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Science Fair Entry Shuts Down Airport Terminal
OverTheGeicoE writes "A graduate student was returning home from a science fair in Omaha with his handmade entry in his carry-on luggage. When the TSA discovered it, they shut down the airport terminal for several hours, until they could determine it was harmless. All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again, so before you fly with your homemade Minty MP3 player, make sure you take a look at TSA Blogger Bob's warning or it could wind up looking like this."
Listen when he explains the FOUR items that each IED has: 1. Power Source 2. Initiator 3. Explosive Material ...
I feel so damn safe.
The "Minty Fresh" mp3 player wasn't just examined, or even pried open to see what was inside. It was maliciously torn to shreds. What do those Luddite TSA agents think could be hiding in a millimeter thick sheet of Aluminum lid? It looks like they put it into a blender.
This isn't looking out for "Public Safety", this is intimidation just because they can. Light your next bonfire with a copy of the Constitution. At least the paper it's written on can be used for something, even if the words are worthless.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
We live in a post-9/11 world. We have to forfeit some of our rights in order to fight the terrorists. If you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear. Think of the children.
Vote Palin 2012.
Why bother voting Palin? You know there's a Democrat in the white house RIGHT THIS SECOND right? And the Democrats have had control of house, senate, and white house within the last few years, and they most certainly didn't finally fight this TSA nonsense- in fact, in the 80s, they were in favor of something like this.
Can't blame Bush anymore. Guess you'll have to accept that they are all corrupt control freaks, eh? Both major parties are opposed to freedom, privacy, and any amount of self determination. I understand that once you pick Red or Blue you want to assign all the Bad Things to the Other Color, but it's just not that simple.
really are that stupid since the very next day some idiot was trying to bring homemade fireworks onto the plane.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
Cleric: And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.
Brother Maynard: Amen.
All: Amen.
King Arthur: Right. One... two... five.
Galahad: Three, sir.
King Arthur: Three.
:(){
Of course it is. But that is completely besides the point.
In this case, something unknown was called "scary" and thus "a threat" because they were idiots. This is lowest common denominator thinking at its finest. They want Sheeple who will obey even the most stupid of requests that have no basis for except for the security theater that we have.
And enough people WANT the security theater or worse, don't give a shit either way, that they hand over their lives to the very same idiots making such stupid decisions as this, and the poor lady that had her insulin confiscated because it violated the "liquid" ban policy.
These cases will continue until such time as we comply to their every rule. Ensuring we are the sheeple they want us to be. This is why more people out to cry out loudly and go to jail exposing these tyrants with badges every chance they get. If 10,000 people did this every day, they'd change the rules.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Honestly? As someone who has seen real improvised explosive devices? It kinda looks like one. It also looks like any of about a million other possible home electronics kits stuck into a mint tin, but a bomb is definitely one possibility. Important point to remember here is that many of the people that make this sort of thing aren't terribly good at it. Especially if they just plan to make and use the one. Small devices like this are a lot less common than they used to be in the major theaters (Iraq and Afghanistan) these days from what I understand, but we were trained to look for stuff just like this (common household goods with suspicious wiring/electronics) and found a few that would have taken off a hand or leg, or disabled a wheeled vehicle.
Thankfully most of the cheap homemade jobs don't actually explode, but a few do. I can see caution at least. Seems like they could just get him to turn in on in an isolated spot though. Couldn't be enough explosives in that to hurt anyone more than a few feet away.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
And upon further reading of the article, it looks like they didn't destroy the science fair project at all. It was a completely different situation, where somebody had a minty mp3 player (or similar) in an unattended bag at the airport, and the TSA took no chances. This summary confused me several times....
You know, all the device needs to do is LOOK like how a dangerous device might look like to an untrained individual. Then the person would wave it around and threaten things. Also, why does it need to be looking like an improvised explosive device? it could be looking like an improvised GPS/Radar/Radio/Cockpit jammer.
Rule #1 in first year engineering courses should be "Don't take your prototype on an airplane"
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
"as someone who has seen real improvised explosive devices? It kinda looks like one."
Fair enough. I understand why a couple boxes with wires and odd looking kludged together electronics can look like a bomb under xray.
Here's what I have a problem with: These people said "This looks like a bomb". They then proceeded to take this object out of the suitcase, open parts of the device, arrange it on the table, put a paper ruler under the device, and take a picture of it, before conducting any render-safe operations.
These people are fucking idiots. Are they trained to go poking around devices that look like bombs? I thought that SOP for something that looked like a bomb was as follows:
1. DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT.
2. Call the bomb squad.
What if this had been a real explosive device? They could easily have set this thing off in the terminal with all their prodding and poking, causing numerous casualties.
On the other hand, if they realized that this was not an explosive device then they should not have blown the thing up. They either handled a potential IED in a remarkably unsafe manner or they knowingly detonated a safe object. Either way, the TSA has proven their incompetence.
Your Palin comment, while designed to be funny, isn't. Have you even seen what she thinks of the TSA and all that or you just assuming? In the end, all you've done is proved you're even more shallow than she is.
She believes all of THESE kinds of examples are nothing more than Politically Correct Security. The problem is that the LEFT WING handcuffs how we do things because it might "offend" the terrorists ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Muslims and incite them to commit acts of terrorism. So we pat down Granny's Diaper, confiscate Insulin, Fondle little kids and least ... smash a toy MP3 player.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2630366/posts
If you're going to criticize Palin, make sure it is legitimate. This isn't one of those cases (there are plenty to choose from)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
except that this actually isn't security theater. It's the useful kind of security procedure that actually prevents bad stuff happening. Screening of cargo and investigation of suspicious looking bits of cargo is how they stopped the printer-cartridge-bomb plot, for instance.
It's all very well to knee-jerk off about how the TSA is full of idiots and they're trampling over your inalienable rights and freedoms and blah fucking blah, but at least spend a few minutes thinking about the context. This science project was a fairly simple, hand-built electronic device with improvised casing whose purpose isn't immediately determinable. The TSA says, and I'm happy to defer to their superior experience on this specific point, that bomb detonators they catch often look like - in fact, are - fairly simple, hand-built electronic devices with hand-built cases whose purpose isn't immediately discernible. Are you seriously suggesting it's 'security theater' to screen airplane cargo and take a closer look at improvised electronic devices? Really? If so, I'm damn well not flying on _your_ airline.
It's not like they arrested the kid and hauled him off to Guantanamo Bay or something. They found a suspicious device and performed an exhaustive investigation to figure out what it was. Which came to the right conclusion. I don't really see that anything happened wrong here.
Yeah, the real problem here is that the governmet has decided to take reasoning that makes perfect sense in a war zone and apply it to our communities.
At places where IEDs are a common and real threat to soldiers, it makes sense to treat any jury-rigged wiring as a potential IED. In a country that has millions of people flying every year without a single actual incident of a bomb, it doesn't.
Same with all the no-knock raids that end up killing innocent people. It is perfectly reasonable for the resident to have a gun in hand when responding to someone busting into his house at night. It is also perfectly reasonable for a cop to defend himself. The problem is the idiots in the police department that think it is a good idea have our cops act like soldiers in a war-zone, just to enforce laws which aren't a life-and-death matter.
In the real world, in the absence of government, I could walk up to you and smash you in the head with a rock killing you and then take everything you have without consequence. There's your "inherent" rights.
That is only true in isolation; that is, only if you and your victim are the only people to witness. Otherwise, there will probably be consequences. Do that to someone in your same hypothetical absence of government in front of the victim's friends or family or other such group that we humans have evolved to form so readily, and I highly doubt that you would be walking away "without consequence".
So called "inherent rights" and "natural rights" are not necessarily, clear, discrete properties of an organism or a person or however you are defining us. Rather, they are more like emergent properties that will emerge naturally from being the gregarious social organism we have evolved to be. Rights appear because of the "social contract" of being such an organism.
And if you still think those rights are "inherent" then I suggest you take a trip to Somalia or Afghanistan or Syria or Bahrain.
And if you think in such a place a person can do anything like you suggested in your hypothetical example, you are also much mistaken. There will be consequences. Take away someone's "right to life" and unjustly kill them in front of anyone, friend or family or other, who thinks fondly of them for feels you are being unjust, and you may just find there are consequences to infringing on someone's so-called rights.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
These people are fucking idiots. Are they trained to go poking around devices that look like bombs? I thought that SOP for something that looked like a bomb was as follows:
The Slashdot post is poorly - indeed, deceptively - written. What the actual article says is: "X-ray screening workers spotted the science project in a carry-on bag...Out of an abundance of caution, screening operations were suspended and the terminal was evacuated...The Omaha Police Department's Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit cleared the item with negative findings."
In other words, exactly what you think is supposed to happen, happened. The screeners called the bomb squad and got everyone else out of the way. After the bomb squad cleared the device, they took photographs. Presumably they did so because they want to be able to communicate to their colleagues what happened in this relatively unusual incident, and hopefully they want to learn from it.
On the other hand, if they realized that this was not an explosive device then they should not have blown the thing up. They either handled a potential IED in a remarkably unsafe manner or they knowingly detonated a safe object. Either way, the TSA has proven their incompetence.
The blown-up Altoids tin shown in the other linked blog was from a case where a bag was left unattended with the device inside. In that case, the bomb squad couldn't determine with complete confidence that the device seen on the x-ray was harmless, so they blew it up as a precaution. In that case, no one fiddled with the object in order to take pictures before the detonation.
While I'm no fan of the TSA, they don't deserve the particular and specific scorn you're heaping on them based on your reading of the sloppy Slashdot summary (and your failure to read the linked articles).
~Idarubicin