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TSA's "Behavior Detection Officers"
Stanistani sends us to MSNBC for a dyspeptic Newsweek commentary on the TSA's latest attempt to make air travel safer: the rather ominously named "Behavior Detection Officers" now working in a dozen US airports, and slated to go nationwide in 2008. They are trained in the discipline of reading "micro-expressions." The editorialist calls that a pseudo-science, but in fact it's a well-understood skill that can be taught and learned. A cursory look at this TSA program might put one in mind of Orwell's "facecrime," and that's the road the Newsweek writer goes down. Yet some who bemoan the security theater historically run by the TSA point to the gold standard of airport security, Tel Aviv airport, and wonder why TSA officers can't act more like the Israelis. Bruce Schneier wrote recently about one reason why the Israeli security model isn't completely transplantable to these shores: scale. And here's Schneier's take on behavioral profiling from a year ago. That's what the BDOs will be trying for: scrutinizing intent instead of pocket knives. Let's just hope they don't get swamped with false positives.
This is the lesson that the British are learning. However it seems that the British are slow learners. The Spanish learned the lesson fast. We Americans still seem utterly clueless!
Some things are quite possible, primarily because at the time of the records being made there was no Israel, and thus no reason to cook the data with the purpose of justifying some Zionist lunacy or anti-Zionist blowback. As, for example, at the time of the British mandate of Palestine, routine bureaucratic records of which were safely in Britain by the time the modern state of Israel was inflicted on the world, and are still in the British archives, written on paper which can be authenticated via well understood scientific means. Naturally, Zionists truly hate that sort of thing.
How did this get modded "informative"?
There wasn't anything in it that wasn't pure speculation.
The best he can say is that this massive organization and the massive inconvenience it has developed as well as the massive incompetence it has shown has "the potential" to stop a few terrorists.
When the tests show that 90% of the time this organization can NOT stop people from getting weapons on board, I'd say that was giving them one hell of a lot of credit.
The only thing that has prevented a repeat of 9/11 is not the TSA - it is the relative incompetence of ninety five percent of the terrorists in the world. And the only reason we had the original 9/11 is the relative incompetence of the law enforcement and intelligence communities under the Bush administration - and possibly a little assistance at the top in that operation, probably by making sure nobody was allowed to be competent.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Right. That is why scores of Jews lived unmolested all over the Middle East prior to Israel appearing on the scene, significant numbers still remaining, in places like Iran.
Ain't the Zionist Exceptionalism and Supremacism grand? Those damn Neandearhal Arabs, who lived in mud huts and ate dirt and little pebbles, exchanging unintelligible grunts, until the Enlightened, Glorious, Inteligent Zionists on a Mission From God arrived with cartloads of Money to bring Civilization to the poor wretches ... and a bit of administrative "resettlement" along with it.
... and of which the dirt-eating Arabs were not consulted, nor whose approval of the plan was deemed even remotely necessary, them being pebble-collecting swamp dwellers ... and which, surprise, shock, horror, they "rejected"! And only because it made most of them into either Zionist subjects or into peoples disposessed -- So how dare they! And over such a small "trifle" too! Ungrateful savages!
If that genius Zionist-White-Colonialist "plan" came down anywhere else in the world, on any other unsuspecting local population, the reaction would have been even more violent.
The Zionists do no Jew any favours by trying to conflate Jewry with Zionism. It is one thing to unjsutly persecute Jews for mere membership in their religion, quite another to resist the supremacist machinations of Zionists. Of course your attempt to tie the two together into an inseparable knot makes your true stripes show through quite clearly.
Yes, the relevant "cultural" background is that of a bunch ex-Europeans who arrived to kick the shit out of a bunch of locals in order to confiscate their land and lord over the disposessed, on an apparent mission of Manifest Destiny pre-ordained by their God who, according to them, designated the area in question as "theirs". The other side responded in kind, by attempting to get rid of the belligerent conquerors via any-and-all violent means, from all-out military conflict involving tanks and airplanes, to, as the desperation grew, all the way to strapping bombs to their asses and blowing themselves up.
Yes, how dared these Arab countries to do to the Jews what the Zionists did to the Arabs! I mean how totally unfair and dishonourable of them! Don't they understand the Glorious Concept of the Double Standard!? Savages!
Ah yes, the dirty Arabs infusing their ... dirtiness into pure, upstanding, innocent Zionists! Particularly the likes of Ben Gurion who was born in the well known Arab Emirate of Poland.