Body Scanners for the London Underground

Ronald Dumsfeld writes "In a report in the TimesOnline, it is alleged that those lovely see-through-your-clothes scanners are to be installed in London's Tube stations. Part of the UK's Military-industrial complex, QinetiQ stands to make £150,000 to £2 million per station ($260,000 - $3.4 million) with their Millimetre Wave Imagers."

Comments

The perception of security

[gbulmash]

Well, some will say you can't put a price on a human life. Of course, that's in the abstract. Our courts do it regularly in wrongful death lawsuits. I also seem to recall someone doing an invoice for the carbon, water, and other compounds our bodies contain if we were to buy them at a chemistry supply house, but I dcouldn't find it on Google.

Essentially it boils down to this. However you believe a government should spend tax dollars, they're going to get spent in two ways: to benefit campaign supporters and cronies, and to do things that mollify the public just enough to make the re-election fight a little easier. A terrorist incident makes people feel less safe, so politicians spend money on things that make them feel safer. Good, bad, effective, useless... doesn't matter. It just has to be perceived as responsive.

Expensive scanners in tube stations? Brilliant!

Security costs money. Of course, the money gets spent on expensive and showy equipment, not on better training of security personnel (or screening of security personnel - some TSA screeners look like they should have their mittens safety-pinned to their coats). But it's all bread and circuses. It's about the perception of security. And governments are great at spending money to create that.

- Greg

Re:The perception of security

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your theory is that, by and large, Londoners aren't drooling imbeciles. There are exceptions, sure, but the number of people who are going to feel safer as a result of scannners in tube stations is negligible.

Re:The perception of security

[Anonymous Coward]

...someone doing an invoice for the carbon, water, and other compounds our bodies contain if we were to buy them at a chemistry supply house...

I hope they factored in the cost of assembly. People are always forgetting little additional expenses like that.

Re:The perception of security

[Mattygfunk1]

Security costs money. Of course, the money gets spent on expensive and showy equipment, not on better training of security personnel

While I take your point on the perception of security in the purchase, you're asking a lot of security staff to detect something deliberatly being hidden with as much accuracy as this technology suppossedly will.

Getting on public transport shouldn't require an interview, lie detector, and strip search before boarding, but it is a common terrorism target and should be protected with the highest security practical.

__
Free funny pics and videos

Re:The perception of security

[BackInIraq]

But it's all bread and circuses. It's about the perception of security. And governments are great at spending money to create that.

No joke. Excellent example...I recently had the singular joy of going through a US airport. I was forced to take off my boots (I say forced because I initially chose not to, and was still singled out for additional search even though I didn't set off the metal detector), and had my luggage randomly selected for additional search.

Oh, I must have forgotten to mention that I was a soldier returning to Iraq, in uniform, with government-purchased tickets and a valid military ID. Definitely a high-threat passenger.

If I wanted to kill some Americans, I could make it happen much more easily. I have access to a weapon, ammunition, and with a little planning even explosives every single day over here.

Are we more safe because they spent longer searching me than nearly everybody else on the plane? I'm gonna go with a no. Are we safer when the US government spends more per capita on security in Wyoming than New York City? Not really.

It's really just a giant game of whack-a-mole anyway. Make planes safer, they hit subways. Make subways safer, it'll be busses. After that shopping malls, then city streets. Then when random sidewalk bombs and carbombs force the government to stretch themselves so thin that they can barely cover every possible terrorist attack...they'll go back to planes, because lack of funding will have compromised security there.

One of the most effective terrorist attacks ever (not THE most, mind you) was probably the DC sniper...not in lives lost, of course, but in actual disruption to people's daily lives and fear caused. And all an attack like that requires is a guy with a gun, and good aim. You may not even get caught, especially if cover a wide area (multiple cities, for instance).

You can't win a war against terrorists, especially not with cops, soldiers, and gadgets.

Re:The perception of security

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nobody who's thought about it, in Government or out of it, thinks that the tube can be secured. Making high profile security measures just makes a tempting target for terrorists. The more secured it was claimed to be, the more publicity the attacks bring."

Wrong! Where did you get trained on Terrorism 101?

Terrorists tend to attack targets at which they will have a high probability of success. This is the reason you rarely here about a terrorist attack thwarted *in-action*. They would love to truck bomb the white house or 10 Downing Street, but they know they would have a low probability of success. While they may have a 10% chance of being able to pull it off, that is too risky. If you actually study terrorism in the past 20 years it becomes very obvious that plots are planned and executed similar to the way a business will plan and execute any action. Both have investments of time, money, and lives and want the maximum return on investment.

There was *no* security to stop the terrorists on July 7th. This is why they selected their targets as they did.

Re:The perception of security

[Itchy Rich]

...And governments are great at spending money to create that.

Luckily for the British taxpayer this project is never going to get off the ground. The quoted price is for the scanners alone. Add to that the cost of:

• Renovating every station to funnel passengers through the scanning area
• Manning the scanners (including security personel trained to confront terrorists) 19 hours a day
• The extra delays caused by the queues to get scanned (consider what London earns in an hour, and the effect on that of delays and bad tempers)
• Maintainance, service and training costs.

Add to that the expense, privacy concerns, and the fact that this wouldn't protect overground trains or buses, and you've got yourself a 'class A1' dead duck.

Re:The perception of security

[Znork]

"Expensive scanners in tube stations? Brilliant!"

Truly. They should create absolutely marvellous queues where terrorists can blow up bombs and get a whole lot more people killed.

"It just has to be perceived as responsive."

Indeed. Of course, the money could have been spent on things that might actually save some lives, like measures to prevent traffic accidents or healthcare. Which means spending the money on useless security junk actually costs people lives instead.

"It's about the perception of security."

Yep. Sticking a 10 cent blinking diode device in the hand of security guards and calling it a 'bomb detector' would do just as well. Heck, stage a few very public and publicised incidents where an actor is caught by such a device emitting a beep and even a whole bunch of the terrorists would think they couldnt get away with carrying around explosives.

Re:The perception of security

[StupidKatz]

Are we more safe because they spent longer searching me than nearly everybody else on the plane? I'm gonna go with a no.

Here's another affirmation of the ineffectiveness of the situation, but from the other angle. I was in the military during '01 and '02, and went to PSAB (in Saudi Arabia) a couple months after 9/11. Anyhow, I packed a big duffel and a small gym bag, the former was checked and the latter was carried. I went through the Oklahoma City airport security, through the Air Base's security, and back through security in Boston (IIRC), only to THEN have someone tell me "I think I see a knife in your bag."

I'd been carrying a ~7-inch boot knife in an outer pocket of my carry-on bag on flights that spanned half the globe (aka, full of jet fuel) which was not concealed in any way except for simply being in a pocket of a duffel filled with socks, books, munchies, and a few electronic gizmos. It still took them close to 10 additional minutes to decide to physically search the bag and an additional 5 beyond that to actually find it (after they'd emptied all pockets except the one it was in).

Feeling safer yet? As for me, I say just do nothing, let people arm themselves if they want to shoulder the responsibility and liability, and go on about your daily life. You might be hit by a car, or you might be blown up by a terrorist. Odds are the car will get you many times over before the terrorist even has a chance.

Re:The perception of security

[los furtive]

Your point is valid as well, but flawed. Put scanners on the subway, and terrorists will just take the bus instead. Put them on the bus, they'll bring bombs to the movie theatre, the concert hall, the bowling alley, the schoolyard, the community center, the gym, shopping mall, grocery store, day cares, etc... In fact, the London bombings are a perfect example of the ease by which terrorists can shift their targets, and was probably a direct result of the increase in security at airports over the past few years.

Of course, perhaps it is money well invested since the logistics involved in a subway terrorism incident aren't pretty, but neither were the logistics of for the people trapped in the World Trade Center nor even the children in Beslan.

Since there will always be a way, I think it's a matter of changing the will instead. The money should be spent on winning the hearts and minds of the people of other countries. I'm not talking about the terrorists but those who the terrorists use for support. Blow up a bus... increase aid to starving countries, shoot down a plane, build a dozen schools or a community center in a struggling nation. Oh, and I'd still have my gov'ts police and intelligence seek out and punish those who took the action.

Re:The perception of security

[Lonewolf666]

In this case, you would have to secure ALL stations at a really high price. Otherwise the bomber gets aboard at a remote suburb without scanner, sets the bomb off in the city, and the bad guys will just laugh at the stupid cops.

Considering the shortsightedness of typical politicians, "less critical" stations will be left out to save money and the above is exactly what will happen.

Re:The perception of security

[rmstar]

A german police chief was asked on TV the day of the London bombings what extra measures should be taken.

He said: "None. The measures are effective as they can be; we cannot avoid all terrorist attacks just as we cannot avoid all crime." I was impressed, really. Intelligent man.

There is a point of diminishing returns for everything.

Re:The perception of security

[AGMW]

The purpetrators of this attrocity are the faceless, and I would suggest faithless (because no one could truthfully commit such acts in the name of any God) terrorists, and their aim is to spread, rather obviously, terror.

If serious actions are now taken to try and prevent them succeeding again, then two things will happen :-

1) Our freedoms will be eroded and we _will_ be terrorised by the spectre of metal detectors, exposive sniffers and body searches when untertaking any normal, day-to-day, things like getting on a bus or entering a shop.

2) We will NOT stop them from doing it again, because it is simply not possible to prevent someone hell-bent on suicide from blowing themselves up!

Therefore, at least on the "home front", we have to not impose restrictions on our freedoms in the futile attempt to curtail the movements and actions of the terrorists. This will be the most difficult thing for the Government, who apparently believe that "taking action" is always the answer because if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail!

We in London and the rest of the UK do, however, have to return to a vigilance akin to the height of the IRA campaign and should watch out for unattended packages. Let us not start suspecting each other as we remember that the bombs did not target any religion, race, creed, or colour, but were an indisciminately blunt weapon affecting any and all in its path.

We need to know what they are hoping to achieve. We should not simply capitulate like the Spanish because that sends the message that terrorism works, and simply passes the problem on to our neighbours. We can try and make sure it becomes more and more difficult for them to recruit new terrorists. We must simply stop pissing people off, and use our power to make life easier for the down trodden and huddled masses, for it is amongst their ranks that the recruiters have the most success.

To this end, it is right that the G8 conference continued, and it is right that we should help Africa, but we should also finally put to rest the Isreal/Palestine problem and give aid to Palestine to help them rebuild. We should then finish the jobs in Afghanistan and Iraq by rebuilding their countries and handing them back to local governments when we can offer aid, be it monetary or military, fiscal or physical and we can be invited to help, rather than imposing our solution.

But I'm still waiting for Our Tony to use this as a reason for the introduction of ID Cards and GPS transponders in our cars, because it can't be far off now.

Re:The perception of security

[TopShelf]

I would suggest faithless (because no one could truthfully commit such acts in the name of any God)

Thousands of years of human history would seem to contradict this. Think the Inquisition, the Crusades, countless Protestand vs. Catholic wars in Europe, Hindu/Buddhist conflicts in India, and Sunni/Shiite violence in more recent times. For (far too) many people, their belief in God allows them to dehumanize those who don't share their beliefs, making just about anything fair game.

Re:The perception of security

[houghi]

We should not simply capitulate like the Spanish

How did the Spanish capitulate? If you talk about the elections, that was a direct result of the then current governement saying it was the ETA who did the bombing. If he had said he didn't know, the result would have been different.

It was also because of the governement being involved in the Iraqi war. The results of the elections had nothing to do with the direct fear of terrorist attacks. It had all to do on how the governement handled the situations. People where not happy how that was done and elected acordingly.

Do you vote for somebody who has lied to you? The Spanisch didn't.

Re:The perception of security

[McGiraf]

Do you vote for somebody who has lied to you? The Spanisch didn't.

I'am an American, you insensitive clod!

Re:The perception of security

[KDan]

A person is reasonable and intelligent but people are dumb stupid and panicky.

There were people in the tube carriage I was in when a bomb blew up in the train which was passing us in the opposite direction, near Edgware Road station. I regret to inform you that contrary to your description, those people reacted as well as you could possibly expect any person to react. Everyone was shit-scared, me included, frozen with fear for the first minute or two, waiting for a second bomb to possibly go off. But then after that, the behaviour of all the people around me was admirable. We stayed calm, comforted each other, talked, tried to get our minds off the awful truth (which no one voiced - it's amazing how many plausible alternative possibilities you can come up with to deny that it's a bomb, even after you saw the flash, heard the loud bang, and breathed the nasty black smoke).

Those people waited patiently to be evacuated, waited a whole 45 minutes in this unnerving train with that nasty toxic smell, with screams of agony coming from the nearby train and no coherent information coming from anywhere, with no guarantee that any of us would get out of there alive, as there could have been a second bomb, for all we knew.

So I think you should grow a bit of respect for people, dumbass.

Daniel

Hype it up!

[FTL]

Argh. I have had it with people and organisations cashing in on terrorism. Some quick facts:
* Population of London: 5.5m
* Average deaths per day: 215
* Increase of death rate on 7 July: 23%
If there had been 50 extra heart attacks in London on 7 July, do you think that it would have been noticed? If it weren't for the wall to wall media coverage, this would have been a non-event.

Britain used to have a really good track record on terrorism. When the IRA blew something up, there would be a brief note about it on the news, then nothing. Terrorism is about publicity, and over-reporting it simply feeds it. But it seems that the dymanics have changed. Now there are too many organisations who have a vested interest in a continual state of terrorism.

Re:Hype it up!

[QuickFox]

Argh. I have had it with people and organisations cashing in on terrorism.

The United States has shown the way: How to take advantage of terrorism for profit, entertainment and re-election.

The writeup mentions the military-industrial complex. Maybe we need to start discussing the terror-media-politics complex.

I do hope my sig isn't too optimistic.

-- Terrorism may have turned the United States into a nation of fear and aggression, but it won't succeed in Europe.

Re:Hype it up!

[flyingsquid]

-- Terrorism may have turned the United States into a nation of fear and aggression, but it won't succeed in Europe.

I am just so sick of people saying that the United States is irrationally aggressive and paranoid. And if you don't stop calling us aggressive and fearful, I'm gonna break every goddamn bone in your freakin' hands and then strangle a whole litter of puppies. Just as soon as Homeland Security tells me its OK to go outside.

Profit range?

[mccalli]

QinetiQ stands to make £150,000 to £2 million per station

That's quite some gap. Suggests that figures are being plucked out of the air, perhaps?

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Profit range?

[Ochu]

Or possibly just the difference between stations with tens of thousands of people going through them each day, and those with ten.

Re:woot

[noidentity]

WOOT! Hot nekkid ch1cks!1.

Not if you're sober.

Problem

[iamdrscience]

These scanners still can see through clothing, but they can't see through all materials. This means that (a) there's a security hole or more likely (b) anyone carrying anything that cannot be seen through and is large enough to potentially carry something dangerous will have to be pulled aside and taken a closer look at. In the second case this will slow things down just like airport security slows things down making it even more of a hassle to take the tube.

The Middle East Is Everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Here(In Israel) we got used to this long time ago.

You can't go to anywhere without passing thru metal detectors(full size or hand used) and surface body checks.

Armed guards are common view.

I can't remember when was the last time that I've entered a mall and nobody have checked me.

The terror is taking over our lives, Now all over the world.

Re:The Middle East Is Everywhere

[pintomp3]

umm, i wouldn't brag about "been there, done that" in this case. that's no way to live. how about we not occupy/invade/bomb/etc other ppls homes and countries so we don't have to live like this?

How about this idea instead?

[Seventh Magpie]

You know, pay me a tenth of what is being charge and I will set up a few of these Sony cameras for them that will do the same trick! Although I would hate to give them up from my collection. What else will I do at the beach each weekend now?

Public more willing to accept surveillance?

[malkavian]

I don't think so..
I'm regularly in and around London, use the underground and the trains.
This scanner deal will be as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Do you get stopped for carrying an iPod, or some other music device?
No?
Then what if that's just the cover for a bomb?

There is no protection from terrorism. If somebody really wants to get you, they will.
If you spend your life worrying over it, stress'll get you before the bomb.

Be vigilant, yes. Watch out for the unclaimed baggage on the tube or the bus.
Keep your eyes open.
If everyone does that, you've got the best intelligent surveillance network in the world. The general public.

My first reaction to seeing the bombs go off was sadness for the people hit.
The second was a wave of resignation that phoney Tony would use this as an excuse to get additional surveillance in, and railroad the ID scheme.
Part one dead of track.. We see what happens next.

Another Tragedy

[Tilmitt]

"After today, I expect the travelling public will be more prepared to put up with a greater level of surveillance." Mr Stringer said.

I find it personally very disturbing how much people are willing to sell away their liberties for "security". We've all been to see Episode 3, but did we let its message get lost in the pretty effects? Better security could be gotten from not inflicting massive suffering on the world through plain wrong foreign policy.

NOT going to happen!!

[MrBandersnatch]

If youve ever used the underground extensively youll be aware that a) Its a nightmare getting in/out at many stations at peak hours. b) On off-peak hours gates are often unmanned/broken meaning you can just walk right on. c) Many stations have gates that you can just jump over to enter/exit. d) Once in the underground system you can transfer between lines without going through any gates.

All the above means that any form of scanning system would be so easy to circumvent as to be entirely useless....unless they were to more than TRIPLE the manpower at non-central stations...and trust me that NO-ONE will be happy at seeing these costs passed onto them via ticket price increases.

Education

[Ochu]

Technology can only go so far. It seems that most of us Londoners have forgotten the lessons we learnt from the IRA. Ten years ago, you would never, ever let an unattended bag go ignored, and you would never leave bags unattended. Until three days ago, you saw both happening all the time. We need to remind people how easy it is to beat terrorism if everyone works together. I would also like to add a personal view on this, which is; these guys are pathetic. We have grown up with the IRA, and there is nothing special about these. Why the fuss?

If bombs are illegal...

[ilduce]

If bombs are illegal...then only the terrorists will have bombs. We need to legalise them for everyone. That way, the next time someone plans on blowing something up, they'll think twice, 'cause they'll know that everyone else has a bomb just waiting for them.

Those who paid attention during Fahrenheit 9/11...

[M3rk1n_Muffl3y]

...will have heard about a Private Equity company known as Carlyle Group. This is one of biggest and most profitable Private Equity firms in the world. The shareholders include the Bush family, the bin Laden family and former British PM John Major may still be their Chairman. It's a bit like Milo Minderbinder's outfit in Catch 22, where everyone benefits, because everyone is a part of the syndicate. Well anyway they own QinitiQ. And please don't assume that I am suggesting anything other than the fact that the war on terror, has been quite profitable for some parties involved.

Water enters via the weakest point

[Toby The Economist]

So we make Tube entrances secure.

Bombers then attack concert halls.

We make concert halls secure.

Bombers then attack football stadiums.

We make football stadiums secure...

There is no purely defensive solution to this problem.

--
Toby

Read Schneier's "Beyond Security"

[stereoroid]

How many copies of that book can you get for the cost of one scanner? It doesn't have all the answers - how could it? - it is designed to get you asking. So you install an expensive scanner at the entrance to Piccadilly Circus tube station. A huge queue forms, waiting to walk through the scanner. Add in a "queuing system" (tansabarriers etc.), so you have 200+ people waiting patiently in an enclosed space. Bang.

Over-reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Before people start getting their knickers in a twist, they might want to remember that:

a) This story is being denied by the government and QinetiQ.
b) Tony Blair has specifically stated that he does NOT intend to bring in a raft of draconian laws and new surveillance powers.

Both of these were reported on the BBC.

Terrorism thrives on publicity

[stoanhart]

It seems to me that terrorism only funtions because people way over react to it.

Think about it. How likely are you to die in a car accident, or from a heart attack, or just some other stupid accident/conincidence? Now how likely are you to be bombed? You should be "terrorised" of the free way, not a bunch of extremeists!

So many people die of hunger, disease, and civil war in developing countries every day. I don't know the figures, but I immagine more die daily than in all terrorist attacks in the last few years combined. <i>This</i> is where we should be spending out money. Just maybe, if we did that, people would stop hating developed nations, and stop bombing them!

And how much news coverage do the attrocities mentioned above get? A 30 second blurb on the news once a week, if that at all? Maybe if we treated terrorism that way, it would stop as well!

Think like a terrorist. Your objective is not to kill people, it's to get a message out. Unfortunately, killing people is the easiest way to get attention. Shitloads of attention. Days of prime time TV coverage. Of course you will resort to this method.

However, would you do it if the evening news went something like, "and in other news, London was bombed today. 30 to 50 people are believed to be dead. Now, back to the Simpsons."

Think about it...

Re:Anti-terrorist recipe:

[Tim Browse]

allow democratic secession of any region that does not want to be part of your country;

Follow the recipe and *no* terrorists will *ever* want to bomb your country.

From wikipedia's article on Northern Ireland:

A slight majority of the present-day population are unionist and wish to remain part of the United Kingdom, but a significant minority, known as nationalists, want to see a united Ireland. These two views are linked to deeper cultural divisions. Unionists are predominantly Protestant and often descendants of Scottish and English (mainly Scottish) settlement in previous centuries, while nationalists are predominantly Catholic and usually descend from the population predating such settlement.

So...er...you were saying?

And so...

[legirons]

And so the cost of last week's terrorist attacks rises by another £500 million...

I assume this is only the start of the damage to Britain.

Re:some thoughts

[Dogtanian]

It seems that most of us Londoners have forgotten the lessons we learnt from the IRA. Ten years ago, you would never, ever let an unattended bag go ignored, and you would never leave bags unattended. [...] I would also like to add a personal view on this, which is; these guys are pathetic. We have grown up with the IRA, and there is nothing special about these. Why the fuss?

Because it's Al-Qaeda, not the IRA. No-one outside the UK gave a damn about IRA attacks, so they were kept in perspective.

With Al-Qaeda, you have 9/11. You also have the fact that everyone knows about them, and that the Americans have felt the effects of their attacks.

Matter of fact, the Americans allowed IRA fundraising (they eventually outlawed them because their criminal activity was becoming an inconvenience). This is the same IRA that tried to kill the British Prime Minister around that time (Margaret Thatcher).....

The more I think about this, the more damn crack-headed it seems. An anti-democratic terrorist organisation comes close to killing the leader of one of America's closest allies, and they *still* allow them to raise funds on their soil?!

Bear this in mind the next time you hear an American complaining about lack of cooperation against terrorism.

Frankly, it doesn't say much about Thatcher that this was never an issue, but personally I never liked her anyway. Not that this is the point.

And on another subject; what the *hell* is going on with Britain allowing hate-preaching mullahs and so on, to remain in the country? It's been claimed that they can't send them back to countries with the death penalty or where they would be at serious risk of persecution.

Well, at least be ******* consistent about it; the British government is sending people (who have done *nothing* to endanger British security) back to Zimbabwe, laughably claiming that they won't face persecution or death when the evidence is blatantly to the contrary. And yet, they're allowing these hate-preaching vermin to remain in the country.

So; any claims of not wanting to breach human rights (or at least human rights legislation) are complete hypocrisy. Frankly, no-one's "right" to asylum should stretch as far as allowing them to incite against, nor to create security risks towards the society that grants it to them.

If there's any case for detention centres, those guys should be the ones going in them, not the children of ordinary refugees. Though it'd probably be a lot easier to deport the hatemongers back to where they came from, outside the protection of the society they despise so much.

Anyway, back to the bombs; this was significant, and it sucks that people died; but it wasn't 9/11. Disruption was the aim, and if we let people like that dictate how we run our lives, they win.

If we don't, they lose.

Re:Anti-terrorist recipe:

[aurispector]

1) Results in instant fragmentation of every country in the world into tiny, competing and opposing units each sporting their own political agenda. Large areas of the world will be controlled by political and/or religious extremists of every stripe, coming to power and enforcing their creed by brutality and murder. Taliban galore!

2) Abide by this and guys like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.. can do anything they want to their own people. After all it's all "internal affairs" - tienanamen square anyone? Do we really have to wait until they fire up the ovens and gas chambers until we act? Or isn't that enough in your opinion? Perhaps we wait until they amass an ustoppable armada and congratulate ourselves on being ethical as they roll across our borders?

2a) What if they have no desire to negotiate honestly? Pacification only perpetuates the problems. Look at North Korea and the Non-Proliferation treaty. They used it to aquire nuclear technology and pulled out when they decided they wanted to make bombs. Do you really think Saddam was negotiating in good faith? This only works if you have a carrot AND a stick AND you are ready, willing and able to use the stick AND the other guy knows it.

3) Does "predatory" include making a profit? Without the willing concurrance of corrupt local officials who would sell out to ANYBODY, this wouldn't happen.

5) Although I agree that everyone deserves a certain degree of respect owing to fact of their humanity and that we should appreciate differences, there will always be discontent by minorities by virtue of the fact that they ARE minorities. As a white upper middle class guy I can't count the number of ways big and small I've been screwed over by people of all colors. If I was a minority and inclined to shift blame I can see how I might cite racism but in most cases race had nothing to do with it.

If you want a recipe that works, then how about this? Foster democracy to give everyone a voice and get the people to believe in the democratic process as fair. Have a truly free press to expose the bad people who abuse power in every society. Don't tolerate abuses, no matter where they occur. Recognize that there is no end to human shortcoming and that there is no end point, only the process.

It pains me to think about how many of these things do not truly exist in my own country.

Unfortunately resources are limited and we are forced to focus first on those things that affect our own interests, but why shouldn't people and nations be expected to do this?

I really wish the world was as fischer - price / tinker toy simple as you imagine it to be. Live a few more decades, read the news and lots more history and perhaps you will lose your "peace at any cost" mentality.

Re:I"d Rather Be Scanned Than Murdered

[vidarh]

The real issue is that terrorism is a minor killer. Every time you step into a street you have greater odds of getting run down and killed than what you have from dying on the tube network, counting both accidents and terrorism combined.

You're more likely to die of almost anything else than terrorism in the UK, even if we from now and onwards see an attack like this every year. We could have 30-40 attacks of the current size every year before it'd rival traffic deaths alone.

That kind of money would save far more lives if it was invested on any number of other things. There are 274 stations on the underground. If the average cost is around the million mark, the cost would easily finance another major hospital, for instance.

If terrorism was a significant killer, then yes, a little loss of privacy might be acceptable. But it isn't a significant killer, and blowing it out of proportion only serves the terrorists scare mongering and draw attention away from issues that affect far more people.

Londoner who has been to Israel and the States

[tezza]

Fly to Israel: Staff grill you before allowing you on the plane. Net result: 1 hour delay for say 150 passengers.

Fly to USA: Fingerprint scanning. Slight increase in time creates larger backlog. Clearing customs takes longer.

London Underground: Simple platform overcrowding at London Bridge Station, creates hour long waits *to get through the barriers*

---------------------

But I think the biggest parallel I must draw is between Israel border protection and the London Underground. In Israel a large amoutn of the suicide bombers detonated their packages at the border entry points, killing soldiers and innocent fellow border crossers.

If they install these machines at Tube stations, then terrorists will have a new target: at the point of inspection. They will be able to take out staff as well as passengers and entrance facilities. They do not have to even get on a damn tube.

Why spend money creating both a target and a delay???? The money would be better spent on building dialogue with the dis-enfrachised Muslim community. I mean who is going to be the main targets of 'spot-checks'? The man with the beard and skull-cap.

*** MOD PARENT TROLL ***

[photonic]

direct copy of this comment

FFS

[t_allardyce]

We were doing so well on Thursday - people were saying "life has to carry on", the media were saying that we wouldn't be pushed around by this. Then it all has to go down hill. I blame the mother fucking tabloids they are basically raping this for everything, cover to cover, give it a fucking rest! It was a terrible thing to happen but do we have to drag it on? News is supposed to report things that are happening, when bombs are going off i want to know about it, when the bombs have stopped going off and there is no more fucking news about it then stop trying to make news out of it, stop trying to agitate everyone. People haven't even been buried yet and already the agendas are coming out - ID cards, scanners, companies who just want to make money selling us this crap are already pitching their bids. You know what? the end of the world is NOT here, the risk of another attack is low, our current security is strong enough and if there is another attack then it will happen no matter what security is in place. Put scanners on all the stations and someone will blow something else up. We can all carry ID cards and have check points every 10 meters and someone with a card will do the attack. Where will we be after that? more people dead but instead of being able to spend all that money on contingency, hospitals and policing we will have wasted it on useless £2m scanners. Just for fucks sake stop this mother fucking knee-jerk bullshit.

London is absolutely fine the way it is, this country is fine the way it is we do not need radical changes. The risk of a bomb going off is exactly the same has it has been for the last 5 years, just like the chance of the lottery numbers being "1,2,3,4,5,6", its only peoples perception that has changed.

Re:Anti-terrorist recipe:

[TopShelf]

Dictators everywhere will love your rules 2 and 2A - giving them free license to do whatever they want within their borders without fear of international intervention.

The authorities were BEGGING for this!

[Builder]

A couple of months ago there was a big campaign in London to raise awareness of unattended packages. The slogan was something about don't take a chance, alert someone.

Around this time, I did see a suspect pacakge, and I called the police like a good shitizen. The full story is on my diary, but I'll give you the summary...

The police gave me such a hard time about calling them about the package that I swore then and there that I would never call them about anything again. I will get me and mine out of the way, and that's as far as it goes - civic responsibility be damned.

The woman on the other end of the line just kept asking why I thought the bag was suspicious, and I kept telling her that it was unattended, looked expensive and was out of place. Any two of these satisfied their stupid poster campiagn, but she even phoned be back to ask what made me think the bag was suspicious.

If the police want the public's help, then make it easy. If you've said call things like this in, then don't give me a hard time when I do.

The fundraising hasn't stopped yet

[jdfox]

Matter of fact, the Americans allowed IRA fundraising (they eventually outlawed them because their criminal activity was becoming an inconvenience).

Congress may have passed some sort of law against it for P.R. purposes, but the fundraising is still going on in the US.

Re:Appeasers go to hell

[Tyler Durden]

As far as Al Qaeda is concerned, wipe those fuckers off the face of the earth. Appeasement with them is not an option.

However, there are still occupations/actions done by Israel that are simply wrong and do nothing but give Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations an easy route to getting recruits.

For Israel to act more reasonably towards the Palestinians is not caving in to Osama and crew. Quite the opposite actually. It's whenever some kind of peace settlement is about to be made between Israel and Palestinians that the most terrorist attacks tend to occur. The terrorists fear peace more than anything. It robs them of power. I am so fucking sick of people claiming "We do not let terrorists control our actions", and then right when one of these bombings happen in response to peace talks demand going into "Fuck the general population and do whatever we need to weed out terrorists" mode. Well guess what Sparky, you did exactly what the terrorists wanted. Peace talks are caput, violence has escalated, and the conflict Al Qaeda is depending on to become a movement to shape the Middle East into what they want continues.

I hope you don't confuse what you label "Islamists" with the general Muslim population. Because that's just want the terrorists want us to think.

How does it feel to be Osama's bitch?

Re:Anti-terrorist recipe:

[learn fast]

Results in instant fragmentation of every country in the world into tiny, competing and opposing units each sporting their own political agenda. Large areas of the world will be controlled by political and/or religious extremists of every stripe, coming to power and enforcing their creed by brutality and murder. Taliban galore!

So why isn't the case with all the existing countries already?

Abide by this and guys like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.. can do anything they want to their own people. After all it's all "internal affairs" - tienanamen square anyone? Do we really have to wait until they fire up the ovens and gas chambers until we act? Or isn't that enough in your opinion? Perhaps we wait until they amass an ustoppable armada and congratulate ourselves on being ethical as they roll across our borders?

Last I checked, nobody invaded Pol Pot or Stalin to stop their human rights abuses. Most military humanitarian missions end up being major disasters that are anything but. Stopping the holocaust was a side effect, not a cause, of World War II. And let me know when those "unstoppable armies" amass at the borders.

Look, I can come up with irrelevant, extreme examples, too! This was a "humanitarian mission" to "stop the Arab slavetraders". This act of selfless charity resulted in brutal oppression and ten million dead Congolese.

What if they have no desire to negotiate honestly? Pacification only perpetuates the problems. Look at North Korea and the Non-Proliferation treaty. They used it to aquire nuclear technology and pulled out when they decided they wanted to make bombs. Do you really think Saddam was negotiating in good faith? This only works if you have a carrot AND a stick AND you are ready, willing and able to use the stick AND the other guy knows it.

Last I checked, North Korea started making bombs after George Bush refused to negotiate because you just "can't negotiate" with people like that. I don't know if that's true, but it's hard to imagine how it could have gotten anything worse than it became without negotiating (ie, them now having some nuclear weapons). Nor do I see wholescale military invasion of North Korea feasible at the current time.

Does "predatory" include making a profit? Without the willing concurrance of corrupt local officials who would sell out to ANYBODY, this wouldn't happen.

Hey, I can play this game, too! So, are you saying we should do things like this?

Although I agree that everyone deserves a certain degree of respect owing to fact of their humanity and that we should appreciate differences, there will always be discontent by minorities by virtue of the fact that they ARE minorities. As a white upper middle class guy I can't count the number of ways big and small I've been screwed over by people of all colors. If I was a minority and inclined to shift blame I can see how I might cite racism but in most cases race had nothing to do with it.

So, are you saying that because there will always be some racism, there's no point in trying to stop any racism?

If you want a recipe that works, then how about this? Foster democracy to give everyone a voice and get the people to believe in the democratic process as fair. Have a truly free press to expose the bad people who abuse power in every society. Don't tolerate abuses, no matter where they occur. Recognize that there is no end to human shortcoming and that there is no end point, only the process.

Well, this is easier now, isn't it? Democracy? We'll just "foster" it. And the people, we'll just "get" them to believe in it it. A free press? We'll just "have" it.

And look out, other nations should "be expected" to do this!

I'm sorry, the GP poster had its flaws, but this is about 10 times as vague and therefore about 10 times as

Re:some thoughts

[jalefkowit]

Matter of fact, the Americans allowed IRA fundraising (they eventually outlawed them because their criminal activity was becoming an inconvenience). This is the same IRA that tried to kill the British Prime Minister around that time (Margaret Thatcher).....

The more I think about this, the more damn crack-headed it seems. An anti-democratic terrorist organisation comes close to killing the leader of one of America's closest allies, and they *still* allow them to raise funds on their soil?!

If:

1. American Muslims were as large a voting bloc as Irish-Americans;
2. al Qaeda had limited its attacks to foreign countries, avoiding killing Americans;

... I daresay we'd probably allow fundraising for al Qaeda here.

Pretty? No. But that's how democratic societies work. As long as the threat is distant, and some significant percentage of the voting public identifies with the people behind it, all the incentives politicians care about point them towards just ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away.

Will never happen

[Joce640k]

This is just some dumb reporter trying to stir up trouble. Those machines will *never* be installed on the London underground: a) It's physically impossible. Anybody who's ever been there at rush hour will tell you this. b) There's kids in the crowd. Given the current anti-child-molester atmosphere this alone would be enough to stop it, but see point (a). c) People won't accept it. Period. Tube usage (especially female) would drop to zero. So forget it. It ain't gonna happen. Somebody somewhere may have "considered" it but it would be off the list in a few seconds flat.

The safety of Millimeter Wave Imagers

[kilodelta]

With the truly conclusive research available as to the injurious effects of RF on human tissue I have to offer my experiences with RF from 20m to 70cm.

If you make contact with a radiator or counterpoise while a transmitter is operating you will suffer an RF induced burn.

Also ask those killed while servicing naval RADAR systems. Those are centimeter units running at significant power.

Now we have millimeter microwave being used to scan people. This will be used on a daily basis so exposure levels are sure to go up.

I wonder how long it will be before we know the true effects of concentrated RF on the body.

North Korea

[Whyte]

"Last I checked, North Korea started making bombs after George Bush refused to negotiate because you just "can't negotiate" with people like that. I don't know if that's true, but it's hard to imagine how it could have gotten anything worse than it became without negotiating (ie, them now having some nuclear weapons). Nor do I see wholescale military invasion of North Korea feasible at the current time."

It's a little more complicated than that. Clinton signed several agreements via Sec State Albright that essentually gave North Korea money and goods in exchange for promising to abort a nuclear-arms race in southeast Asia. But he did so without consulting with the Republicans in the Senate, and as a result couldn't get it ratified (remember Congress controls all the money in government). This is almost identical to the failed situation whereby the U.S. Senate refused to pass the treaty concluded after World War I (here again the executive failed to allow minority government to participate in the treaty making process and as a result was unable to get it ratified after it was signed).

Shortly there after Bush comes on the scene. North Korea makes the same offer ("buy us off or we make nukes"), but when Bush refused unilateral negotiations of this type they "suddenly" began developing nuclear weapons.

The reality more likely is that these weapons had existed in some form the entire time. As a number of analysists have pointed out, nuclear development in North Korea is a "fuzzy" matter to timeline. Especially since the U.S. is so heavily dependent on signal intelligence through the monitoring of internal communications - this type of intelligence is faulty if uncorroberated by human intelligence (/insert line blaming CIA Director Deutche). Just like in Iraq, we were hearing all the crosstalk, but the communicating agents are often lying to each other as is frequently the case in countries like Iraq and North Korea where each element is trying to bilk money out of the country and protect their position ("Comrade, we have increased boot production by 100,000 units this month, this memo proves it!").

At any rate, Christopher Hill and our other excellent public servents over at the State Department have as of this week re-engaged North Korea in multilateral talks. Unilateral negotiations can never work because the problem of nuclear proliferation within southeast Asia is not a unilateral one, and Bush was correct in accepting the State Department's advice in rejecting North Korea's request for such.