorist induced' crashes.
I say social sensitivity be damned! The cost of all this time waste far exceeds the cost of delaying a small number of profiled passengers.
Quit wasting MY TIME!
Give up dude, you can't argue with this kind of "Guns are bad Mmkay" head in the sand thinking. These are people who's only experience with firearms are thru the idiot-box, & are perfectly comfortable with their government making them into good little citizens who have no means of protecting themselves from anything.
There is a war going on for your mind.
I love the quote at the bottom of the page right now. I wonder if it is intentional:
Any excuse will serve a tyrant. -- Aesop
Of course, Aesop himself argued that it's better to keep corrupt tyrants in place:
"Aesop, defending before the assembly at Samos a popular leader who was being tried for his life, told this story: A fox, in crossing a river, was swept into a hole in the rocks; and, not being able to get out, suffered miseries for a long time through the swarms of fleas that fastened on her. A hedgehog, while roaming around, noticed the fox; and feeling sorry for her asked if he might remove the fleas. But the fox declined the offer; and when the hedgehog asked why, she replied, 'These fleas are by this time full of me and not sucking much blood; if you take them away, others will come with fresh appetites and drink up all the blood I have left.' 'So, men of Samos', said Aesop, 'my client will do you no further harm; he is wealthy already. But if you put him to death, others will come along who are not rich, and their peculations will empty your treasury completely.'"
Aristotle, Rhetoric ii, 20.
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I think, therefore I am. I think?
you lucky devil.. they wore a glove.. I bet you also managed to get them to use lube... Where I work SCO - we get the finger in the ass treatment each day regardless of us being at work or on leave (and they leave their knuckle dusters on.. :)
p.s I don't really work at SCO
I think I agree with your fundamental point though - the cause is less likely to be guns and more likely to be the lack of a stable monarchy in the States. If there was a queen, she could behead George W. Bush. Or at least give him a good spanking...
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
How about cancer? X-Rays are carcenogenic!
If your job puts you on an airplane once a week, then you're going to be at risk. This makes traveling on an airplane unsafe, since it can give you cancer.
This is not acceptable.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
> The Darwin Awards?
But these people with bombs up their asses are in theory suicide bombers...
Innocent man herby defined as man who waited up in order to shoot a fleeing criminal in the back.
I guess there's a reason in the US that the postman doesn't walk up the drive.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
"Hollywood isn't very big on getting the physics right. If you put a bullet through an airplane window, people do not get sucked out to plummet to their deaths."
No, but in this instance they are right.
If you hit metal? No, it will probably just make a hole. Hit glass at 36k feet, 6 miles up where there isn't breathable athmosphere and everything has to be presurized? Hit glass and the glass will shatter and suck everything out of it.
There is a great show called seconds from disaster that talks about things like this. There was one where the wrong screw sizes were used in a window in the cockpit. The way the window was oriented, you'd think the wind coming directly at it would have held the window in regardless, but no, when the internal presure got the best of it, it imploded out due to the weakened screw holds -- ones that were only a milimeter too short, but still had ample grip for almost all other applications, the pilot was sucked out of the window and if the others had not been fastened, they would have too.
The greatest thing about this show is its a real life foresics show analyzing real crashes and otherwise from the point of view of actual experts in the field that did the FAA reports and all that. No fictionalization. Its all real.
If a group of people could almost be sucked out of a window from a screw giving way, imagine what would happen if someone busted a window out.
So, in this case, Hollywood is right -- I'm using the show as an example, but read up on air disasters and you will see the truth of it.
Past all of this, I just wanted to say You Sir Are A Fucking Moron, And Luckily Too Stupid To Be A Troll. Fuck Off.
"In a nutshell, crime in the UK was on a fairly steady decline until the proponents of victim disarmament started to get their way in the 1930s." - Stats please.
"It all really hit the fan in the late 1990s, when the gun ban precipitated a sharp rise in gun crime." - Stats please.
see, the fondling is my problem with airport security too...it just never lasts *quite* long enough.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Especially if you're a freelance woodworker taking some work home, and you'd better be careful when you cross the road, you never know when some speeding wanker might be going past. ..
Your other bones then.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I noticed that they always seemed to pick the slim and reasonably attractive types for the body scan. So either that was coincidence or there was a few pervs there.
pervs? I am proud to add myself to the worldwide organization of Pervs Digging Slim And Reasonably Attractive Types (PDSARAT). We are many, we are strong. We dig hot chicks. pervs my ass.
Even without the x-ray scanners the cosmic radiation adsorbed by a plane worker (pilot, hostess..) is far more dangerous than any terrorist.
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
interviewer: are you gay\bisexual
interviewee: *lies* no.
interviewer: ok ur hired
interviewee: *grins*
Planes are designed to fly with windows missing. It does not cause a catastrophic loss of stability, all it does is depressurise the cabin. Wear your nice yellow mask and everything is fine.
Come on, these things fly with engines missing. One window isn't a major problem. The size is determined as one which can be shot out and the plane can still fly.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
[i]the disadvantage is screeners seeing your wife/girlfriend/daughter naked.[/i] So you're saying this is only bad when the woman in question belongs to somebody? How about single women with no emotional attachment. I guess it's fine to put 'em up on the Jumbotron, right?
No sig today...
What then would be unacceptable?
Regular goatse screenings?
Joking aside, I mostly agree with you. I agree in terms that this would violate our right to privacy. However, this is something that is already commonly done by your peeping toms. Using the Sony Nightshot with a special lens you can already see through certain materials. Honestly I really couldn't tell you how I would feel about this if they passed it. It's not like I would really feel any safer as I already do. In light of a terrorist attack on a plane I feel fairly confident that a passenger (myself included) would take the initiative to take down a terrorist even if a few lives are lost. But screening passengers down to their naked ass won't make the plane any safer. It's not like a terrorist can't make a formidable knife out of a coke can that the stewardess gave him.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
I would hate to have to screen the people who have to buy more than one seat on the airplane to fit properly!
The Tech Terminal
Now with full body naked airport scans of JLo, Jennifer Aniston, Britney Spears, ...
Gods, this is old. When did we first see this? Certainly mid-2004, maybe even 2003. I'm too lazy to look, but I bet /. has covered it too. Certainly it's been covered elsewhere.
I'm sure the hostesses and pilots on the 9/11 planes are quite relieved to hear that.
Will they be serving drinks?
While they let us watch, of course. You know, eternal vigilance, homeland security, and all that.
No it isn't. There are two problems, but this is not one of them:
First, it's a problem (from the airliners point of view) that people where afraid of flying after 11/9. To combat this, you need to do something that is visible, and that gives the appearance that something is being done. Notice that if the measures actually improve security or not is uninmportant, what matters for this problem is only that people feel safer, not that they are safer.
Most of the stuff we've seen after 11/9 fall in this category, fueled by forces that'd like to see more surveillance and broader police-powers generally, and latch onto this as a suitable excuse.
Then there's the problem of ensuring that flying is safe. Generally it already is pretty safe, but it's always a good thing to improve safety if it can be done at an acceptable cost. (not cost only in sense of money, but in sense of money, inconvenience, etc)
Dealing with "armed criminals on an airplane" is a tiny part of that problem. You may be rigth that having 20 other armed people on the (extremely rare) plane that gets problems with an "armed criminal" may help in that spesific case. But very likely it would hurt more than it helps. Because you get a new class of problems: People who wouldn't otherwise be armed, but which now are because it's allowed.
It happens *often* that some passenger drinks too much / had the wife leave him the day before / starts to argue because his seat isn't the one he'd wished for / looses his temper for some other reason. It's not particularily uncommon that such passengers must be restrained.
If a large part of the passengers are armed, what is today a bit of loud yelling followed by a pair of handcuffs for the rest of the fligth may easily turn into a gunfight. I consider it likely this would happen dozens of times before you experience the first case where all the guns in the plane actually *benefit* security.
I am going to patent a line of obfuscation undergarments and make a fortune. Using metal microfilament thread woven into a mesh. You'll be able to choose between a smilie face, a finger flipping the TSA the bird and for the more adventurous, the John Holmes line (only available as boxers).
You damn fools brought this on yourself. I have you enjoy getting some fat sicko looking at your private bits everytime you board a plane. No need for porn now if you work at an Airport! America - The land of the free airport porn!
I can see in the sample images that the rays don't pentrate leather (eg, the man's shoes). What will the airport do with a person wearing leather pants or skirt? Anything could be in the pockets.
Besides which, the golden age of hijacking planes is now over. No group of passengers or crew is going to allow it anymore. Pull any shit on a plane and you'll get your ass tackled by every person on the plane. If they somehow still succeed, the government will have no problem blowing a civilian aircraft out of the sky now that they know what their alternatives are. I got even money on any single fighter pilot being able to pull the trigger on civilians, which is one of the reasons they scramble two.
The more I see stuff like this, the more I'm inclined to believe that no one in the government has any idea how to actually keep its citizens safe. I'm think that this, like many other "security measures" since 9/11, is a placebo designed soley to comfort an ignorant population by making them think that someone is actually doing something useful. Certainly a naked X-ray is a much more comforting thought than is the idea that you could be on the receiving end of an air-to-air missile if someone does actually succeed in hijacking your plane...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Pure Audio
:D
Don't know if it works because I have no FLACs.
Wish I could moderate myself offtopic to save time.
There is a chance that some perv would get the job as x-ray screener, but that's a chance you take in any position (ask someone you know who has worked at a fast food restaurant what kind of nasty stuff goes on there).
I worked at McDonalds in small rural community in Tennessee (several years ago). Although there are a lot of stories about all of the disgusting things that go on in fast food restaurants (shoes in boiling grease, semen in mayo, spit, etc.) I never saw anything even close to that actually happening. The stories make for good urban legends though.
Okay. I'll put my mask on while the hijacker is spraying lead around.
I'm sure Tom Clancy has thought of a way to bring a plane down with a pistol (are there any fuel lines accessible?); but my plan would be go for the cockpit, unless the doors are bulletproof (only on El Al, I think).
And violent crime in general is up WAY more than that 2%.
1. Crack open your cheapo digital camera.
2. Take away the infra filter out of objective assembly.
3. Reassemble the device
4. You have it. Go find some profit using it.
There you are, staring at me again.
They could add a booth at the end of the security lines selling your picture to you, just like they do at the theme parks at then end of rollercoasters.
You live in a world where good people outnumber bad people? Granted there are probably less on any given flight who are trying to takeover the plane than not, but most people are NOT good people.
P.S. What is a peace officer? If you mean a police officier, they tend to top the bad people list.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
A rapid depressurization at high altitude in any plane can mean a number of people pass out and die before they have a chance to put on their mask.
If for some reason the crew cannot put on masks rapidly then their capacity to react can become impaired due to hypoxia, even if the depressurisation is not rapid. This
might be a useful reference.
the most effective way to counter an armed criminal is with a trained, armed population.
/.er I will make an example you can understand. Remember Microsoft Windows? and the way we all cry and bitch because it is very insecure, etc etc ... and that it really pisses us of that MS enters the Antivirus market and that it makes patches and patches etc... and what is what EVERYONE agrees on?, it would be BETTER to FIX THE DAMN OS on its ROOTS so by DESIGN it is not so insecure. Read it, the solution is not to PATCH IT , and add other superficial fixes (Antivirus, spam fighters, etc)[similar to your everybody-fuck-themselves weapons solution] the solution is to fix the OS from the Design [read above to see what could work for you].
Oh man oh man... this is what your current government has taught to you people from the USA... you think everything is fixed by putting a bullet[rocket, bomb] in someone else arse.
That is why I do not like to go to USA, because everyone thinks they have the right to kick someones ass just because he pissed you off (remember the quote that goes "if you are not with us/me you are against me") and if you by any chance think that I am not "with you" or because I happen to be a "fuking Mexican" then you are going to shot me...
That is so bad, I really would like you to come to Mexico, to some cities outside Mexico city (yes... we have a problem there), so you can try the sensation of going out at the street at ANY time 24 hours a day, without the fear of being robed or raped or killed or whatever, just because you saw someone in the eyes, or just 'because'.
Do you know that sensation? it is certainly good, and THAT is the normal way man, IT IS NOT normal to have to walk on the street scared and thinking first about what will happen next and looking at everyone waiting for them to shoot/kick/rob you... it is just that, you feel it normal and natural because I think it has been that way before you were born... and that is sad.
So, how to deal with the problem? I will tell you how the CIVILIZED people/countries do it, and I return to our Mexico's city problem. In Mexico's city we have lots and LOTS of insecurity, we have assaults, bank robberies, people hijacking, etc. We could try to solve it the way you USsenians do it just arm everybody and let each other kick their asses, BUT, this is NOT the way.
The way to do it is to look at the ROOT of the problem, and try to solve it, what is our problem? Poverty, extreme and miserable poverty, and that is what the Mexico's City major has been trying to do. It is about trying to fix the root of the problem.
Now, for you
So, I told you about our problem (in Mexico City), but what about yours?, well as I am not from USA, I do not have complete understand of your problems, but what I can see is that you (I mean the country) have a really big problem with depression, fear, some poverty and paranoia.
Why do you think that some kid would just go into his classroom and kill everyone?, no, it is not JUST because he saw it in a game, it is because all the system surrounding him oppressed him in some ways, maybe his fathers could not give him enough time, maybe also their friends look him weird because he only played D&D and videogames, maybe he saw his president wanted to kill every fucking soul in the planet, and he saw your evening news where they only say BEWARE! BEWARE BEWARE !! WE COULD BE DEAD TOMORROW!!.
We've gotten far too used to the idea that the government is mommy and can protect us
Protect you from what? from yourselves? anyway, the government HAS to do it, that is why YOU [are supposed to] chose your government, if it is not that way, then you are getting screwed and the [other] thing that is bad is not that everyone should be armed but that there is something WRONG with your DEMOCRACY (DCMA, IP, anyone??).
Ok, I hope something of this can get into your head, but I am afraid you people from US are used now to
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
So, I suppose the person trying to rob him was the innocent one?
someday, somewhere, the goatse man will seize this opportunity
Oh, this isn't a poll, is it?
Crap.
Jimmy
I would love to have this technology so everyone sitting in front a monitor could view others naked in front of their monitors. It would be great for business. p.s. I really would like to see the bodies of most of the people posting at slasdot... :)
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Imagine what would happen if the Goatse Man walked through that x-ray machine. The security to the Airport would be disabled because the person checking the x-rays would go blind.
Ah, you found me!
No, people do not get sucked out of the plane. It's just that a bullet (even a qualified one) through the cabin itself would amount to instant cabin depressurisation and a sincere risk of structural damage. No guns on any airplane would be very sensible indeed.
How about cancer? X-Rays are carcenogenic!
This is my concern exactly. There is a REASON why the X-Ray techs in hospitals step out of the room when they X-Ray a patient.
Of course knowing how much congress critters like to fly - maybe there is slight silver lining after all...
First they burn books, then they burn people.
I would like to see a report of how effective all this airport busy work is.
How many would be terrorists have we caught using these measures?
True story:
We're (Husband,wife, 2 year old son, parents) headed to a state to visit grandparents. We get delayed in a layover state and the airline issues us aall a one way ticket on another flight.
My 2 year old son gets flagged as a suspect becaue of the one way ticket. Not I or my father in-law, my 2 year old son!
The screeners come up to us and take us to another area. We're not alowed to touch him at this point or we'll be handed to security for resisting. All we can do is follow.
The screeners themselves said that this was ridiculous and were apologetic for the procedure they were required to follow.
It was pretty terrible to watch him freak out in the hands of another adult but then he said "doctor?" and we said "Yes, they're doctors" to agree with him so he's at least civil.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Cause and Effect!
Consider that gun crime was going up and was slowed by attempts to restrict handguns. At least as likely in my opinion, and opinion is all the other side has too.
That site says you have about 30 seconds at maximum cruise altitude - at that point in time surely the pilot/co-pilot will have got their masks on and at least some of the passengers will have and thus be able to help others.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
We've seen them in the UK already. The Reg has a great article on it.
s canner_pilot/
:-(
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/08/heathrow_
I particularly liked the first comment on the linked article from Spy Blog
These machines produce x-rays which can penetrate a thick leather jacket but just 'bounce off' your skin causing no ill effects whatsoever. It's fantastic!!
I'll be going for the pat-down every time
...what if there were no rhetorical questions?
1) What about kids? We don't want sickos that can barely function, looking at young kids naked.
2) I don't know of any father that would ask their daughter to willing step thru those screeners.
3) Why is the govt. slowly eroding privacy bit by bit? Does this have anything to do with hiring the Gator CEO for privacy director or whatever of Homeland Security?
4) What are other alternatives? Especially for people wanting to go to other countries, since we can't exactly take a train or a bus to say Asia.
5) Can't they just blur the private parts up to say a certain area (unless they are afraid that people will duct tape weapons to their genitals. i know I wouldn't risk it, but hey)? I can't imagine it to be that difficult. I RTFA and it said fat people might conceal a weapon. It may be easy to grow a double or triple chin, but does a body grow a double clit or double anything in that area?
But does the x-ray machine have bluetooth? If I'm gonna get a job screening hot euro girl soccer teams, I'm gonna be taking a serious pay cut. I'm going to want to supplement my income by downloading the images to my phone and posting them to a subscription website. Free as in **speech**, not free as in **beer**!
That may be true in your case for whatever reason, but I have to ask the question of why is this necessary. How many hi-jackings using hidden guns or weapons take place in the U.S. each year? How many incidents would it have stopped? (If you say 9/11, that'd be wrong. The box cutters didn't slip through security, they were allowed on.)
This looks like a solution in search of a problem. It plays off of the fear and paranoia spread by the current administration and media. You are far more likely to get your car hi-jacked than be on an airplane that is hi-jacked.
so...how about the gay scanners?
Unless depth can be seen, a knife could be placed against the leg and would probably not be seen from the side, and only a small bump from the front.
I'm taking a flight to Oshkosh this summer, with alot of friends(~15y.o.) Just off of my friends, those pictures, and some artificial coloration, imagine the website that could be made? There's too many possible abuses of this technology.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
You want the right to fly cheaply and safely anywhere in the world, you have to submit to security crap.
You want the right to drive your car around US roads, you have to have a license, you can't just go drive claiming your god given right to drive anywhere without regulation.
If you don't like the limitations imposed, walk or take the bus.
The only reasonable expectation of privacy currently in the US is locked inside your home with the shades drawn. With some types of sensors, I doubt that really is private as well.
... is that the airport screeners keep their hands above the little table, in plain sight.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
A peep show that involves people of EVERY shape and size... dear god that would be gross. I can see the grandma boobs hitting the ankles now!
Simple solution. Ban all rabid animals!!
You have a constitutionally protected right to be wrong, and I the right to ignore you.
If this backscatter imaging technology is as effective at seeing weapons carried on a person's body, I fail to see how some pattern recognition software can't be used to discern between a threat and non-threat.
One would argue that the human eye can detect a threat more accurately than some software, but what about after the 100th person walks past the screen. The thousanth? Computers won't fatigue and potentially miss the first threat after countless passengers are screened. The technology is there...
I'm vehemently opposed to having some minimum wage security officer leering at naked people all day. I work for a gov't office and know for a fact that more than a few government security officers think of screening the "hot chicks" that come through the gate as a major job perk.
Would you be as opposed to this technology if a human were only screening people that came up as a potential threat by the computer?
I am NOT putting my signature in this stupid little box! How do I know you won't steal my identity???
It's not your "right" to get on the plane. It's very simple. If you want to get on it, you agree to comply by the screening rules. Your rights are not being taken away here, you don't have to fly if it's that big of a deal for you.
Right, in Europe if you shoot with a gun anyone you feel is threatting you in the middle of the street, yeah, you're going to be prosecuted. Oh oh and you cannot even buy a submachine-gun in the supermarket for autodefense, what a shame!...
Everyone does, and that also happens in USA. What do you mean with criminal ? Someone is a criminal if he has commited criminal acts. And that is true for the law only if it gets probed. We call it innocence presumption.
Oh, wait, I suppose you already knowed all this...
From a caption accompanying the article: "Millimeter wave technology from security specialist Qinetiq is designed to detect not just metal but other threats, like ceramic knives and hidden drugs." No more hidden drugs. I feel safer already.
I don't care if they see my genitals. But you just can't x-ray people routinely without medical need! X-rays can cause cancer!
Silly.
Am i the only one who's wondering why they named these things after some sort of deviant fecalphiliac sex act?
From OSI's "Office of Strategic Influence." Fitting. Just proves that all you ever needed to know was predicted in a song lyric.
- eaerth (the creator has a mastertape)
Do a bit of research: Ever since your government made your local criminal element quite certain that you're unable to defend yourself, crime in the UK is way up.
Go read the CIA world fact book on crime numbers, especially those like robery and (attempted) murder for the USA and for example the UK, you may be in for a surprise.
The reasoning you follow sounds oh so logical and is used a lot by proponents of 'the rights to bear arms', but it has one simple flaw that seems to rather be confirmed:
More guns means more people get killed by them, no matter who have the guns, it ALWAYS results in more people getting killed. It is people who do this and not the guns, but the guns enable it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why not just make all airports all-nude, all the time. More booze more nudity. They could bring back the tag-line, "getting there is half the fun."
How about the first one to stand up with a gun gets his ass handed to him on a plate by everyone sitting next to him. He can't shoot them all at once. If theres more than one, now the non-terrorists have a gun to fight back with.
You can't even set your shoes on fire without getting everyone involved, these days, what makes you think that people are going to just let this happen?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
a few years ago Glock was building a plastic gun 'for law enforcement' that specifically could go concealed though normal metal detectors
nope, just more urban legend
I see, so because you don't want to take a fucking cruise ship, suddenly it's your right to fly on planes with no security measures?
As much as I think the idea that guns on planes would make them safer is incredibly stupid and counter to experience, the idea that a cabin depressurizes instantly or produces a risk of structural failure simply isn't true.
Cabin pressure is constantly monitored and adjusted, generally around 8-9 psi. (The pressization comes from a bleed from the engines.) They already have a couple of outflow valves, one in front and one in back, which are basically just holes. The systems are generally designed to maintain cabin pressure even with a whole window knocked out. It might be a little windy near the window, but there's not much worry of depressurizing.
Even without the automatic monitoring and correction for pressure, it would take a fairly long time to depressurize the cabin to atmospheric, certainly much longer than the 5 minutes or so it takes to get to a safe altitude.
As for structural damage, the airframe itself is capable of flying without pressure and certainly the windows and shell provide no structural support. I'm not sure where this belief comes from.
In case people are worried about depressurization and structure, consider that a flight from Hawaii lost an entire section of skin. While it did depressurize fairly quickly (huuuuggge hole), that only caused diziness and headaches with perhaps a little vomiting. It did not cause structural failure and the only serious injury was the flight attendant who died when she was sucked out because she was standing next to it when it failed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You mean you were serious? Anyway, my point stands. Maybe you would feel comfortable knowing armed vigilantes were in a plane; not me. I think the chances of passengers being killed are astronomically greater from this than any terrorist attempt.
I think you are really overlooking the obvious here. Contemporary terrorists are already prepared to kill even themselves while killing others to "make their statements." A vigilante is acting in defense... even if it might be offensive. The odds passengers being killed by a vigilante is way lower than being killed by a terrorist. Essentially, it's clear that terrorists intend to kill and are not bargaining with anyone. This makes it about a 100% chance that someone will be killed when terrorists attack... I'd say that's considerably less if it's a matter of a stray bullet launched by you imaginarily clumsy vigilante.
I think the chances of passengers being killed are astronomically greater from this than any terrorist attempt.
Only if nutcases outgun the sane people. Thats the whole point of this exercise. If one person draws a gun, someone on the plane should be able to put a bullet through that person before he kills too many people. If ten people draw guns, there'll be a bloodbath, but if the other 90 people on the flight have a gun and know what they're doing with it, the majority shold come out all right. Now, if half the people pull their guns, thats when it comes down to whos got the better aim, and whether the plane can fly with that many holes.
The good news is that you can be paid for gawking an nekkid people, you are probably already doing as a hobby.
The bad news is that the naked bodies you will have to look at for an eight hour shift every work day will be American.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I could go into much more detail, like the changes I'd like to see, but I really can't be bothered.
Seems you can't be bothered to make an argument with some substance, or at the very least, actually do some research into your claims either eh?
Its your right to believe what you want, but if you want to convince others, you'll have to come up with something better then you just did.
Al Qaeda must surely be very pleased. This is certainly beyound what they hoped to achieve.
All the body x-ray screeners should be women. The straight men will think it's hot and the rest of us will know it's no big deal.
They say the mind is the first thing to
GREAT.. Now I have to find a way to get rid of my hard-on before I go through the security gate. Now THAT makes me feel like my rights have been TRULY violated. :/
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Excuse me, miss, we seem to be having some minor technical problems. If you could just take a few steps back and go through the scanner again, a bit slower... thank you, that's - oh, that's /almost/ got it, sorry, just once more should do it, please swing your hips more...
</obligatory>
Today folks, we will learn about a clause of this great document that says, more or less, you have many, many rights, and that it doesn't have to be listed in the Constitution or some other document for it to be a right. That's correct, it does not have to be listed, to be a right.
One example, plucked right out of the air (pun intended), is the right to travel freely. You don't have to present documents or internal passports to move within the US.
So, not do you only have the right to fly, technically, it is a violation of your rights to make you present identification.
But it gets better. You have the right to enter into contracts as you see fit, as an adult, but not into contracts that violate any of your rights... you can't sell yourself into slavery. One example of a contract you can enter into is paying $500 to fly to some city on the other side of the country. An example of a contract that is invalid, giving up your right to very intimate privacy such as revealing your nipples and buttcrack to a airport screener in return for being allowed to board.
you don't have to fly if it's that big of a deal for you.
Maybe he does have to fly. I can think of any number of contrived scenarios where there is no other option, really. Some quite plausible. A parent is dying on the other coast, and you only have a few hours left. Rocketcar Taxi Services is out of business for breaking speed laws...
But it does not matter. It could be the shallowest reason, or no reason at all. The entire point of having rights, is that you don't need to ask for permission to exercise them, or justify their use. And even if we're going to get into tired arguments about abuse of rights, if such a thing is possible, not wanting to be digitally undressed by a TSA mouthbreather just to go on a trip is not one of them.
If someone really gets their jollies by looking at backscatter images I really feel sorry for the person and they obviously are in need of psychological counseling for something.
What do you think that guard is looking at on the screen behind the counter, a soap opera?
When the attacks of 2001/09/11 happened, trust in the airlines and passenger safety plummeted to an all time low. Millions of dollars were lost by the airline industry, with several airlines going out of business or being bought up at extreme loss. For months Boeing was laying off thousands of employees.
So in an attempt to recouperate, the airlines have made passenger safety their only priority, in an attempt to regain what was lost. As a result airline passengers have lost both dignity and privacy due to the pervasiveness of it all. This has made jetsetters annoyed, delayed, and indignant. Thus many unnecessary business trips and personal trips have been cancelled by the frequent flier.
However, that shouldn't be the airlines' main concern. They should stop and think how many thousands of U.S. and international citizens have now left the skies, not out of fear of being in a terrorist's plane, but out of unwillingness to go through with these extreme measures. The tourist dollars are the most free flowing of all monies, and the airlines have effectively shut themselves out of nearly all of them.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who heard the story of the granny who wasn't allowed to board an airplane due to her having knitting needles in her carry-on bag from a few month back. She wasn't allowed to go on the trip she was planning on to see her grandchildren who lived several states away. Her entire vacation plans were ruined because she didn't have the forsight to leave behind a "harmless potential weapon." Do you think she will be planning on another air trip soon? Could you blame her for not traveling the airlines again due to fear of rejection from the plane because of something she never thought of as a weapon?
Most men are not thought unwise until they speak.
He wasn't defending himself. He shot a fleeing man in the back from a distance.
The Tony Martin case was tragic in many ways. I have a lot of sympathy for Martin and a lot of concern about the situation he found himself in and the lack of support he'd received until that point.
Nevertheless, the act for which he was actually imprisoned appears to have been a poorly-judged over-reaction. In fact, it's an excellent example of the dangers posed by letting just anyone have access to firearms. (I'm not taking sides in the debate here, just saying that this case would definitely strengthen the case for the gun control lobby.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Wow, our tax dollars at work. They should all be fired, especially for the "we're sorry, but we have to follow procedures" part.
How many of these have to happen, how often, before Mullah Jihadster can slip right through because they are wasting time checking toddlers for C4?
I just feel bad for the airport screener who will never feel like a real man again after I walk through.
So, I suppose the person trying to rob him was the innocent one?
Those are 2 independent things. I know this is hard to understand for some people, but it is dundamental to proper law enforcement to not strip someone of his rights due to that person having commited a crime.
Using a weapon (gun or otherwise) in self defense is recognized, and in many cases not punnishable. Self defense is however defined pretty strictly, and requires that someone is a direct threat to your life for example. Someone who turned his back on you to run away is usually no longer a direct thread to your life, hence the self defense claim fails.
The following is work-safe, unless maybe you work in a secret underground Gray Alien research bunker:
...should be locked up in some kind of X-Files uber-prison, and then promptly dissected to determine their species before it can reproduce.
backscatter softcore
Sure solved my horniness in a hurry -- one look and it's Boner-B-Gone.
Any Federal agents, or their rent-a-cop proxies, who get turned on by that picture
-kgj
-kgj
That is a fucked up example. He shot someone in the back that was running away from his house, then let him bleed to death on his lawn before he was reported missing the next day.
There was no reason for him to fire and in most US states he would be facing charges for his actions.
Not that you are deliberately misleading people or anything. He shot someone in cold blood and let them die in one of the most horrible way imaginable. Hardly "innocent".
Fly naked!
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
Second: that fat woman in the example pic is an old version, using tech that has been replaced.
I flew from NYC to the UK last year (catch that "last year" part?) and back, and on the way back from Heathrow something peculiar happened...every young, attractive female was pulled out of the line for x-ray screening. EVERY young attractive female. It was reciprocal, too - there was absolutely no one pulled out of the line for screening that wasn't a young, attractive female (well, of the females at least...there were seperate screeners for male and female). They were selected "randomly" in theory...but of hundreds of women, why were only attractive ones...all the attractive ones...pulled out of the line?
Why? Because the pictures actually come out better than a) the old photograph in the above link, and b) the resolution of the display that someone took that picture of. Much like viewing a 1024*768*16Mill color picture on a 640*480*16 color display - it's not the picture's fault, and I refuse to believe there wasn't a higher-res display somewhere viewed by the person telling the screeners who to pull out of the line.
Adding backstatter technology is NOT a net gain in security. It's false security, unless one adds intrusive body searches on top of the scanner.
"Yes, Jayne, she's a witch. She's had congress with the beast..."
"She's in Congress?" - Firefly, "Objects in Space
Well, sure.
But we should be clear about what we're fighting for, otherwise you end up with the wrong priorities.
For example, conservatives are generally against an idea of a national identity card, or even standardizing licenses across states because it can be used like a national identity card. Some conservatives, however, are for using biometrics attached to a national database in many places where IDs are presented. This allows the government to do everything a natioanl ID card would do, and more and without your knowing they are doing it.
So -- is the problem the indignity of carrying and presenting a physical card, or is it the level of control government will be able to exercise over our movements and activities?
The same sort of reasoning applies here.
Modesty and embarassment about our bodies is a social norm, one which we could live without I think. We equate nakedness with vulnerability. But the only reason this is so is because we're conditioned to be so modest about our bodies; we'd only appear naked in front of strangers if they exercise power over us.
If everyone is effectively naked all the time, then nakedness does not imply any kind of vulnerability.
However, we allow people to frisk us when we go on a plane. How is this better than letting somebody look at us? Is anybody naive enough to think that using same sex friskers guarantees that some of them aren't getting some kind of perverted pleasure out of touching your body or the position of power that puts them in?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How do you tell who is a terrorist and who are the "good people". Better to get rid of all the guns. That is why I feel safer in the UK.
In my country, you get the benefit of the doubt.
And it's strange that anyone from the UK would be able to post to this discussion without feeling some kind of shame, haven't your camera operators already been disciplined for using them to ogle women? This discussion is about us not wanting our government to do the same to us.
These assholes need a hangin' Damned ragheads shoulda landed in the capital building and whitehouse insteada killing innocents in NY. If theyda gotten rid of these money grubbing, corporate whorez in our "government" they coulda gotten medals , instead of a fake war in Iraq
Sounds like a load of bullshit to me. There are no "federal concealed carry permits" and there is no 100% plastic / ceramic glock (That was Die Hard 2...). No wonder I don't trust law enforcement to tell the truth.
Sounds like it would be a pretty shitty knife to me.
Your paranoid to the max
Your President keeps mentioning Terrorists
You bomb the shit out of countries that were not going to do anything...
and now you have x-rays to see your flabby parts.
geez...
Yeah, but can it see through my dirty underwear?
Adventure City Tours
Would you put your child through this?
dosage is 1/2500 of a standard medical x-ray, less than 1/500th of a dental x-ray.
If your job puts you on an airplane _every day_ you end up with the same x-ray dose as seeing your dentist annually. The health risk appears "acceptable." It may well be below the hormesis level and be a HEALTHFUL dose, but we'll argue that somewhere else.
I notice in the sample picture that the guy's shoes are not trasparent. I would think the same physics that keeps it from going through your skin very far would keep it from going through leather. Does this mean I can't wear my shiny leather pants to the airport anymore without fear of a body cavity search?
I had a strip search at Fiji International Airport and I don't think the 'gentlemen' who conducted it, enjoyed it anymore than me. I don't think TSA people should be likely to view this as beyond their jobs.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Wow.. I can see the advert now: "Nope, you can't really hijak a train and take it somewhere that doesn't have rails... and you can get on and off as you please! No frisking, no Xrays. Welcome to Amtrak, the last form of mass transit to preserve your rights as an American!"
meh
Handguns are heavy. To make it easier to carry one around all day, Glock designed a line with some parts made of plastic rather than metal to make them a little lighter. It worked so well that now many handguns from other manufacturers have plastic frames.
There's still plenty of metal in them and they will set off detectors.
The "undetectable plastic gun" thing was FUD, pure and simple.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Is there are reason we need this 'extra security'? Aren't planes safe enough as it is now? I mean, before 9/11 there were maybe a couple of hijackings a year if that, along with maybe 2 or 3 major accidents a year that made the news. As far as I know there haven't really been any hijackings, especially in the US, for the past 2 years.
The point is, a person outside the plane can do far more damage with your average hunting rifle (say at an airport where the road goes right by the runway) or as it was mentioned earlier with a bomb in the terminal. Do we also really think that with all the visible security at airports, terrorists will actually try to do what they did on 9/11 again? We are vulnerable in plenty of other areas, where they are far less likely to get caught, and they might not even have to die in the process.
When a government is willing to imprison an innocent man for defending himself from criminals
tony martin is hardly an innocent man he was convicted of manslaughter by a jury, the only reason the charge was reduced from murder was Dr Joseph found Martin to be a paranoid nutcase and not able to make rational decisions.
the man shot an unarmed teenage boy in the back, with a gun he was not legal entitled to (his shotgun license had been removed when he started shooting at people scrumping apples.)
in short tony martin is exactly the sort of person i want locked up, one un-able to distinguish between revenge and justice.
the only other case i can think of where the "victim" of crime was jailed for "defending" himself involved a factory owner who set a man trap in his factory for burglars (notice BTW burglars are UNARMED unlike robbers), he then proceeded to brutally torture captured burglar.
Now if you are sitting there and thinking good, it should be his job to meet out punishment to criminals, then you also are confusing revenege and justice and should go back and join the mob weilding pitchforks to which you obviously belong,as you are clearly not a civilised human being.
The odds passengers being killed by a vigilante is way lower than being killed by a terrorist. Essentially, it's clear that terrorists intend to kill and are not bargaining with anyone. This makes it about a 100% chance that someone will be killed when terrorists attack
Except the probability that terrorists are on a given plane is extremely small, where as every plane would have a large number of armed people on board.
Even if we accepted that the situation would always be better off with armed people, in the case of a terrorist attack, you have to factor in the possibility of injury or death, due to anything from accidental firing, a paranoid "vigilante" who mistakenly thinks someone is a terrorist, or people who cause trouble or get into fights (just because a person isn't someone we would consider a "criminal" doesn't mean they're not some random nutter, or never turn angry and start a fight or whatever).
I can't say which situation would be worse, but then neither can you. You have to look at what will happen on any flight, not just flights with terrorists on board. Personally I'd rather risk it with no guns.
The person trying to rob (sic) him was innocent of assault and attempted murder. The man with the gun, however...
the layman's guide to computer science
You can't even set your shoes on fire without getting everyone involved, these days, what makes you think that people are going to just let this happen?
Just wondering, what makes you think guns are needed for this? as you point out, people are already extremely likely to interfer with a hijacking nowadays.
So its okay for someone who's gay to be screening because they're "of the same sex"???
Its naive to assume that someone of the same sex isn't necessarily turned on by the near-nakedness produced by the x-ray. Also, how do you know that the person screening your kids isn't a pedophile with a hidden camera?
I've heard people say that the screeners are "professionals", and therefore won't be arroused/stimulated by the experience any more than doctors. A physician with years or training may only see a few naked bodies a day in a clinical context, but a screener who has a few weeks/months of training can be expected to view hundreds or thousand of bodies a day. To me there's no comparison.
I predict that people will be shocked after "x-rays" of small children get posted to web sites, or a screener gets convicted as a sex-offender or child molester. By then however, the government may argue its not "economicaly feasable" to remove the devices.
****
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security - Benjamin Franklin
What they didn't mention was that the real benefits of countless young men rushing to join the TSA once this system is deployed. The TSA will have twice the man power while paying them minimal wage and will no doubt attract a significant number of nerds.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
And even if someone would manage to rip out an entire passenger window, people wouldn't get sucked out like in the movies. Airplanes have air valves which continuously let air in and out (see here). If air would start flowing out of the cabin elsewhere, the valves will adjust and the net flow of air would stay the same. It requires a pretty large hole to exceed the capacity of these valves.
The article doesn't seem to touch anything about health concerns. This seems to be particularly bad for the frequent flyers and the security people. How much X-Ray radiation are we talking about? What are the effects of exposure on a daily basis?
Of course, if this is accepted, I don't think anybody has any kind of claim anymore about "gross indecency". Why shouldn't I be allowed to walk buck naked in the street if the security people can see me in my birthday suit? The reason that that concept is as embarassing right now, is that we are conditionned to thinking that being naked in public is wrong. Before this kind of thing becomes acceptable on a widely deployed basis, the social acceptance of nudity has to change. Then it would not be humiliating. Still likely to be unhealty, but not humiliating.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
I've sliced myself open crushing cans before. You can twist them into pretty sharp points, or even get the aluminum to tear, and get a nice long sharp edge.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It is my choice to make those areas private. If I don't want you or anyone else seeing those parts that is the end of the discussion as far as I am concerned. This constitutes a violation of your basic human rights. I choose to not let you see this. PERIOD. Who cares what societal norms are. Even if nudity is more or less accepted if I choose to not be nude that is my choice. Its a pretty simple case to me. You could even argue that this violates your fourth amendment rights (unreasonable searches and seizures).
Jeremy
Oh, that's not true - there are lots of undetectable plastic guns. They just shoot plastic bullets, is all.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Airlines are private companies, and while they are subject to certain anti-discriminatory rules, no, you don't have the right to cross the atlantic IN THEIR AIRPLANE if they don't want you to. you are completely entitled to cross the atlantic on your own. you can swim, row, whatever, however you may have some difficulties at the far shore with customs and immigration officers of that country.
you could always start your own airline with different rules...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
put quite simply no, you don't. You're using someone else's service - infact, you pay them for it. You could always swim. Your rights end where mine begin, and since I have the right to live, you don't have the right to fly security free. idiot.
Speak for yourself.
Heh.
Bottle sealing equipment issued by DHS these days?
- T draws weapon
- A spots T drawing weapon
- B spots A drawing weapon
- A fires on T
- B fires on A
- Passengers C-S and U-Z all draw weapons
- Chaos
Thank you for flying Loony Airlines, tagline Your right to bear arms is not infringed; you right to a safe and happy life probably will be.the layman's guide to computer science
It also worries me that they collect so much data from so many people. With these data volumes and the level of human error rates you should expect even with well trained and careful operators, there are bound to be some really bad consequences when faulty data is entered, data gets lost or the analytic models used have errors. Not only does this make it very likely that completely innocent people are wrongfully harassed, but it also makes it more likely that the bad guys slip through the cracks. (Not the least because the staff might be reluctant to harass passengers because I would suspect the systems are designed to err on the "safe side" -- ie. produce more false positives than false negatives).
It is in our best interest that security measures are implemented. Privacy has become the cost of such extreme mobility because the world has changed. However, playing defense is much harder than playing offense.
I think that the most important thing the governments of the world need to do is to make sure the data used for securing passenger flights can not be abused
It's not your "right" to get on the plane.
Then I should also have the option of my tax money not being used to bail out the failing airlines.
And people think the airlines are in trouble now. I know my family won't fly if they have to go through one of these things.
And for the record, this is _NOT_ on the "acceptable security" side for me.
It should be up to each airline. Don't like it? Fly their competitor.
but we are already waaaaay down that slope...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
And I, for one, applaud that choice and pray that you stick with it in the future.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Israel actually spends the money to protect each and every flight, since they're actually interested in security, not just the appearance of doing something.
And you can tell that is true because they don't make a big stink about how "safe" they're making everyone.
We are all about the "show."
These are people who's only experience with firearms are thru the idiot-box, & are perfectly comfortable with their government making them into good little citizens who have no means of protecting themselves from anything.
You are the one that appears to be hiding his head in the sand, the only thing you should need protecting from is your government, the other things you want to shoot criminals, terrorists, rabid dogs, it's the government's job to protect you from those.
The reason you have a right to bear arms is the right to defend yourself from oppressive governments.
Now do you really think you stand a chance defending yourself from YOUR oppressive government?
That just means the guy who shot out the window will be charged with murder and locked up. I know several people who think an armed population would be a good thing (I can see both sides and am on the fence). There would be a transient where all the nuts would hurt people and either get themselves killed or locked up. After that, you could rest assured that you are surrounded by well armed security forces (the public). Some states already allow everyone to carry guns, and they don't have random shootings all the time (In fact many have lower crime) why should this be different on a plane? Perhaps I'm not on the fence... But I don't own a gun even though I'm a firm believer in the 2nd amendment.
When the government and police disarm, then we might think about disarming the people.
LOL
You mean the right to carry a concealed weapon on your body that would go through a metal detector without a hitch?
The racial profiling that is being practised on american and UK airports is apalling. The reluctance of the propoganda mediums like BBC and CNN to accept that it happens is unbelievable. They are all eager to point out towards the human right abuses in far off places in the world so that there masters can invade the country. However when it comes to a gross human-right abuse in their own country thw word is mum.
I guess most of you concerned by this move need not bother as it will be applied to innocent travellers from asian and african counterie who have come to America on business.
My 2 year old son gets flagged as a suspect
Well, of course not picking on your 2 y.o. son with a one way ticket and instead picking on a 20 y.o. man with a one way ticket would be discriminatory. Thank your local ACLU chapter for the treatment your received. Instead of profiling suspicious characters, the screeners have to pick on everyone, even if 2 y.o. or 90 y.o. or they'll be in serious trouble. If they hadn't done picked on your child, they'd have been fired.
"If a large part of the passengers are armed, what is today a bit of loud yelling followed by a pair of handcuffs for the rest of the fligth may easily turn into a gunfight. I consider it likely this would happen dozens of times before you experience the first case where all the guns in the plane actually *benefit* security."
:P
My solution is not to merely *allow* weapons on planes, but to actively *issue* them to passengers. Just give every passenger over 21 (or whatever) a big nasty 6" knife at the gate. You think 9/11 would have happened if they knew they'd get stuck 5 times the second they threatened anyone?
Whoa...what happened on November the 9th? Oh ... you aren't American.
**retreats in confusion**
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Be careful of what you point out, else DHS might actually start doing routine cavity searches... Israeli security "randomly" administers those to outbound passengers at Ben Gurion. More fun to be had by all!
I do see a great market for eye transplants in the future....
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
It's time for tinfoil underwear
Thus, all the screening they have added is NOT for protecting people, but for protecting PLANES. Planes are expensive.
Umm, while planes are expensive they pale compared to large buildings. 9/11 demonstrated that a large, fully fueled airplane is a hell of a weapon. That's why you need to stop hijackings.
Still wierded out- A combination of better cockpit security measures like armored dors and more air marshalls would be a better solution than this.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
errr...TSA...whatever!
What about the bullets? hmm? Are they plastic? I agree...this has to be urban legend.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
It's a lot easier to interfere with some Allah uber alles nutcase with a gun if you're packing yourself.
Even a very bad shot can drop an accountant bum-rushing him in an 18-inch corridor long before the would-be hero gets anywhere near him.
Actually, I am worry about the screeners see and somehow get the image of your wife/girlfriend/daughter naked and post them on the internet. Don't underestimate the power of a screener.
How about an eject button for each passenger seat?
And sadly my mod points ran out! mod parent up!
Simple. Just get some metallic body paint and write "Suck it, Cockfag!!" (or something equally as distasteful) on some clothed part of you. When they complain, complain back about invasion of privacy.
Eventually people will notice how stupid the technology is.
That's, like, R-rated by your american standards at best.
Glocks are not ceramic, and never have been. F'ing Bruce Willis.
If this plane could fly I don't think a few windows missing is going to hurt.
Fellowship 9/11
Actually, the "metal detectors" installed at airports do not actually detect metal. They detect magnetic substances. Don't believe me? Hold a handful of change in an open palm while going through one. Since none of your coins (at least in the U.S.) are made of magnetic substances, the alarm won't go off. Airport security won't be too happy with you though...
http://www.bynarystudio.com
Good idea! Especially when these police officers fall asleep, and someone steal their gun.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
Wow, how did you get it into your mind that the only alternative to a strip search, is a pat-down? I'd rather take my chances with just the metal detector.
Because you could NEVER stick a ceramic knife between your butt cheeks, right?
This is NOT going to stop someone who is dedicated to wiping out a couple hundred people.
This is purely for that cute blonde in that line over there...
it's the government's job to protect you from those.
Not in the US (Yes, police ARE government agents. That's why icing one is usually a federal offense)
dig out my old tinfoil hat and suit :-)
Not urban legend, however, is a little knife I saw advertised maybe 30 years ago, made entirely of plastic and glass fiber. The catalog (P&S Sales, a fairly trustworthy outfit) said it would take a shaving-sharp edge as I recall. It was dubbed the "CIA Letter Opener".
Dunno how you'd detect one of those without X-ray imaging or physical contact.
Equip every aeroplane with a knockout gas cylinder, containing enough to zonk out everyone on board, including the crew; and a remote control system allowing the plane to be landed from the ground at any airport. The Authorities could then board the plane wearing breathing apparatus, and sort out the terrorists from the civilians while they were still incapacitated.
Obviously it would have to be made an offence to carry breathing apparatus in the passenger compartment of an aeroplane, but an oxygen tank is pretty hard to conceal anyway.
Alternatively, just have a self-destruct system and blow the plane clean out of the sky; passengers, crew and all. Just make sure the pieces were small enough not to do much damage to anything they landed on. At least that way, it would be impossible to hijack a plane. A couple of hundred civilian lives are a small price to pay for not letting terrorists get their way.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Most bodies are pretty average or downright boring. It would be about exciting as a locker room or beach.
I want the idiot who modded this "Insightful" to take a "Cruise ship" from Alabama to Montana.
Don't the authorities know that all it takes to see through a lot of clothes nowadays is a flash of light?
Surely they aren't that blind to the media/paparazzi are they?
The N th person would mostly turn out to be an inncoent non-white person travelling to the west on businees. I am apalled at the racisism that is practised on the western airports (UK and USA) on the name of security.
Its basic statistics, surely you understand this. True there may be white hijackers (Although personally I haven't heard of this). But seeing that everyone likes their references...
http://www.answers.com/topic/aircraft-hijacking
Other significant hijackings include:
* 1958 First Cuba to U.S. hijacking
* 1960 The first US to Cuba hijacking
* 1968: The first Arab-Israeli hijacking, as three members of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijack an El Al plane to Rome. Diverting to Algiers the negotiations extend over forty days. Both the hijackers and the hostages go free. This was the first and the only successful hijacking of an El Al flight.
* 1970: As part of the Dawson's Field hijackings, PFLP members attempt to hijack four aircraft simultaneously. They succeed on three and force the planes to fly to the Jordanian desert, where the hijackers blow up the aircraft after releasing most of the hostages. The final hostages are freed in exchange for seven Palestinian prisoners. The fourth attack on an El Al plane by two people including Leila Khalid is foiled by armed gaurds aboard.
* 1971: D. B. Cooper hijacks Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 and obtains $200,000 ransom for the release of the plane's passengers. Cooper proceeds to parachute from the rear of the Boeing 727 and is never found.
* 1976: The Palestinian hijack of Air France Flight 193 airliner is brought to an end at Entebbe Airport, Uganda by Operation Entebbe: Israeli commandos assault the building holding the hijackers and hostages; they kill all the Palestinian hijackers and free 105 mostly Israeli hostages; three passengers and one commando are killed.
* 1977: A Palestinian hijack of a Lufthansa airliner Landshut during its flight from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt is ended in Mogadishu when German commandos storm the plane. Three hijackers are killed and 86 hostages are freed. The hand of German Red Army Faction is suspected. The pilot is killed.
* 1978: Two Arab guerrillas seized a plane in Cyprus. Egyptian commandos flew in uninvited to try to take the plane. Cypriot troops resisted and 15 Egyptians died in a 45-minute battle.
* 1981: A Pakistan International Airlines jet is hijacked and taken to Kabul, where one passenger is killed before the plane flies on to Damascus; the hostages are finally released after 13 days when the Pakistani Government agrees to free fifty political prisoners.
* 1983: Tbilisi hijacking incident
* 1984: Lebanese Shi'a hijackers divert a Kuwait Airways flight to Tehran. The plane is taken by Iranian security forces.
* 1985: Lebanese Shi'a hijackers divert TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Beirut with 153 people on board. The stand-off ends after Israel frees 31 Lebanese prisoners.
* 1985: Palestinians take over EgyptAir Flight 648 and fly it to Malta. All together, 60 people died, most of them when Egyptian commandos stormed the aircraft.
* 1986: 22 people are killed when Pakistani security forces storm Pan Am Flight 73 at Karachi, carrying 400 passengers and crew after a 16-hour siege.
* 1990: Hijackers seize a plane from the People's Republic of China which later crashes as it tried to land in Canton killing 128 people.
* 1994: Four Islamic GIA terrorists seize Air France Flight 8969 plane in Algiers. It is flown to Marseilles where French commandos (GIGN) storm the plane, killing the hijackers. 170 passengers survive.
* 1996: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 crashed into the Indian Ocean near a beach in the Comoros Islands after hijackers refused to allow the pilot to land and refuel the plane. 125 passengers die and 50 survive. This is only the third inci
Ho ho ho.
To us Europeans it seems that America is utterly determined to become both more fascist than 1940s Germany and more repressive and intrusive that either communist era Russia or East Germany etc.
And you still get Americans calling people "Commie" intended as an insult !
Your leaders truly are insane. The only bad thing is the idiots in the UK government have their heads firmly stuck up the American right wings arse so I guess we can expect the same crap over here too.
And what will be the result of all these clampdowns ? "Every time we try to impose order we create chaos"...
Next stop mandatory RFID implants for all humans.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Maybe you could build one of these machine in a public place, like hide it in an arch or doorway. You could put it in L.A. where celebrities frequent or a college with lots of young women.
I don't get out much and gain most of my insights through /.
What's this "nipple" thing?
Either force people to travel naked, or to wear spandex.
After September 11, the concept of using improvised weapons to take over an aircraft is void. The implicit deal was always that if you cooperated, then they'd land the plane somewhere and make demands. Only a raving idiot would believe that now, which is why we need to worry far more about IEDs than box cutters. The next attacks on airliners will be efforts to blow them out of the sky, as that is really the only tactic left to the terrorists now. In fact, even if a hijacker threatened an aircraft with a bomb, it should still be standard protocol to not allow them into the cockpit, but to ask them where they want the plane landed. Turning over control of the plane is signing your own death warrant, period.
In fact, it would not surprise me that when the hijack alarm is sounded to the ATC that any deviation from the flight plan would result in a Sidewinder up the ass anyway. Nobody is going to chance another controlled flight into a target again.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
It is my choice to make those areas private. If I don't want you or anyone else seeing those parts that is the end of the discussion as far as I am concerned.
OK. I didn't mean to offend you.
Who cares what societal norms are.
Well, evidently you do; or at least you care that norms are respected. So do I for that matter, but I was probably not as clear as I could be on my point. It's important to draw distinction between actions that violate social norms, and actions that shift the balance of power between the individual and the state. These are both important issues, but different.
The problem as I see it is that violations of social norms are by definition manifest; you can't violate a social norm in a way that nobody notices. But the same can't be said about shifting the balance of power between the state and the individual, which can be done in ways that are invisible or to subtle to notice. Therefore violations in norms often provoke a reaction that great relative to their significance, and violation in rights often provoke no reaction at all. In fact, there's nothing like stirring up a good cultural brouhaha to distract people if you want to take their rights away.
In the end, both norms and effective rights change over time. Changes in norms feel different at first; changes in rights don't. Over the long term, this flips. Norms are generally superficial; power is deeper and more fundamental. Our future selves won't comprehend how we could have worried that somebody was able to see our genitalia when boarding a plane. We'll be equaly at at a loss to explain how we let the government install the first stages of a national biometric tracking system that in time came to track our whereabouts and activites 24x7.
You could even argue that this violates your fourth amendment rights (unreasonable searches and seizures).
You could, but you'd be wrong. Context matters. What is reasonable intrusion when boarding a plane is highly unreasonable when applied to random people walking down the street.
The fact is, we allow officials to search us in the context of boarding a plane, including looking through our luggage, making us walk through a metal detector, and even patting us down. What's more, we even allow them to do this with no prior evidence that they are any more likely to find anything on us, which is pretty extraordinary if you think about it. If they had the resources, they could pat down every single one of us when we're boarding a plane. So it's hard to see how, from a privacy standpoint, this technology is any different; it's worlds different from a modesty standpoint though.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
With the ability to observe the hidden parts of people, there will be more attention paid to how big his genitals are, or her nipples or genital area. With the inspector's attention distracted by body parts, I expect that more "risks" will go undetected. We might even be worse off than we are now.
So they have cranked up the machines to spit out ionising radiation to equalise the control populations cancer rate Vs those coming back from Iraq pissing Du and uranium (and cancers and worse). Those screening doses will be added to the dose you get while flying.
g et.htm
Why is it, your dentist/doctor/xrayist stand back in a corner behind lead glass before zapping you? Because they know. Kylie may have got hers from one of those NEW airport scanners. Its second nature for a x-ray operator to zap that body.
Now dumb ass xrayers, goons, and the others who stand in proximity of this machine for 8 hour shifts. Cleverly designed anti-rad features will richochet rays as they bounce off coins, gold fillings, dentalmongerly or titanium hip or knee replacement jobs.
No wonder they chase off people with radioactivity sensor and buttons, lest the truth get out. Bet they won't have a sign saying what your 'dose' is.
http://www.rense.com/general41/airporttravelersto
It is quite possible, the extra deaths from cancers because of this screening equipment will exceed the risk of something happening on the plane. So the question is - is it safe for women?
Ugh. I can't imagine what scenarios will occur when the same people who can't tell a penis from a pipe bomb get an eyefull of the real deal.
get a handgun tatooed on your thigh, or a bomb on the small of your back..
Actually, only half wrong. But I thought I'd take the opportunity to use my favourite "subject" heading.
p df
0 5/04/crime-figures.html for details.)
p ?National)
Lets talk British crime rates. Yeah, baby!
Violent crime has fallen by over a third since 1995. So, since they tightened gun laws violent crime in the UK has *fallen*. (Not risen, fallen.)
Source: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/hosb1004.
Now, I know there are people who don't like the British Crime Survey. But their methodology is simple. Every year they ask 30,000 people "have you or a close friend/relation been the victim of a crime, if so what was it and how many times did it happen?" Essentially, the survey strips out the absurdities of police crime reporting changes. (See http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/20
Now, I'm not claiming that guns cause crime. But the evidence is certainly more mixed people (on either side of the debate) believe. And the main argument, I believe, against letting the populace bear arms is the risk of accidents. (See http://www.kidsandguns.org/study/states_deaths.as
Anyway, just my thoughts,
Cheers,
Robert
--- My dad's political betting
"I think that the most important thing the governments of the world need to do is to make sure the data used for securing passenger flights can not be abused"
This is where it always falls apart. There is no way to prevent 100% of abuse. Never has been. Never will be.
What *is* possible is that abusers can be removed from positions where they have abused their power, and otherwise punished if appropriate. There is no possible technology which can prevent a sufficiently determined abuser, but if I can have him fired, even jailed, then abuse should be infrequent, and I don't have to feel helpless (because I'm not).
Not only that, but the "blade" can be stiffened somewhat by folding it correctly and wrapping the aluminum into multiple layers.
It's still somewhat fragile, but it would do anything that a boxcutter in a similar situation could.
Heh. Don't worry. The teeming hordes of Slashdot aren't likely to unleash themselves to the unsuspecting public any time soon.
Jeremy
Obviously, no democratic country will ever allow such blatent violation of people's right to privacy. Such technology will show the clear division between totalitarian regimes, and countries that respect people's basic human rights.
However, we allow people to frisk us when we go on a plane. How is this better than letting somebody look at us?
Because one is a 1-on-1 experience, the other is a 1-and-everyone-in-the-area experience. I have stood and stared at the screens showing X-Rays of people's luggage (there _were_ signs that said I wasn't supposed to look, but I did anyway - I was in a long security line). I'm sure this "nude cam" would attract even more gawking, and I'm also sure that some enterprising airport screeners (who are paid REALLY poorly) will, rather quickly, get the bright idea to attach a VCR to the monitor.
The article won't load, but I'm sure (I hope, anyway) that there are some plans to prevent these sort of abuses, but still - those are the reasons why many people are against this.
Done properly, where the viewer is in a remote location (unlike current X-Ray gates), I have no problem with this. Hit a button when you see paraphenelia. What's the big deal? The screener will have no idea who they're looking at. Look, I'm the last person who's going to walk around naked -- I'd like to maintain a bit of self respect/esteem -- but this isn't exactly prancing around in front of a crowd, or showing up at school and realizing you forgot to wear pants. The alternatives involve pat-downs, which they already do, and personally I'd much rather be felt up by RF than Rent-a-Cops.
If it weren't a form of sexual discrimination, I'd say just staff them with 100% women. Most women would feel less threatened, and most men won't care.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Film at 11.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
I agree in terms that this would violate our right to privacy. However, this is something that is already commonly done by your peeping toms.
So that means because voyeurs do it, our government can too? I'm not following that logic. Our current "security" systems in place for passenger screening, immigrant tracking, and ID verification are not protecting anyone from another terrorist attack. How much more difficult is it to forge five documents as opposed to two? Not much. It might just cost a little more. How secure are biometric scanners (thumb, iris, voice)? Not very.
There are so many breakpoints in the "security" systems that the systems themselves are laughable. How hard would it be to bribe a security screener with a several thousand dollars to let someone get through a little easier? How difficult is it really to get a muslim extremist (especially a white, middle-aged one) hired at an airport and start working the plan from the inside?
I honestly believe that we're just making it harder for honest Americans to go about their normal lives.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
Typical neocon bullshit ... hell, it's not even neocon, it's right out of the reagan playbook.
"Look, I have to abridge everyone's rights, the ACLU made me do it. So strip, grandma, so we can all be safe."
You're either a cretinous Fox News slave or you're knowingly mendacious. Either way, fuck you. I've become a permanent member of the ACLU along with other whining pansies like Bob Barr and Dick Armey.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
Hmm.. Somehow all the dots, slashes etc disappeared.
Thanks for fixing anyway...
"The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum cleaner."
I too would like to see how effective various measures are, but notice that if they are working well the number of terrorists caught recently should be zero, because nobody with hostile intent would dare try to pass the procedures.
I accept your story, but here's another. We arrived at the airport with the recommended 90min. lead time. There were maybe eight people in line at the screening station -- we were through in two minutes with no flashing lights or physical inspections. We sat in the departure lounge for 80 minutes until boarding time, showed our boarding passes, got on the plane, and were taken to our destination without incident. Same story on the return flight. It does happen.
> And violent crime in general is up WAY more than that 2%.
Curious, isn't it? It had been on a downward trend for twenty years before now.
While they may pick people at random, I think All Representatives and Senators should be REQUIRED to go through these devices.
Let's see how they feel being exposed every time they go on a trip. It's the least they could do if they claim to be representing us.
I wish the President and this immediate family would be forced to endure this. Of course, he gets his own private plane, so he is totally isolated from this (and given that most Ex-Presidents fly private, will never be exposed to this)
Sadly, until the Congress is forced to give up their own freedoms, they'll do nothing.
This is purely for that cute blonde in that line over there...
That should at least help screener recruitment efforts...heh heh.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I personally think that Airsoft tournaments on airplanes would be really fun! Flights wouldn't be so boring then, anyhow.
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
This is going to be absolute HELL for transgendered people. Any transgendered person will be immediately spotted, and perhaps even arrested (they will be seen as "men wearing womens' clothing").
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
"...It happens *often* that some passenger drinks too much / ha..." Just as a point of FYI... this is why Pilots are prohibited from allowing anyone under the influence of any drug (excpet under medical care and supervision) from boarding an aircraft. look here for an example and an excerpt from the FAR (Federal Aviation Regulations) http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/callback_issues/cb_261.ht m
"Tolerance is a virtue of a man without convictions." G.K.Chesterton
> Hit glass and the glass will shatter and suck everything out of it.
I'm happy to inform you that you're dead wrong. Windows have broken on planes. It causes rapid depressurization, the air masks drop, everyone's eardrums take a beating... and that's it. Someone simply drops the window cover (actually they require them all to be dropped at that point), and it's plenty adequate.
There's a lot of difference between the cockpit and a passenger window.
It's entirely possible that a show like "Seconds from Disaster" might blow things out of proportion just a wee bit? You use this as a credible source? Unbelievable...
I think it would be alot more fun if they just stripped everyone naked before passing through security. You get your cloths back at the final destination, oops we lost your cloths...
We could add a third class section to airplanes the naked orgy cuddle pile section. If your going to get naked with strangers you might as well enjoy yourself. Instead of seatbelts, assorted leather restraints would be provided to insure passenger safety in turbulent weather. These would be fitted by a leather clad steward or stewardess (preference marked when you purchase your ticket).
From the article:
"One maker of backscatters is Rapiscan Security Products, a unit of OSI Systems. "Since the Russian plane tragedy, which is suspected due to suicide bombers, the interest has heightened for these needs, especially for the body scanner," Deepak Chopra, the chief executive of OSI Systems, recently told analysts."
Wow, I guess that self help thing didn't pan out for him.
Once you lick the lollipop of mediocrity, you'll suck forever!
There was something with attacking the format of a message when not having a valid argument to attack the content..
Wait til Paris Hilton has to fly someplace and her pix show up on the front page of the tabloids. She'll be getting frequent flyer miles to get the free publicity.
So is it going to be separate male-female lines? And will the women's line always be longer?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
It's not my right to get on a plane, but getting on a plane doesn't mean that I surrender any of my rights. And it's not the "right" of the government to make me show an agent of the state my genitals before boarding a plane.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
it imploded out
:)
How does something "implode out"?
Karnal
Sucked out the hole, no. But everyone on that plane will die, bcos the plane will depressurise. The ones who survive total instant depressurisation at 60k feet (and plenty won't) will die on impact, bcos no-one's flying the plane.
Grab.
This things have already been installed at Heathrow Airport in London, U.K.
I was randomly selected to go through one when I was flying from Terminal 4 back in October 2004. The guy who was operating it, even showed me the images that it produced of my body. It was quite impressive the image that it produced.
The upside of using it was that I got to queue jump the queue for the regular metal detector, so could get to the duty free area (and hence the pub) quicker.
They only stuck a finger up you?
When they did me, I told the guy his wedding ring was hurting me - he replied "That's not a ring, that's my watch."
My God.. The implications of this would be 911 times a thousand!
;)
This would be, like, 911,000!
The federal government's own studies show that air travel is no safer after homeland security took over passenger and luggage screening. Federal agents perform just as poorly as their prior airline counterparts, missing just as many weapons. This all the while with much meightened sensitivity and screening procedures. For $38,000,000,000 we get federal take-over of airport security, a jelly bean color of the day, increased delays and annoyances at the airport and exactly how has life improved just one iota?
These full-body scanning systems are called X-ray machines. I wonder how much will be the increase in cancer risk for air travelers?
signature pending slashdot approval
So are you saying prison should be a pleasant experience? Of course it should be unpleasant. It is prison. It needs to be a deterrent to not do crime. What deterrent is there to getting hot meals, medical treatment, satellite tv, playstations, and fully equiped gyms? Make people plow fields or bust rocks like they used to so people actually don't want to go to prison. Criminals have more rights now than the victims, and it is ludicris. Prisoners should have NO rights as far as i am concerned, and torture is quite suitable in many cases in my mind. Definitely not satellite tv.
Have you actually seen hollow metal support frames on suitcases? And what is your point about shoes?
And what happens when the airport screener's buddy gets the bright idea to put the pictures/videos on the Internet and the press discovers it?
That's definately a question of when, not if.
Well it would seem the US government is finally turning on it's own. Rather than face the problem they come up with some scatterbrained scheme to further enslave it's citizens.
I am anxious to see what type of impact this has on airtransit.
Anyone have stock in the rail or buses? It may be time to pull your money from the airline industry and invest it in other means of transportation.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
so that they can't open the door.
In fact, why even have a door?
It would be worth it to extend the cabin, slap in a port-a-potty and be done with the cabin access all together.
9/11 was a possibility since the '60s (Remember the pictures of the hijackers at the cockpit window? That's how long we've been absolute morons about this.) It wont stop either until the airline industry wakes up.
I can predict with absoute certainty that a big ol' AirBus loaded with people, luggaqge and fuel will get crashed into the Vatican. Why? Because they can.
They're Muslin extremists. This would be a chance to strike at the heart of Christendom, and its a soft target surrounded by civilian infrastructure. Even if they fuck up and take out the wrong hill, they still 'win.' As such this is an event waiting to take place.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
But they could protect us, if they'd just stop pissing off every other country in the world.
.sig I've seen floating around here about XML and violence; that has honestly become our mantra... "fight the possible threat of violence with more preemptive violence".
Look, when you call a peoples "barbaric and backwards" (to say nothing of a history of imperialism and crippling foreign economic policy), you're going to rattle some proverbial beehives. This whole "us and them" mentality that's emerged in the U.S. is frightening; this dehumanization of our enemies and its acceptance by our citizens is downright terrifying.
It reminds me of the
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
For instance, I have no idea what the data gathered by the INS employees at airports is used for and who gets access to it. I know nothing about what analysis it is used in, I have no way of making sure it is correct and I have no way of knowing what procedures are in place to prevent unathorized access or proper deletion (or pruning) when the data is no longer needed.
Since it is largely undefined what happens to these data we can't even say what constitutes abuse. It can easily be argued that no action sanctioned by a government official represents abuse. Including handing the records over to other countries' governments as part of some unrelated agenda.
I am going to cut letters out of tin foil and arrange them on my chest so when they x-ray me it will say "If you can read this, you must be pretty grossed out".
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
Are the security reqs different for private planes? Why couldn't someone start an airline that had membership type customers that are pre-screened so they don't have to jump through hoops every time they fly?
I reported this on my crappy blog on May 24th.ahref=http://www.pintmaster.com/wordpress/200 50524/airport-screeners-could-get-x-rated-x-ray-vi ews/http://www.pintmaster.com/wordpress/20050524/a irport-screeners-could-get-x-rated-x-ray-views/>
--------- I have no signature
... hello? Has anybody read Snow crash? Glass knives! I tell you, they are transparent in more ways than one.
"Good news, everyone!"
I'm sure most people would. It's not like they're going to X-Ray only the people who would have been strip searched though, they're doing it to everyone. Maybe if they only did this to people who failed at the metal detector and/or did something else to spook security then they would be subjected to the X-Ray people might have fewer problems with it.
Unfortunately, GM and General Tire took those choices away from you in the nineteen fifties.
Tearing up all of the tracks, the hundreds, the thousands of miles of tracks, was the WORST thing that ever happened to America.
Its brought us to this impasse.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Hi -
People often overuse the phrase "X rated" Generally speaking, you need an erect penis for an X rating. Simple nudity, bad language, or even simulated sex don't usually get an X rating.
TWR
Sure, it looks pretty naked, but we can trust them with that! RIGHT??? You mean like we can trust the luggage checkers to not steal stuff?
That's a completely ignorant example. You can't violate someone's property right in order to justify your uninhibited travel.
Funny you should mention that. The article specifically describes a scenario where an overweight passenger could hide a bomb in folds of flab.
The scanners are designed not to penetrate the skin for "safety" concerns.
So noting is stopping it. It just means all the overweight people will probably be flagged and pulled aside for a "random" body cavity search.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
It would cost less and bring the same result... Ask people to undress, put the clothes on the tray and then dress again after the scan.
Low cost and... less X-ray radiations!
You have the right to enter into contracts as you see fit, as an adult, but not into contracts that violate any of your rights... you can't sell yourself into slavery. This is, um, how to say this ....? I think the words "totally false" come into mind. Some rights are waivable. For instance, I have the right to a jury trial if I am accused of a crime. I can, however, plea bargain with the prosecutor and give up my right to a jury trial in exchange for a charge of a lesser offense. This happens all the time.
I have the right for police officers not to search me without probable cause. I can, of course, consent to a search for which there is probable cause.
I have the right to a jury trial in certain courts and certain jurisdictions for many civil actions; I can waive those rights (in many states) by signing a contract that requires that disputes be arbitrated.
Now, some things -- like your status as a free person -- are not waivable. Those rights are very few and far between.
Most personal rights, however, are very waivable. Including the one about people looking at your buttocks. Yes, folks, you heard it here first: a porn star's employment contract is enforceable, despite the U.S. Constitution!
The real reason the contract argument is drop-dead stupid is that there is no contract that requires me to subject myself to an invasive search. Take a look at the conditions of carriage -- see anything there saying they can see me naked? I didn't think so.
It's a federal regulation, not a contract. And that's why the privacy argument matters.
Read Bujold. Free (as in
The problem is not for you, or me. The problem is my sister, who is very pretty, getting followed and harassed by cops. The problem is that guy who mouthed off to some cop and pissed him off, who now gets followed around and booked for violations that everyone does all the time, but are selectively enforced. (Do you drive the speed limit all the time? Always use signals? Stop completely at all stop signs?)
But, really, your ethos is just wrong. It doesn't matter whether I can give examples of how it harms someone for the police to gain the ability to search and track us without due process. There is always a way it will be abused, whether some guy involved in a lame slashdot conversation can think of it or not. The framers of the constitution gave us a fourth amendment for a reason.
The situation is exactly the opposite of what it should be... as the government gets more power, we need more transparency into what govt officials do; they don't need more transparency into what we do.
Terrorism, blah blah blah. The attitude that we have the moral mandate to peek on what everyone's doing and control it is what motivates the terrorists. (I am not by any means justifying terrorism; I'm being practical about what to do about it.) Ratcheting up imaginary security is a paranoid and counterproductive response. There are real things we can do to increase security, and I think we're doing some of them, but most things we do increase the illusion of security for people who haven't really thought about it. And really, what is the impact of terrorism? Smallpox and nuclear bombs are something to be worried about. Plastic explosives aren't going to kill enough people often enough to be worth worrying about. Buckle your seatbelt and exercise for 30 minutes every day if you are worried about your health and longevity. Lobby for your government to dismantle nuclear weapons, put radiation detectors on all of the ways in & out of the country, stockpile smallpox vaccine, and stop biological weapons research wherever possible.
Just don't promote x-raying travellers and putting cameras that only cops can use all over our city streets. (Public cameras that are available to all I have no beef with, mostly because in the long run it's unavoidable.)
Terahertz imaging has been covered here on /. before many times. Nothing like a FUD article to resurrect an old topic.
---k--
</stupid>
Remember, Big Brother is watching you for your own good!
Turning off your a Homeland Security Scanner is in and of itself a terrorist act.
Remember to always have your RealID with you. Individuals traveling without appropriate identification will be detained for questioning.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Or water.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Has anyone noticed that the TSA people that operate the x-ray machine are not wearing radiation safety badges? I just was thinking about this since they have started the large machines for all baggage. I know the direction of the x-ray beam is downward, and the machines supposidly have some shielding, but you would think OSHA would require them to have their exposure measured and tracked
Now where can I get the 'flyer list' and cross out the names of all the ugly, fat people.
I think that we should demand the right to fly naked and get speeded up to the front of any security check point.
If the religious establishment objects, they can just hold their ankles to get inspected for 'security.'
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Ice.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I'd say that even 20 UNarmed people would be able to reduce a bad guy to bloody shreds.
Freedom is risk. It's that simple.
We should not be so afraid of risk that we are willing to give up freedom and privacy. We put up with greater risks every day and don't take such extreme precautions. We drive down the street in 2 ton weapons within feet of people we don't know. We go to work in buildings with hundreds of people we don't know. Risk is all around us. As a matter of fact, the entire US system of government is based on increased risk in favor of freedom.
Don't believe me?
A simple example is the basic idea that a person innocent until proven guilty. That assumption assures that more guilty people will go free than innocent people will go to jail. We, as a society agree we are willing to walk among dangerous criminals so that we do not endanger the freedom of individuals. Why is this any different? What are my chances of being involved in an attack on a plane? How much will this reduce that risk? Is it worth the loss in personal dignity? Wait till airport X ray photos end up on some fetish internet site. I say it's not worth it.
The whole risk for freedom idea also implies that we all share responsibility for our own safety and that of others. The people on the 9-11 flight that crashed in PA were right. They took matters into their own hands and did not rely on a protecting government, which is incapable of helping anyway, to save them. Their death, though completely tragic, was a victory & a wake up call. I can't say for sure how I would have acted before 911 but I am sure now.
The passengers on the other flights were told to stay calm and all would be OK. The thought being that they would be released by their captors or that they would be rescued. Both assumptions put the responsibility of their personal safety in someone else's hands.
Both are wrong.
You think someone that is willikng to die for there cause gives a shit about the chance he might get stabbed to death in the attempt?
Hitting someone with a handgun, when they're within grappling distance of you and trying to kill you, is A LOT harder than you might think. Even trained police officers have been known to empty an entire magazine and miss with every shot in that kind of engagement.
Furthermore, contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, getting shot with a handgun isn't always instantly incapacitating -- you need fairly precice shot placement with a large-calibre round to do that, and even then it's iffy. Real-world statistics show that even the MOST EFFECTIVE handgun rounds only have about an 85% chance of getting a single-shot kill with a center-of-mass hit; most calibres are much worse -- 50% or less. Keep in mind that someone who's been fatally shot can still gut you like a fish before they bleed out.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
If we had intrusive x-ray screening for VOTING, then that would be an infringement (there is nothing, technically, that should make you lose your Right to voting simply because you have a conceiled weapon). But if you want to use the air transportation system, you have to play by their rules. If you want to buy a co-op apartment in new york city, you have to play by the co-op board's rules. Want to join a country club? They can deny you for whatever reason is necessary.
Don't like it? Too bad.
Puddle of water before you even get through the line.
In order for a picture to be pornography, it must show the subject having some kind of sexual behaviour. A photo of a naked old woman is not "geriatric pornography" for example.
When a government is willing to imprison an innocent man for defending himself from criminals, you should certainly expect a jump in crime.
ITYM when a jury is willing to imprison someone for shooting a criminal in the back.
Tony Martin was convicted by a jury of his peers because he shot someone when that person presented no threat to him(he was running away). If he had shot both burglars when they broke into his house or while they were in his house, the chances are that he would have walked free or never even been arrested.
Whilst I have every sympathy for those householders who are persecuted by burglars as far as I am concerned killing someone who has failed to steal from me and is now running away as fast as they can is not the right thing to do. A warning shot over the head and comments along the lines of "come back here and I'll blow your head off" is a much better response.
Jeremy
I have an idea, lets prosecute all Doctors for being perverts! And no, the technology won't give us good-looking images anytime in the foreseable future.
---k--
</stupid>
This is purely for that cute blonde in that line over there...
I'm thinking the amount of titillation produced by viewing cute blonds will be more than offset by having to view fat old people. "Eeeewww!"
You're either a cretinous Fox News slave or you're knowingly mendacious. Either way, fuck you
What did I do to get this kind of language??? From ACLU's own website: The American Civil Liberties Union today told a House subcommittee that airline passenger profiling would be a dangerously ineffective, invasive and potentially discriminatory practice
The grandparent post was about a 2 year old getting searched in the name of being fair to everyone and I pointed out that it would be discriminatory and the ACLU would be all over them if they picked only on suspicious characters. Are you seriously telling me that the ACLU would be in favor of not screening small children but only suspicious characters??? How do you reconcile your claim with their own news release say that profiling better not be used because it might discriminate??? It's all very fine if you want to support searching small children in the name of being fair, but don't blast me if I agree with the grandparent that it's silly to do so.
Yeaha, yeaha, yeaha. What's your phone number at home?
Ya know, that isn't a security risk if you dont intend to use it.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
A picture of a naked boy/girl standing in front of an X-ray scanner is *not* pornography. That is why arts such as cinema are allowed to show a naked boy or girl and not be banned. See "The empire of the senses" or "Novechento" for examples of such films.
See my reply to the grandparent post. It must have some kind of sexual content to be considered pornography.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Here's a quote from their site:
"Due to new federal regulations, it is a felony offense to carry the CIA Letter Opener into an airport.
After about five years, we have revived the CIA Letter Opener. Designed in the mid-1970's, it was based on the A. G. Russell(TM) all steel Sting 1A and has been one of our most popular items of all time. This is the world's toughest letter opener. Made of fiberglass reinforced nylon, it weighs less than one ounce, but with the reinforcing ridges and blood groove to stiffen the blade, it can literally be hammered through a board. The uses are limited only by your imagination; self-defense to tent stakes. Measures 6-1/2" and weighs only 0.8 oz. Made in the U. S. A."
WTF? Can you imagine how many people would have died and planes crashed in the last three years if passengers were armed? Every time a swarthy passenger sneezed or yawned and stretched he'd have a dozen guns cocked and pointing at him. And are you going to prevent Americans of Arab descent from carrying guns? Then what happens when some redneck spots him and decides to preempt? Not to mention what would happen 12 hours into a flight when the vigilantes have had way too much booze.
How about the fact that no American airlines have been hijacked since 9/11? The only threat I can think of was from the infamous idiotic shoe bomber, and no guns were necessary to subdue him.
If you want to make planes hijack proof, fortify the cockpit. If the terrorist has a bomb, he can set it off whatever you do (if he remembers to bring a fuse).
I'd say that's considerably less if it's a matter of a stray bullet launched by you imaginarily clumsy vigilante.
I am REALLY glad this is all just a fantasy. My blood runs cold at the thought of people like you armed on an aircraft. (Or anywhere, but that's another discussion.)
Your post is what's bullshit! Organizations like the ACLU and NAACP _are_ the problem. They're the ones that enforce PC to the point that profiling is impossible. We have to stop scumbags from bringing weapons onto planes. If we can't focus on the most likely possibilities (arab males between 18 and 50) then we can only focus on things like one-way tickets.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
sharok,
I'm afraid this issue comes up every time a statistical assertion is made comparing averages, and not extremes.
Look, if we found some miraculous way of cutting off a person's leg in exchange for making the other one indestructible, and a bill requiring all people to undergo such a procedure didn't go through (an outcome which 99.999% of people would agree with), the people who thereafter lose both legs in an accident will STILL COMPLAIN!
Sorry about the unrealistic argument, but it's really quite congruent to the parent post.
And in spite of that fact, moron hoplophobic murderer Teddy Kennedy continues to insist that these non-existent terrors be banned. Jack would be so proud.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
When the people who are causing the mass murders in your public transport networks have a basic organizational framework but have not yet reached the level of civilization, you are not going to get the best security from surveilence.
It is far better to put resources into infiltration and communication with the leaders of the groups who are sending suicide solders out into your society.
It is important to have these leaders understand that there will be precise, exact, and unavoidable retaliation for specific acts of random mass murder committed by these groups. And (this is quite important) it is imperative to have them understand that the price that they will pay for sending suicide solders into your society will be far greater than any physical or propaganda gain that they will achieve for their cause (either political or religious) resulting from these acts of mass murder.
When the leaders of the mass murder cults realize that the price that they and their cause and their people will pay for having committed these acts is far beyond the gain, then the mass murders will stop and there will be no need for obsessive and intrusive searchs before entering a public space.
This is cold and a basicly inhuman stance. However it is not new. For fifty years the Americans and the Russians have had an understanding that an attack with nuclear weapons on each other's territory would result directly, quickly, and unavoidably in an exchange that would destroy each other's country. It is a brutal, insane, and near omnicidal (the destruction of all human life on earth) policy, but it is the only policy that has worked for this situation. We should not forget that it is still in operation. Of course, it can only fail once.
The time has come to make the world of Islam know what exactly they will suffer in exchange for each level of mass murder committed in the future on the West in the name of Islam. This idea that ordinary people the West should be murdered by suicide solders in response for a military operation on Islamic peoples done as a response to a previous mass murder, must simply stop. It will only escalate with each incident until the West decides to utilize its vast stores of biological, nuclear, and chemical weapons against the people who live in Islamic societies. We should never forget that the Americans have enough WMDs to wake up one morning, decide to rid the world of every living Muslem, spend the morning planning it, the afternoon doing it, and the rest of the evening drinking beer and watching football.
They shouldn't forget it either.
So, what if it's one of those REALLY white chicks that only fucks black men? CHECK HIS COCK! CHECK HIS COCK!
Come on, people. A little fucking courage , and this stupid shit doesn't bother you any more. I'm more worried about the radiation exposure for frequent fliers.
If they start probing your holes with cold instruments, THEN I'll take issue with it.
I'm glad you find it an acceptable measure for yourself, but that doesn't mean it's okay by everyone. If they implement this measure the way they're planning to, they're effectively going to make flying an unreasonable mode of travel for anyone who doesn't want to be seen naked by people they don't personally choose. It's rather like a peeping Tom - only government sanctioned. Being "in the name of security" doesn't make it any better.
Now, if they used the machine as a substitute for, or precursor to manual strip searches and only in a situation where it's currently warranted, it would be an appropriate security measure. But mandatory "see you naked" screening is an invasion of privacy, whether you're willing to let them invade or not.
Notice that the complaint about the child being searched is 'informative' and my pointing out the self-admitted culprits is 'flamebait'.
This falls on the "acceptable security" side for me. This, paired with a metal detector would mean almost 100% transparency with regards to body-carried weapons. Even ceramic items like knives or a Glock would be caught by the X-ray whereas the metal detector alone would have missed them. But my "gun" is tiny! I don't want anyone to know! Please don't let 'em peek!!!
But all this trying to stop weapons from getting on a plane is absurd, because humans have been making weapons out of things for 100,000 years. Like rocks, and sticks, and CDs, and, oh yeah, our hands.
I could get on an airplane and find something I could threaten someone else's life with with no prior planning. With prior planning, I could trivially take hostages.
And without any work on my part, I'd find myself and my hostage laying on the floor dead if I tried it on an airplane.
What we're getting now is what you call 'faith-based security' instead of 'reality-based security'. You just want to believe things are more secure because of what is happening, but there are exactly as secure as they've always been.
You want reality-based security? Well, there are places, called 'gas stations', that operate in high crime areas. Do they check people for weapons? Do they ban dangerous looking things? Hell no. They just put up damn bulletproof glass. Um, duh.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Now we'll all have a new reason to lose weight before that vacation...
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
Whilst you may have a point, shooting someone in the back with an illegal weapon while they are fleeing is hardly innocent. Sure he was a burglar, but that doesn't make it right to kill him.
I am trolling
Picture these headlines!
Big Brother (aka the Department of Homeland Security) regrets to inform the American public that images from body scanners were placed onto the Internet without authorization. As a result of the year-long internal audit, the individuals involved have been suspended or terminated, with charges pending further investigation. However, the department officials state they will continue to deploy and operate body scanners as an effective terrorist deterrent.
Advanced image enhancement technologies and feature reconstruction using forensic techniques resulted in high quality, full colour nudes to spread like wildfire across the Internet.
Privacy advocates pointed to a number of sources for the leaked images, including camera phones, smuggled recordings, and a hacker intrusion into a once-believed secure repository which archived digital recordings.
What if Congress passes a national ID act? He won't be able to live.
Congress already took care of that two weeks ago.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
en tea
Really now, take a look around you. How many people do you see that you would want to see naked? There are a lot more who look like 'Rosanne Bar' out there than 'Nicole Kidman'. Kinda like sausage, don't really want to know.
I'm sure the hostesses and pilots on the 9/11 planes are quite relieved to hear that.
I seriously doubt it. They're dead, after all.
However, it may be of concern to the thousands of airline staff worldwide who deal with these issues on a daily basis, rather than, say.. the only group of people in history to ever have died of being in hijacked planes flown deliberately into buildings.
I'm sorry. Did your point get lost in there somewhere?
Just remember that for every sexy X-ray, the scanner also sees a revolting one.
The world is bell-shaped.
Hand them out to everyone!
Well screen for firearms/explosives, then hand out melee weapons.
No firearms though, flying bullets + flimsy aircraft fuselage = bad.
But really, imagine what would have happened if the terroists that took over the planes on 9/11 tried that boxcutter shit when every person on the plane was armed with a knife/bat/club/sword/katar/brass knuckles/billy club.. They would have been beaten senseless and we wouldn't be putting up with this airport security shit.
Think about it. The life of every person on the plane is at stake while its in the air. People will work for the common good and the status quo will be maintained with deadly force. Nobody on the plane would let anyone endanger said plane.
Question everything
I worked at a McDonalds in Glasgow for a while, and I can tell you, everything the urban legends say, and a damn site more, went on there. Yes, up to and including a co worker spunking in the mayonnaise.
The really worrying thing is, I think the manager had a fair idea some of this stuff was going on, and just didn't give a toss.
Sound like a pretty good gig for a bunch of pedophiles if you ask me. Who's going to question them 'patting down' a kid behind curtains if it's in the name of security?
Since we are talking about 'rights', lets not be selfish...
Your all concerned about your right to privacy, but what about every elses right to be safe from terrorism and violence when going about their every day lives?
The government is trying to protect the rights of people to go to work without worrying about planes flying into their buildings...
Sure, I understand that you want to fly without these annoyances, but a lacking airport security system endangers the lives of everyone in the United States/World... Even the people that never went into the airport -- These huge jet-fuel filled airplanes are just too dangerous to leave unprotected.
Of course, on the contrary, if there is a way to ensure safety with less intrusion, then I would hope it would be chosen instead.
I agree with this : Look, I've already been subjected to the security gropefest a couple times. I'd take the X-ray *any* day over that. In my mind, this is a restoration of some of my rights ... I don't have to worry about being fondled.
However, I would take it a step further. Since the stated, and court supported true intent is to keep weapons off of planes, there should be no need for ID checks at all. Bomb detectors, XRAY for the luggage, and these new detectors for people should be enough to keep us safe. I'd also put a barrier between the people who are monitoring and the people who see the actual person. If there is an issue, they can alert the people in the screening line to hold someone. This should alieve some of the privacy concerns.
Dunno how you'd hijack a plane with a freaking knife after 9-11.
Them: "Hey America, stop being who you like to be."
US: "No. Fuck off. I like my MTV, my corvette, my iMac and my mcdonalds."
Them: "I said stop, or we'll blow you the hell up."
IT DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT. You don't think the US's prior history of interference in other countries' affairs has ANYTHING to do with pissing people off, do you? Or did you think this was just about lifestyle choices?
Just because your President said that "they hate us for our freedoms" doesn't make it true. Especially if his administration is happy to take away these freedoms as it chooses. If you want proof, just look around.
If you look at 'suspicious' people more, that means you look at others less. (Don't even try to argue that.) So all terrorists have to do is fly a lot and they'll find out who the government thinks is suspicious. (Plus, they'll get 'frequent fliers' quick security scans!)
Which will give terrorists the completely obvious idea that, hey, maybe we should have the non-suspicious guy carry the weapons and pass them out on the plane! And could also lead to terrorists locating information leaks and closing them. (Who knows me and you and you, but not that guy?)
And before you think searching a kid is stupid...terrorists have kids, too. Even more pointedly, terrorists can kidnap kids, or befriend them. Hell, if you can abduct a kid from a public place, you can certainly get one to carry a bag for you onto the plane. (I have a coach ticket, so do not get to carry bags onto the plane. If you will carry this bag for me onto the plane, you can read the comic book in the side pocket, but you have to give it back when we land.)
Profiling only makes sense if you assume that terrorists first board a plane the day they want to blow it up, or somehow we can scan them much more without them noticing, or they are complete retards.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Such as pre-op transsexuals.
Don't forget the energy content in your laptop's battery. Oh, yeah, the one made from lithium. I wouldn't be surprised if a group of middle eastern buisness men traveling with their laptops and cell phones and extra batteries couldn't rig up something to blow the hinges of any 'secured' cockpit door. Oops, at least they didn't use a knife. Better luck next time I guess.
What worries me far more than the terrorists is the continual erosion of civil rights that far too many seem happy enough about: A free society bent on cooperation has at most to worry about psychopathic freaks in the world; an oppressive state that curtails freedoms and imposes its will with increasing force breeds discontent and enemies.
Is it just me or is all this fear over security a sign that we are stuck in a vicious circle of paranoia that's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?
--Udo.
And rereading that, it sounded like I was talking to the parent poster with 'you'...I wasn't, I was talking to the American people who buy all this crap.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Keyword: Attempt.
You're right, but success becomes attempt and for the other hundred people on the plane and N number on the ground, that makes all the difference.
Otherwise it's useless on about 60% of Americans. I've seen a few folks who like they could hide a few knives or sticks of dynamite or whatnot.
If you get to the airport really early, you could simply go back through the line again.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
In the past 30 years or more very few planes have been attacked. The news wants to make any small thing out to be the end of the world so that they make more money -- and people like you are dumb enough to fall for it. Looking at it from another point of view, by being so afraid that a freaking 2 yr old or a 90 yr old woman in a wheelchair MIGHT attack you, the terrorists have already won. The key part of terrorist's is TERROR and by being afraid of something that only has like a one in a billion chance of happening, you've let them succeed.
Notice that somewhere up the thread the phrase was "armed and trained"
If you were used to seeing people armed, someone drawing a weapon might just be moving it for comfort. A trained person wouldn't fire on someone for drawing a gun.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Looks like its time to invest in a penis enlarger.
"We are always training to fight the last war."
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Anyone living within the borders of the United States of America, now lives within a Police State.
Try and deny it, you can't.
This is not flame bait it is the truth.
If you think this is flame bait,then you are trying to deny the truth....open your eyes and look around.
You're rights are being crushed, violated, and stripped away more and more. Why can't you see this? Why do you consider this acceptable?
Stop being sheep....fight back!!!
Why such an out cry about privacy? Oh my goodness! Another human will view a body part that is prevelant on 3 billion other animals on this planet! Holy crap! Why are we so obsessed with privacy when it comes to your body. You should be more concerned with privacy in the home, or with your actions than your body. I got news for you. Your body isn't private. Half the population has pretty much the same goods you've got, and the other half isn't some huge mystery.
We're animals, your body is natural. Who seriously cares if someone see's your nipple, or an outline of your wang. I don't.
I for one am against this not because I'm afraid some pervert is going to check out my package. Hey, if you get off on that kind of thing, more power to you for landing your dream job. No, I'm against this because it's just more fluff to create the illusion of security. I'm against it because it violates my personal freedoms and ability to travel without presenting documents, or a nipple.
But it doesn't matter that I'm against it. It doesn't matter that your against it. It doesn't matter how many people are against it, because we don't vote on individual issues.
I wonder if I'd get "in trouble" if I used xray reflective masking tape to draw a giant middle finger on my chest when I fly.
Because you could NEVER stick a ceramic knife between your butt cheeks, right?
You probably could, but for Heaven's sake, make sure the sharp edge is pointing out, and don't sit down!
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Oh, and in the U.S., we don't have fathers selling their daughter...
Well, we don't have that here in Mexico either.. just because you see one nutcase doing that doesn't mean that everybody does.. (btw, we do have nutcases.. so do you)
And boy, you guys breed like rabbits
Actually, USA and Mexico has about the same population grow rate.. go figure..
The average flyer is, well, average. In the US this means that they are likely obese and/or unattractive.
I suspect that the airport security people arn't going to enjoy this one bit..
The thought of watching an endless parade of naked fat people isn't too appealing to me at least.
In the second image (http://news.com.com/Photo+Scanner+searches+throug h+clothing/2009-7348_3-5718274-2.html?tag=st.next)
you can see quite clearly that the radar apparently doesn't go through shoe leather.
Doesn't that sort of nullify the whole system?
Why not just give the airport people some of those camcorders that can "see through clothes"? It would a heck of a lot cheaper than inventing and deploying those "Total Recall" X-Ray machines.
No Quality Control.
I think you're being distracted by september 11. There are still people wanting to get money, or have some of their friends released from prison - and being realistic, that's more likely than another planes-flying-into-buildings attack. Hostage situations are quite often resolved with none or few deaths among the hostages - in this situation, a vigilante with a gun makes things worse, not better, for the other passengers
I am trolling
but if a bullet did pierce the body of the plane, it would be very uncomfortable breathing until the plane descends to a lower altitude.
... nah, that could never work.
Good point. If only all modern airplanes were required to carry some sort of mask and breathing apparatus for each passenger... something that could maybe fall down from the ceiling, right in front of their face, when a loss of cabin pressure was detected
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
And in other news...Airport security job applications from pedophiles is up 800%. One pedophile tells us under demand of anonymity, "Why would I pay for internet broadband, when the airport can give me WAY higher resolution, real-time kiddie porn. AND THEY PAY ME?!?! Can you believe it?!?! No more risk of imprisionment, and they pay me...Woohoo! bring on the kiddies!"
(Do you really want to take your kids on a plane now?)
You knew it would happen.. a defining moment in the lovely voyage towards the ultra-security state. Will Laura Bush lead the way, stepping through one of these do-hickeys and invite the press to paste a copy of her boobs (or more?) on every front-page, to lead the flock to eternal security?
;)
And if she does, after the flock stops to gawk, will it follow?
How many wanna-be Laura Bush housewives will give up their modesty (or the secret of their corset or their boost bra) to maintain support for their chosen leader?
I suspect very few. But if not, I could imagine worse dystopic futures
I know you're being facetious, but I would have assumed the same if you'd said "Why don't we all just get naked before getting on a plane?" before all this.
:P
Don't take our your ire on my vodka
Sounds like we agree. You want a *policy* by which passengers may know what employees may and may not do with passengers' personal information. That is necessary (though not sufficient) to implementing what I want, which is power to remove and/or punish violators of the policy.
Even if the Swedish Swim Team comes through, they'll look like a naked Sinead O'Connor.....Gahh!!!
I'm back on the fence on this device!
I'm amazed at the fact that people are so fearful of terrorists that they would allow this. The murder rate in America is between about 10,000 and 25,000 people. Even at the low number, each year about four times more Americans get murdered by fellow Americans than died in 9/11.
We don't allow ourselves to be randomly strip searched at the mall, in bars or before entering our cars, yet we're far more likely to be murdered in those places than on (or by) a plane. Why do we look at run-of-the-mill murder as something that we can't afford to give up our rights to prevent, but terrorism as something that is so fearful that almost anything is fair game.
I don't think I'm in a position to not travel on a plane, but I can still protest if they impliment this. I will find a non-metalic substance that's high contrast to one of these machines and I'll spell out the words "go fuck yourselves you nazi whores" on my chest or back, but under my shirt. The only people who will see it will be the screeners. I will continue to be completely cheerfull and cooperative in every other way. After they get finished looking at my cock and my ass cheeks with their machines, I dare those mother-fuckers to accuse me of being crude or mean to them.
TW
Mod parent up !
at 36k feet, 6 miles up
:)
Small nit: 36,000 ft is 7 miles, not 6. 1 mile is 5080 feet.
There was one where the wrong screw sizes were used in a window in the cockpit.
I saw a special on that accident. Interestingly, the pilot actually survived. His legs remaind inside the cockpit below the knees (his ankles actually caught on the control column, forcing it forward, and thus forcing the plane into a steep nosedive), and he was pinned to the outside of the fuselage. I saw it on "Mayday," on Discovery.
However, this was not due to rapid depressurization. When the cockpit window blew out, air was rushing directly into the cockpit at over 600 mph. Given that the cockpit is a closed environment, this caused a tremendous whirlwind effect in the tiny, closed space. The captain wasn't "sucked" out so much as "blown out."
A similar opening in the cabin, where the window is parallel to the airflow rather than perpendicular, wouldn't have nearly the same effect. Besides, Mythbusters broke this myth.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I have one of these, its not sharp enough to cut a person, nor hard enough to hold any cutting edge. You might be able to make a shallow stab wound if bone isn't in the way. It does look like a real knife from a few feet away though.
Mine came with a little metal ring through the hndle since "it was illegal to ship weapons to CA that wont set off metal detectors." I cut off the ring with wire cutters in 2 seconds...
And while some passengers don't get their masks on in time, others will help them. You pass out in 30-60 seconds, you don't die. That come a few minutes later.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The crew compartments of fighter and bomber aircraft are pressurized. The whole plane doesn't rip to sheds if it takes a bullet.
The case you mention of a misinstalled cockpit window is completely different and has no bearing on this.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The knock out gas is ok, if it works instantly.
The other idea, If the Hijacker's goal is to blow up the plane, he dosn't need to bring anything on with him, All he has to do is act badly enough to trigger the "Hijacker Wins!" option
A previous post mentioned makeing the cockpit a separate place accessible only from the outside, this is a good idea except you will have to make communication only one way, or the hijacker can threaten the pilot. The only cabin to cockpit comm should be a light that says "somthing has happend bad enough to make an emergency landing at the nearest airport" The crew can trigger it if someone has a heart attack or something in flight.
Unless there's actual penetration, of course.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
"Ice."
Watch Myth Busters.
"Derp de derp."
everyone on that plane will die, bcos the plane will depressurise.
Bzzt! Airplanes have masks that drop down automatically on depressurization.
The ones who survive total instant depressurisation
"Total, instant depressurization?" There's no such thing, save for the plane completely exploding. The air must bleed out a hole of some sort, and that will take at least several seconds, probably several minutes. It will not be "instantaneous."
at 60k feet
Holy crap, what airline are you flying on? "Air SR-71?" Airlines don't fly that high. Try cutting that number in half.
bcos no-one's flying the plane.
Except for the pilots, who are strapped into their seats and breathing through their oxygen masks, like everyone else.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Briefly. That event demonstrated that there's no reason to believe inaction will get you a better fate than action.
So you're one of those people who are relieved and dance in joy when gas falls from $2.60 back down to $2.49?
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
having these images apear on the internet would b one of the first step to showing what a sick chirade the entire security at airport scam has been.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Naive as it may be, unacceptable for me is requiring identification. Acceptable is requiring semi-intrussive searches such as this x-ray. I don't care if the fellow sitting next to me is named Sheikh Omar Kill-The-Infidels, Maxwell the Martian, or Bob Smith; what I care about is wether he is armed or has explosives. These xrays are not related to any database that any government or corporation has access to, it is not like a "no fly" list that doesn't work. Get rid of the "no fly" list, get rid of identification requirements, and INCREASE actual searches, as unobtrusively as possible for the majority of people and outright searches for anyone marked suspicious by the unobtrusive search.
As with many other problems, the answer is duct tape.
Simply let the passengers on board and then duct tape them to the chair. They can have all the weaponry with them they want.
It's a bad idea because it's a fucking stupid security idea
Tell that to the Isrealis who profile the heck out of passengers and never had a hijacking from one of their airports. And airplane hijackings were almost a monthly occurance in the mideast in the 70's. Profiling is a reasonably good idea and makes a lot more sense than the current screening of small children and the elderly.
And some people should randomly secretly get two or three, so it's impossible to force people to disarm...someone could still have a knife. Hide them all over the plane, too.
Or, if you want to be more plausible, how about a taser? Everyone gets a taser! With a thirty second recharge!
Completely impossible to take over a plane with. Trivial to use against someone taking over a plane.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Heh, by the book. I believe they're really sorry, they were probably just minimum-wagers following a procedures list, any deviation from which would incure their PHB's wrath, whos's also just a little guy afraid of what would happen to his job if the MIB hear of said deviation.
What a sorry little world we live in. Who wants to hitch a ride outta here, the next spaceship is flying by next Thursday.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I've used a handgun to stop the commission of a violent crime. A friend of mine has prevented a robbery with his legal concealed pistol. The police are no longer here to protect & serve, they are only around to detect & arrest after the fact. After the crime. There is no way the police can protect me or you or anyone else from all the scum out there. If you can't understand this then you aren't living in the same reality as the rest of us. Frankly my state government has taken some very proactive steps recently to make sure that the citizens of Florida are able to protect themselves if the need arises.
There is a war going on for your mind.
"That's great. Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying to enjoy what rights we have left, ok?"
Meanwhile, some would call that a knee-jerk reaction.
Frankly, I don't understand why you guys are worried about your 'freedom' to get on a plane. I mean, it's one thing for the gubment to want extra ID info and all that, it's another to bitch about whether or not you'd be seen naked at the security checkpoint. Big fucking deal. You should have the freedom to conceal your shame (and, in turn, weapons...) then board a pressurized metal tube with 300 other people travelling at ridiculous speeds?
I'm sorry, but I can't get on-board with this mindset, not with the lives of that many people at stake.
"Derp de derp."
is this really the question at hand? really? i mean, how many flights take place each day, and how many of them are hijacked?
more people's lives would be saved if we diverted some of this anti-terrorism money into things like drug rehabilitation, providing clean drinking water, improving car safety, all that hippie crap. seems like a bit of a stupid way to burn cash, seeing nudie people in airports.
Typically the mailbox isn't located up the drive.
WTF workign 60 hours a week and paying
"Assuming $640 (or even $1640) a month as living expenses"
640?$?$ for FOOD RENT GAS everything?!?!
hahahahahaha someone either lives with mommy and daddy or at a comfy subsudized univeristy. my rent alone is 600 a month. the cheapest place i could find would MAYBE maybe be 450$, and that would be living in a slum. then theres 30-50$ gas per week (gotta get to work somehow right?) car insurance (120$ month) food (good lord at least 150$ living on rice!) and what do you have? a shitty quality of life with no luxury items working 60 hours a week.
yeah what a life that would be.
I cant wait till you move out of your parents basement and get a real world. 11 or 12 dollars an hour is fucking change and will barely keep you above the poverty line. thats like 20-30k a year. god forbid your car breaks down or you have a large medical bill. spolied young adults like you make me sick.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
And all you knuckleheads who modded him up in the first place for spouting this ridiculous nonsense about a "right to fly" and contract law - go haze yourselves.
You're all fucking retards.
The last time I was at the airport it was 99% fat bastards, and .999999% skinny wankers, with the remainder being attractive people. Nobody wants to look at that much skanky unwashed airport ass to see one hot chick or hot guy. These things wont make it out of testing.
two points about that case:
- they were very very lucky
- somebody died..
Wow, yeah - and I'd definitely put a lot of faith in the post of an asshat who actually thinks that commercial airliners are even capable of reaching "60k feet", much less ever fly that high...
Sure, you could go to all the trouble of making weapons that disassemble, but you hardly need to do that when they're allowing fucking laptops on the plane. Look at one of those slim-ass Mac laptops, then look at a big bulky cheap PC one, and realize that the parts take up the same amount of space, and the big one just has a bunch of empty space in it.
Empty space surrounded by weird metal shapes. Gee, could you hide metal things in there? Could you remove parts and hide big things, like guns?
Yes, sometimes they make you turn it on, but that just means you need to be clever and remove the CD tray, hard drive (Boot a USB Linux distro.), and replace the battery with something that will run two minutes.
And there's no way they can keep razor blades off a plane if they allow anything made of metal and plastic, which is like 50% of the stuff we carry around. They can go next to your AA batteries, they can go behind metal slides of floppies, they can go inside your cell phone, they can go anywhere.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
rapid decompression isn't an immediate problem. explosive decompression, or decompression that occurs in less that 0.5 seconds is problematic. This is due to air decompressing faster than it can be expelled from the lungs. Hypoxia is a concern with both types of decompression In addition, explosive decompression tends to toss debris around, and introduce people to how cold it really is at 35,000 feet. It's also typically foggy due to the change in humidity.
Amen.
You know...I'm worried abit about all this X-Ray exposure...it isn't like this is a really SAFE technology. For someone that travels a lot, this could potentially be dangerous. I worked in radiology for awhile, and it is serious business. Are the going to outfit the TSA agents with full lead aprons? I prefer to only be irradiated when absolutely necessary for medical reasons....
Wonder when the first airport security cancer lawsuits will take place?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Fortunately, FAR Part 91 Section 211 mandates that no pressurized aircraft be operated at or above FL350 without one pilot on supplemental oxygen at all times, making the time between depressurization and donning an oxygen mask (during all but the shortest of commercial flights) pretty much irrelevant.
No it isn't. There are two problems, but this is not one of them:
First, it's a problem (from the airliners point of view) that people where afraid of flying after 11/9
You know, I honestly didn't get any further than this in reading your post.
You had three grammatical errors in the first two sentences (ending a sentence with a colon, failure to use an apostrophe correctly, and incorrect use of "where"), and then you got snooty about referring to the terrorist attacks on Sept 11th as 11/9.
Go away.
The police are no longer here to protect & serve, they are only around to detect & arrest after the fact.
And you don't see anything wrong with that? the shit you people put up with amazes me. Your government is there for YOUR benefit, as are its minions. YOUR taxes pay for them, and your civil obedience is another of the cost you pay to have your government serve you.
Yours is failing you in so many ways, and leaving you to pick up the pieces, so you and you friend stopped crime with guns. great. just dandy, and are you a trained professional with it? and are all the other citizens of florida you want armed?
Your state is failing to do its job, and telling you to sort it out yourself with guns, and you are applauding that!
three cheers for mob justice, let me know how that tarring and feathering goes for you lot...
or are u just happy to see me.. :p
Maybe he should take a car. Or a bus. Or a train. Or a carpool (redundant?). Hitchhike (where legal, but wouldn't that be a violation of my rights?!).
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
A rapid depressurization at high altitude in any plane can mean a number of people pass out and die before they have a chance to put on their mask.
True, but losing one window will not cause a catosrophic decompression. All airliners have ram air inlets that bring air into the air conditioning packs, and outflow valves that let air out. Coincidentally, these outflow valves are about the same size as a cabin window. If a window blows out, the crew will don their oxygen masks and then (typically the first officer) switches the outflow valves to manual control and closes them. Problem solved.
If for some reason the crew cannot put on masks rapidly then their capacity to react can become impaired due to hypoxia, even if the depressurisation is not rapid.
Hypoxia is very dangerous, no doubt, which is why when flying above 30,000 feet or so, if one pilot leaves the flight deck the other is supposed to put his oxygen mask on regardless.
Speaking of which, the masks that flight crews use are vastly different from the ones you see demonstrated in the takeoff safety announcement. They're a "quick release/quick don" style. Essentially, there is a tab that gets pinched with the thumb and forefinger to pop the mask out of its holder. This also inflates the mask; the "straps" for the mask are actually small tubes that fill up with air. The pilot places this over his head, releases the tab, and the straps deflate over the pilots head, giving him an airtight fit. These masks can be donned with one hand in under 5 seconds.
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?
I hope that you were joking. This was one of the dumbest ideas security-wise I've heard in this thread.
What if some suicidal nut decided to stab a few passengers before being himself stabbed to death?
Yes, sure.... he would not be able to take over the plane, but who cares? It's a loss the moment someone else dies because of the nutter.
If some group wanted to capture a plane, they would simply have to put enough men on a plane, weapons provided for free by the airline! And it wouldn't need to be a big percentage of the passengers. (How many John Does can your average commando overpower? A decent number I guess.)
GPG 0x1B479C78
I hate replying to my own posts, but a picture is worth a thousand words:
Flight crew oxygen mask
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?
Until your good friend goes "I thinks I saws something in der, better double check" and feels you up anyways.
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
They put national guard armed with m16s at the airports, funny thing was that they didn't have clips for their guns probably due to safety reasons. Heathrow(sp?) they parked tanks in front of the airport. Government knew full well that a no brigade of terrorists were going to come storming through, they were just feeding ignorance of the general populace and trying to invoke a sense of fear. How many times did terror alert rise in the US with no credible evidence? Its blatant fear mongering. There's no way a 9-11 could happen again, only reason why the first 3 planes succeeded is because people didn't know their lives were in immediate jeopardy. 4th plane passenger found out the fate of the previous 3 planes and proceeded jump the terrorists.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Maybe that had something to do with the poster being, apparently, Norwegian, and not American?
You seem to be ignoring the fact that the United States has one of the highest violent crime rates in the world. So what if the UKs crime rate went up, it would still put it well behind the United States.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
I agree it's silly. But why the hell are you making the ACLU the whipping boy?
It looks like now would be an excellent time to invest in a company that sells anti-Superman jogging suits (i.e. lead-lined clothing).
Must... get... picture... of... Michael Jackson... doing... community... service... at... the... airport... out ... of... my... head...
You sneak on the diesel fuel, I'll take care of the fertilizer.
Why not create a easywear jacket with extended
underpants, that more or less distorts the image
(similar to looking through a float glass). Apart
from this why not post process the image to identify
if the more intimate regions of the body are checked
against an expected reflectance value, and then
blurring the region before display. By this method
the privacy is maintained, and for advanced analysis
the company could regenerate the original image
from the saved image by complex image processing.
The overhead of wearing and removing the jacket
just adds few minutes to the scanning process.
Um, no, I'm not afraid at all. I think it's idiotic we're strip searching or looking through the clothes of anyone.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Poor guy won't go back to SFX for a while now....that is until he gets horny again
AS&E also has a "drive-by scanner" in a van, for covert scanning. This is a higher powered device than the BodySearch. "Although radiation exposure levels are below those specified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the ZBV is not certified as a personnel scanner. Customers planning to operate the system in stationary mode must obtain an exception from government regulations."
Slightly more practical is the RapiScan Secure 1000. It's less bulky than the BodySearch; it's only 80 inches high, so it can be installed with less trouble, although it weighs half a ton. And it only takes 8 seconds per scan. Like the BodySearch, it's a true backscatter X-ray machine, and produces good images through clothing.
Two more generations and these things will be in nightclubs. Here's a paper (in German) with picture of a cute girl seen with a BodySearch machine. So now you know what it shows.
What makes you think people ALLOW this? The fact is that many people who fly have no choice but to fly, whether it be for a job or an emergency. Given that for whatever reason you must fly, you're not in a position to allow or disallow anything.
Note: I am my own grandparent.
How is frisking any better? In my opinion it's still unacceptable, but it's less unacceptable because it's only done in select circumstances. If everyone who went through security got frisked, it would be just as much of a problem.
But as I said, still unacceptable.
Why...yes. Yes it is.
There's just to many things that go against this. I think this is a part of the shitty things that arre happening in our country. I'm not against it, but I don't understand why it's all of a sudden important. How many problems have they had in airports since 9/11? But see how all the security keeps getting stiffer.
This would have been much more sucessful, had they just implimented it, and never told anyone about it, like everything else they do. That they did not do it that way, makes me think there's a reason to let us know.
hmmm... what could that reason be...?
trade in the tin foil hats for full body suits.
it's less unacceptable because it's only done in select circumstances.
Just because it is done less often doesn't necessarily mean it's done in select circumstances. Even if it tends to be done in select circumstances, it doesn't mean it is not done otherwise; so far as I know there are no rules about when not to do it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yeah, every time another state debates a concealed-carry bill, hysterical people worry about all those people with guns losing their heads and getting into gunfights. And every time a state adopts concealed carry, it turns out that doesn't happen after all.
The reason Isreali profiling works is they know who their enemies are...all Palestinians, and most Muslims. Israel is much less mixed society than ours.
We have, gasp, black Muslims! We have Muslims with Jewish names. We have Muslims we don't know are Muslims, which is the kind of thing that happens outside a theocracy like Israel's.
We have 'known' Arabs and Muslims, even ones who disagree with the government, who are not terrorists, and we have terrorists we don't know have any issues with the government at all, and don't know they are Muslims.
We have, and this is possibly the most important thing, other kinds of terrorists.
Israel security works because of clear enemies, it works because their society has a lot more security restrictions to start with (especially for Palestinians), it works because they know they can't hijack a plane because the cockpit is locked and there are armed people on the plane.
It doesn't work because of 'screening', screening just keeps the optimistic idiots out.
And again for some reason 'hijackings' have been conflated with what we're fighting, terrorism, to make statistics look better. A simple airplane hijacking is not terrorism. Destroying an airplane, either with or without hijacking it first, is (almost always) terrorism.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
And here's a torrent location for that show.
I'm amazed at your restraint. I have no doubt that had it been me I would be in jail at this moment. I could not watch my son so frightened without acting.
Please understand that I don't mean anything personal against you, but that incident would be the end of my freedom. I'm positive.
So lets see:
Its not okay for a security gaurd to see your wife/daughter/gf, but it is okay to see you naked?
Well thats alright, and if you would rather see a women in your life end up on a hijacked plane and rammed into a building rather than spend 2 seconds walking through a scanner than thats your choice. You can choose to feel embarassed about it or not, but its your choice. There is a valid security risk, and this seems like a much better proceedure for detecting explosives and weapons than what we currently have, and whats the cost, some guy who makes 2x minimum wage (I suppose if he made 200x minimum wage that would be better) will get his jollies looking at your naughty bits? I Will you tell you this, the few hot chicks these airport screeners get to see, will be the few and far inbetween, because most of the public, for most people, need clothes on to look good, and they are going to have to look at them as well.
Overall, I am happy with this innovation travel security, and would welcome it at it earliest adoption. If some chick security gaurd/screener, wants to fanasize about me later, all the better.
As for the Constitutional Arguments, they are bit rediculous, the Constitution Clearly grants the Federal Government the right to regulate interstate commerce, and these insterstate and international flights look like Interstate commerce to me + when you are talking about National Security from a legitiamte military threat that has ALREADY HAPPENED 4 TIMES, the Government has always deemed to have the power to deal with these problems.
I know this wanders a little off-topic, but I think your suggestion of making the seats a little bigger and the flight more comfortable is an excellent one.
The thing is, this seems to go well beyond the issue of improving airline safety.... This, I think, is key to improving the success of public transportation in general!
The last time I rode Amtrack to Chicago, I was amazed at the run-down nature of the train car I was in. The seats weren't all that comfortable, but the fabric looked like it was literally rotting away. The "food car" looked like it hadn't been remodeled or rennovated since about 1950, and was pretty "bare bones" back then. The food selection was about the same as you'd expect out of a vending machine, except at higher prices. And to top it all off, we kept stopping in the middle of nowhere - adding at least a full hour to the length of time the trip should have taken. (Apparently, it was to allow other trains up ahead to do something or other..... but annoying!)
Then they wonder why they're going bankrupt? Come on people! When people's own cars are more comfortable to ride around in than taking a plane or train or whatever, something's wrong! Make the trip ENJOYABLE.
Correlation != causation. Israel has lots of other security measures that we don't.
No doubt this will get read by only one or two, since I entered into the discussion so late in the game.
Perhaps someone has even already suggested it... but why don't we simply fly naked? If security issues are so terrible that we have to be implement these outlandish meausres, why not simply make it impossible to carry anything on your person.
I envision a simple scenario. You check into the airport, where you are shown to a private changing area. You are issued a nice terry cloth robe and a pair of slippers and told to change into it. The clothes brought with you are held in special bags for re-issue once you arrive at your destination. After you change, you collect your carry on and continue throught the metal detector as usual. The difference now would be walking through would be a cinch. You've already taken off all metal objects, so the scanners could be set to a rather high sensitivity. The lines through the scanner would be quick, no more idiots having to walk through ten times removing one ring each time, no more removing of shoes to be put through the x-ray machine. Aside from all that, you'd feel like you were taking a nice trip to the spa in your sexy robe (no doubt emblazoned with corporate logos).
'The poets are strangely silent on the subject of cheese...' - Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Nice strawman.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Glocks have always showed up on both metal detectors and X-Ray machines. In addition to the 2 pounds of ordinance steel in the slide, the polymer frame shows up clear as day in an X-Ray. (the polymer frame also has numerous metal components within it, but I'll save you the technical dissertation) You need metal to make a gun, period. In addition, the ammo casings and bullets are metal as well.
Not checking grandma was specifically rejected in the US because there are grandma's who are terrorists. Some of the suicide bombers in Israel appeared to be normal grandma's until they set the bomb off and killed some people.
I personally work with a couple Muslims in the late 20s, and they are fine people. There is no more reason to believe they are terrorists than there is to believe grandma or I am one.
In fact profiling makes security WORSE! The terrorist only need a tiny number of people to achieve their goals. If you only target the 25 year olds who are, those people make sure they are clean and do nothing when they travel. They spend their time recruiting grandmas to do the dirty work. Remember there are millions of grandma's in the world, they only need a few willing to do the dirty work. It doesn't matter if half of all 25 year old male Muslims are terrorists (to pick something extreme), you cannot to anything about them if they are clean. In the mean time the 1 in a million grandmas are killing people because you are ignoring them.
Time to start wearing it
All this worry about passengers privacy.
What about showing a little pity for the poor TSA scanner operators that have to look at nekkid airline passengers all day. Have you taken a good look at what the average passenger looks like?
Another thought on airport security. Every time airline passengers have to take off their shoes at a security check, they and the TSA emplyees should be thankful that the shoe bomber didn't have his explosives hidden up his ass.
Hah.
NMG
El Al is a government owned airline in a country that spends a significantly higher portion of it's budget on defense than even the United States. Additionally, El Al operates a fleet of only a few dozen airplanes. The American aviation industry has hundreds of planes belonging to dozens of private companies with variable budgets.
Let us not forget that to board an El Al flight, you must go through a thorough screening process, including interviews with counter-terrorism experts, to determine your psychological state and to interrogate you about whether or not you are who you say you are. How can they afford to do all this? Once again, because they have a small number of planes and because they are funded by a wealthy government. El Al doesn't exist to make money, it exists to protect the lives of traveling Israeli nationals and visitors.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
Given the number of lines at the airport, I can always catch a glimpse of some screener's monitor as it x-rays someone's luggage. There aren't any signs or screeners saying, "you can't stand there."
What are they going to do? Install privacy blinders around the monitors or set-up remote viewing stations?
Screw the people... they're easy to replace. But planes cost money!
Seriously folks. Get some freaking perspective. These measures aren't to save you from the evil AQ terrorists (who've hit the continental US ONCE in the past 500 years), but to make the sheeple feel safe, and to pump lots of money into defense contractors and security product makers. Really, were I intent on causing death and destruction, I'd walk into an airport on a friday evening and toss some AP grenades into the air. Or I'd pack a shipping container full of C4 and old uranium from Russia and set it off in one of the many, many unprotected seaports. Or I'd find a nightclub, or a church, or a sporting event, or an ANYTHING. Do you see the pattern? Catch the key word? ANYTHING. It does't matter how many billions you blow on security, how invasive you are... there is ALWAYS a loophole, a weakness, a way. And that's exactly what the government is counting on. An unlimited source of fear, and fear is the tool. Today it's airports, next it's shipping, sporting events, libraries, coffee shops... they just have to pick one, make you afraid of it, and then spend the next 5 years pumping money into the industry in the name of Freedom(tm) and National Security(tm).
The key to understand is that THIS is how the Terrorists Win (tm). Not by blowing up a nightclub, or crashing a plane. The key word is "Terror", hence "Terrorists". A "Terrorist" is one who causes terror, and by causing terror, he wins. Some guys crash planes into buildings 4 years ago, and everyone is still afraid. They've won.
The battle is not over planes or money, the battle is over Terror. You make them more afraid of you, than you are of them. That's how you win. And you do that not by blowing the shit out of unrelated countries, but by undermining their base, making them weak, to the point where they know if they hit you, they'll have no support at all.
For example, "Hmm, Saudi Arabia, looks like you're closely allied with AQ to us. So, until you stop funding and stamp out AQ, we're not buying any more oil from you. Yes, it will hurt, but we'll find other suppliers, and this is the price we pay for sticking to our values".
So, let me predict how this particular issue will go. Govt: We want to see you nekkid! Sheeple: No, we will protest! Govt: Ok, we reluctantly agree to restrict our NekkidViewer to people who really, really deserve it. Sheeple: Yay! We've won! Government of the People, baby!
Meanwhile, no-one cares that their library records are recorded by the government, that there's a national biometric database, or cameras on every street corner. The government isn't stupid enough to think that we'll actually let them see us nekkid. It's just a carrot to dangle to the sheeple, to distract them from the real objective. And it helps keep eyeballs away from the real issue. After all, how many people would rather read about NekkidView than biometrics?
Todays score:
Terrorists: 1
Government: 1
People: 0
Have a nice day.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Hmmm. While I have never seen an actual image of the type of boxcutter used in the 9/11 sky-jackings (it's possible they were the rather rare straight-razor type, in which case I'm curious why they were allowed on in carry-on baggage in the first place), the standard boxcutter makes a pretty shitty knife too, from a threatening standpoint. I worked in several packaging places in my youth, and the linked type is the only one I ever ran into in the workplace.
That said, I've never understood how you could successfully high-jack a plane with one.....
Personally I'd rather wait until the color version is available... (maybe with a one-click auto-post of certain images might be nice)
As proven on the TV show MythBusters: Shooting a bullet through an airplane window in a pressurised cabin will not cause rapid depressurization of the cabin, air will escape through the bullet hole but the window will not explode.
/agree
There is no mass production of guns that cannot be detected by metal detectors, but there is such thing as a ceramic-based gun that can't be detected. The problem is that it is so delicate that only a few shots can be fired before you need a new gun.
Yes, exactly. Though the shadow of 9/11 blocks it out, people may remember stories about the rash of airline violence that has taken place outside of the terrorist situation. Adding handguns to the mix sounds like an awful idea to me, especially in the paranoid state American air passengers find themselves in today.
Wouldn't this also increase the cancer rate over your lifetime if you travel alot too?
"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on
Seriously though, this is just another argument about what people are willing to give up for (real or imaginative) security.
Next flight write something truly offensive above your crotch in aluminum paint. "FUGW" comes to mind. Perhaps 'No Entry' above your butt... especially if you're flying to SF... or maybe 'Entry In Rear' if you lean that way. Lots of fun to be had. Mess with their pointy little heads - the mind you twist will appreciate it. Honest!!
your ass would appear shaved.
As someone watching from outside (ie non-USian), the slippery slope is far, far behind you. You're now in the Crisco coated grain chute. Any hope of derailing the current trend of personal freedom/privacy loss is likely long, long past.
What really disturbs me is how easily the US government is pulling other countries down the same route....
Since all of these scanners have a signature what happens when somebody rigs a device that activates 1 on scan 2 X time after the scan 3 and causes the scanner to shutdown ? or how about a PHS programmed staff member? News at 23:00 time???
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
If keep the door sealed, that 8-year-old girl dies. Yes... very tragic and all.
But if you OPEN the door, she dies anyway. And so do you, everyone else aboard the plane, and hundreds or thousands of people when the hijackers reach their target.
Sure, it's a shitty decision to have to make. But at the end of the day, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few... or the one. And I WOULD want pilots with the kind of detachment necessary to make the right call, even when it's that difficult, flying the plane.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Awesome! Now I can show my balls to the airport security people without going to jail! Maybe when one of the female TSA reps sees my package she'll ask me out!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just curious....you think that grandparents and children should never be searched? Seriously?
So all a terrorist needs to do is enlist someone over 60 or under 10 to carry their guns/explosives/etc. onto the plane for them? Or better yet, someone else's grandparent (how many old people are that attentive to their carry-on luggage)?
I'm not saying that it makes sense to be strip-searching 80-year olds and 3-year-olds, but if you're going to strip-search 18-year-olds and 45-year-olds, you damn well better be searching everyone, or the entire exercise is pointless.
Computers can already land airplanes. It is a short step to pre-program the computer to fly the plane the entire way and have passangers in the cockpit.
Hijack? Sorry, the flight path can only be programed when the engines are off. Flight control is handled by computers using strong encryption between planes. Human pilots are not allowed on the runways computer controlled aircraft use, so the planes just decide landing/takeoff orders themselves.
Mind several redundant systems are required to do this. And I want the strong encryption reviewed by experts, not snake oil salesmen. Still humans are not perfect either.
As long as the screeners are naked too.
It's not the *people* that are demanding this, it's the government. Sure, more people are murdered in DC every year than can fit on a 747, but land that 747 on the White House or the US Capitol, and you'll find out whose life is worth more (in the government's eyes).
I'm not passing judgement on this, but a hundred dead civilians concerns people a lot less than a hundred dead senators.
Get yourself elected then you get to skip all the invasive security and go through VIP security check which is the white glove treatment. That's on those rare times when you're flying commercial instead of being whisked around in private jets by lobbyists and companies looking for favors.
I maintain one of the big reasons crap like this goes on is that Congress never sees it. They never have to mix with us little people so they're never subject to that long, long wait in the security line. So it's no surprise when TSA tells them that the wait is acceptable to most people. It's a lie, but how would they know?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Time for tinfoil underwear.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
The answer to this security check point crap? General Aviation. Get yourself a pilot's license and fly anywhere you want to almost any airport you want with no baggage restrictions, no lines, no security bs. The sky's no longer the limit!
Stop dreaming, start flying! Be a pilot.
http://www.beapilot.com/
Someone with a gun would get stopped by metal detector in either of the lines.
Dunno how you'd hijack a plane with a freaking knife after 9-11.
a) Air Marshals are on only a very small minority of flights.
b) Humans are, well, human.
People are both afraid of personal danger and they're afraid of doing anything that would allow harm to come to others. A hijacker that killed one or two people quickly might have a lot of success at getting others to do what he wishs them to do, possibly even a pilot. I know a hijacked plane would be much more likely to go the way of the Pennsylvania 9/11 plane today, but it's far from a certainty that it couldn't be successful.
TW
If I had my choice, I would say kill a hundred senators, not a hundred civilians. In fact, do it when they're trying to pass legislation to allow cock-scanners in airports :)
I know how you can use a nail clip to cut someone. You probably couldn't kill anyone with a nail clipper easily but you can certainly put them in pain, which is all a terrorist needs.
Maybe that used to be the case, but it certainly isn't now.
I doubt that a single hijacker with a handgun could take a large jet these days.
These days if someone tried to hijack a jet they would have to fight at least half the cabin... to the death...
Look around on your next flight, do you think you could take them with a nail clipper (or even 15 rounds before you reload)?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
B-17s were unpressurised war planes, designed to take heavy fire, that flew much slower and gnerally lower than modern jets. So if you pullled a gun and went nuts on one it wouldn't be a problem. If you and your NRA buddies shot up a Jumbo, I'd rather not be around, thanks.
It's the buzzword effect. It turns off the parts of the brain responsible for critical analysis. "Terrorism" is probably the most powerful buzzword ever invented, edging out even "for the children".
... crap, I think I just invoked Godwin's Law :/
;)
As to relative odds, your chance of dying in an accident in your own home is far greater than your chance of being murdered (in your bed or elsewhere). So with safety in mind, lets ban individual houses, and all live in nice safe enclosures
As to your high-contrast message (an excellent idea! Do come back and let us know when you do it!) I suggest putting it square across your ass, so they're forced to take a good close look if they want to read it.
[Wondering if metallic "temporary tattoo" ink would work]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"Hear, hear," not "here, here."
"Plane," not "plain" -- it's a contraction of "airplane."
Google for Backscatter XRay and you can see all sorts of sample images these devices can take. Anything organic shows up in bright white with plastics, metals, etc showing up as darker shades of grey.
Apparently they were trying to get around the x-rated picture issue by covering the image of the body with a silhouette so you could not see any detail of the body itself. Not sure how they accomplish this or how well it works though.
You really can't see that much.
Yeah, how disappointing. The headline said X-rated, I'm not sure this even qualifies as PG-13.
"We're not alowed to touch him at this point or we'll be handed to security for resisting"
I don't think that random checks are all evil. But that you can't hold your child while they pat him down... motherfuckers.
What if you are the guy with the gun end up killing a child when you miss and perhaps shoot ome holes through the hull endangering everybody's lifes even more than they already are. Chances are the terrorists are much better at shooting then the ordinary citizens with guns even the ones who are "trained."
I have a bicklebrush growing in my front yard. Yeah, its spines rip your clothes every time you go by, but it keeps the tigers away.
You don't see any tigers in my yard, do you??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
They are probably using Teraherz Imaging, not X-Rays to screen people. X-Rays are ionizing radiation. Their use comes with a lot of regulatory restrictions.
The body emits radiation in the 0.1 THz - 4 THz spectrum which can be picked up by Teraherz imaging devices.
Teraherz frequencies are non-ionizing and are located below the IR light spectrum and above the RF spectrum. 1 THz = 1000 GHz. Teraherz imagers will work with or without a Teraherz emitting source. Teraherz energy will pass through the body like X-rays, but the body also emits it's own energy which passes through clothing and can be picked up with a Teraherz imager.
for underwear which has a high contrast on these things.... Maybe ceramic-composite plates similar to those used in certain types of body armor....
Honestly... This is fundamentally *bad* technology. If it can easily be manipulated, it is even worse technology.....
Honestly, we are setting ourselves up to be more vulnerable rather than less. A tightly organized terrorist group could cause *more* damage to the US using very little force than they could prior to Sept 11th. Consider the following scenario:
1) Terrorists engage in a large number of fake plots. Maybe leaving luggage stuffed with weights and paper in airport restrooms, giving annonymous tips about ships importing produce being contaminated with chemical and/or biological agents, etc. As a result air traffic is largely shut down in this country, as are produce imports.
2) Once people discover that these are all hoaxes, a real attack is set off somewhere. Security is either distracted or not taking it seriously. So the damage is greater. THis could be kept up for a while. Bear in mind that the goal of terrorism is to scare us into being manipulated. We are well on the way to giving them that.
What we need to do is focus on how to minimize the impact of attacks and then work carefully to find political ways to cut terrorists off from their support base. Prevention is less important than containment.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
My first thought on that is... I don't believe them.
If all you can see is a "silhouette", then why can't I hide a low-density weapon flat against my body, visible only as part of the silhouette?? Hell, just fit it to my ass crack or my cock and it should be hidden along with the biological "detail".
The problem is that either it *has* to see these "details", or it is not effective (and someone is selling us a line of snake oil).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
if only there were a way to get from one place to another before there were planes! i want the idiot who wrote the parent post to get a brain, and do a little thinking. try it sometime, though it may hurt you the first few times.
To furhter nit what was probably a typo, a mile is 5280 feet. Unless you're somewhere that feet are longer than normal :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Someone with a kid, after the first time you go through one of these machines, charge the TSA with distributing child pornography. That ought to stop it. (Is there an emoticon for cynicism???)
Bring big obvious knives or guns onboard planes anyways? It seems to me that boxcutters were at one point in time OK to bring onboard because of their innocuous appearance. If there is a next terrorist plot, who is to say they will bring something obviously weapon-like onto a plane?
There is no X-Ray machine or airport security person that will catch someone determined enough. As someone previously posted, having a locked pilot chamber, and a tazer (or other non-airplane puncturing subdual device) armed guard on the plane is the best way.
Meet new people, and kill them.
Before the parent gets moderated the rest of the way to oblivion I just wanted to point this nugget out:
You'd have to be a pretty big Pollyanna to believe that removing all security at the airport will result in safer air travel.
This has got to be THE best example of a strawman fallacy that I have ever seen!
And the Iris scanner project, like the one currently being tested in Halifax airport!
And finger-print scanners!
And RFID chips in my passport, clothing, arm, etc.!
And unconditional wire-tapping authority by the FBI, CIA, Police, etc.!
And libraries, banks, the postal system and international travel organizations (among others) keeping tabs on the things I see, think and do, and being forced to report to law enforcement agencies!
And unconditional powers of arrest for suspected crimes based on no evidence and an easily applied 'Enemy Combatant' label!
And torture to derive needless/useless information should I be arrested for being suspected of being suspicious and generally mouthy!
And over-enthusiasm among the police resulting in things like lethal taser misuse and power-tripping cops!
And jail systems owned by corporate entities which make PROFIT by keeping and employing prisoners!
And Neocons who either don't see or who are profiting from the climate of artificially constructed FEAR!
And. .
Get out now. Everybody knows it's here and that it's going to get worse. Looking the other way will only get you killed. Fascism is real.
-FL
itll be circulating in irc channels under
#voyer
hilarious, we will be able to see
penis rings and nipple rings!
Handguns are heavy. To make it easier to carry one around all day, Glock designed a line with some parts made of plastic rather than metal to make them a little lighter. It worked so well that now many handguns from other manufacturers have plastic frames.
;)
Not so sure about the "Glock deisgned a line with some parts," but you could be right. Certainly modern glocks are just as heavy, if not heavier than other modern pistols. In fact, the modern glock is actually mostly metal, with the exception of the receiver (lower portion of a pistol, below the slide) and grip. The barrel is, as any reasonable person would assume, completely metal. I am not sure if there are any other manufactured materials in existance that are both strong enough and flexible enough to withstand the compression wave. Certainly none are inexpensive enough.
May I suggest sunblock?
"That's why the entire TSA is a farce. It's purpose has never been to increase the security of the travelling public, but rather to preserve our conditioned docility..."
:/
Your statement would be more accurate if you'd stopped at that point. IMO, whether our gov't can "protect" us or not isn't really the issue, just the excuse.
How would the gov't "protect" us if someone drove along a busy freeway dropping homemade grenades out the window -- scan every car as it entered the freeway? What about dropping a few dead rats into a water main -- should we shut off the public water system so this can't happen? There's no end to the fun if you're a really creative terrorist, because there's no way to "protect" everyone from an imaginative attack.
But you can frighten all the sheep into wanting to be "kept safe". On second thought, that now seems to be the government's job
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Or so my brother-in-law, an air marshall tells me. He said that there were hijackers inside the cockpit as student pilots. Who knows?
He did have a good idea, though - instead of taking steak knives away from everyone, the flight attendants shold be at the door, handing everyone who boards a steak knife. I know that wouldn't work for a variety of reasons, but it sounds good, if only at a visceral level.
...And to think that some people claimed there was no way Jar Jar Binks would have been elected senator!
Just watch real world parlaments!
No sig for the moment.
Five years ago when I submitted it.
2 5&tid=126
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/30/19572
I just think that killing one passanger is far from sufficiant to hijack a plane these days...
I am assuming that if the objective of the action is to kill one or two people, it would be more easily accomplished on ground. If the objective is to take over a plane, you will need the ability to kill or otherwise incapacitate a large number of people.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Yes, but have you ever flown El-Al? It's miserable. Completely miserable. The screening process is painful - the last time I flew through Israel on the way to Africa, (and the last time I ever will) getting through security in Israel took about two hours, with the security questions and the bag searching and the unending waiting in line.
I would imagine that in a country like Israel, this level of security might make sense. But the idea that American airlines should be more like El-Al in their security proceedures is rediculous. I'd do everything I could to keep from flying if I knew an experience like El-Al's security screening was waiting for me at the airport.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Looks like Michael Moore might have a future as a homicide bomber...oh wait, he already did that. :-)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Thanks for my first laugh-out-loud moment of the day.
If I remember correctly, lighters (and lighter fluid) have always been banned from checked baggage because of the different air pressures and temperatures they may be exposed to during flight.
I used to work for an airline before 9/11 and we had to tell people to take out their lighters and put them on their carryon baggage
No sig for the moment.
I'd hate to see the names they rejected for this.
"OK, we've got it down to Rapiscan, Violatron, or Nip-L-sniff."
The PDF link seems to be dead, but the HTML link still works:p rivacy-deathof.htm
http://personal.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Anybody know why they'd have to specify that as being ok?
At one point somebody thought terrorists could smuggle aboard destructicons and then build devastator??
technically, as i recall, this "x-ray" machine actually uses 1mm microwaves, not x-rays.
Here we go again. When this story broke a few days ago, the news kept saying "triple-x rated". I think not. What, these machines are actually going to show passengers in sexually explicit behaviors? No, at WORST they're going to be standing there naked which, in the right context, can even get you on PBS during primetime -- this is completely nonsexual in nature.
It's NUDITY folks. Not artistic, not even medical. Is this necessary for airline travel? Well that's a different point than the one I'm arguing. Let's understand the ratings system before we start throwing it around as criticism.
RP
Yup, looks like we have a Fox News watching hillbilly on our hands...
"If they hadn't done picked on your child, they'd have been fired." (grandparent)
Yessuh, if they dun hadn't picked on yer whippersnapper, y'alls woulda been farred!
technically, as i recall, this "x-ray" machine actually uses 1mm microwaves, not x-rays.
woops didn't mean to post as AC
No, they're Kevlar. Kevlar-jacketed rounds are not common armor-piercing loads. I saw one my ex-boss bought after being attacked on a plane, since it was their only chance to catch him unarmed. He assured me it passed through detectors unnoticed. It was weird--so light, it felt like a toy to hold. Perhaps he may have had to customize it to achieve this.
1) jimmah
2)
i'm going to wear a tinfoil cup!
I work at an airport and get scanned by metal detectors many times every day. They claim the radiation from them is minimal. How about the radiation from those x-rays? I don't want cancer just because some guys want to see me naked!
This is my recent experience through airport security:
Trip as from Vancouver (canada) to Toronto to New York. The tighest security was when I was leaving Vancouver, even the rivets in my Jeans set the metal detector off. Seeing this I got quite paranoid over the Toronto stop-over to get to New York, well it was all unfounded, I walked through the metal detector with my watch and wallet on me, and not a peep from the metal detector.
How can someone justify spending who know how much on these new machines when the current ones aren't even being used properly!
On the bright side, this ought to cut down on the Attractive Travelling Companion* delay.
*i.e. whenever I am fortunate enough to travel with an attractive woman, we have to arrive an hour earlier, as she's inevitably subjected to further rounds of search. Have any of you noticed this as well?
Seriously, no matter what airport you go to, you wouldn't want to see 95% of the patron's in a bathing suit, much less x-ray nudes. Besides which, if there are underage folks going through those machines, then it would be considered child pornography, in all likelyhood.
This is the first time I noticed this, but the standard for conviction is considerably lower in England than in the U.S. To be found guilty in the U.S., the conviction must be unanimous 12-0. The two charges that stuck were both decided 10-2 and the article I read implied that a majority was all that was needed.
It also seems that the burden is much higher in England than in the U.S. to use self defense.
The guy should have been convicted of weapons charges, period. Yet he was never charged with that offence. The burglars got what they deserved. What should he have done, in the middle of the night, with 3 burglars having broken in, without lighting to see the burglars, without knowing how many, if they were armed, if they intended to harm him? I think he did the right thing. Was the man a paranoid loon? It isn't paranoia when they really are out to get you. He obviously knew, as many in England do, that the police are less and less empowered to protect people. The criminals know this. The fact that 3 men broke into an occupied home at night shows the guy, while a bit strange, was not paranoid. He was dead right. It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. In this case, they tried, and he was able to protect himself and his property. If the criminals, on their combined 114 previous convictions were in jail, this never would have happened.
If I knew the Airport was giving free passes to say under 5 year olds and I was a terrorist, I would have no problems strapping a bomb to my 5 year old. We both end up in heaven with 21 virgins. Since my 5 y.o. isn't old enough yet I get 42 out of the deal.
I was lectured by an American how flying is a privilege and not a right. Therefore no-fly blacklists are a ok.
The same goes for driving a car.
The same goes for traveling in a train, or in fact any kind of public transportation.
The same goes for using the Internet or the telephone system.
These are PRIVILEGES, not RIGHTS. Is this true, what this republican american told me?
If so, you're soon going to have loads more blacklists with no people able to do anything but walk. And not on public roads at that. Using public roads is a privilege. Not a right.
There's a disturbingly large subsection of the male human population that would prefer Roseanne Bar.
If they couldn't accommodate that, I would not fly.
I agree with the general sentiment that all these invasive searches suck.
That said, de-pressurization at altitude is a serious situation, but should be survivable by most of the passengers most of the time. I would think that people with medical conditions might well suffer serious injury or die, but that is certainly not a forgone conclusion.
One friend used to fly an airplane that would commonly experience catastrophic de-pressurization events at 25,000 feet (it was a turbo-charged piston twin). There were never any injuries, although it probably isn't the most pleasant way to spend your day.
old
http://DiabloHeat.com | http://Kyle.TheOCSucks.com | http://TheOCSucks.com
'Think airport security is bad enough already'
no. US airport 'security' is a slow joke that scares people from other countries and yet ignores major security breaches.
LAX has *one* major screener, no attempt to have a process, rather a general hullabaloo, no 'where am i in the system', but bluster and false positives a-go-go. People wander out of the queue (line) and greet friends who've been screened, randoms from god-knows-what-US-state look amazed when their bag is searched yet I watch people *repack their bag after it was screened*
Every other country has had for years a sensible, non-intrusive (as a foreign national at a US hub i was finger-printed, retina-scanned and my photo taken) and rational systems.
You are still living in 1932, grateful that air-travellers land, and amazed when they aren't US citizens
Get more serious, get less inappropriate, and deal with modern hub- and spoke- travel, or people won't fly to you anymore.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
You make a valid point about the random mall searches. It's not just about airport security. It is also a way to check for security. A CA city councilman was busted for a nickel of pot. (A nephew took the rap.)
A search warrant works like this. Police go before a judge and get a warrant for weapons. They search your house & don't find any but they did see some pot. They have to go back to the judge and get another warrant. Then they can bust you for the pot. Airport security is an open ended search warrant. Remember this was put together by the same minds who thought eliminating the $1,000- bill would impact the cocaine business.
We have become the countries I was taught to hate, Cummunist Russia and Nazi Germany.
20 years ago I read in a computer book that for every security system 1 person can build there is another person equally as clever to figure a way around it. This was published before teenagers were hacking into the Pentagon computers.
AND no plane will be able to be hyjacked in the future. It's no longer just a change in itinerary. There will always be at least a dozen guys on any plane that will fight back against any hyjackers.
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT before it happens. A hyjacker is holding a knife to a baby's throat. He will say don't stop me or I will kill the baby. What are you going to do???
Stolen from beforeonetime by soobvious.
Kandi Rocks.
It's bad! = small penis!
:)
It's good = smaller penis!
toasty
A blog I run for the wealth
I notice that privacy and rights and whatnot are being fully discussed, but I haven't seen any discussion of the fact that we're talking eeeevil killer unclean RADIATION. Maybe that's a hopeful sign, but at the same time I do want to know that it'll be darned difficult to accumulate a significant dose from these scans if I ever become a frequent flyer.
Agreed, requiring nude flying (and no carry-on luggage) will pretty much eliminate the whole issue of searches. Well, except for those daring enough to stuff body cavities with explosives and weapons.
I remember this on the BBC program `Tomorrows world`.
:`( Guess I would have had a bloke though :( There is no consolation.
The two presenters came on, one male and one female. The female looked nothing unusual. But then I nearly blurted out "What's that consealed in his pants!". I'm suprised it aired but thought it was hilarious. What a child I am.
On a more serious note,
when entering Nepal in a large group 2 girls got taken aside. I had already gone through. As I looked back I saw a stainless steel table and a lady in uniform donning a latex glove. I kid you not! Why them?
- Why not me
So for them the technology would have been preferable.
It's certainly interesting if you already know how to make a gun out of a BritishAirways pillow and a plastic fork.
A blog I run for the wealth
I love it. Excellent idea.
http://www.downsizedc.org/read_the_laws.shtml
I Totally Recall seeing this before somewhere.
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
You make some pretty strange assumptions when it comes to carrying handguns.
First of all, I'll state that I live in Texas so my opinions on this subject should be somewhat unsurprising. But consider living in an area where traffic is always screwed up and people never seem to understand what "the passing lane" is for.
Now you'd think that the ability to carry a handgun legally in this state and routine road-rage would equate to someone's grandmother going on a shooting spree. So far, I haven't heard of any... have you? There just hasn't been a lot of incidents surrounding people being shot that way. In fact, crime seems to had dropped significantly in areas where people are known to carry.
I think your worries are exaggerated greatly.
There's no way to make anything hijack-proof. Shit is going to happen. I'd rather give everyone a fighting chance than to see them go down helpless.
What then would be unacceptable?
Almost by definition, every change is always going to be "just on the acceptable side", because it will always only be marginally worse than the current status quo, which people have already gotten used to and thus have already accepted as being totally the "norm". People have remarkably high tolerance, almost unlimited, to absymal conditions as long as they've gotten used to something as being "normal".
Each change represents only a marginal decrease in your rights. It will always be accepted. That's why there are "slippery slopes", and they're not imaginary, they're very real. Even the mere threat of something previously totally unheard of (e.g. the idea that anyone should be allowed to see you naked "for security reasons") is enough to start psychologically "normalising" the concept. An hour ago, it was just unheard of and "shocking" to me, but now I've already come to terms with this "new reality" as something I'll have to put up with when I travel again. By the second or third time I go through the scanners, I'll think it's 100% normal. And any children growing up now will live in such a world entirely and never realise that it was ever any other way. But there will be many more "marginal" changes coming still.
Everyone has a right to privacy. That should be so obvious that I find it something of a marvel that there are even people dumb enough to even consider that it might be debatable. Privacy is like almost everything else in our lives - it has countless positive and healthy uses, and a miniscule percentage of shady uses.
We all know this isn't really going to help combat terrorism either.
But I think that if there were a non-toxic, not-terribly-expensive KO gas, it would be normal policy to KO all passengers for any flight. Imagine the economy on catering. Or peanuts :-) What *is* the thing with airlines and peanuts anyway???
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I have it on good information that suicide terrorists may be planning to use women with plastic explosives hidden inside tits, or breast implants! You can feel them out because they're a bit harder than normal tits and tell them apart!
Be sure to check those tits on chicks!
"RE: Who wants to see everything?"
Widespread advertising of such screener capabilities is bound to boost employee retention,
already a real problem for the TSA. Such xray vision capabilities is bound to attract more job applicants (,never mind that these "might not be" the type of employee that the TSA really needs). The Dubya regime is doing all in its power to keep the Federal Employee union out of the TSA -- the pay and working hours suck, the screeners' job can be shifted from airport to another on short notice, and the TSA is already threatening to outsource these positions to lowest bid government contractors.
Instead of focusing on having motivated, professional Federalized screeners, the TSA would rather spend their money on underlying (and often non-functional) technology. And while our borders, seaports, and air cargo go largely unsecured and under-inspected, the TSA is ready to roll back the clock to pre-9/11/2001, when the airports themselves were responsible for their own security. (That worked out well before, didn't it?)
The nation's air travellers are already being subjected to groping screeners, stolen baggage from proportedly "secure" areas, and worst -- all while the airport ground crews pass straight through locked security doors. Every time there is a more thorough background check run on these screeners and the ground crews, more criminals & illegal aliens are discovered to be employees.
The whole problem boils down to the fact that neither the Dubya regime nor the neo-cons in charge of Congress was to see in increase in the number of Federal employees, especially Federal employees that demand the right to unionize. It is not hard to predict that 2 years from now, there will be no Federal employees in the TSA who are security screeners -- they will all be underpaid, non-motivated employees of private government contracters.
Deja vu, all over again.
I don't have a "wife/girlfriend/daughter" you insensitive clod. So I'm all for seeing everyone else's. Terrorists will be able to get around this by using very ugly people so that the screeners may glance away from their monitor to avoid losing their lunch.
And what exactly is the difference between this and a strip search? The humiliating part of a strip search is being naked infront of people you dont know.
That's exactly what this is minus the taking the clothes off part.
As it is, I'm already concerned each time about what would happen if it was noticed by security, even without the x-ray devices.
In a sense though, there is a part of me that would enjoy this if I was more comfortable about it, i.e., if there was less of a social stigma about excretory function and medical "abnormalities."
In that case, I would love to empty the contents of the bag in the hands of the security person so they could "examine" it! :-)
(Evil? Sure. So since I'm evil, all the more reason to need to examine me huh? :-) )
Seriously though, I already avoid air travel as it is, whenever possible, due to the current degree of intrusiveness in the name of false "security."
(Posting anonymously, for what is probably an obvious reason)
That's why I take the train everywhere.
Another problem is that even if you can stop people from taking a knife aboard. How can you prevent them from breaking some hard object while in midflight turning it into a dangerous knife? You would have to no longer allow glass, plastic, aluminum, and countless other materials to prevent someone from quickly and easily creating a sharp object in flight. Even after that people can use strings of cotton or their belts to choke people.
I think airport security has gone a little to far on the sharp objects issue. I hope this doesn't take their focus off of firearms and explosives.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
That's a tough call. On one hand, I think this new technology solves the problem of strip searches and groping of female passengers. But on the other hand, it's almost the same as strip searching.
But let's say a woman wearing a berka is being escorted by a suspicious man. Which scenario is more preferable:
1. Pulling those two out of line and publicly humiliating them. Then furthering the humiliation to the man and the woman by giving the woman a thorough pat-down. Then furthering the humiliation by requiring a strip search of the woman.
OR
2. Never having to speak to the suspected woman/man, but having them walk through this x-ray machine just like everyone else.
I think option 2 is the lesser of two evils. Sure, it violates some personal privacy, but isn't it worth it for airline security? I mean, it's not like their doing this in grocery stores or other public places (not yet at least). Just think of it like going to get a physical. You have to get naked for the doctor if you want to stay healthy. So this is the same: you have to get naked to stay alive in the sky.
Health Insurance Quotes
Perhaps this is because of the purpose terrorism was invented for. After all the main goal is not to destroy a few buildings or kill some people, but to introduce fear. And until now thus scheme has been perfectly successful. The way to win the "war" against terrorism is to stop the fear, not to increase it by constantly introducing new expensive and inefficient security measures.
1. kids being shot in schools in Russia? you gotta be kidding? you mean columbine is not in the USofA?
2. it's (your rights) online, not your (rights online).
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
"And it's strange that anyone from the UK would be able to post to this discussion without feeling some kind of shame, haven't your camera operators already been disciplined for using them to ogle women?"
Okay I am that person. The camera operators get to see me naked, big deal. My doctor can too. Sitting in front of a computer both at home and a work means my body isn't that exciting anyway.
You have got to grow up about it. Nudity does not always have to be sexual. Take a sauna in Finland where you get to sit with naked old relatives. You soon learn that all nudity is not sexual!
As someone already pointed out, with the alternative being a cavity search, bring on those X-rays.
Back to the guns, the only people I have ever seen with guns are clay-pigeon shooters and Heathrow cops. I like it that way.
Don't forget that Britain is very small with a huge amount of people. I live in one of the biggest cities in Europe and in seconds dozens of police can be here. Do I need a gun? No.
In England it is quite simple, if you own a handgun then you are breaking the law. This makes things very simple. It also means that some criminals are less likely to carry guns since the police here stop and search certain groups (Black, Irish, Muslims) very often indeed (but without Xrays). It is very sad and unfair that certain groups get picked out but it gets the job done apparently.
I am sorry that you think that I have to be ashamed to be from the UK. I realise that it is a sin not to be born American, I repent profusely. All I can say to that is we don't need guns when we have George Galloway...
My little Linux and tech blog
Do they know how safe repeated scanning is for frequent fliers? What do they know about the effect of this technology on pregnant women and their unborn children?
Julia Cameron
Oich ù agus hiùraibh éile
Dunno how you'd hijack a plane with a freaking knife after 9-11.
Those safety cards which describe what to do in the event of a water landing should include another leaflet that says, "If a couple guys try to take over the plane with knives, beat the hell out of them. There are 130 of you."
There are no "federal concealed carry permits"
Acutally, Congress passed a bill recently that allows retired police to carry concealed weapons outside of their home state, even if the state they are visiting does not otherwise allow the concealed carry of weapons. This could conceivably be called a federal concealed carry permit, but it's not for citizens so it doesn't really pass muster.
Now, I bet the Secret Service guys have federal concealed carry permits. I don't think they unstrap and unload and protect the President with brass knuckles, just because they enter Illinois or NYC or some other place that does not allow its subjects to carry concealed.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
The 9/11 planes were allegedly taken over with fucking BOX CUTTERS. Basically, someone determined enough to take down a plane, bomb a facility, etc., WILL DO SO. What we're not asking ourselves is "why are these people supposedly targeting us?"
...I think this would go a long way in making our flights more secure, without having to resort to privacy encroachment methods.
Somewhere else in this thread
Sorry, but I'm not all for the little screener monkeys looking at my wife - even in shitty false color 3d - in the nude (I'm jealous, sorry). Nor do I want them looking at me (cause nobody wants to see that).
This does NOTHING to promote security, just like the RealID thing does NOTHING to prevent 'more terrorism'.
Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ. All the government does is whisper "terror" (Sorry, 'terra' as GWB says it), and the majority of this country cries in fear, "remembrance", and "Never Forget 9-11!" cries.
Statistically, four times as many people are murdered each year in this country. Where's your hue and cry for 'more security' in our schools, government buildings, etc. in regards to our own people?
If you're an American, the privilege of living in a free country is the chance that not everyone will live like you. I, for one, would rather give up human lives instead of the original spirit behind this country.
Yes, that includes mine or my family's. The greater good - the society that COULD be the US, or the potential we have if we get this damned government straightened out - is worth some agony, bloodshed, and revolt.
Why are you all so willing to just bend over and ignore this? US Foreign Policy and the general American attitude towards the rest of the world is the largest reason we're reviled by the rest of the world. They only tolerate us because we're the rich quarterback - we'll bring the money and the chicks to the party, but don't piss us off, or we'll punch you.
Meh. Sometimes I'm ashamed to be born and raised in this country, when the attitude displayed by 90% of the people I encounter is the one you've displayed -- willful ignorance, and undeserved national arrogance.
Does she have hairy ass?
and many other things are always going to be a pain in the ass until the US/Europe take a good hard look at their atrocious 57 year old middle east policy. Made even worse in 1967.
Actually, I happen to have had an opportunity to do a little research on the radiological characteristics of these particular two systems. I won't tell you why, and I won't tell you who for, and I won't tell you in what capacity, but I have spent a good amount of time looking into this particular thing. A few things to know about these machines:
1)They are *not* medical-style X-rays.
2)The emission rate from these systems is on the order of 3-5 microrem per scan.
3)There exists an ANSI standard that was created specifically to deal with these types of devices (ANSI N43.17)
4)If you look into the National Council for Radiation Protection and Measurements Report Number 116, you will find a section on "Negligible Individual Dose." This is a dose below which the chance of harmful effects is effectively zero. These machines are well within the NID.
5)If you look into NCRP's Report Number 93, you will find a representative cross-section of average radiation exposures to persons in the US. Being searched with these systems is safer than drinking tap water for a year.
6)Also extrapolating from NCRP 93, one can find out that being searched with these systems imparts a radiation dosage roughly equivalent to cosmic radiation exposure from flying in an airplane for 10 minutes or so.
Seriously, not a thing to worry about from a radiological standpoint.
Mod parent up! This is very insightful. Do you think people are going to want to have their wives scanned in such a manner?
Ice is a myth. There was an episode of Mythbusters where they tried to make ice bullets, but they were just too brittle. They couldn't even load them into a gun before they cracked into pieces.
Who says they're in favor of removing all security? Isn't the security we have to go through enough? Has there been a hijacking since the TSA beefed up security?
I would never allow this to work. I don't think most people will either. Most women aren't going to consent to this. It's against my religion for strangers to see me nude, that goes for both men and women. I'd rather a pat-down (and avoid the groin) than a scan under clothes.
You don't find this X-Rated? You must have been desensitized then. Plenty of non-Americans will find this appalling.
"A simple airplane hijacking is not terrorism."
I think that qualifies as the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
how sure are you?1 12
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
There was no reason for him to fire.
Must be nice to be able to make that determination from a safe distance. If I were in a house that burglars were breaking into for the third time, I don't think I'd take the risk to ascertain whether they were armed.
of course. I say we all sue them. What if the radiation makes me sterile?
What makes you think all this additional screening is to protect "the people" from terrorists?
They don't want hijackers ramming another financial district or D.C. or some bigwig CEO's penthouse office.
Not killing the rest of us serfs is just a fringe benefit.
It also allows them to pass such lovely fascist legislation as the PATRIOT act, Real ID, and other crap because "it's good for us".
And let's not forget all the good those wars are doing.
I'm sorry...am I being cynical again?
~X~
~X~
Acceptable security?
It's interesting to watch a great free nation spiral down the toilet of oblivion.
Apathy and self-centeredness will destroy this country.
~X~
~X~
Just so you all know, after the aformentioned gropefest, it is an EXTREMELY bad idea to ask for the 'full release.' I tried this once and they kept me at their freedom station for an entire hour.
That's the least of your worries. For every hour you spend up at 30,000 feet you're subjecting yourself to the equivalent of a full-blown x-ray that you typically get at the hospital or A&E.
I find it amusing that there are all these 'frequent flyers' out there worried about an incredibly weak-powered x-ray examination on the ground when they're getting blasted way more upstairs and they don't even know it.
Plastic.... water..... water gun.... joke... ha ha...
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
The PDF link works fine for me.
Here's the money quote, emphasis my own:
Sigh. I guess that speaks for itself, huh?
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
I'm confused. How is someone hitchhiking a violation of your rights? Or am I misreading?
Actually, I take back what I said. I was under the false impression that hitchhiking was illegal, when it actually isn't, or so says the Hitchhiking FAQ". I take back the joke.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
How the Hell did anyone hijack a plane on 9-11 with a box-cutter? Methinks this is the real urban legend...all this airport security is a solution to a non-problem. Prior to 9-11 how many of you had some altercation on a plane that involved any kind of weapon, be it a gun, a knife, or any other kind of threatening object that was brandished by a person? The real reason for the enhanced security in airports is quite simple: drugs and other contraband. This is the government's stock in trade, but there was much competition from independent operators running mules with small but valuable packages cross country via the airlines. Some sufficiently valuable packages, like LSD and jewels, to name two, could still be effectively moved in this fashion even after 9-11. But with this new "x-ray specs" tech, the government will finally have its monopoly consolidated and protected...
I assume guns are tools designed to make holes in people, or anything else they're pointed at. I also assume that someone who wants to have this ability is not someone I would want to be in a confined place with for 12 hours with free alcohol.
I'd rather give everyone a fighting chance than to see them go down helpless.
Hijackers have no chance to subdue unarmed passengers now. Box cutters aren't gong to stop them being beaten to death. Give them a chance a getting a gun and they'd still go down, but take more passengers with them than otherwise. Potential hijackers knowing this is probably the reason there haven't been any hijackings since 9/11. Not preventing people carrying nail scissors or X-rays. It'll always be possible for a suicide bomber to crash a plane, but not to take it over.
"Perhaps this is because of the purpose terrorism was invented for. After all the main goal is not to destroy a few buildings or kill some people, but to introduce fear." Exactly. And who has been the biggest supporter and the biggest promoter of this fear? The current administration. So who are the terrorists responsible for 9-11 and the cause of all this bull? Same answer. See this site for some interesting info regarding this idea: http://www.erichufschmid.net/
it wasn't intended to be one, or are you really suggesting that the law and order situation has gotten to such a state that there is no way for any government to protect its citizens from crime?
Well, that point is somewhat open to debate. As US citizens, we do have the constitutionally-guaranteed right to freely move and travel about this wide nation of ours. Many Supreme Court cases have established this with regards to driving--that is, driving without the need for license, registration, or insurance, all of which restrict the individual's right to move freely within the nation. For interstate flights, considering that some destinations are only valid within a certain time frame, say your mom's funeral, your sister's wedding, it may very well be valid to extend our right to move freely throughout the nation to airlines as well....
No doubt we will find extracts from the recorded scans appearing on the Internet. "See Britney Spears *N00d3* in an airport scanning machine!!" ....or whomever.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Had you actually read the article, you would know that the radiation is too low to penetrate the skin.
Wonder when the first airport security cancer lawsuits will take place?
Fairly soon. Lawyers, judges, and lawsuits are not bound by the laws of nature or common sense or plain old reality.
And I'm rather inclined to say someone who's house has been broken into at least two dozen times before -- with no police response, ever, has one of the better reasons I've heard for being paranoid.
Also, the first kid lunged for Tony with a flashlight, in a dark house. He was firing blind when he shot at robber #2.
I'm not sure whether the previous robberies were armed; however one in three criminals under age 25 is armed, and violent crime is (as of 1999) just shy of double America's rate in Britan according to the Dutch ministry of justice in a 2001 report. It seems very unlikely that all 24 were unarmed.
You are being naive. The government can do whatever they want. And they do. The higher you go (city, state, federal), the more freedom they have.
The government shot some kids at Kent State. Murdered them in cold blood, from quite a distance, using high-powered rifles. The government was not punished, neither at the shooter level or at any other level. Was this a rights violation? Assuredly. Can the gov't do this anyway? Assuredly. How? because they not only make the rules, they enforce the rules. Or not.
The government invaded a sovereign country that had not attacked them, namely Iraq. This is illegal, but they managed to pull it off. No one's been punished yet (except people who refused to go, or to otherwise participate.) You think anyone's going to be punished? We know the government flat out lied to the public to get support for the invasion; we know the Shrub was absolutely complicit in this lie, we know he spearheaded the whole thing, either on his own or as a figurehead for people in the shadows, do you think he, or anyone else in the government will ever be punished for this? Or are you still laboring under the illusion that we should be in Iraq for some reason? (other than greed for oil, I mean.)
The government can register a criminal for life, after conviction, even though this is absolutely forbidden by the constitution in the double jeopardy clause. In this example, the government took a little time to invent the idea that holding an individual up to the public on a list of miscreants is magically not punishment, although 200 years of prior law and legal thinking disagrees uniformly with that notion. You might think this is a state issue, and it would be, except that the Supreme court heard the issue after it crawled its way up the court system and said, "sure, that's fine" which makes this particular constitutional violation fed all the way.
The government can tell you what you can drink (prohibition) or otherwise ingest for recreational purposes (current set of drug laws) although there is absolutely no constitutional basis for this. They can't be stopped, punished, or otherwise bludgeoned by constitutional means. You can vote 'em out, some of them anyway, but it takes many years to kill stupidities such as these -- again, prohibition being a good example and pot being even better, as we're still waiting for the pendulum to swing away from that particular set of clueless lies. Mind you, I'm not a drug or alchohol user -- I don't consider either a sensible use of my time -- but clearly, if I wanted to, there is no constitutional basis for stopping me from smoking pot.
The government can engage in blackmail. For instance, if a state doesn't toe the line on some particular issue, the feds withhold highway funds from that state. The constitution forbids the feds from making state laws, so they turned to blackmail. Do you see any feds being prosecuted for blackmail? No? I didn't think so. Me either.
The government can declare you something awful (terrorist, for instance) and not give you the right to counsel, or a phone call, or anything else. It is unconstitutional as hell, illegal as hell, and they do it anyway. No one gets punished; in fact, typically, no one manages to reverse such a thing, not that you could ever recover the lost time, of course.
The feds put Christian symbols and statements all over everything from money to buildings to sessions of congress and the senate, though they are explicitly by letter and obvious intent of the founding paperwork not to favor any religion. Anyone getting punished? Hell no, instead, we get Christian frosting added to the pledge of allegiance.
These are the same feds that told teenagers in the 60's that they couldn't vote, they couldn't drink, but the
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Wasn't this whole "privacy" of scans thing solved already a long time ago? I dont remember where, but I do recall reading about some technology in which the computer took the scan data and overlayed it ontop of a gender-neutral human model before displaying it to the security guards. I tryed a shallow google-search, but I couldnt turn up anything (mainly because I had no idea what to search for).
So says the testimony of a guy who shot someone in the back, and was facing prison. 'Firing blind', come on, get real. The chances of actually hitting someone in that scenario are nil. To hit someone with a gun, you have to aim at them, Arnie movies not withstanding.
If he just wanted to scare them', he could have simply shot in the air or ground. He wanted to harm them and that is why he is in jail.
however one in three criminals under age 25 is armed, and violent crime is (as of 1999) just shy of double America's rate in Britan according to the Dutch ministry of justice in a 2001 report.
Link to report? Because it's talkig shit. Nationmaster (stats resource) lists assaults in the US as ABOVE the UK, and the one in three being "armed" (with what?) sounds bogus as well. As for murder rates, don't even go there!
Holy crap, your taser idea is the best I've heard of yet. Nice!
Not just the congressmen, but their wives, and daughters should have to be treated to this. Then see how they feel about it. Of course you are right though; congressmen scam too much money by passing these laws to ever have to be submitted to experiencing them.
Aditionally free drinks are served, granted you won't get 3 bottles of wine, even if you ask for it, but they'll give you half a bottle and then a whisky for the desert with no second thougth.
If you've ever flied on charter-fligths returning from say Mallorca to some North-European country you'll also know that the prohibition on entering while under the influence of any drug does not, in practice, prohibit anyone capable of walking on his own two feet from going on the plane.
Yeah sure, restricting alcohol *would* improve air-safety, but it'd be bad for bussiness, so it's out of question.
I wasn't talking hypothethically by the way. The raving drunk agressive passenger that needs to be handcuffed down for the rest of the flight is a reality, you read about him in the newspapers regularily. Atleast you do in Norway, Sweden, Germany and Italy which are the countries I know well personally.
It's possible that noone flies drunk in the USA, if so that's a definite plus for security.
A single murder can be terrorism, like the DC sniper would have been had he issued any political demands. (As he didn't, he was just a normal serial killer.)
Meanwhile, a serial killer can run through fifty people and not be a terrorist.
Terrorism is not any specific sort of crime. It is causing and using the fear of death (or, arguably, other harms, resulting in concepts like 'economic terrorist') among civilians for political purposes. It is not, per se, the death itself, although usually terrorists have to actually kill some people or no one will believe them.
But normal airplane hijackings (Aka, fly me to Cuba) were not for the purpose of making people fear for their lives. They were, duh, to get to Cuba. They are no more terrorism than carjackings are, or a normal kidnapping is.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Just have the entire Slashdot crowd go through an airport. No-one will ever want to work the see-people-naked machine ever again.
Fuck you
What kind of fear are you trying to spread with your gory descriptions? Thinking of the most horrible things in order to prepare yourself for the worst is one thing, spreading this FUD is another. The doors already are reinforced. And before an eight year old dies in vain, the rest of the passengers are going to castrate whomever did it. 9/11 is on everyone's mind, so adrenaline pumps a lot quicker now.
Nobody's opening the door but the pilots, not even the flight attendant. And the US marshall who flies as a undercover passenger will put a bullet in the assailant's head head. Unlike security personel, Marshalls are professionally trained and equipped.
So in reality there are very simple prevention measures in place. We only need away to tighten up how firearms and explosives can be discovered.
You can think of it as detachment, but in reality it's sense of duty.. I want that quality in pilots and in the control tower.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Indeed 30 s sounds like a long time, however on this site it also says that the crew can experience a slow depressurisation and go into hypoxia without realizing the emergency because they can ge busy fighting some other problem, which could definitely happen with a terrorist attack.
The author specifically writes that he himself had experienced hypoxia with all the symptoms (blue lips, giddyness etc) without realizing what was going on. If it had not been an experiment on the ground he would have been unable to react to any emergency.
I'm sorry, but I believe you're factually wrong on several counts. Principally, your assessment of when burglars break in is not supported by any information I've ever seen from the police, crime surveys, etc.[1]
Moreover, breaking into someone's home does not imply a threat to life: statistically, burglary is far less often associated with violence than many other crimes.
Finally, while I agree wholeheartedly that everyone should have the legal right to defend themselves, shooting a fleeing man in the back is not defending yourself. There was no immediate threat, pretty much any legal system in the western world would agree with that position, and I know of no legal argument in the UK (or most other places, though I wouldn't bet against Texas) that permits the use of lethal force in the absence of such a threat.
The UK government is guilty of many things in connection with this case, most seriously failing to supply adequate support or security directly, but also creating a legal framework where it was near impossible for Martin to deter the burglars himself. However, it is not guilty of abusing his human rights, and this is absolutely clear to anyone taking the time to study the case. Introducing such hype is unconstructive, both in this case, and more generally where it diminshes to effect of cases that really are a government abusing an individual's rights.
[1] I used to help teach at a martial arts club. Since people going to such classes often ask about self-defence, I made a point of seeking proper advice on the non-physical aspects (which is most of it where real SD training is concerned). This way I could give them informed answers, or at least direct them to someone else who could. The best summary I can give is that the majority of burglaries are committed in the evening or at night, under cover of darkness, and that burglars will usually flee if they discover that the property is occupied rather than risk a confrontation.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
According to the latest statistics I have easy access to... "Contact Crimes" constitute robbery, sexual assault, and assault with force. In England and Wales, 3.6% of the population was victimized in 1999, and 1.9% of the US population was in the same period.
Of course he wanted to harm them; he believed they wanted to harm him.
And you take that to mean "1 in 3 is armed"? You are talking bullshit. "Have access to" is an entirely different thing altogether. Anyone has "access to" a firearm if they know the right people. Hell, I could probably have one by Friday if I wanted. But no one does. No one in this country is packing, get over it. I know a fair number of shady people and I've seen a lot of shit. I've never seen a gun in this country.
And the number of guns has doubled in 10 years? That's great! Considering how few guns there actually are, over a ten year span it's incredible that the numbers have only doubled. They aren't consumables, every new gun is one more on that number while the old ones lie aroung.
In America, a gun crime is recorded as a gun crime. In Britain, a crime is only recorded when there is a final disposition (a conviction).
That's just crapness on the part of those doing the comparison. There are other figures available, you are a fool if you think that crime is only recorded in the UK after a conviction.
Of course he wanted to harm them; he believed they wanted to harm him.
Exactly, and someone is dead because of it, so he's in jail now. What's the problem? Still doesn't make him innocent. Revenge is not a part of the legal system in any civilized country.
Violence is everywhere, in (maybe) different scales.
USofAns don't have enough of it at home, they take theirs to Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, or anywhere they can (they don't take theirs to places like North Korea where they know they'll have their butts kicked, though...)
But USofA has it, too, as I mentioned, with the Ted Bundys and the Columbines.
We (Brasil) have our, too (don't forget we had a *congressman* in Acre whose hobby was chopping people to pieces with a chainsaw -- but he's in jail now)
The UK has the IRA, Spain has ETA *and* Al Qaeda, and don't get me started in the Middle East thing.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Crapness on the part of the sources yes; have you checked yours?
There are more than three million illegal guns in Britan now. (The Guardian, September 3, 2000) I don't consider "how few" an approrpriate description for that.
It seems like the ban was implemented in 97; at least that's the first year that legally held guns dropped. That year there were 2,647 handgun crimes; in 2000 it increased to 3,685.
Exactly, and someone is dead because of it, so he's in jail now. What's the problem? Still doesn't make him innocent. Revenge is not a part of the legal system in any civilized country.
Revenge was not involved. According to Dictionary.com,
1. To inflict punishment in return for (injury or insult).
2. To seek or take vengeance for (oneself or another person); avenge.
Revenge is done after the fact, not while you're defending yourself against a percieved threat to your life. I don't believe that anyone should have to kill another in self defense, but the truth is that police can't be everywhere at once, and if they could, would you be willing to tolerate that level of scrutiy?
Even if they had the capability, are not required to by law (Town of Castle Rock, Colorado v. Gonzales, South v. Maryland, Warren v. District of Columbia - this last one involved several calls to 911 over the course of a half an hour to report a housebreaking (and assault and rape). "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.") The sad fact of the matter is that many people do consider the woman found in an alley raped and strangled with her pantyhose morally superior to the woman holding a smoking 357 and standing over the body of a would-be rapist. I don't get it.
Not quite. You could get a permit prior to that, but you were vetted for it and had to follow a shitload of rules. The spectactular failure of this system led to a larger than Columbine type event (in infant school no less), which is what led to the complete ban of pistols. You can still get shotguns/rifles though. It's just handguns that are banned outright (and auto's of course).
Revenge is done after the fact, not while you're defending yourself against a percieved threat to your life.
A kid running away from you because you have a shotgun is not a threat by any definition of the word. And your dictionary quote mentions "vengence". What exactly are you smoking? It's practically a textbook definition of what happened. I'm unsure where you get the "after the fact" thing from, but it was revenge for scaring him in his home, AFTER which FACT he took revenge.
the truth is that police can't be everywhere at once, and if they could, would you be willing to tolerate that level of scrutiy?
No, of course not. However, guns bring far more problems than they solve. You mention a rape case, tragic but however typical of pro-gun campaigners. However, as always, you forget to mention that guns will increase crime, they increase murders, they increase armed robbery, they increase innocent dead bystanders and they increase the number of children killed in accidents. I'd also argue that it would make rape more prevailent as it makes it easier to hold someone against their will with a knife. The fact that police took 14 hours to respond is the issue there. Plus, the case was in the US, where they COULD have had a gun if they wanted, but didn't. Discounting the fact that there is zero evidence that having a gun in the home would have prevented the crime (or even made it worse) in the first place. So it is a completely pointless and irrelevant argument.
However, guns bring far more problems than they solve. You mention a rape case, tragic but however typical of pro-gun campaigners. However, as always, you forget to mention that guns will increase crime, they increase murders, they increase armed robbery, they increase innocent dead bystanders and they increase the number of children killed in accidents. I'd also argue that it would make rape more prevailent as it makes it easier to hold someone against their will with a knife.
Categorically wrong. "In 1966, the city of Orlandio responded to a wave of sexual assaults by offering firearms training classes to women. The number of rapes dropped by nearly 90%" (Guy Smith, 2004)
Every day , on average 6500 people use a firearm in self-defence in the US, 15.6 saving their own lives in the process. Gun accidents kill 13 children per day, though this figure includes 'children' from 17-20 involved in gang warfare. Now remove the number of suicides from this, and it's 1.3 accidents per day (CDC, National Vital Statistics Report) Mental math says that this is about 1027 lives saved a day, at the cost of 1.3 tragedies. Fortunately, the number of firearm accidents has been steadily decreasing since at least the early eighties.
Murder? "20% of US homicides occur in four cities with just six percent of the population -- New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington D.C. -- and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns." (FBI Uniform Crime Reports for 2000, p. 79, table 5)
Crime? 92% of the time, an armed victim only has to pull their gun and ask if their attacker would like a side of lead with that wallet, and they mess their pants and run away screaming like a little girl.
And the legal analysis I read of the case said that three shots were fired in rapid succession -- one at the flashlight that was shining in his face, and two into the darkness immediately after that, before his night vision could have recovered. http://www.tonymartinsupportgroup.org/ has some interesting tidbits on the court case, if you think what he did was evil, try reading the detailed sequence of events.
One of my co-workers used to have a newspaper humor column clipping about this. *grumble* Can't remember who it was by or great detail, but it was written by a woman, suggested that not only would it break down peoples' shame about their bodies, but that it would also allow for dermatologists to practice business while in-flight. ^_^ And then had a line afterwards about how she wasn't sure if she'd trust the bomb/drug-sniffing dogs to steer clear of her cockpit.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
So I don't think it's any more "silly" than any of the other bullshit that goes on with air travel these days. If you don't like it, don't fly or leave the kids at home. It really isn't that hard.
The Farewell Tour II