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Full Body Scanners Violate Child Porn Laws
gandhi_2 writes "The Guardian has a story about an ongoing legal battle over the use of full body scanners in the UK. The Protection of Children Act 1978, includes provisions in which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a 'pseudo-image' of a child... which a full body scanner does."
It's not illegal if the government does it. Right?
-Kinsey
Pedobear TSA edition!
"Think of the Children" meets "Fighting Terrorism." Which one wins? News at 11.
The World is Yours.
Two ridiculous hot-button topics with opposing aims.
Wow, this is kind of like when the unstoppble force meets the immovable object.
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How deep we've dug ourselves.
Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.
I somehow doubt that their choice is limited to those two options.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Yet another example of how "think of the children" has a myriad of untended consequences.
It's not to say that I'm hugely in favor of full-body imaging devices, but I'm also not in favor of draconian laws about "pseudo-images" which serve little to no purpose as well.
How about we agree that if nobody gets hurt, we won't press charges.
Lame.
This is ridiculous. Child porn laws need to differentiate between nude images and obscene/exploitative images. Hopefully this security debate will fuel a rethink.
As much as I don't care for the losers working airport security, I'm more concerned about the trauma they will go through looking at average airline passengers sans clothing all day long.
Body scanners are optional, if you refuse, you get a pat-down search. :)
But some pat-dows may constitute sexual assault:
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/inappropriate-pat-down-searches-during-an-airport-security-screening.html
This may be a catch-22 for TSA
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
"But back to those privacy concerns. Some lawyers believe having a young traveller pass through the full-body scanners could violate child pornography laws. As a result, Canada is exempting passengers under-18 from the new measures."
from http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/01/06/f-rfa-common.html
Personally, if I were asked to go through one I would opt for the pat-down instead. Want to get your rocks off feeling my rocks? Go for it, but I won't have my naked image stored in a computer that politicians claim is hack proof and will get deleted right after.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
please think of the adults!
If we continue to allow such invasion to our personal dignity as full body scans, scatter ray etc in public places WITHOUT DUE REASON OR WARRANT we are only one step away from having cameras and microphones in all of our houses. For anti-terrorism measures, instead of investing far more in either more labour intensive approaches such as metal detectors or explosive/chemical sniffers, governments have chosen far more invasive options with dubious increase in safety for the innocent.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Sorry, I am not native in English.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
...I would go a bit further: I don't want my naked image to be seen by anyone. Unless I was a porn star, which I'm not (and not intending to be one through this technology).
It's indecent, and I am principally against it. It's attacking the integrity of the human body, and a number of other basic human rights.
In The Netherlands, some person from the PvdA political party called it totally acceptable to introduce body scanners as flying is "voluntarily", and thus you would not be able to refuse it once you bought a ticket and boarding the plane. That person probably has no idea that a significant number of flying-hours is made by business travelers who are not doing that voluntarily, and cannot refuse (lest be fired).
A lot of stupid arguments are floating around in these days why the body scanners are OK, but every one of them can be refuted by a simple - but basic (like human rights) - counter argument...
Let's hope the political process works and we can indeed always opt for a pat down (or more, if suspicion arises *after* the pat down and normal security screening - that failed for Schiphol), or we have hundreds of thousands of people added to a virtual "no-fly list" as per arguments above...
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A child protection law is actually protecting the privacy of adults?
This cant be right, I'm certain the PC committee will rectify this before tea time.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
We'll have to put kids in opaque balls and cast them out to sea so that nobody can look at them or touch them or think about them. It's the only way.
Perfect. There have been suicide bombers younger than that. I feel much safer now...if perhaps a tad undignified.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Based on pictures they snapped of my cousin and I running around naked at the beach when we were about 3.
This is really stupid. The UK's "strict liability" laws are horribly designed.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
If you think if the children, the terrorists win. Wait. No. If you don't think of the children, the terrorists win. Ahhh...my moral outrage is so confused right now.
I say the passengers for the flight get to take a vote to see who gets to go through the body scanning machine. I doubt you'll get a flight full of pedophiles, but some kids seem capable of blowing things up
Fear of pedos vs. fear of terrorists.
The cage match we've all been waiting for.
Anyone taking bets?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If it's not sexual in nature or intended for sexual arousal, it's not porn. People of any age can be legally pictured nude in art, medical images, etc.
Its odd someone gets all the way from the middle east, thru Europe, all the way to Detroit with JUST the sort of device these things are meant to detect at JUST the time their deployment is starting to ramp up.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
wtf, if you fly, you get screened. you don't want to get screened, don't fly. bloody simple.
Won't somebody please think of the children?
Why the hell do they need to long term store it? It doesn't help you to say "oh yeah, he did have a weapon on him after all" 4 hours later. Don't let the image stream ever hit the hard drive. Just keep it in ram and wipe it when the next one steps through. Wait, why is this even a computer? Why isn't it just a monitor for the machine and strictly a video feed?
Oh who cares, the staff just whip out their cell phone cameras anyway if they see the secret transvestite senator walk though. Then it doesn't matter how much security they put on it. And who cares if they're storing pics or not if some pedo decides to get a job with airport security so he can look at naked kids all day? The article's solution was to "tell people not to violate CP laws." Oh yeah, telling pedos not to do anything pedo-ish always works. I say modify or dump the scanners!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Think of the child terrorists!
Coroners had better stop documenting the autopsies of children or they'll be in trouble -_-
Note. This quote may have been altered for your safety.
In agreement with the parent, there are plenty of examples of governments making laws to sanction immoral actions; consider the apartheid regime in South Africa, where as the government 'needed' to do something illegal, e.g. force mass evictions based on race to provide new land for development of suburbs for whites, new laws sprang into place. A more recent example example would be the US and the patriot act. Granted, the introduction of laws that curtail civil liberties or are immoral had to be sneaked in, often on unrelated bills, but it is another case of a government making laws to suit it's own purpose.
Which brings me to my actual point. It's not only developed countries that have a proper separation of powers. Many developing countries have the same legal principles enshrined in their constitutions. It's just that those principles are often ignored (including in developed countries) by the corrupt. Corruption is a part of human nature, not a part of just 3rd world human nature.
First of all, full body scanners are a fucking poor solution to terrorism for two reasons:
1. Terrorists will find another way around it anyway.
2. You're X-raying someone every single time they fly. It doesn't take a radiologist to tell you that lots of x-rays are bad.
We're effectively willing to slowly sterilize frequent fliers over the next 10 years because of some jackasses putting explosives in their shoes/underwear. The terrorists have already won. I mean, I don't think that even the most extreme terrorist would have thought that they would be able to have a government agree to irradiate its citizens.
But anyway, how do doctors get around taking x-rays and CT scans of minors for medical reasons? I mean, it's not like children have never broken their pelvis before. Surely there already exists some exception to this child pornography law to allow the use of x-rays and CT scans for legitimate purposes.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Presumably the use of a "full body scanner" won't be considered "indecent" in court. Whereas pictures of a naked child holding a sex toy for instance would be.
If you can't tell the difference, you should be shot. The Guardian certainly deserves to be. Because presumably they would bring up the same argument against, say, visits to the pediatrician or medical imaging.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So mediical scans are forbidden now too? what a load of crap.
Let's not forget that"anything" that could be considered child porn, regardless of the facts will put you behind bars... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28319199/
"Child pornography is illegal even if the pictures are drawn, a federal appeals panel said in affirming the nation's first conviction under a 2003 federal law against such cartoons."
Can someone Think of the children!
going with this thought process, then i'd say the pampers diaper commercials should be considered child porn...
Im 27 and never flew before, now I will never fly fuck you if you think you gonna xray my whole body. Sorry but if I want to keister some pot ima do it! Fuckers.
Visit my Forums?
More people die on Britain's roads each YEAR than have died as a result of terrorism in TOTAL.
Each and every day we take far greater risks with our lives that that posed by terrorism.
Yes things changed on 9/11...
We all became wimps as our leaders showed fear...
Where's the spirit of Winston when we need him ?
Don't worry, you outclassed many of the English speakers.
Total security implies zero privacy and some privacy implies less than total security. Individuals demand privacy whereas societies demand security... The solution is clear in this case however, if security is the priority, then simply rid the world of children. If privacy is the priority, then rid the world of individuals. Ah! Safe and private. no people, no problem
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
Get the Queen to run the scanners. She is above the law (or ta least can pardon herself from anything)
Do you mean that the hospital can't use CT- or CAT-scan on a child either? I don't believe that is forbidden, nor do I think that the full body scanner violates that law.
The scan image makes the dude look like a f*cking ken doll, true you could kinda make out his balls, but really, come on, ken dolls have a bulge too. Worse still, I fear that if children are exempt from such scans, terrorists/smugglers will start using children as mules (they probably already do, but this would certainly increase that).
I understand the mentality behind such a reaction, but really, which is worse: a pedo possibly getting jollies from a doll like image of a child (internet child porn is a far more explicit and available), or a child being used as a bomb or drug mule?
Geeks don't grock information, they grep it.
This was not meant to be in the defense of child molesters but rather as an example of a similar situation in which it is easy to get a warped view of reality based on a poorly chosen sample group
It makes me sad that you need to say that. Are people really... meh... fail.
but... but... but... I was told that if I ever saw a child naked I'm a pedophile, and if I don't want my and everyone elses privacy continually violated then I am a terrorist... that means I have to be a pedophile or a terrorist?
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
As far as the airport scanners go, (1) inform the public what they face, and (2) they can choose whether to submit. This is very harsh, but it still allows for privacy and most liberty, excepting that travel using someone else's privately owned conveyance has preconditions no sensible person would put up with (and hopefully, that will kill the air travel industry, finally teaching the idiots in government a lesson.)
I don't even go to an airport in order to refuse to submit to America's ludicrous and paranoid security theatre.
No, me and my money fly to places other than the USA, places that don't demand that my local airport administrators play kiddie games with their flight check-in procedures. So I go to those places, then I come home again, while my money stays behind.
America apparently believes the tourist dollar is less important than pretending to be trying to catch "z0mg terr'sts!!!11". That's fine, because there are lots of other places who see things differently.
So, it violates child protection laws, meaning that if they are implemented children will not be allowed to be scanned, so terrorists will just use children. By the admission of the Home Secretary, it would have had at most a 60% chance of catching the guy who attempting the bombing on Christmas Day. It's taking "naked pictures" of people against their will. We have no idea as to the safety of the devices, the concequences of repeated exposure. Why are we implementing these, again?
The risks did not change - we did.
Never before in our history have we ever been so scared by so small a risk.
Pre 9/11 hijacked passengers stood a fair chance of survival with both negotiations and advancements in our hostage rescue capabilities. As a traveler your safest course of action was to be passive.
Post 9/11 when hijacked you know you are going to die. Your safest course of action is to be aggressive. Terrorist should know that by hijacking a plane - all they do is create a plane full of people with NOTHING TO LOOSE and EVERYTHING TO GAIN.
At least if I were to die trying I would be the one to have chosen how and when I die not them!
Now imagine a plane load of people with the same f**k *** attitude....
Why don't we just make it illegal for people under 18 to have bodies? They're too young anyway, and having a body just encourages them to explore it. At their age they shouldn't be taking on such adult burdens.
In one stroke, we get rid of under-age pregnancies, statutory rape, pedophilia and many other issues related to under-age sexuality.
Children should be heard, but not seen!
I am anarch of all I survey.
There are two types of scanners we will have to endure at the airport; the millimeter-wave scanner and the ‘backscatter’ X-ray scanner. Both emit ‘high-energy’ radiation and are dangerous.
Whole body scans of healthy people will create more problems than they solve by exposing healthy people to radiation. The risk for radiation over-exposure may be small for a single subject, but the number subject exposed to airport body scans will increase the risk by the millions. A normal CT scan of the chest is the equivalent of about 100 chest X-rays. Some scanners are equivalent of 440 conventional X-rays. The traditional X-ray machine detects hard and soft materials by the variation in transmission through the target. The backscatter X-ray detects the radiation that reflects back from the target. Several studies have suggested that people have been unnecessarily exposed to radiation from CTs or have received excessive amounts of radiation. A person undergoing a backscatter scan receives approximately 0.005 – 0.009 millirems of radiation. 1 mrem per year is a negligible dose of radiation, and 25 mrem per year from a single source is the upper limit of safe radiation exposure. Widespread overuse of body scanners and variations in radiation caused by different machines could subject many to radiation doses that could ultimately lead to thousands of new cancer cases and deaths.
Stupid friggin article.
First off, in order for the law to have any effect, you have to find someone willing to press charges.
Second, the charged person will have a right to be judged by their peers.
So, do you think anyone would prosecute someone under this law? Do you think any jury (including a judge) would convict someone for these circumstances?
This is how and why the laws work in the US, are they that much different in the UK?. Whoever wrote (and posted here) the article is just digging for attention on a non-issue.
Now if images did leak out onto the internet, then you have a case against anyone who allowed or enabled that leak. So, I would be all for stringent historical logging of usage of these machines. Some way to identify all persons who had access that could have leaked an inappropriate image, be it child or not. So, like other things, quit trying to stop a good thing based on exaggeration, and spend more effort discussing and fixing the real problem.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
An example of an expensive deployment of the wrong technology when a cheap alternative has been available for --decades--.
Change the security such that every single traveler, bar none, must enter a private passage way, perhaps with a couple video cameras or viewing windows. They remove all clothes and place on top of the x-ray belt along with the usual purse, wallet, keys etc. They walk through this "new" "scanner" which is really the security person looking at the x-ray and at the individual who has just bared all. At the end of their walk one of two doors can unlock - one leads to hell - further interrogation, wearing a hospital gown and (if needed) straight jacket.The other door leads to get their clothes etc. from the x-ray belt and go "safely" travel away. Many such passage ways could be cheaply built and their images do not need recording. Make a "family" passage for those with small children.
Apply the same requirements to all employees coming to work at airports including flight staff. Make all employees do this when coming and going. Maybe there are airline pilots waiting to be terrorists too. Nobody, not even your aged grandmother, warrants being beyond suspicion.
With so many baggage handlers out there it only takes a few to bypass this "security" anyway.
If you don't want to risk your life on a plane, boat, bus or train, then don't get on one. You have a greater chance of a heart attack or cancer caused by unhealthy lifestyle than terrorism.
This cheap "scanning" could have been done for a very long time without the use of video cameras. It is not immoral we all have the same body parts. Well most of us do anyway.
The truth is effective security was never the real goal. In most of the world It has always been the authorities' goal to create the illusion of effective security to the general public while at the same time in most countries fill the pockets of the authorities' chosen private individuals and corporations.
The authorities have assured us that the images from these scanners cannot be stored, masturbated over, taken away or sold on by airport security thugs. If anyone wants to believe that then let them do so.
That's the problem, though. Alberta is pretty big and it's easy to miss any gun or knife crime.
I also note that the original poster didn't say anything about other violent crimes.
Rape? Muggings without knife/gun? Brawls?
Even pseudo images are banned. Even actresses dressed up *like* children are banned. Waiting in the wrong area if you're male is banned. TALKING to a child is proof enough to get you arrested. Even if they aren't erotic.
Anne Diamond was arrested for Kiddie Porn because she had a photo of her infant child in the bath. Naked.
What parent puts their child in the bath WITH THEIR CLOTHES ON?
And what is erotic about a picture of your infant child in the bath, playing and laughing?
And doesn't the parent have a legitimate case for having such pictures?
What I don't understand is that these security measures are placed in airports pretty much exclusively. But what's keeping someone from touring the white house with an underwear bomb, becoming the aid of a senator, a member of secret service, or infiltrating any other political house hosting many political figures. Why don't they strip search people going into them? Why don't they get their nudie scans of all the senators, employees, security, secret service, caterers, etc? I mean yes a terrorist wants to invoke terror, well what's more terrifying to the "leaders" of the US than blowing up their politicians and people who work for them?
Or more importantly I should ask, why do those people who make these decisions to implement these policies not want those policies protecting them? I would think they are at a higher risk than the average citizenry. But I suspect it has something to do with all of these things being pretty degrading to a person, and they have the voice and the power to prevent it from affecting them. Plus you'd think the companies buying all those votes would want them to buy more of their security equipment at those highly inflated government pricing schemes..........guess the cost per government official versus gain by implementing them in government buildings.
I still say they put em all the court houses, police stations.....maybe a few others. See how many people can get out of jury duty based on religious rights to not have their soul stolen by scanner tech, and how many weapons the system can detect on the officers as a good "testbed".
We could simply use this law to keep the fanatics off aiplanes!
FRA: STFU GTFO
Everyone seems to immediately focus in on the fact that these things show naked images of people and completely ignore the fact that these images are taken by low energy x-rays that bounce off after traveling a few millimeters into the skin. They have already shown that even these low energy x-rays can damage DNA, Chromosomes, and (in males) the ability to produce healthy children (The scrotum isn't thick enough to reflect all the radiation). Radiation is an accumulative issue ... being a frequent flyer already at increased risk just due to altitude in our atmosphere, but having full body irradiation once or twice a week could very well cause severe medical issues.
I don't know about anyone else, but I fear cancer more then being killed by a terrorist on an airplane. And the idea that we are opting into getting cancer just makes it worse.
"If it's a problem sir, you are more then welcome to not go through the scanner, however you and your family won't be getting on any planes"....
Stopping annoying kids from planes is personally a fantastic idea... The reality is, however, when common sense kicks in, parents are going to put either security or the lost holiday infront of a lame media hyped paedo worry...
Not all images of children is child pornography. Otherwise parents taking pictures of their child in the bath should be arrested. The only reason people are bringing this up now (rather than when this technology was announced) is because it's become a reality that everyone is going to have to do this so all the fat people or people with nasty genitalia don't want stand in one of these machines.
See if you can get a boner. Erecting nipples for women will be harder. I suppose you could take your bra off for that extra lift. Insist that they check that you're not hiding plastic explosives under the breasts....
Men, of course, could insist that their underpants are checked by feel to see if there's explosives hidden in them.
Insist it's done in public so that you can't be raped: it would be in front of witnesses.
It depends on whether you're comfortable with your sexuality.
about full body scans, terrorists will take it to the next level: http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2009/09/26/internal-bomb-suicide-bomber-hid-explosives-inside-his-body/
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Oh Come on. Atlanta has about 500 000 people. London has 7 500 000. That is 15 times as much. You can't make such crime comparisons between the two and claim the reason is in one difference.
But if we want to make such comparisons: Finland has about as strict gun control laws as you can have (to get a small handgun you need to prove that you are a hobbyist, need to have belonged to a shooting club for at least a year, need to get a doctor to review your mental health... There is more, but you get the point) and Helsinki is about the size of Atlanta. Know what? We don't have such problems in our subways either!
I know that mods are from USA, largely libertarian, etc. but modding the parent up for that? Jesus Christ.
Thats what sad about this situation. We're too afraid to treat them like children any more.
The law does differentiate between nude and obscene/exploitative images. You may freely publish an image of a child with a skin disease in a medical journal (although the face is always obscured in some way.) You may publish images of nude children as art (although not art that is erotic in any reasonable way) or journalism (think the famous image of a burned child in Cambodia during the Vietnam war.) Those objecting to the images on the ground that they violate child porn laws are morons.
There are plenty of reasons to object to full-body scanners, but this isn't one of them.
SirWired
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Benjamin Franklin
The UK law prohibits indecent images. Nudity is neither necessary nor sufficient to indicate indecency under UK law.
Simple snaps on a nudist beach, medical photographs, photos gathered for evidence in court, snaps in the bath or on a rug - all perfectly legal. A fully clothed but sexually suggestive photograph of a child may be illegal - nudity is not the defining criteria.
There is no way these machines would fall foul of the UK law, so it's a complete non-story.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
I don't understand why they are investing hundreds of thousands in these scanners that do not detect all forms of explsove anyway, when a sniffer dog's nose can find traces of just about any dangerous substance.
I have an idea... If you don't want planes blowing up in the air and you don't want your kids going throught the scanners... DON'T F*#@%ING FLY! I swear, all these little squeaky wheel groups need to shut the hell up. We all need to start running our airports like the Israeli's and we wouldn't have all these security breaches.
This points to one reason that this is a valuable debate to have.
Hysteria in this area has driven the courts and lawmakers to weaken and make ambiguous any similar distinction which in the *sane old days* pre-hysteria - say pre-1980s - remember those? - used to be quite strong. The moralistic US as usual has the worst record here with high profile prosecutions (persecutions really) of artists and photographers who have been brave enough to depict naked children eg acclaimed photographer Jock Sturges (google). If Raphael was alive no doubt they'd prosecute him LOL!
Despite the fact that an accepted definition of child pornography defined by an international treaty requires that, to meet this definition, a depiction has to exist primarily "for sexual purposes" and (iirc) that it primarily focuses on the sexual areas ie genitals etc, courts and lawmakers have continued to interpret the definition of child pornography ever more broadly as time has marched on. Depictions, particularly arty nudist photography and family snapshots that once could not possibly have been considered pornographic and that do not even meet the above definition have resulted in serious prosecutions that plainly make no sense.
In former, calmer times the vast majority of naked depictions of children were quite legal and I think I am correct in saying in the US these used to have to show actual sexual activity in order to qualify as pornographic. So there was a category loosely called "child erotica" (but they shouldn't have used that label) and also a whole lot of nudist and art photography that was clearly legal. It can still be argued in court, often with success, that it is legal. The world did not end. Nations did not collapse. People rarely even cared about this stuff because an average reasonable person did not think of these as obscene in any way. Only since abuse hysteria set in have governments delighted in this new-found mandate to censor, ban images and prosecute. And it's so very politically correct and few will question it besides a few very very brave groups of artists and activists.
We cannot control what images someone will be aroused by. If someone is aroused by children's underwear, do we restrict the sales of underwear? Defining a mere image - any explicit image - of a naked child or of any human body as "abuse" or "exploitative" is nuts. What about advertising? Many models are 13 or 14 when they start walking the catwalk in bikinis. Previous generations would have found all this very strange, because it is very strange. Photographing your naked babies and children (remember the babies on the rug?) at least once for the family album was pretty much mandatory. The fact that so many people lack the courage to say so these days should be of great concern.
What the hell is wrong with nudes anyway, even highly explicit nudes with clear views of genitals? We all have these, you know. Hiding them doesn't mean they're not there. These are not disgusting, these are a part of being human. Why do we think that shame (ie body hatred) is a good thing? It is interesting that, as the "war" waged on adult pornography by nutty Christian and separatist feminist groups was totally lost in the 80s, a newly broadened category of prohibited images emerged to take its place in the armory of social control.
The control of images is enormously politically significant. All regimes seek to control some type of image - be it the flag, the child, the woman, genitals, legs, whatever - this seems to be hard wired fact of societal control. Beating up these issues by reference to one hysteria or another - fear of the (child's or adult's) body, fear of emerging sexuality in children, fear of our own sexuality, fear of Jews, fear of whatever - is how it's done. It's all about fear.
If the children haven't done anything wrong, then they have nothing to hide. They're obviously terrorists.
"Think of the Children"... "Think of the Terrorists"... "Think of the Children"... "Think of the Terrorists"... "Children"... "Terrorists"... "Children"... "Terrorists"... BANG!
i mean, pick any cause of death: pancreatic cancer, slips and falls, drug overdoses, etc...
you can say about all these kinds of death: "well, more people die due to car accidents..." so therefore we shouldn't care about other causes of death?
quantity of dead alone, as the only determinant to how much attention we pay to a cause of death, is demonstrating on your part poor reasoning skills. you can't imagine other factors that go into determining how much attention we pay to a cause of death?
something like terrorism is caused by other people ON PURPOSE. this makes it pretty serious, unlike blameless agendaless accidents or blameless mindless disease. when a committed organization has announced their desire to kill as many people as possible, and shown real capability and intent and follow-thru, that's a big problem. a little creativity results in something like 9/11. does anyone doubt that if an al qaeda asshole got a hold of a suitcase nuke they wouldn't set it off in the middle of a major western city? is it panic and hysteria to worry about that possibility? no, its simply prudent. in fact, an attitude like yours: "whatever," is UNDERreacting. there is just as much danger in a false sense of complacency as there is in a false alarm. the only attitude that makes sense is a prudent logical analysis, and that prudent logical analysis means you take the threat posed by al qaeda and the wannabes very seriously. because they most certainly intend as much death as they can get away with
terrorism isn't like cancer or car accidents. you need to pay a lot of attention to it: the cause is someone else, and the intent is death. a committed group wants to kill you, and they'll kill millions if given the means and opportunity. so it really does make a lot of sense to focus on al qaeda and the wannabes a lot of time and attention, and it is in fact perfectly proportional to the nature of the threat, since it is composed of creative committed organized disciplined and determined human beings, trying to kill you. totally different threat than accidents and disease: you can pretty much gauge things like road conditions for car accidents, air temperature for disease, etc., and come up with a mathematical statistical model for the kinds of death you are faced with
but when your killer is other human beings, and you see an escalation in mayhem and murder and threats, as we do today in the west AND the muslim world (don't forget that the most dead from groups like al qaeda are muslims), then you pay ALOT of attention to the threat: it doesn't follow statistics. it could be a hundred dead one year, a million the next, unless you get a handle on things. destabilize certain regions with terrorism and you get a war. a war is how many dead? still sound like baseless fear to react so seriously to al qaeda and the wannabes?
there's nothing wimpy or fearful about it. of course, there are hysterical people who are overreacting. but they are just as stupid as people like you, who are clearly UNDERreacting. you think its "wimpy". this is low iq, an inability to adequately and logically ascertain the venomous potential in a threat. to you, only statistics counts as what is a threat to you. one dimensional idiocy
a logical, prudent, levelheaded analysis of the threat posed by the rise of militant fundamentalist assholes hellbent on killing a bunch of people means we should pay them a lot of attention and throw a lot of money at the problem. really. no fear panic hysteria or wimpiness in any of that analysis, simple logic and reason
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I suggest all those that support this get on a plane with a terrorist.
Well, this certainly lets Islamist terrorist minors off the hook.
Horny suicidal Muslim 17-year-olds need not fear Pedobear.
If it violates child porn laws when children are involved, does that mean it's regular porn when adults are involved? So much for not violating privacy.
Mandate that children's clothing be scanned. Present each child with a choice. Either:
1) the child chooses to disrobe, and their clothing is scanned. Security staff visually inspect the naked child. As long as there is no photographs or video taken, then no child porn is created. Looking at naked children is not a crime; it is only a crime to look at pictures of naked children. Or
2) the child opts to walk through the body scanner. It is now the child who is responsible for creating the child porn. You can therefore arrest the child, preventing a known child pornographer and possible terrorist from boarding the aircraft.
It would probably be illegal if I attempted to frisk some woman in the street, too. Surely, security personnel have some kind of exemption to laws like this?
And if the child never knows, it won't mind.
If that's the way you want to take it, the KP is fine as long as they're young enough that they will look different enough by the time they're old enough to be embarrassed (and since "Doctors and Nurses" doesn't go out of fashion until probably half way to puberty or beyond, AND you change a lot in your formative years, this would allow up to, say 5 y.o. but not 10 y.o pictures of nekkid kids).
And the laws are not based on "embarrassment" since kids taking pictures OF THEMSELVES is considered KP, they're arrested and then embarrassed for the rest of their lives. If embarrassment were the reason, the prosecutors would be in jail for KP too.
"Slow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 2 hours, 22 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
"It's been 2 hours, 51 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
Gosh. Wonder if I'll break the record of three hours...
Maybe they will finally find a use for the hideous fun frames "feature" found on most camera phones and superimpose a swimsuit over the images of children. As a bonus, for a few $ or pounds, you can get a printout. Problem solved, and in a Fun way!
allegory time:
imagine a hypothetical disease whose mortality rate is exponential
now you meet a guy who says "i refused to be terrified by the miniscule chance of being killed by this disease, since its only killed 10 people out of 6.5 billion!" ....so far, duh. when of course, unopposed, the disease threatens to kill millions. its not fear and hysteria that moves one to realize the potency threat, but simple extrapolation. meanwhile, a static analysis of only historical deaths is simply stupid and disingenuous: of course a disease, at the point of starting, only has killed a few. but to only use that in your analysis is simply dumb. if the disease is genuinely shown to be growing exponentially, a pure static analysis of historical deaths is simply illogical and a pointless examination of the real nature of the threat, correct? the disease is obviously worrisome, by any logical analysis
now, historically speaking, is terrorism emanating from al qaeda and its wannabes on the rise or on the decline? therefore, is an analysis of only historical deaths intellectually valid?
now imagine the disease is successfully contained through a long hard expensive effort
now the man says "why did they spend so much time and money and worry on that disease? so much fear and hysteria. it only killed 20,000 people, the chance of dying was obviously extremely low, not substantiating at all the expensive effort undertaken to fight it"
when of course the disease only killed 20,000 people PRECISELY BECAUSE people spent so much time and money and worry on the disease. so what is the value of this man's obliviousness? what is the value of your obliviousness?
in both instances, the man is a moron, with low intelligence and poor analytical skills
if you fail to see how terrorism, unopposed, can't destabilize regions of the globe, if not the whole globe into war (what was the STRATEGIC AIM of the mumbai attack on civilians last year again?), if you can't see the solid determination of terrorists to kill as many civilians as possible by the most devastating and disgusting means possible, you are not "unterrified", you're an idiot. remember: world war one was triggered by a small group of nationalist fanatics in sarajevo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria#Consequences
this is precisely what al qaeda and the wannabes are trying to achieve with things like the mumbai attack. world war one killed millions. terrorists are pounding right now very, very hard along the same kind of geopolitical fault lines that existed in world war i, in a serious effort to start world war iii. that's what they WANT. they are already at war, they want to pull the whole world into their struggle
again, in case you missed it: a false sense of complacency is JUST AS DANGEROUS as a false sense of alarm. the only logical approach is a prudent rational analaysis of the potency of the threat. a prudent rational analysis of the threat posed by terrorism means we devote a lot of time, money, and worry to the effort. NOT FEAR. of course there are hysterics in this world. but the existence of hysterics about al qaeda does not mean there are not also people who have LOGICALLY AND PRUDENTLY come to realize the potent threat terrorism poses. to group both people into "just a bunch of hysterics" again is nothing but a demonstration of your poor analysis and reasoning skills about the world you live in
i have tried to convince you of the threat terrorism poses with logic and reason in this post, but most importantly, notice that there is no fear or hysterics in my thoughts as presented to you. i am merely logically explaining the reality of what terrorism really means, that you seem unable to grasp. so can you honestly say that only fear is the motivation behind the effort and time and money pointed against al qaeda and its wannabes? its really just mass hysteria to you?
then you suffer from a dangerous false complacency just as dangerous as any false alarmism that you hold in contempt
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hear Diabold got the development contract...
What if everyone of the 4chan generation took this to the next level... what if everyone who didn't have too many qualms about it puts on a big grin and says to the TSA folk, "Heh, I request a pat-down instead!" Turn their shit against them and make them squirm. They thought they were gonna be giving the rapes; ha. Seriously, whenever the government decides to make our lives miserable for theatrical purposes, there are often exploits and flaws that we could use to make sure they're just as miserable with it.
In the United States there were a number of significant cases that set precedent for the US. 'The Color Purple' is a good example of a real controversy, 'Lolita', nudist colonies, parent taking pictures of their kids playing in bathtubs, anatomy books, and such. An issue that even came up in 'The Color Purple' controversy was if therapist and psychologist could be charged with possession of child porn if they wrote things down they were told by abused children. Also, is it child porn if a doctor or nurse takes pictures as part of a rape kit? After a lot of debate, to my understanding it came back to the spirit of the law. Are children being abused? Child porn laws are meant to protect children and prosecuting good doctors, good parents, and authors sharing their experiences does not do anything to protect children from abuse. You have a better argument for saying this practice would put more children at harm. However, it is possible to take something legal and present the same thing differently and make it illegal. For example, if a doctor took pictures from rape kits and sold them to people that got off on that kind of material should [be prosecuted]. But for the sake of argument, selling the pictures and information with parental consent to researchers in order to compile a model for identifying sexual abuse if not the same thing.
Anyway, I find it unlikely that the amusement over blurry near naked like pictures of people running through an airport wears off within hours. Also, just like any search, respect needs to be given to those being searched. Look at the 4th amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
This is exactly what they are doing. I know this is not European law, but it goes to the philosophy. These scanners are more effective and less evasive than actually stripping people down and searching them. Also, you can opt out of being scanned get a body search. Shouldn't people be happy about this?
But back to the respect issue, if security personnel are being crude or disrespectful such as point or laughing, they should be disciplined and possibly fired depending on the severity. If they are collecting pictures and giving them to Nambla, they should [be prosecuted].
Other than that, thank them for trying to keep you safe and let them do their job. And if you are worried about your kids safety or mental well being, or what might bother them, compare these scanners to full body cavity search. What would you like to subject your kids to? If you don't think there is any reason to have strict security at airports or that government is over stepping their bounds, that is a totally different issue. I honestly think this is argument is a troll for people worried about these near nakedness of these pictures. To say that this would be production of child pornography is silly, and if the law hasn't caught up somewhere, it needs to.
I am no fan of invasive government, but if we believe TSA does a real job, these scanners enhance their ability to do their job of protecting people, including children, and in a less invasive manner.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Nobody will do that until one blows up a plane.
That is precisely correct, and on more than just an economic level. We have also turned around and eroded many of the fundamental liberties and rights that our country was based upon as if this were a solution to people attacking the system. The "terrorists" could not have hoped for an outcome anywhere near as destructive as what they actually achieved through the weakness of our leaders and the muzzy-headed pandering of our media.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Here's some research on 'A Privacy Algorithm for 3D Human Body Scans' for the no-no spots.
http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/research/techreports/2006/tr_cylab06001.html
Suppose it wouldn't be a stretch to adopt to issue at hand.
First RTFA, see that picture of the naked guy? That's a real person, BTW.
So the thing is that you are invading people's privacy, but it's with technology so it's right? I don't think so, that technology makes it easy for Security personal to watch me naked doesn't mean I like it now, it's an invasion of my privacy and I don't want them to do it unless they have a good reason.
The irony is that personal privacy of adult civilians is a joke in the UK to the extent that the best argument you can make against it is that it is a form of CP, and that only works because they are that paranoid of it. That's completely fucked up.
Full body scanning of children is right or wrong for the same reasons that full body scanning of adults would be right or wrong. It's like, oh you are an adult now, you no loger deserves clothes. Fucked up.
But... the future refused to change.
I have to admit to acting the same way toward other men.
When I was a kid I had close male friends (my age). We could play football, wrestle, go swimming together. One friend had a habit of skinny dipping which I thought was gross but not sexual.
Then I hit puberty and became aware of sexual norms. It was "gay" to get physically or emotionally close to another male. Since then I've avoided close friendships with males. I've had many close, non-sexual female friends (in addition to a number of sexual ones). But any sign of intimacy with a man raises suspicion of homosexual intentions by either him or me. Even regular acts of familiarity like hugs are something that I'll do with men my father's age or kids my nephew's age, but it seems really strange to make physical contact with a man my own age.
The strange thing is that I don't even have a moral objection to homosexuality. I just don't have any homosexual interests myself and don't want to send the wrong message or be viewed the wrong way.
your initial statement was that worrying about terrorism is just hysteria and less of a concern than car accidents. i will take your ceasing of that argument and the taking up of new subject matter as a tacit acknowledgement on your part that you accept you are wrong on your INITIAL statement above. good day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Recalibrate the display on these things to A) only show a rough outline of the person and B) simply highlight whatever it is that the person may be carrying?
The software disguises the private parts of the individual before the image goes to the operator. The simple solution is for the software to doctor the image and enlarge desired features. Then everyone would want a copy of the image to hang on their wall at home. The airport could even make a buck off the images. j/k
This is a silly argument that one often sees nowadays. Of course no measure we take will be perfect, and the terrorists will exploit whatever gaps we leave in the protection, but the point is not to create a perfect system, but to make it more difficult for the terrorists so that there will be fewer attacks.
One might as well argue against equipping cars with door locks, since thieves can and do find ways around them. The point is to make it more difficult for them, so a large number of potential evil-doers will give up before they start.
Okay, so I don't really get why anyone could get their rocks off looking at one of those body scan images. Then again, I don't get why people get off on kiddie porn either. But, IMHO, this might be solvable. Lots of cameras now have face-detection software in them. Why not modify it to detect boobs and other naughty bits and then just put a blue circle over the top?
Thanks again for the legal opinion, /.
I'll take it for what it's worth.
there's no other factors your vast genius-like mind can conceive of when evaluating risk?
do you have alzheimer's? did you miss my posts above where i delineated the simple inescapable logic of how moronic it is to take static quantity of deaths as your only guide?
no, you simply changed the subject. now you repost your initial point. which i already demolished as an argument in previous posts. you changed the subject because you know you i have a point. so think some more on the points i have shown you, or even better yet, be a man and admit when i have shown you something you did not consider and that perhaps your opinion is ill-conceived
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
is always relevant
and it is preventable
plenty of terrorist plots have succeeded. plenty of terrorist plots have been foiled. the struggle goes on. stopping terrorists will never be 100% successful. but ceasing the struggle simply results in the terrorist plot success rate going to 100%. that's acceptable to you?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
always includes intangibles
its only disingenuous when you ignore some intangibles and inflate others
one could say that the real hysteria on the subject matter here is those who think prudent security precautions is the death knell of our freedoms. a true understanding of our freedoms results in a deeper faith that they aren't really being threatened in any wider contexts than simply getting on a damn airplane
a few governmental initiatives due to genuine terrorism in limited contexts can not erase 500 years of philosophical, legal, and cultural trends. meanwhile, a weak, low iq, crude understanding of our freedoms imagines them dangling precariously by a thread all the fucking time. that's the real hysteria here. have some faith, grow a backbone, grow concerned about your freedoms when they are REALLY threatened
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm guessing that 99% of you have never actually seen what a "full body scan" looks like. I'm also guessing that a significant percentage of you believe that the x-ray glasses you see ads for in comic books really work. For some education - instead of hype - you might want to take a look at the NPR piece broadcast this morning about full body scans. This link http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122289282 references a transcript and includes an image of one of the scans.
I suppose some slashdotters might consider this porn. Then again, in 1914 a woman's bare leg was considered porn.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
the real hysteria comes from thinking "omfg! general societal freedoms and 500 years of legal and philosophical traditions is destroyed because of airplane security!"
your understanding of what your freedom really is is crude and weak if you think it dangles by a thread
that's the real fear and wimpiness right there
have some faith in the strength of your philosphical and cultural institutions and grow a backbone. airport scanners are not the end of fucking western civilization and every freedom you hold dear. THAT'S hysteria
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
simply a more logical and more prudent analysis than yours
a simple static historical analysis of a threat is not valid. crude allegory: a disease grows exponentially. so: is your risk of catching the disease simply a function of historical cases? of course not. the threat changes over time. so why do you think your static statistical analysis has any value whatsoever on the subject matter? is the threat gee, i dunno, SLIGHTLY more complicated than your braindead one dimensional thinking on the subject matter? can you imagine some other variables and dimensions in a VALID risk assessment?
let's put it this way: false complacency is just as dangerous as false alarmism. i'm not speaking from alarmism. but you most definitely are speaking from complacency
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
so let's explore your questions:
something like road accidents have been studied to death, are mostly unchanging, and any costs are readily understood in terms of impact and cost effectiveness
meanwhile, something like terrorism is poorly understood, is obviously on the rise, is wildly variable in result, and is as a rule of the catastrophic variety: an airplane blown up today, a nightclub tomorrow, a suitcase nuke after that. its not a fucking exercise in counting the regular annual pile up of cars into trees, or anything remotely comparable, according to a thousand different variables a junior high school student could grasp. so to simplemindedly equate the two threats is exactly that: simpleminded stupidity
really, this is the truth: if you honestly want to sit there and represent to me that the threat of terrorism is as pat and simple as something like car accidents, then you are either intellectually dishonest due to denial or blindness, or you're just low iq and stupid
so let's put it in one obvious way maybe your dim wattage can grasp:
wwi, which killed millions, was set off by a small group of nationalist partisans in sarajevo bent on assassination. the mumbai massacre last year was the same sort of attempt: pound at geopolitical fault lines until you pull everyone into the war al qaeda and its wannabes are already fighting. that's what they WANT, that's what they are working hard to do: not to be the earthquake, but to be the catalytic event that unleashes pent up frustrations and hatreds. you understand what an enzyme is, right? how a little bit can dramatically change the outcome of a solution of chemicals, correct? then you understand the potency of what al qaeda and its efforts really represents to your well-being
put it another way: 19 men crashed 4 airplanes on 9/11. you say so what. i say it allowed a terrible american administration into invading iraq. how many died there? say to me with a straight face that gwbush could have had the political support to invade iraq if 9/11 didn't happen. understand what is at stake yet? after 9/11, india and pakistan mobilized their troops on their borders. nothing happened there. is that always going to be the case if al qaeda and its wannabes unleash a few more mumbai massacres?
in other words, only if you are completely blind falsely complacent moron who doesn't understand the impact and ramifications of a successful major terrorist attack in this world do you view terrorism as no threat to you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What do these catch that the old ones didn't? You know, the ones that made more of a chalky outline of things instead of a full-color nude shot (inverted)?
How on earth will this stop the ones who cram the explosives up their ass?
This is a completely ineffective trampling on liberty. What a mess. What's next? Standing on a conveyor belt with everyone else, bent over, cheeks spread? Oh, it's for security! We have to protect you!
The chances of being killed in a terrorist act with what's in place is less than the chance of being struck by lightning, by a long ways.
Lastly, does any of those asshats realize that when they do this, terrorism wins? That is, they successfully terrorised you enough to forgo the liberties everyone fights so hard to keep.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
it was simply to dispel your ridiculous notion that static historical statistics is somehow valuable in adequately describing the threat terrorism poses to you
"If Radicalism is spreading exponentially - perhaps you should look to your foreign policy and to your world attitude in general to find out why so many people hate you, not to their actions."
hilarious! in which you refer to a geopolitical truth that supports MY ASSERTION: that terrorism is a threat, and growing. hate feeds hate, correct? so a successful terrorist attack breeds hate, WHICH THREATENS YOU. right, moron?
19 men crashed 4 airplanes on 9/11. you say so what: terrorism is not a threat to me. that's your thesis
i say it allowed a moronic american administration to invading iraq. how many died there? did the hate in the usa and the hate in iraq from this growing cycle of violence POSE ANY THREAT TO YOU?
say to me with a straight face that gwbush could have had the political support to invade iraq if 9/11 didn't happen. do you understand yet what is at stake with terrorism and the need to fight it with time, money, and effort?
after 9/11, india and pakistan mobilized their troops on their borders. nothing happened there, luckily. is that always going to be the case if al qaeda and its wannabes unleash a few more mumbai massacres? wwi, which killed millions, was set off by a small group of nationalist partisans in sarajevo bent on assassination. the mumbai massacre last year was the same sort of attempt: pound at geopolitical fault lines until you pull everyone into the war al qaeda and its wannabes are already fighting. that's what they WANT, that's what they are working hard to do: not to be the earthquake, but to be the catalytic event that unleashes pent up frustrations and hatreds. you understand what an enzyme is, right? how a little bit can dramatically change the outcome of a solution of chemicals, correct? then you understand the potency of what al qaeda and its efforts really represents to your well-being
if princip had NOT assassinated the archduke, wwi probably still would have happened due to some other cataclysmic event, correct? OR: given time, and no major cataclysms, MAYBE things would have cooled down in europe, and the whole of history would have changed and millions of lives would have been saved
but you say fighting terrorism isn't worth it. according to you, a few more mumbai massacres, a few more blown up night clubs, a few more blown up trains: eh, isn't statistically significant. buy more road signs to fight car accidents instead. because you know, stopping 100 car accidents versus the possibility of war between india and pakistan which would kill millions: obviously, lets stop car accidents. pfffffffft
maybe, FINALLY, if you fucking understand what terrorism threatens to unleash in the world you derive your well-being from, then maybe you will finally be intellectually honest and admit that terrorism is a serious threat that must be fought hard. FAR more important than stopping fucking car accidents
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is actually a carefully crafted plan to burn out the brains of knee-jerk anti-intellectuals as they rant in circles about protecting children while fighting terrorism. I patiently await seeing Glenn Beck self destruct on TV like the androids sabotaged by Spock on Star Trek.
i'm saying gwbush is an asshole. i'm saying assholes exist in this world. i'm saying terrorism gives them carte blanche to overreact. only in your demented mind does me saying that assholes overreact mean then that i am the same kind of overreacting asshole. no, moron, i'm only TELLING you what will happen, i'm not SUPPORTING what will happen. get the difference? the way you are reacting to me is called shooting the messenger
this is my message to you: assholes will overreact to terrorism. so therefore, its very important to fight terrorism. get it?
you're telling me "hey, everybody stop overreacting. you know, everybody just magically start behaving like no group of human beings in any culture in any period of human history has ever behaved"
in other words, i have an intelligent grasp of human nature and therefore an intelligent understanding of the large threat terrorism holds for us: it could precipitate a war. you, meanwhile, just wish people would sing campfire songs and hold hands and everything will be ok. you're a fool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"hey everyone, could you listen up? i would like everyone on the planet to have a cool head. you know, to start behaving in a way no large groups of humans in any culture or any time period has ever behaved in all of human history, k thanks"
what i'm telling you is that terrorism precipitates war. example: wwi. example: iraq 2003. this is what al qaeda & co is trying hard to accomplish with the mumbai massacre last year. they aren't the earthquake. they are trying to catalyze the earthquake by pounding on geopolitical fault lines. THAT's why its important to fight terrorism hard. that's why its way more potent than something like car accident statistics
meanwhile, you just want to magically snap your fingers and change fundamental human nature. you want everyone to have a cool head. good for you. hey: its not going to happen. the status quo, permanent for human nature, is lots of hotheads running around
so when i tell you we need to fight terrorism hard it is not because i am also a hot head, it is because i recognize the reality, unlike you, that simply wishing for cooler heads is not going to actually make cooler heads. instead, we have to PREVENT THE ACTIVITIES THAT MAKE HOT HEADS. that is, we have to fight terrorist plots, hard. get me now?
what you are asking for is impossible
what i am asking for is hard, and doesn't always succeed. but it actually has a real world effect: ruined terrorist plots. and that genuinely makes a difference
you tell me: would a hardcore antiterrorist have possibly stopped princip in 1914? and if so, would millions have died in wwi if other cataclysms were also averted?
if you say wwi would still have happened, you betray your own statement that everyone just having cooler heads is the way to go: because by saying wwi was inevitable you are saying hotheads will always prevail
but if you say wwi could have possibly been averted, then you are putting your faith in hardcore antiterrorist efforts
so either yes or no to wwi possibly being averted, you lose your argument
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
question: would a hardcore antiterrorist effort have possibly stopped princip in 1914?
and if so, would millions have therefore not died in wwi, if other terrorist cataclysms were also averted?
if you say wwi would still have happened:
you betray your own statement that everyone just having cooler heads and ignoring terrorist events is the way to go: because by saying wwi was inevitable you are saying hotheads will always prevail
if you say wwi could have possibly been averted:
then you are putting your faith in hardcore antiterrorist efforts
you lose your argument either way. feel me now?
your problem is that you confuse my rational approach with the hysterical approach. from your position, which is the cluelessly blindly falsely complacent point of view, i can see how the hysteric and the prudent look the same. but you are confusing two positions. i'm not a hysteric. i'm not fearful. i'm levelheaded and prudent
meanwhile, i clearly understand that, just as dangerous as fatalistic terrified whining hysterics, is blind falsely complacent people like yourself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i'm not talking about waging war, i'm talking about a hardcore antiterrorist effort, like the airport screenings
when terrorists set off bombs, hotheads on either side win, correct?
so, just as you say, and just as i also understand and agree with you, the way out of conflict is to let cooler heads prevail, which means not agitating the hotheads. you do that BY STOPPING THE BOMBS
you are confusing my support for hardcore antiterrorist efforts with hotheaded partisanship
surely, a few more IRA bombs or a few more ulster death squad atrocities would have prolonged the conflict and the hotheads, correct?
so we're in agreement
your only problem is that you are confusing my desire to ramp up the antiterrorist effort with being a hothead on a partisan side of the equation
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
however, you can't erase an ingrained legal, philosophical, and cultural allegiance to freedoms overnight. in other words, there is also hysteria that a few airport restrictions means the entire western experiment with liberties and freedoms is over. yes, some screening efforts are an overreaction. but what we will see is some clamping down on freedoms in limited contexts: public squares, trains and airplanes, and then when the fundamentalist threat dies down in a decade or so (it is already losing its cachet in iran, which was a pioneer in fundamentalism in 1979), then these temporary clampdowns will be appropriately shoved aside as well
aside: my story about the troubles: i knew a british chick in the early 1990s and she was horrified when she came to new york city. now she knew that the ira got a lot of money from the states, but she was horrified at how out in the open it was. she couldn't believe that on almost every bank window were signs to the effect: "open your ira account today!" "now is the best time to open your ira account" "getting the best rates on your ira account?" etc...
ira stands for individual retirement account ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
one bad actor can ruin the forum for everyone else
a nation committed to liberties will occasionally find those liberties abused by actors in bad faith. normally, you can weather these bad apples in low doses. but when the incidents increase, and the venom increases, some sort restriction on liberties becomes inevitable, simply as a matter of self-preservation
what's driving the threats to our liberties today are bad actors, not some top secret cabal that will preserve those limits forever. so fear not that our liberties are so fragile. there is a lot who remain committed to extending and expanding our freedoms, it is a solid philosophical bedrock, not some fashionable vogue. assholes hellbent on abusing our priveleges and blowing us up is a temporary threat, and restrictions on our liberties because of them are temporary as well. we the people will see to that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The FBI data uses only the population within the city limits of Atlanta, while the data for London appears to consider the entire metropolitan area. Look at the MSA figures for both and you'll see that the populations are a closer match, at 1.9:1 than your 17:1 claim.
However the crime figures from the FBI didn't include the outlying areas, so that number is sure to go up. So the Atlanta area wouldn't fare any better on a per capita basis.
As I understand it Britain will no longer be self sufficient for electricity as of 2015.
A sizable portion will be outsourced from Russia.
Through undersea cables (we are after all only a small island).
A loss of those cables during the height of our summer or the depth of our winter would be far more devastating.
"Your example should be Ireland.
We fought for years with the death tolls mounting on both sides.
And it was not the fight that ended the conflict."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1502532&threshold=3&commentsort=1&mode=nested&cid=30697250
well which is it?
it ends, or it doesn't end?
certainly terrorism in general will always be with us, but terrorism from one source or another certainly does end. fighting terrorism is simply the wages of civilization, like taking out the trash every thursday. you don't take the trash out one thursday and never do it again. its "the war on garbage". its called a "war on terrorism" but its really just law enforcement and police work. i mean there most certainly is a "war on crime" that will never end as well. its just verbiage
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Like clothing that has in it a substance that will be seen by the scanners... So you can have a big smiley face or "Hi TSA!" message written across your body when they scan you.
What will a full-body scanner see clearly that won't set off the metal detector? We need that stuff in some kind of paint pen.
I expect to see some sort of kit for this at ThinkGeek in the coming year.
contact al qaeda. tell them what you've learned from the troubles. good luck
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
that's all you should ever ask of anyone in a democracy, and its all you need to do to be effective
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The Protection of Children Act 1978, includes provisions in which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a 'pseudo-image' of a child... which a full body scanner does."
I'm glad that one of these stupid "think of the children" laws is finally biting them. We've made too many regulations with the "think of the children" argument.
One of my personal pet peeves, is the booster seat, required in the US, for riders under the age of 8. I think there is dirty politics at play, but aside from that, it would have been much less burdensome on the population to simply require that new cars have adjustable seat belts, and grandfather in existing cars. Instead, they require the purchase of these seats for every rider. No longer can the coach of a child's sports team take the team to get ice cream after a game, without having a booster seat for every kid.
Its a very freedom limiting regulation.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
As with all the replies I have seen to my post, many indicate that "this is not technology to draw a line", and simply accept it.
But let me ask you: do you draw a line *anywhere* ?
Basic human rights can only exist if at some point if time you speak up and say: until here and no further.
Besides, if they do suspect a person, they (already have...) the right to strip search a person. Why extend this to *everyone* without question ?
Basic human rights are the last line of reasonable defense against abuse of power and they define the limits with which we can enjoy our earned freedoms. By saying "we have nothing to hide" or "this is not a violation of human rights, but a luxury problem", you are saying that just because we live in the "free west" we have no rights whatsoever, or you say that those rights are marginally defined by positive comparison to 'lesser' countries.
If we continue down that path, these 'lesser' countries start to become more free by our standards as they *do not* virtually strip search people without grounds of suspicion!
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Terrorist should know that by hijacking a plane - all they do is create a plane full of people with NOTHING TO LOOSE and EVERYTHING TO GAIN.
Recent attempts were about destroying the airplane, not about hijacking it and then making demands. The underpants bomb has already failed by the time it was noticed. A properly detonated explosive needs only a few microseconds to change from being an innocent clay to being a cloud of hot gases - no time to react then.
And IMO the Christmas bomber was set up, for some unknown to me reason, to fail because his bomb was not likely to work. I can't imagine nobody tested such a bomb on the ground; all you need for such a test is a long rope. I'm sure they have that level of technology even in Yemen :-)
Bottom line, If you do not want to be scanned or have increased security please stay home. Then my fat butt can ooze into your empty seat :)
In other news, parents have officially been forbidden to look at their children while they are naked -- yes, that also includes the birth.
That's just ridiculous, and it's part of why the World isn't moving -- stupid punkass idiots with the fear of change trying to find ridiculous arguments. If you want to be against it, prove us that it is wrong with decent things!
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
Even more startling, those studies are using a truly young definition of "child". I imagine a few more subjects might be aroused by images of nude 17-year olds. And yet they are considered just as disgusting and unlawful by American society.
"Recent attempts were about destroying the airplane, not about hijacking it and then making demands."
I agree that the tactics have changed - but not so much the risks.
There are risks in everything we do, but there are some things that simply don't make sense.
Link : http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23790729-body-scanners-unlikely-to-find-al-qaeda-bombs.do
Quote : "It was unlikely that it would have picked up the current explosive devices being used by al Qaeda," he said. "It probably wouldn't have picked up the Detroit Delta Airlines bomb on Christmas Day."
And still people want us to pose nude for some ineffectual piece of privacy invading junk ?
Evidence.