Slashdot Mirror
TSA Shuts Down Airport, Detains 11 After "Science Project" Found
OverTheGeicoE writes "A group of students and a professor were detained by TSA at Dallas' Love Field. Several of them were led away in handcuffs. What did they do wrong? One of them left a robotic science experiment behind on an aircraft, which panicked a boarding flight crew. The experiment 'looked like a cell phone attached to a remote control car with some exposed wires protruding.' Of course, the false alarm inconvenienced more than the traveling academics. The airport was temporarily shut down and multiple gates were evacuated, causing flight delays and diversions."
What more can I say. Dallas, TSA, Southwest---we aren't talking about the brain trust here.
I am surprised someone just didn't scream NERDS!
The TSA sucks, but I can't say I disagree with their response in this case. The device is described as a robot-like device with exposed wires, resembling a handmade explosive device. According to the statement in the article, the TSA determined that the device was not harmful, the airport reopened, and everything went back to normal. That seems like what is supposed to happen.
The Dallas City Hall statement in the article:
That doesn't change my opposition to the groping and scanning, of course. But this story seems just a little overblown. I think an airport would have reacted this way regardless of the existence of the TSA.
Just to be the devil's advocate, imagine the following scenario.
Professor reaches TSA, shows the package, passes it through X-ray / opens it to show there is no chemical / explosive, and answers questions to the fully satisfaction of TSA (yes I am teacher these are the children I teach...).
Sometime later, someone else (who of course has not been told that there was such teacher with such object in the previous flight) finds the surprise. Even if the artifact was competently investigated by the TSA, the people who found it probably had no way to verify that ---> panic button.
To me, this article is bussiness as usual, and per se (the devil lies in details) it does not show up any incompetence / abuse
Why can't
If it got on the plane, someone checked it somewhere and gave it a thumbs-up. That makes it more likely to be a toy, just like it looked.
Or it could have been placed aboard the aircraft by a crew member, ground support personnel, or any other person with access to the sterile area that intended to do something illegal. To get a job that gives you access to the sterile area takes little more than a 10-year background check, with no ongoing checks. There is always the possibility that someone could turn or be a sleeper long enough to get a job. That is why aircrews and airline employees are supposed to look for and report anything suspicious, because there are always ways to get something past security. Things like this actually do happen on a fairly regular basis, but it usually involves theft or drugs. The aircrew was right to report it.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Excellent technology frightened the merely mediocre. Who we let gain power. Handcuffs were applied by pigs. Who we let to gain power. That's all there is to be said.
There was a time when JPL and MRI lured the brightest from all over the world into the country. Now they all get scared away. If anybody wants to meet me nowadays, I call them back to Europe. There's no way that I'd be traveing to the US anytime soon.
I know quite a lot of stuff that'd be deemed harmful to the US. Like logic, evolution, security related stuff. Maybe not grammar. Screw that. 30 years ago that was a completely different thing. Jimmy Carter. A downhill race ever since.
Who actually does vote those into office that are eternally scared of the stuff they don't understand themselves? Could you please strip them off their right to vote?
20 minutes into the future
What kind of moron takes something that "look[s] like a cell phone attached to a remote control car with some exposed wires protruding" onto an airplane?
Uh, someone that does not want the device utterly destroyed?
Checked luggage gets the shit beat out of it. Also, very often, security personnel will go through your luggage, and break even more stuff, through plain negligence, or just plain re-packing it poorly.
Here's an interesting info-graphic I saw for the first time today. Pretty much falls in line with the rest of the sentiment here.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Every American is a criminal... if you ask those in charge
FTFY. Why do you think the number of criminal offenses keeps increasing? Ayn Rand hit the ball out of the park:
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
Palm trees and 8
And people have left bombs behind on aircraft as well. Designed to blow up AFTER the plane took off again. And the bomber left at the stopover, too.
Of course, I suppose people have hidden bombs in checked luggage as well. (This was one of the incidents that led to the rules where if a passenger fails to board the plane, their baggage is offloaded as well).
All this happened prior to 9/11. People are a wee bit more paranoid now.
It was 2002, and I was taking a course in digital electronics. One of the well-known projects for this course was to build a digital clock from regular 74xx and 74xxx IC's. We were to complete the projects on our own breadboards, and we could, if we wanted to keep the result, buy our own electronic components as well. I bought my own electronics, and as a result, could work on it when I was not necessarily in the lab. I was in a fairly reclusive hallway in the school around lunctime, testing out a circuit I had designed which would get incorporated into my final project, and I was using some LED's for feedback, which flickered quickly as my circuit ran. I was concentrating on what I was doing, and was surprised when someone from campus security came up to me and grabbed me by the shoulder. I spent the next 15 minutes in the office of campus security explaining what I was doing, and as it happened, one of the people from campus security knew the professor and could vouch for the story I was giving. They had called my professor for the course anyways, who came to security, chuckled at the whole incident, because he recognized me immediately, and said that he knew me and that I was okay.
Later that afternoon, during the class lecture, the prof relayed the anecdote to everybody with much amusement, not mentioning exactly who it was who, evidently, got him called down to the security office because they thought one of his students was building a bomb. He advised us all that we should be building our projects in the lab only, and not in the hallways of the school.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's not even hyperbole, just a basic opinion on when "personhood" begins that differs from the majority opinion. If you share that opinion, it would be hard not to be appalled by the rampant infanticide.
It's sad that geeks are, on the whole, so quick to just dismiss someone with differing values. When someone comes to a very diferent conclusion, we shouldn't be so quick to assume they're stupid, instead ask whther they're starting from different assumptions (certainly 90% of design arguments at work could be avoided by this practice).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think the fact that it was *left* on the plane means that someone in the TSA already decided it was ok to be on the plane in the first place. In fact, it was judged safe enough that it could be a carry-on, which would be a requirement to be "accidentally left on the plane" (checked luggage would have made it to the carousel with nobody ending up detained, or outright lost forever).
... err vigorously inspecting... that device, sir...).
You'd think that there would be a pink sticker or some shit for nutty stuff that's already passed a first screening. I can tell you, as a guy that carries various odd electronic equipment all over the country, it'd be nice to earn some sort of reward for convincing the apathetic screener that what I'm carrying onto the plane is, indeed, a very expensive spectrophotometer and not an evil pilot killing death ray machine, complete with a USB strangling cable for those desperation fallback plans (please, please stop fucking with
Incidentally, I flew a couple years back, and had to give up my $0.99 nail clippers that I'd forgotten I'd put in my pocket. Apparently I could have clipped the pilots' fingernails too short until he bled to death...? They didn't even have the file/stabby bits on em. Still, only $0.99 and I knew better, so d'oh. What pissed me the fuck off, though: I went to a shop on the "glad that's over" side of security to get a book and some chips prior to boarding my flight, and guess what I saw? The same exact fucking brand of stabby-less nail clippers for $4.99. I half wondered if they were MY clippers, and that security took so long because they needed time to repackage them for re-sale to me.
The tubes all made it. I don't think i even put protective wrap on them... I forget, though.
It was an old beater, just had sentimental value for the family, so I figured I'd give it a tune-up.
I never did get FM working on it, though... Maybe I should take another look at it, I was fairly noob back then, this was 10 or 15 years ago. (and I have actual test equipment now, don't need to guess anymore).
Mod parent up please. And add to that, cockpit doors are now reinforced.
Also had a brief demonstration this weekend of what a pilot can do to incapacitate passengers. We had a go-around at our landing, first time I've ever done one. Pilots were not trying hard to be annoying or unpleasant, but the down-down-down then up-up-up made my tummy not very happy. A few more of those, I'd have probably been sick, and I'm sure I was not the only one. Imagine if the pilots were trying -- "fasten your seatbelts, or else".