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DHS Plans Changes in Air Passenger Screening
narramissic writes "The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced plans to revamp its Secure Flight program, with the agency no longer assigning risk scores to passengers or using predictive behavior technology. In addition, the Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, will have direct control of checking domestic passenger lists against terrorist watch lists, instead of the airlines, said DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. Just the same Marc Rotenberg, executive director of privacy advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), notes, air passengers still can't see the reasons why they're targeted for extensive searches or kept off flights, nor can they correct bad information on the terrorist watch lists. 'The problems with the watch list are still valid and are not going away,' said Rotenberg."
I no longer fly into the United States because of this kind of dog shit.
Your American airlines are losing my potential travel dollars because of your stupid government.
I hope the industry tanks.
The knife is because he read Snow Crash. On the other hand, it wouldn't be a difficult task to turn a cheap Airsoft handgun (made of plastic, shoots little plastic BBs) into a cheap plastic .22 handgun. Don't think for a second that it's impossible to get bullets past checkpoints.
.243 cartridge that was live, someone must have accidentally dropped it. He put it in his pocket, and went on his way. Later that day, his daughter (my aunt) was flying out to England, and from there to India. He took her to the airport, and went through the security checkpoint to walk her to the gate. He set off the metal detector, and they had him go through the process of emptying out his pockets of all the change, keys, etc. He reached in, and found that he still had that live rifle cartridge in there. He noticed that neither of the security people were paying attention, and he pulled out the cartridge and dropped it in his shirt pocket. When he went through again, he beeped, and got wanded. His shirt pocket beeped, and so did the other one. Being as those pockets were behind the metal buckles on his suspenders, they let him through.
True story: My grandfather used to take a walk every morning down to his local shooting range. He'd pick up trash, and sometimes brass for loading his own cartridges. On this particular morning, he happened to find a
An old man managed to beat airport security without even trying in the days immediately following 9/11. It has never entered my head that terrorists couldn't do the same.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
I'm actually in the process of writing my senators and congressman a hand written, registered letter to tell them how ashamed I am of DHS and TSA. Yesterday, flying home from Orlando, I witnessed:
*The security line ID checker occasionally checking people's IDs, then turning around to talk to his co-worker and letting people pass, then randomly checking IDs.
*A second TSA staff member knocking on the glass trying to get the attention of a friend of hers, then making faces like you'd see kids do in high school
*A sporadic "take out all of your electronics" followed by "only laptops" followed by "only electronics bigger than your hand need to be removed from your bag."
Anyone who travels on a regular basis (I fly about 100,000 miles a year) knows that behavior like this is unsurprising, but I'm just getting to the point where I've had enough. If we're going to enforce security, how about actual enforcing effective security protocols rather than making sure that my shaving creams fits in a ziploc bag?
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?
My 79 year old dad has trouble every time he wants to fly because his name. an EXTREMELY common one, is the same as someone on the list. It seems to me that they could at least include an age, height, and weight in the list or something to narrow it down a bit. As it is it's clearly not meant to be of much use to actually weed out suspected terrorists; they could have picked names out of a hat and done just as much good.
I haven't been able to board airplanes since 2005. I was born in Denver, lived here all my life except for two years when I lived in Seattle, '00-'02. I'm of Swedish, Irish and German descent. I've flown to Europe a couple of times, but only to places like England, Italy and France. I used to fly a LOT for work, now I drive or take trains. Being put on some shitty little list has been one of the best things that's happened to me. I get to see things I'd never see while flying and I get to experience different local flavors that I surely would've missed out on in the past. I've never been told exactly why I can't get on a plane, but it can't be my appearance, I'm 6'4" with blue eyes and blonde hair. I look as Aryan as anyone can. I've never been a member of any political organization that would like to see the current government overthrown (not counting being a member of the general populace) and I've never been convicted of a felony. If the airlines are happy with participating in keeping away the tens of thousands of dollars I used to spend on flying every year, that's ok with me, fuck them and the tax money they generate. I don't know what I'm trying to say here except that I hope the flight industry dies. Let's get some fuckin' bullet-trains built. France has one.
Doesn't mean that they won't.
I have a friend who had his house raided many years ago because of the chemicals he was keeping for making fireworks (not you're crappy little fireworks, but cluster shells and the whole shebang). Due to his age, if he didn't reoffend (which he did, but never got caught or charged) it was to be permanently wiped from his record once he turned 18.
He is now in his 20s (and has a second job in the pyrotechnics industry), yet every time he steps on a plane he gets the full bomb treatment, they even do mouth swabs.
So as I said, just because they say they won't doesn't mean it. And this is in Australia.
Its all to scare the passengers, or perhaps to make them FEEL like someone is doing something.
The womenfolk in my family feel safer at the airport when a .
Then I ask them about Jeam Charles De Menezes, and then what they think would happen if a suicide bomber were to run past a queue of passengers. What would happen to the bullets that miss the guy?
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Actually, they have a legitimate reason for limiting liquids - just not the one they tell you about. Given the strong oxidizer you would need to make an explosive, a liquid bomb isn't really an issue - especially considering we _still_ have nothing to stop a guy with a couple of sticks of TNT on his person and a matchbook.
OTOH, one of the ways drugs were smuggled was inside a bag, inside a liquid. It makes it harder for the drug dogs to smell it, as the scent is masked by the liquid. This is why you are limited to 100ml, in a clear plastic bag.
The more you know.
Your American airlines are losing my potential travel dollars because of your stupid government.
Don't tell us. Write a letter to the airlines. Write a letter to the US board of tourism (or whatever it's called). If enough people do that it might start the pendulum swinging back towards sanity.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'm not suggesting that we give in to the dark side.
However, I don't see any point punishing the 19 suicide terrorists that flew the planes into things. They are kind of dead now.
So sure, go after the masterminds, if you want. But we haven't really done this. You cant catch them with an army, at least not easily.
Sure, we did get Saddam with an army. Two problems there, however. Firstly he isn't a terrorist. That made him much easier to catch. Secondly, we now have much more terrorist activity because of what we did. Fortunately most of it is still in Iraq. Fortunate for us, less fortunate for the Iraqi's. Sadly, there are more deaths now from this than was ever the case from the death squads that Saddam had. Lets just hope is stays confined to Iraq, because if even 1% of them get to the first world, the amount of terrorist attacks we are experiencing are going to rocket up.
I'm not advocating that we ignore the terrorists. Just that our current responses are mis-directed. Even the governments of the world are starting to see this.
We would have saved alot more lives if we had focussed on dealing with what we can deal with. The solution to terrorism isn't obvious, and it takes time. But it has been done - look at Northern Ireland. It wasn't the army that solved that problem, and increasing firepower there would have been the wrong thing to do. If we had done that, we would still have people driving trucks with fertiliser into the centre of London. Its not as if NY is the only big city that's had a building taken out by terrorists.
Just a little food for thought.
Armies fight other armies. This works in conventional war. Worked in the two world wars. Was the right thing to do. Fails miserably against terrorism.
And none of this applies to safety on planes. All that planes need is a door that locks properly between the pilots cabin and the passengers, and you could probably let terrorists take hand grenades on board without another september 11 happening - sure, planes would crash, they do even without terrorists. But the terrorists wouldn't be able to take control of planes again, and this would largely stop them bothering.
Much better than all the rubbish that we put up with every time we catch a plane now. Cheaper than invading other countries. It doesn't get revenge, of course, but as I have pointed out - the people who did this are dead already. Our biggest priority is to make it impossible to happen again, and that solution only requires a door with a good lock.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.