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The Sensible Body Scan Alternative
An anonymous reader sends in a CNN article that looks at airport security from more reasonable point of view, suggesting that looking for every last micro-gram of potentially explosive material is a waste of time, since very small quantities of explosives are unlikely to significantly damage a plane. The author also recommends incorporating parts of the Israeli method of securing airplanes — look for the bomber, not the tools. Quoting:
"Clearly everything should be done to prevent explosives getting on board an aircraft in quantities sufficient to cause structural failure and bring the plane down. But is it worth chasing lesser quantities that would result in zero or minimal damage? The enhanced pat-down that some find so offensive is designed to search for these small amounts. It often ends with a swab being taken to test for explosive residues. Technology does have a role to play, but imaging is not the solution. Operator fatigue sets in after short periods of time staring at computer images. That's why there are reports that contraband items have been smuggled through X-ray units used to scan carry-on bags. The aim should be to detect high explosive in quantities that are sufficient to cause significant damage. We don't need a machine that takes pictures of the human body. It makes more sense to develop a detector that clearly discriminates between high explosives and human tissue or water."
The goal is to make money for government contractors and politcians, not enhance safety. Inefficient, ineffective solutions produce much more profit for government contractors and the politicians that support them.
Could the underwear bomber have done any worse than what happened on Aloha airlines flight 243?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The alternative should be to dismantle the TSA, put every single person who works for it on trial for treason, and have them executed.
The third can't happen, because the second wouldn't convict anybody. According to the Constitution you and I use to argue against them, only two things constitute treason: acts of war against the US, or aiding and abeting those who commit such acts. For all that can be said about the TSA, and pretty much all of it is bad, they still haven't managed to do either of these things yet, so there is no treason involved.
I applaud you for looking into the abyss, but the abyss is looking back into you, and you are letting it win. If you want to be better than what you're fighting, that starts with respecting their rights even if they do not respect yours.
Who's been caught by the TSA?
Not a single terrorist has EVER been caught by the TSA while trying to board a plane.
And if they thought your can of Coke was really a threat, then why don't they treat you like a threat when they find it? Instead they just demand that you throw the POTENTIAL LIQUID EXPLOSIVE into a garbage can next to them.
It is 100% bullshit.
Why you ask? Because the first person to point out how useless all of the scanning is will be singled out as anti-American by their opposing Congresscritters. Same problem when it comes to common sense with child porn laws and sexting by those under the age of 18. If you don't throw the book at the offender, you're not "thinking of the children!"
The machines will kill 16 people a year in cancer deaths, terrorists don't get that many. We have here a cure that is worse than the disease.
The most effective detector for hidden explosives is the bomb-sniffing dog. My unit used dogs to great effect in Iraq, and yes we did find bombs and hidden explosives on people, in cars, buried in the ground or in houses. Dogs can even sniff explosives from several meters away. So all the passengers would have to do is walk by a bomb dog and his handler on the way to the airplane. If the dog signals a positive, then that passenger could be taken aside for a more detailed search. An indication from a trained working dog is legal grounds for probable cause to search a person.
Dogs are so effective that DARPA even has a challenge to come up with a machine detector that could match a dog's nose. So far, no one has won the prize. I admit that dogs do have limitations such as needing rest, food, water and play time. But those limitations can be easily overcome with a little careful planning and cycling dogs in and out. The DEA and the US Customs services already use dogs at airports to screen luggage for drugs or illegal animal trade. So many airports probably already have the infrastructure to attend and care for working dogs. I honestly do not know why the TSA hasn't even openly considered bomb dogs as an acceptable alternative to full-body scanners. The TSA is obviously aware that the military and police have been using dogs effectively for many years.
Send anti-gay religious wingnuts to protest at their funerals.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
As much as I admire the success of "the Israeli method of securing airplanes" on a day-to-day basis, it has failed abysmally in the decade-to-decade time frame. Not because it has permitted planes to be hijacked or blown up, but because it is still in place after so much time. It (along with the quality of the Israeli armed forces, its nuclear arsenal, and the insufficiently qualified support of foreign governments) has served as a kind of "enabling behavior", making it possible for the Israeli government to maintain hostile relations with its neighbors and even so many of its (non-Jewish) subjects. I'm not saying that the political situation in the Middle East is entirely (or even mostly) their fault. But their ability to make a state of war tolerable enough to live with decade after decade has kept them from finding a real solution. (Obligatory geek reference: ST:TOS episode "A Taste of Armageddon".) Likewise, the US government's efforts to make its "war on terror" tolerable for its people to live with - with no planes blowing up or other experiences of "war on US soil" - enable it to avoid dealing with the real root causes of this problem. Not Islam. Not Iraq or Iran. Not Israel. Running with the "i" theme I've got going here, I'd call it "industrial imperialism". If we want air travel to be safe - if we want our people to be safe - we need to look at that, not individuals' skin color or body cavities or religion.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Except none of the two more recent trerrorists were Arab.
Shoe bomber : Richard Colvin Reid, father black Jamaican, mother white English. Born in the UK.
Underwear bomber : Umar Abdulmutallab, both parents Nigerian, born in Nigeria.
I remember back when we had real trolls. Not these thin-blooded wanna-bes.
So you cannot parse basic English or you are completely ignorant of recent history or you're trolling.
And you even got some mod points. Interesting.
No. You said that the method used by the TSA worked. I said that it did not because it didn't catch any of the terrorists since the WTC attack.
You said something about fences and coyotes. I pointed out that the "coyotes" were still there and had not been stopped.
Now you're talking about whether the shoe bomber had been caught by the TSA. He had not. He was stopped by other people on the plane.
All that and you even started off this thread with "racist".
Feel free to wander around the subject, but the fact is that the TSA has never caught a single terrorist. Never.
But the shoe bomber got through the TSA's checks.
Therefore, the methods the TSA used did not stop a terrorist from getting a bomb onto a plane.
You have a problem with that. Whatever.
Racial profiling fails. It was gamed over 20 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindawi_affair
How about a free market solution where I can select an air carrier that just does not bother with this crap?
The only way to do security of this type effectively IS the way other countries (like Israel) do it - and that is with profiling
Except that Israel does not use profiling for airport security.
Israeli security experts have repeatedly emphasized that, in their view, profiling is an open invitation to terrorism. Terrorists need only to find out what profile is being used, and then they're in; they just use a terrorist that doesn't fit the profile. Profiling fails.
The Israelis use questioning. 100% questioning.
The US, on the other hand, does use profiling. The last time I was detained for detailed questioning (because, for reasons beyond my control, I'd bought a one-way ticket at the last minute-- a profiling flag), every other person in the group was a middle-Eastern or Indian male. It was pretty darn obvious what the profile was.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Have you had your head buried in the sand for the last couple of years? TSA didn't catch the shoe bomber -- the passengers and flight crew of the airplane did.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Dogs. Put a bomb-sniffing dog at each security checkpoint. When the dog alerts to a substance, stop the line and use pat-down procedures (performed in private) on the individual(s) who caused the alert. This is cheaper and much, much more reliable than any scanner.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
The crotch bomber was Nigerian, not Arab. Timothy and the Unibomber were both US and white. Jim David Adkisson was both white and in his late 50's. The McCamy Law Firm bomber and the Well's Fargo bomber were also white.
There are active terror groups in Spain, Ireland, Japan, China, India, The Former USSR, etc etc. Profiling just Arabs leaves out huge swaths of potential killers.
The ______ Agenda
Not to mention I ought to be able to travel within my own country without answering to a government official about the purpose of my trip.
I think we all just need to accept that some people are going to be struck by lightning, some people will die from trees falling on them, some people will die of food poisoning, and some people will die in exploding planes. People will go 80mph, driving with one hand while nursing a coffee and puffing a cigarette, while passing other vehicles going in the opposite direction also going 80mph only 5 feet away and think nothing of it. We should take the stupidity/bravery that allows us to do that and use it to just get on the damn airplane with our fingers crossed.
Clearly you haven't thought this through, or you'd realize that "everything" includes ending air travel, or doing full medical-grade X-rays of every passenger. No, what should clearly be done is to reduce the risk of injury due to terrorism below that of things people put themselves at risk to every day, like car travel. The rest is a matter of educating people. At that point, by definition, the terror caused by the risk of someone taking down a plane is less than that of traveling in a vehicle, and we have won and the terrorists have lost. That's the way to win without subjecting the very people we want protected (us!) to any unnecessary hardship.
Unfortunately, you technically can do this. You just have to pick one of the small charter companies that doesn't use the terminal, or fly yourself. The unfortunate part comes when you pay the bill.
In other words, the groping and nudie pictures are just for poor people, not their wealthy and/or politically connected betters.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This is the truth. Terrorism can't be completely stopped without turning the US into a police state, with cameras inside every home. Therefore some terrorist attacks are part of the price of freedom.
Reasonable searches are fine, but machines that take naked pictures of passengers and invasive physical searches are not reasonable.