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DHS Official Considered Shock Collars For Air Travelers
"The Washington Times is reporting that the DHS wants to replace your boarding pass with a GPS-enabled shock bracelet. Plans for the device include subduing passengers remotely as well as onboard interrogation. There's even a promotional video."
Perhaps Paul Ruwaldt (the official named in this story) has been watching "The Coneheads" a bit too much, or not actually flying enough. Expressing interest is not quite the same as ordering mass quantities, but it's scary enough.
The truth is that another hijacking is unlikely to happen. With the memory of 9/11 anyone trying to take over the airplane is going to be subdued, if not out and out killed, by the passengers. The philosophy before 9/11 was to sit back, let the terrorists make their statement, and then everyone will be safe. Not any more.
So TSA's main job now is justifying their job.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
This system would help terrorists control all of the passengers on the aircraft. All the terrorist would have to do is take over the system and activate all of the wrist bands of the passengers to incapacitate them. After that resistance is futile.
That is just it... I can load just about anything I want into my private plane and fly anywhere in the US without having to go through security, without having to provide biometric ID, without having to take my shoes off, without having to wear shock collars, etc...etc...etc...
That is why this whole thing is security theatre.
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I'm not completely sure why the fear level is so high in American culture, but I'd hazard to guess that it's the result of a combination of being too used to being too comfortable and too safe too much of the time - similar to tyrant's paranoia - and the fact that the media and the current administration both cultivate fear (for different reasons).
A-Bomb
That's right, keep the conspiracy flying.
I don't think the passengers had time to watch the news, call their families, and say goodbye.
Right. Because the recorded phone messages of flight attendants and some of the passengers are completely fabricated. The families made them up after the plane went down to gain sympathy.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
To authoritarian people, the very idea that the masses have freedom is a scary.
Whether true or not, this story shows a very real reaction some people have to idea that they can't control other people. Freedom is, amongst other things, is also based on a "trust." At some point, a free people will rebel against an increasingly oppressive government. I think we are seeing the U.S. government racing to reach a state of control and surveillance BEFORE people start to rebel en mass.
The race is to get to a point where there is no way the people can rebel without losing their jobs, savings, houses, lives, etc. This is why students and kids protest, because they don't have a life's work of savings to lose.
The irony is that the corrupt powers that be had better fix the economy pretty damn quickly, as people with a lot to lose are easier to control that people who have lost everything. Once we have a major depression, the ideologies of abortion, gun control, "family values," become second to jobs.
If a mob of 1,000,000 people march on the white house with pitchforks and tourches demanding justice, there will be justice.
American culture doesn't have this level of fear. Nobody I know of has cut short travel plans because of the terrorism threat, though I imagine some people have. Nobody I know of thinks TSA is making air travel safer.
This whole fear thing has been manufactured by the government as an excuse to remove our civil liberties.
Don't ever EVER think that the American people are demanding it. We're not. This is being done TO us, not FOR us.
There will never be another hijacking of a plane with americans on it.
Exactly. That's why all four planes were hijacked in the same hour. Flight 93's reaction ("it's them or us") is now the default.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Where are all of these scared people?
They are in the government, and they are scared of getting their budget cut, so they keep a constant state of fear in motion to grease the wheels of spending and reduction of freedom.
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
I stopped flying specifically because of the TSA restrictions, NOT the fear of terrorist hijackings and bombings. I refuse to be treated like cattle by the airlines and shoved into a tiny tin can after being accosted by glorified mall security guards for hours at a time. They're making it as inconvenient as humanly possible to fly in this country these days and frankly, if I need to travel I'll just drive. If I can't drive somewhere and a ship is infeasible then I really don't need to travel there.
I wish I could mod you up higher than 5. Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, and we did not listen.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
And any pilot with half a brain knows that a cabin full of dead people is still better than a plane and building full of dead people.