Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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
Yeah, go waaaay beyond "papers please" and treat *all* of your citizens as animals when they travel.
There. Fixed that for you.
Wrong!
If they put a shock collar on me, I'd blow the damn plane up on general principle.
The fear level in American culture is, as Noam Chomsky puts it, "off the scale."
The weird thing is that I don't feel afraid (and I travel frequently) and I don't know anyone who is really afraid. Where are all of these scared people ? Who are they ? More importantly, do we know that the above statement is really true, or is it just what we are told ?
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.
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?
Way back in the late 70's (or early 80's maybe, I forget) I and several of my friends set up a couple of Dobsonian telescopes in my grandmother's backyard. A half-hour or so later a police car pulls up and two cops get out and come around to the back to ask whats up?
They'd gotten calls that "Suspicious looking people" were setting up "mortars" aimed at the city.
Yes it really happened.
It turns out one of out neighbors had issues with my grandfather and was trying to use the cops as his private thugs. He came out pointing with the classic waving finger prattling on about hippies and pipe bombs and such.
There are a lot of unstable people out there and we are currently dealing with two political parties who both seem convinced that more govt. power is needed. It is now useful for govt. to use these people to shoehorn it's new policies into place.
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
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!!
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.