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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.
Flying into this country is becoming more and more of a hassle and every time that I fly outside the US, it is apparent that the DHS is completely corrupting business and pleasure travel at the expense of our freedoms and economy.
If our government seriously thinks this is a viable option, then we have truly lost and the slide towards a fascist government will be complete. Yeah, go waaaay beyond "papers please" and treat *all* of your citizens as criminals when they travel.
What I suspect will happen is that this is a trial idea floated to the media and will be explained away as saying "Oh, well.... we intended this to be used for transporting criminals" or some such nonsense like that. This idea is one of the most absurd and dangerous ideas I've heard from my government in a long time and it moves us dangerously close to a threshold that will destabilize this country.
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I thought that air travel was punishment enough already!
Kevin Smith on Prince
TFS liks to a blog post which itself links to part of a letter (page two, so we don't even get to see the whole letter). The video link tells us simply that a company called Lamperd Less Lethal would love to sell these devices to a government agency. There is absolutely no evidence presented that would justify the claim that "the DHS wants to replace your boarding pass with a GPS-enabled shock bracelet". Why did this fake story even get posted?
Caveat Utilitor
Hahaha, man.. The Onion has the best articles!
Hahaha... wait, wtf?!
%#$$%#@!!!
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.
I don't care about the shock collars, but for the love of god don't run the system on windows.
...why not just show them Slashdot's new interface?
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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you're an airline pilot. A terrorist organization just used Semtex to destroy your reinforced door. I know my gut reaction is to look at a list of passengers and type in an id number to shock a specific individual.
As much as I don't like Tasers, it makes more sense to have a Taser gun than Taser wristbands. Those wristbands have to either be activated individually by number - not happening in an attack - or all at once - pissing everyone off.
For those that want to get outraged, this is an area where big business (airlines) can be your friends. The airlines won't allow this. Anything that makes flying more of a pain reduces their profits - even things like the new security fees on airline tickets reduce their profits. They aren't going to pay more money (I'm guessing at least $15-a-bracelet for the materials, location tag, and shock element considering that a Taser costs hundreds of dollars) to piss off customers.
So, this won't happen.
No, TSA-mandated 12" exploding buttplugs would be scary. (which is what it'll take for the public to wake up)
Shock collar boarding passes are merely funny.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
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.
What I suspect will happen is that this is a trial idea floated to the media and will be explained away as saying
These kinds of proposals aren't random; by making ridiculous suggestions like this, they move the boundaries of what is acceptable. Compared to shock collars, some of the other things they come up with will seem tame now.
What I don't understand is why people go for this bullshit. Why is it the government's responsibility to make air travel safe? Who cares? I've been flying for nearly 40 years, and the same risks we have today existed all that time and were just as obvious. And except for the fact that in 2001, the air planes plowed in a big building in Manhattan, 9/11 seems not much different from any of the numerous other plane hijackings.
People should just not vote for any president or representative supporting such measures.
This technology is well-understood and widely available -- the canine shock collar first came into use in the 1950s. Today's models are highly refined, capable of variable shocks from "barely a tingle" to "FRY". (Note: as a professional dog trainer, this falls into my area of expertise.)
Setting aside the "Your agonizer, Komrade!" aspects for the moment... how much will this cost us in tax dollars? How many passengers are in the air at any one time, at a wild-assed guess about 50,000?? The most basic canine unit costs about $200, but that one won't be sufficiently reliable or securable for airline use, nor does it have enough range for a large terminal, so let's upgrade to the $700 unit (which has a range of up to one mile under ideal conditions). That's $35 million just to purchase the units.
[And the average lifespan, in daily use, is about 3 to 5 years, then it's off to The Collar Clinic, which charges about 30% of the value of the collar for repairs.]
As to hackability -- this has been a problem since way back; one of the design challenges was ensuring that the transmitter from one collar didn't make another go off by mistake. And there are only so many radio frequencies available, and that too is old tech.
If I were bent on causing chaos on a plane, I wouldn't even get on board myself. I'd hide a scanning transmitter in the luggage, which would start transmitting "FRY" across the spectrum at random intervals. Passengers would never know who was going to get shocked next, or when the next shock was coming. Wouldn't that do wonders for air travel! (Encrypted signal required, you say? Okay, I'll just set my trigger to hit the electronics AFTER the decryption point.)
These devices are generally safe, as they are designed to be painful yet harmless. But someone with a weak heart or epilepsy could be in big trouble -- on FRY the shock is similar to a weedburner-type electric fence; it'll put you right on your ass. Even on "tickle", what happens to someone wearing a pacemaker??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I found the problem with your post.
There are no "plans for the device" on the part of DHS. The idea for outfitting passengers has originated from the company trying to sell them, Lamperd FTS. Why? Because selling tens of millions of these bad boys is a lot more exciting to the business than selling a few thousand.
By reading the response from the DHS (http://www.lamperdlesslethal.com/news/upload/pg1HomelandSecurity7_06.pdf) you'll see exactly what they think of the idea. DHS asks for a written proposal, and outlines the areas of interest for them, which are almost solely around prisoner detention and transport. The official also finds it "conceivable to envision a use to improve air security, on passenger planes," but the tone of the letter effectively takes Lamperd's pie in the sky multi-billion dollar contract off the table. Lamperd sends DHS a brochure with their cockamamie idea, DHS responds saying "we can see how you got there. Now here's how *we* would use it, so send us a proposal that focuses on our needs."
That's it. End of story. Yet some kook at the Washington Times puts two and two together and gets ZOMG THE BUSHNAZIS WANT TO PUT SHOCK COLLARS ON US!!!11!!!!ONE!!1!!