The plaintiff was hoping to get a jury trial in the district court. All suits regarding TSA in the DC circuit court go straight to appeals, meaning no jury trial is possible there. This is the same court that has been so deferential to DHS in the EPIC suit on the same topic. The plaintiff seemed to think a jury would be more receptive to his arguments.
Is another suit in the DC court worth the trouble? If not, then Mr. Corbett has been about as effective as Jesse Ventura was in his suit.
Most people don't know that large airliners can't fly without FAA-issued aviation war risk insurance to cover planes, passengers, crewmembers, and third parties against terrorist acts like the September 11 attacks. Private insurance will only cover $50 million, which is less than the replacement cost of a Boeing 737.
For X-ray scanners this vulnerability has been known (at least in theory) since 2010, when it was discussed in a paper by Kaufman and Carlson. They concluded that 'an object such as a wire or a boxcutter blade, taped to the side of the body, or even a small gun in the same location, will be invisible.' Sounds like they were right.
Here's an interesting letter allegedly written by an anonymous DHS lawyer. Summary: DHS knows that the VIPR searches are illegal, and that courts ultimately will not validate TSA's authority to conduct them.
Should a traveler encounter a TSA VIPR team deployed in a non-airport environment I would advise them to refuse to submit to the search. Once they have refused the search they should ask for the team leader and request that person’s name, title and where they are based. If the traveler has a video camera, as most phones now do, I would advise them to record their entire interaction...TSA publicly states that photography and video of TSA operations are legal. Furthermore video in a public space cannot be legally impeded except in certain very limited instances in the United States.
The TSA may threaten the traveler with arrest for refusal to comply and it is possible the local law enforcement on site will comply with the TSA’s arrest request, however this arrest should not hold up in court if the traveler is polite, non-combative and complies with the arresting officer’s request.
So, if you're a protester-type interested in challenging the constitutionality of VIPR searches in the courts, here's a blueprint for you. If not, I'd just avoid the subway altogether.
There's a rival proposal in the House called the Online Protection & ENforcement of Digital Trade Act, or OPEN, which claims to be better than SOPA/PIPA but does similar things in a different way. I suspect it's better to do nothing at all than approve any of these bills, even OPEN, but it's hard to say because OPEN doesn't get as much coverage. It would be nice if OPEN were included in the discussion in the future.
Most of the questionable machines listed in the article had the kind of names you would expect for this kind of activity, like "viagra" and "cialis". Several machine names contained "facebook". Is Facebook involved in this somehow? When you're a giant of the industry, do you really need to resort to this kind of thing?
Minimizing passenger aircraft size also minimizes the potential damage in worst case scenarios like September 11. If that can be accomplished, TSA's draconian security measures are much less defensible than they would be in a world where A380s can become commonplace.
The 787 is longer and has greater wingspan, cargo capacity, maximum takeoff weight, and fuel capacity than the 767s it is replacing. I'd say that is bigger.
I'm not sure engineers are really thinking about safety for people on the ground with their new designs. The opening paragraph of the 787's Wikipedia page implies that the 787 is a more fuel efficient replacement for the 767, consuming 20% less fuel. At the same time, according to the specifications sections for the 767 and 787, the 787 can carry about 50% more fuel than the 767, which did most of the damage in the September 11 attacks.
Perhaps it would be better if the aviation industry reversed their current trend towards bigger aircraft. We need to make passenger aviation less interesting to terrorists, not more so.
According to the ABC article, the particles are showing up 60ns too early. If the particles were in fact traveling at light speed, that would simply mean the detector was about 18 meters closer to CERN than they originally thought. Considering differences in altitude, oblateness of the Earth, the detector is underground, and so on, it isn't hard to imagine an 18m position error over approximately 732,000 m distance measured or calculated.
It looks like the summary above is mistaken. TFA says that TLS 1.0 and before are affected. Shouldn't that include SSL 3.0 as well as 2.0? It matters because if the summary is correct, we can tell our browsers not to use TLS 1.0 but keep using SSL 3.0. If not, we're stuck waiting for fixes from, well, everybody.
The opinion linked in the summary is not for the case seeking to suspend airport body scanners. The opinion linked here is for a case where EPIC tried to force DHS to release additional documents about body scanners. It does not address the suspension lawsuit at all. All we know about the suspension suit is that, according to information in an e-mail from EPIC, the request for a rehearing was denied.
The front page of the 'texting toy' website begins with 'It sounds 2good2btru - but it's 4real!' and ends with my stomach contents, evacuated onto the floor. Shame on TheGeicoE for subjecting us to that.
Sorry. I have kids. They've desensitized me. I just wasn't thinking how innocent Slashdotters might react.
The article and the study have a less objectionable picture with some hexadecimal numbers on the screen.
Which part of the mostly-empty mint tin or the mostly-solid block of wood looks explosive to you?
TSA has access to explosives detectors for baggage. They can swab a suspicious item and check it for explosives fairly easily. Wouldn't it have been more responsible to run that test to establish probable cause for alarm before assuming the worst? How many people were needlessly alarmed by clearing the terminal? How many flights nationally were disrupted because flights from this one airport were delayed or cancelled for several hours? What is the dollar cost of the damage done nationally by a panicky TSA overreaction?
Won't this make students think twice about participating in science competitions? Doesn't this discourage inventors from showing valuable prototypes to potential investors? Does this really help American competitiveness in global technology markets?
Is TSA's response to this incident really something they should be proud of? I think not.
Call me an infidel, but I'm reluctant to try Nephthys again. I tried it once and I was buried so deep I couldn't dig myself out. My computer stopped working and I had to reboot.
Perhaps I shouldn't have tried Neith, Selkis, and Isis in that order first.
HTML5 browsers already have support for audio file playback, depending on the browser. For example, Chrome can play MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files. Firefox 4 can play Ogg Vorbis but not MP3 due to licensing issues. Safari can do MP3 natively; Ogg Vorbis requires extensions from Xiph.org that are easily installable.
"Airlines are seeking ways to win back passengers put off by long and irritating airport security measures who have opted to travel instead by train, boat or car. IATA said Monday it expects the industry's profit this year to plummet to $4 billion from $18 billion last year."
It sounds like people have quit flying in droves since TSA implemented scanners and patdowns last year. Are there any other stories that could confirm this conclusion?
This isn't the first time an American politician has encouraged students to pursue science careers, even though it takes a vow of poverty to stay in that game and the most likely outcome is being unemployable in their chosen field. American politicians also encourage people to enlist in the military and die in Afghanistan. It's equally self-serving in both cases, and when things go wrong, who suffers? Not the politicians.
Politicians keep the cost of scientific labor low with their speeches and their generous visa allotments. That's what they really want, not what's best for Americans as individuals.
Subsonic uses Java for serving files and Flash for playback. HTML5 browsers like Chrome and Firefox can play music files without either of these. Take a look at the Playlist project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/playlistplayer/) to see how it can be done.
Slashdot Mirror
We might not be finished with X-ray body scanners. TSA and DHS have a fairly-recent $245 million contract with another supplier for a similar X-ray scanner.
The plaintiff was hoping to get a jury trial in the district court. All suits regarding TSA in the DC circuit court go straight to appeals, meaning no jury trial is possible there. This is the same court that has been so deferential to DHS in the EPIC suit on the same topic. The plaintiff seemed to think a jury would be more receptive to his arguments.
Is another suit in the DC court worth the trouble? If not, then Mr. Corbett has been about as effective as Jesse Ventura was in his suit.
Most people don't know that large airliners can't fly without FAA-issued aviation war risk insurance to cover planes, passengers, crewmembers, and third parties against terrorist acts like the September 11 attacks. Private insurance will only cover $50 million, which is less than the replacement cost of a Boeing 737.
For X-ray scanners this vulnerability has been known (at least in theory) since 2010, when it was discussed in a paper by Kaufman and Carlson. They concluded that 'an object such as a wire or a boxcutter blade, taped to the side of the body, or even a small gun in the same location, will be invisible.' Sounds like they were right.
Slashdotted. Figures.
Here's an interesting letter allegedly written by an anonymous DHS lawyer. Summary: DHS knows that the VIPR searches are illegal, and that courts ultimately will not validate TSA's authority to conduct them.
So, if you're a protester-type interested in challenging the constitutionality of VIPR searches in the courts, here's a blueprint for you. If not, I'd just avoid the subway altogether.
How seriously do you really take security if you let your certificate expire like this? Is g10code.com legitimate?
There's a rival proposal in the House called the Online Protection & ENforcement of Digital Trade Act, or OPEN, which claims to be better than SOPA/PIPA but does similar things in a different way. I suspect it's better to do nothing at all than approve any of these bills, even OPEN, but it's hard to say because OPEN doesn't get as much coverage. It would be nice if OPEN were included in the discussion in the future.
I always wondered if Rossy's rig actually generated any lift. Now I know.
Most of the questionable machines listed in the article had the kind of names you would expect for this kind of activity, like "viagra" and "cialis". Several machine names contained "facebook". Is Facebook involved in this somehow? When you're a giant of the industry, do you really need to resort to this kind of thing?
Minimizing passenger aircraft size also minimizes the potential damage in worst case scenarios like September 11. If that can be accomplished, TSA's draconian security measures are much less defensible than they would be in a world where A380s can become commonplace.
The 787 is longer and has greater wingspan, cargo capacity, maximum takeoff weight, and fuel capacity than the 767s it is replacing. I'd say that is bigger.
I'm not sure engineers are really thinking about safety for people on the ground with their new designs. The opening paragraph of the 787's Wikipedia page implies that the 787 is a more fuel efficient replacement for the 767, consuming 20% less fuel. At the same time, according to the specifications sections for the 767 and 787, the 787 can carry about 50% more fuel than the 767, which did most of the damage in the September 11 attacks.
Perhaps it would be better if the aviation industry reversed their current trend towards bigger aircraft. We need to make passenger aviation less interesting to terrorists, not more so.
According to the ABC article, the particles are showing up 60ns too early. If the particles were in fact traveling at light speed, that would simply mean the detector was about 18 meters closer to CERN than they originally thought. Considering differences in altitude, oblateness of the Earth, the detector is underground, and so on, it isn't hard to imagine an 18m position error over approximately 732,000 m distance measured or calculated.
It looks like the summary above is mistaken. TFA says that TLS 1.0 and before are affected. Shouldn't that include SSL 3.0 as well as 2.0? It matters because if the summary is correct, we can tell our browsers not to use TLS 1.0 but keep using SSL 3.0. If not, we're stuck waiting for fixes from, well, everybody.
The opinion linked in the summary is not for the case seeking to suspend airport body scanners. The opinion linked here is for a case where EPIC tried to force DHS to release additional documents about body scanners. It does not address the suspension lawsuit at all. All we know about the suspension suit is that, according to information in an e-mail from EPIC, the request for a rehearing was denied.
You can see a picture of these vans via the earlier /. link
Can you repeat the link to the pictures here so it's easier to find?
ANSI standards documents are copyrighted. You can buy them, but you can't freely redistribute them, unfortunately.
The front page of the 'texting toy' website begins with 'It sounds 2good2btru - but it's 4real!' and ends with my stomach contents, evacuated onto the floor. Shame on TheGeicoE for subjecting us to that.
Sorry. I have kids. They've desensitized me. I just wasn't thinking how innocent Slashdotters might react.
The article and the study have a less objectionable picture with some hexadecimal numbers on the screen.
Which part of the mostly-empty mint tin or the mostly-solid block of wood looks explosive to you?
TSA has access to explosives detectors for baggage. They can swab a suspicious item and check it for explosives fairly easily. Wouldn't it have been more responsible to run that test to establish probable cause for alarm before assuming the worst? How many people were needlessly alarmed by clearing the terminal? How many flights nationally were disrupted because flights from this one airport were delayed or cancelled for several hours? What is the dollar cost of the damage done nationally by a panicky TSA overreaction?
Won't this make students think twice about participating in science competitions? Doesn't this discourage inventors from showing valuable prototypes to potential investors? Does this really help American competitiveness in global technology markets?
Is TSA's response to this incident really something they should be proud of? I think not.
Call me an infidel, but I'm reluctant to try Nephthys again. I tried it once and I was buried so deep I couldn't dig myself out. My computer stopped working and I had to reboot.
Perhaps I shouldn't have tried Neith, Selkis, and Isis in that order first.
HTML5 browsers already have support for audio file playback, depending on the browser. For example, Chrome can play MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files. Firefox 4 can play Ogg Vorbis but not MP3 due to licensing issues. Safari can do MP3 natively; Ogg Vorbis requires extensions from Xiph.org that are easily installable.
From TFA:
"Airlines are seeking ways to win back passengers put off by long and irritating airport security measures who have opted to travel instead by train, boat or car. IATA said Monday it expects the industry's profit this year to plummet to $4 billion from $18 billion last year."
It sounds like people have quit flying in droves since TSA implemented scanners and patdowns last year. Are there any other stories that could confirm this conclusion?
This isn't the first time an American politician has encouraged students to pursue science careers, even though it takes a vow of poverty to stay in that game and the most likely outcome is being unemployable in their chosen field. American politicians also encourage people to enlist in the military and die in Afghanistan. It's equally self-serving in both cases, and when things go wrong, who suffers? Not the politicians.
Politicians keep the cost of scientific labor low with their speeches and their generous visa allotments. That's what they really want, not what's best for Americans as individuals.
Subsonic uses Java for serving files and Flash for playback. HTML5 browsers like Chrome and Firefox can play music files without either of these. Take a look at the Playlist project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/playlistplayer/) to see how it can be done.