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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."
Why the "Scare Quotes" in the title? Is someone implying that it was actually a bomb, and not a robot? TFA does not.
There's no such thing as too much fear.
The terrorists aren't trying to get on our airplanes. The terrorists are blowing up Planned Parenthood clinics.
Thanks, SCOTUS.
Zero.
Number of people nude Xrayed or sexually groped (on their breasts or crotch) or strip-searched or locked in glass jails for carrying breast milk or ..... (this list could go on several pages).
Millions.
I hope none of those machines were malfunctioning and ejected lethal doses. They are never checked. TIME TO END THE TSA. And the Fed (give the power back to the State central banks).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
They grounded us with science...
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
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?
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
How many things actually happened in the entire history of commercial flights before the TSA existed? And why do they still exist in light of that? Sheesh.
Doh! Wasn't logged in for some reason.
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.
I'm as against the TSA as anyone.
But come on. Considering what was found, why should any authority there NOT freak out? The flight crew did.
It's really annoying it had such a large impact but in this case it was I think fully warranted. Even though I think they should have been allowed to enter the plane with the whole kit unscanned, once they left it behind all bets are off.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They're the aviation equivalent of the bear patrol....
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?
What kind of moron LETS SOMEONE take something that look[s] like a cell phone attached to a remote control car with some exposed wires protruding" onto an airplane? I mean, if snow globes are verboten, how in the world could that contraption possibly get on board in the first place?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The device obviously got through security in Dallas thus it must not have been a threat. It isn't like that was something that was easily concealed or concealed in a bag if the crew found it. The TSA have stopped exactly zero terrorists while harassing and groping millions innocent people and have multiple lawsuits filed against them costing taxpayers more money then their already ridiculous budget. TSA is a waste of taxpayers money, plain and simple.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
While not the best decision, I think the point is that he shouldn't have to worry. If it was on the plane, it made it past the TSA, and assuming they did a good job at their theatre, was safe. This whole fiasco is an exercise in how useless and overbearing the security is in airports these days.
Meanwhile, somewhere deep in the Arabian sea .... Osama Bin Laden is laughing his ass off. His face is shot so that is the only thing he got left to laugh with.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Look at the bright side. They probably got their robot back. If it wasn't for the TSA, they'd never have seen it again!
Okay. These people happened to be flying with something that looks very suspicious. A cellphone wired up to some other electronic device. Okay. Occasionally people do fly with suspicious looking items that are completely innocent. Then these same people "forget" it and leave it on an airplane? When's the last time you forgot a piece of carry-on luggage on a plane? I'm sure it happens occasionally, but when people are flying they are usually careful about such things. Now put the two together. What are the chances that a group of people bring a very suspicious looking electronic device onto a plane and then they all simultaneously forget it there? Isn't it possibly a bit more likely that they were playing some sort of a prank, or trying to test security at the airport and it backfired? Just a thought.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
"Southwest Airlines cancels more than 40 flights at Dallas Love Field in Texas in the aftermath of #tornadoes. " http://on.cnn.com/Hc37c4 Very next day. I think it's clear who the real terrorists are. Tornadoes.
I remember when I could get on an airplane without getting finger fucked and fish hooked by some "highly trained" a-hole in a blue suit with a badge...
I got here through a series of tubes
That is what the flight attendant said it looked like. That does not mean that it looked like that in the slightest. /. once had an article where the police were called on the halo devs for carrying a AF-47 around in public, the AF-47 was in fact a 10 foot long halo sniper rifle replica that does not even look real (http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/11/medium_3ce16ecb6851fdac6329346672baea73.jpg).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
They were released with no charges after the situation was cleared up, right? Also, were the handcuffs really necessary?
Better question - if they let it on the plane, then why didn't TSA ask the flight crew what the thing was instead of treating it like a bomb? Seems somebody should have already known it was on the plane during the flight.
Handcuffs, really? Couldn't this have been solved in a matter of minutes if the TSA just asked a few questions of the students and teacher?
The same with the shooting in Florida. If both guys had just talked/asked questions that teenager would still be alive.
Editors, PLEASE learn your TLAs. The TSA didn't / doesn't detain anyone. The TSA run x-ray machines, search baggage and grope grannies. They have no power of arrest or detention. For that they call law enforcement, such as the police or air marshals. The TSA cannot and do not lead people away in handcuffs.
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
So the lesson is, if you want to bomb an airplane, enclose your bomb in a smooth, brushed aluminum and/or plastic case?
Palm trees and 8
they will get it back as a court room evidence
That would clearly violate the TSAs guidelines on logic and sanity.
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.
Better question - if they let it on the plane, then why didn't TSA ask the flight crew what the thing was instead of treating it like a bomb?
Because the flight crew had no idea what it was. They're the ones who reported it. This was the incoming flight crew that had just walked onto the plane. And the outgoing flight crew certainly doesn't know what every passenger is carrying, so even if you could find them, they couldn't help.
Well, if the flight crew is freaking out, then either the TSA let it through or gave it the OK because it's ON THE PLANE.
I'm sorry, but that's an incredibly stupid and naive thought.
The flight crew did not scan the passengers. Also by that time there have been a number of ground crew interacting with the plane. It could have even been assembled in mid-air. The crew has no idea where this thing might have come from.
There's not way you can expect a flight crew and even law enforcement to not reasonable consider some very roughly assembled electronics as possibly dangerous when found with no owner.
As I said I'd even be for the guys waltzing onto the plane with no security carrying the thing. That is fine by me, but equally fine is treating something like that as a threat when found totally unattended.
I mean, lets turn your argument around. You say it's OK because obviously the TSA is awesome and let it on the plane to start with, so obviously t came with a passenger. Great then, since now we "know" it was brought on by someone who went through TSA - WHY DID THEY LEAVE IT?
I mean, why on earth would someone who carefully constructed such a thing leave it behind? That makes no sense either, in fact even less sense to me. I would be pretty concerned if I saw that because anyone who had the skills to build such a thing obviously would care about it very much and have the intelligence not to forget they had it. I would be more prone to think something like that left behind was nefarious in purpose exactly because it had been left and forgotten.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So if I put coloured epoxy over the wires so they cannot be seen ...
The point is that the people claiming that this looks like "a handmade explosive device" do not know what "a handmade explosive device" looks like.
It just looks UNUSUAL so they panicked.
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'
http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html
It used to be that police would investigate intelligently, and lay charges appropriately. Now, it appears that everything must reach a judge before common sense is applied. We are living in the days where losing a cell phone will cause a plane to be grounded. We need to get people to use their brains again, and not make major incidents out of false alarms.
If it was left on the plane, how did they get it through security in the first place? Did TSA just take their word that it was a science experiment or did security not catch it? Neither one makes me feel any more comfortable with the TSA...not that I'm comfortable with them to begin with.
Where in the Constitution is the TSA mentioned?
Is it in the section labeled "unreasonable search and seizure"?
Or is it the section about "warrantless searches of citizens"?
I'm not sure which section it is.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What, exactly, does a bomb look like in the post 9/11 world? Because in the only two cases that I'm aware of where someone *actually* had a bomb on an airplane, one looked like a pair of underwear, and the other one looked like a shoe. Clearly, we should therefore ban all underwear and all shoes on airliners, right?
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
So you'd never investigate anomalous network activity on your network because clearly your perimeter defenses would keep the hackers out?
C'mon now; I loathe the TSA as much as anybody else, but if you don't get the concept of defense in depth you're probably not qualified to throw stones...
Then everybody on slashdot will get detained, probed and then TSA will request additional funding based on the spikes in detaining/probing/confiscations.
You seem to be arguing that the limit of this police function as x -> the readership of slashdot is near infinity, but I don't think that's anywhere near the case, based on these axioms: a) population of U.S. is less than infinity and b) the percentage of U.S. population which can be converted into police and guard to succesfully prosecute and imprison the rest before riots and revolution breaks out, is FAR less than 100%.
Nah, you're getting "poor impulse control"
My feeling is that those TSA pigs wouldn't be happier. They found justification for their crap existence and secured some more of future funding for their parasitic operations
You know the US is no longer a First World country when a government agency can justify its existence by causing a huge economic loss for no real reason.