Slashdot Log In
JetBlue Gives Away Passenger Info To TSA?
Posted by
simoniker
on Thu Sep 18, 2003 02:01 AM
from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
Old Ben Franklin writes "In September of 2002, JetBlue Airways secretly gave the Transportation Security Administration the full travel records of 5 million JetBlue customers. This sensitive travel data was then turned-over to a private security contractor for analysis, the results of which were presented at a security conference earlier this year and the analysis then posted on the Internet." This comes after Wired News's recent article on this matter, explaining that "...the proposed government system to prevent terrorism by color-coding airline passengers according to their risk level will be tested using old passenger itineraries from JetBlue", but quoting a TSA spokesman as saying that "currently only fake passenger data was being used."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
color (Score:5, Funny)
So is blue good or bad?
That's nice (Score:5, Interesting)
It was the security folks who failed to do the extra scanning at the checkpoint, but it was Jet Blue's guy who got me off the plane. He didn't know and didn't care that I might have already snuck something onto the plane. If Jet Blue wants to help fight terror in the skies they'd better re-think their priorities. Paying lip-service to security is a long tradition in commercial aviation. Just think about this: if there was no law passed mandating crash-proof cockpit doors, most airlines wouldn't have put them in.
Similar thing happened to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
The usual procedure is to stamp the ticket and punch a hole into the ticket to prove that the SSSS security check was made. After my very thorough SSSS check which involved unzipping my carry on and looking under one shirt, I got my ticket stamped but no hole. I'm about to board the plane when they say I can't get on because I only have the stamp.. not the hole.
Mind you, the hole IS A REGULAR CIRCULAR PUNCH HOLE CREATED BY A 1.99 STAPLES HOLE PUNCHER.
Of course I had to walk 900 feet back to the checkpoint, as this magical punchhole proved I was clean and not a terrorist. Kinda scary, no?
Also upon flying out of Burbank airport, flagged my usual terroristic SSSS, I asked which line is for SSSS security. To which the "guard" replied "Oh we don't do that here, just go through regular."
Now of course I know that I am no terrorist, but what about others who may be? When I told a close friend who is a pilot for United about that, he freaked out and said theyd be in huge trouble if the FAA ever found out.
Needless to say the whole airport security thing is a facade of false security, regulated by mystic punch holes, dimwitted workers, and innane flagged policies - He took a one-way flight!!! He's a terrorist lets do extra security on him for the next 30 flights!!" When of course anyone looking to cause trouble would just book round trip..
Parent
Re:Similar thing happened to me... (Score:5, Funny)
Fly to Florida one way, hitch-hike back, then fly one way to Florida again.
Rinse and repeat.
Smoke will probably come out of their tiny little ears before they figure out how you can do that.
KFG
Parent
Re:Similar thing happened to me... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh great. I took a one-way fight out of the country. I'm going to be labeled a terrorist forever.
Oops and there's more.. (Score:5, Interesting)
While leaving Burbank my "friend" had purchased a kitchen utensil set. Upon packing the luggage my "friend" looked at the 8 inch chef knife and said.. "Damn I'm gonna have to ship this back or give it away cause there's no shot in hell this is getting let on the plane in my carry-on." His brother says Ah give it a shot, if its a no-go let security confiscate it.
Needless to say, my "friend's" bag went through the X-Ray machine, and the attendant didn't even give it a glance. Remember he is flagged for extra security.. regardless of the 8 inch knife on the X-Ray, the bag has to be checked by FAA policy!!! His bag was never opened and he boarded the plane and landed with the obvious contraband aboard. But I dare the 90 year old woman to try to board with a nail clipper.
So not only was he flagged as a security risk, but he sucessfully boarded the plane with an 8 inch chef knife without anyone giving him a second glance! Of course he had no mal-intents but the whole incident shocked my pilot friend and he was furious as it showed how really terrible airport security is, and how easy a terrorist can smuggle stuff in if a regular passenger (who was flagged a terrorist!!) can get by without trying to circumvent any security.
Parent
Re:Oops and there's more.. (Score:4, Interesting)
And if you think I'm giving people ideas, you obviously haven't read Snow Crash. Airport security isn't about true security. It's about giving people the appearance of security. True security is what they have at El Al airport: all passengers are asked a series of questions (usually brief and not very deep, sometimes very probing if the initial questions suggest you have something to hide); all baggage is put through decompression chambers, to simulate flight conditions in the baggage compartment; cockpits are heavily reinforced. The latter two, in particular, aren't visible to the public. But they work, and far more effectively than what we have in Australia (or, AFAIK, in the US.)
Nail clippers? Sewing scissors? The effort in confiscating those, versus the security that doing so provides, is way out of proportion. Read Cryptogram [counterpane.com] for more detail on this subject than I can be bothered typing.
Parent
Re:Oops and there's more.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, so the terrorists will simply obtain fake documents with white Christian names, and travel through Europe to get to the Middle East, and the government will end up harassing innocent people and letting
Re:Oops and there's more.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Similar thing happened to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem: someone with a knife took over a plane and crashed it.
There were three places he could have been easily stopped
1. The knife might have been discovered while he was boarding the plane.
2. An armed security guard could have stopped him while he attempted the takeover.
3. The cockpit door should have been locked.
I would have fixed 2&3.
(but that requires thinking)
This whole ssss business just shows that they are clueless, any perimeter defense can be circumvented or breached. If you want to protect something, focus on the inner layers of protection, investing in the outer ones is much less effective.
Parent
Re:Similar thing happened to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then it dawns on me... if I were a terrorist with a big ol' fruitcake bomb in my carryon or a plastic shiv down my sock, I'd just calmly walk out of there since they've told me that I'm slated to be searched. The only way they'll ever actually CATCH anyone with this stupid dual-line flagging approach is if they stop telling all those terrorists that they're going to search them ahead of time. Plus, once the CRAPPS II sticky status flag stuff is in place, all a terrorist has to do is fly once or twice without any boxcutters to get their status flag and know with high probability what they can expect on their next flight.
What a bunch of feebleminded doughnut-chomping rentacop government bureaucracy maroons we've got running this show. The only domestic terrorists I'm afraid of at this point are John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge.
Parent
Re:Similar thing happened to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
A better plan would have been to just replace the passenger cabin air with laughing gas.
So simple, but did they even think about it?
The only domestic terrorists I'm afraid of at this point are John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge.
When fascism (or is it fashionism) is finally in place, you won't be given the chance to worry about them...you'll be much more worried about escaping your own home.
Unbelievable (Score:5, Interesting)
I sympathise you, and wish you best of luck. Hopefully your country will recover the freedoms and sanity that its dwellers were so proud of.
Parent
Re:Similar thing happened to me... (Score:4, Interesting)
Another time,in Minnesota, I forgot that I had a long small head screw driver in my carry on bag that I used to change out laptop hd's. The extra machine tech saw it and handed my bag to a security officer. I was asked about it and admitted to being absent minded and leaving a screw driver in the bag. They tell me they'll have to take it so they start to search the bag. They can't find the damn thing and it's not some complicated bag, it's a cloth laptop bag from Sun's Java store. I offer to reach in the bag and get it for them, nope that's not allowed. They end up xraying the bag a second time still seeing the screw driver there but even though I'll telling them there is one they conclude that it's a fantom screw driver being caused by several pens in my bag.
As for the security profiling that airports do, some do the "he looks like a bad guy" approach. Sadly if you get behind someone that isn't white you have a much better chance of avoiding searches. Other airports have profiling systems in place that will flag you if you do things like switch your flight to a different time, ignoring the fact that you have a million frequent flyer miles.
Parent
Re:Similar thing happened to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
After 9/11, I flew for a show and went through the usual motions. Upon returning home and clearing out my luggage carry on, I noticed a full sized pair of scissors in a side pocket... EASILY detected by the scanners. But it got through two of them. So I called security at the airport here, just to let them know they seem to have a problem with their employees at the checkpoints. The person I spoke to got terribly defensive, and I kept saying "I'm just calling to help." She wouldn't have any of it, and eventually hung up on me.
Security is a joke... and we're talking about major airports here.... IAH was my departure airport.
Parent
It's terrible when information is handled this way (Score:5, Insightful)
But then the records get given to a private firm and like Chinese Whispers, the privacy implications are completely forgotten.
I notice the exact same effect at work. I explain the ethical implications of not spamming to my boss. He then exlpains to clients that it's fine for them to send information to existing client lists. They then come and ask us to send mail to a list they have bought in from a 3rd party supplier!
I guess that problems like this are going to crop up more and more as we give up more and more of our personal data to large companies.
I dunno... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that I don't beleive that it's impossible that JetBlue gave/sold their passenger list, but the article doesn't give any corroborating evidence other than the old "they deny it, it must be true." The file they linked to as a copy of data put up on the web also seems to be empty, so I couldn't look at what this data was. Regardless, how did they figure out that this was JetBlue's data? I'm also wondering if JetBlue even has had 5 million customers -- perhaps they meant 5 million transaction records?
I'm all for privacy, free speech, blah blah blah, but this seems pretty alarmist and reeks of, what's the term... conspiracy theory. This just doesn't add up.
Just my two cents, go ahead and flame me.
George Dubya working as airline security: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Has No WMD's - safe passenger
2. Has No WMD's but with no evidence or any link whatsover to recent terrorism, we want you to think he has WMD's so lets haul him off the airplane for a near nuclear anal probing where we will find no WMD's and call in the UN to clean up after us when we can't handle the mess we made anymore. - safe Arab passenger
My father in law was branded as number 2 recently - with his tan from working in africa for months, they thought he was middle eastern, when he pulled his shirt open to expose his untanned white skin, the guards laughed at their 'mistake', stopped searching him and let him carry on.
Now if you Americans would stop pissing off people around the world, you wouldnt need all these colour schemes.
JetBlue Passenger (Score:5, Insightful)
It was very nice of them to include the SS#, address, and date of birth. I recognize some of the addresses on pg 20 of the PDF, it would be almost trivial to find out the names to go with those, and use them in identity theft.
I wouldn't do it, but I might anonymously mail a printout of the pdf to them.
US is forcing this with international flights (Score:5, Insightful)
"This information will include names, travel routes, credit card numbers, and possible special meals."
full article [helsinki-hs.net]
just a question (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:just a question (Score:3, Interesting)
Where's the Data on Passenger Risk? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how you'd even begin to come up with such data. But if you can't figure out how much of a risk each passenger actually was, how can you see whether this correlates with the risk score CAPPS spits out? As far as I can see, this massive breach of passenger confidentiality will do nothing to test the efficacy of CAPPS.
(As far as I know, no terrorist acts have been committed on JetBlue, so all passengers who have flown on JetBlue should have been given the "Green" CAPPS rating. Hence once they feed this passenger data through CAPPS, it better spit out low risk for everybody. Otherwise, this profiling obviously isn't working.)
Re:Where's the Data on Passenger Risk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me that the dataset they should be testing this against is UA and AA's passengers for September 11th, 2001. If the system doesn't spot the hijackers, it isn't working properly.
Parent
Always a downside (Score:5, Insightful)
All schemes like this increase the chance that evil people will target low risk travelers for identity theft.
Scenario: terrorists identify suitable target in fairly remote location. Break in, force target to purchase tickets over the internet, disclose PIN numbers to credit cards etc., kill target and catch plane. It takes a bit more organisation and time, but these people seem to have plenty of that. You can't even rely on those sneaky people to be darker shades of brown: the white English-speaking world has shown an ability to produce home-grown bombers, in the US, Northern Ireland and the UK.
If this is going to be a substitute for airport security (and I suspect it will be) all I can say is, fortunately I rarely need to travel by plane nowadays.
Best quote from the document (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone tell me why they let known Airline Terrorists fly at all??
There is some interesting data-mining being done in the document. Correlating several databases together gives you a good profile of the people on the plane, but it doesn't give you an idea if someone is a terrorist. Like the presentation sais, Find a needle in a haystack, without knowing what the needle looks like If you don't know what it looks like you won't find it. What you do find is anamolous behaviour that points to interesting people to check.
Finding these people largely depends on how much they differ from the ordinary profile. Ordinary here is middle income suburbanite. So low income ghetto dwellers get singled out time and time again. Yes they might be out of the ordinary, but it doesn't mean that they will blow up the plane.
How To Fly Without ID (Score:5, Interesting)
Top secret fact! CAPPS is actually only based on (Score:3, Interesting)
The data includes your SSN and dates of service for medical conditions and general location. Thats it.
All this fluff that is being studied by the document the contractor did is not what the FBI uses.
Basically... you need to create a fake limited medical history in the major databases sold by blue cross and others for favors to the gov.
If you have a valid passport and credit card adn back acct but absolutely no medical history tied to your SSN then you are flagged for SSSS sec line treatment.
Its that goddamned simple.
MEDICAL HISTORY this limited 5 million record jetblue database is nothing but the tip of the iceberg.
The us thought of everything but the only thing that works best is medical histories. Any history at all is "clean" and no history is suspect.
BTW : the 19 saudi nationals had no us insurance based medical histories... but then again they had other signifying traits that were indicative of being a foreigner.
I wonder why no one gets the mediacl history angle.
its 90% of the weight of CAPS II profle.
Re:Top secret fact! CAPPS is actually only based o (Score:3)
Yeah, they were carrying Saudi passports.
Dear Racial Profiling Advocate, (Score:5, Informative)
The reason it is less secure is because it's hackable. By that I mean, if you can reverse engineer the algorithm they use to determine who is to be searched, you can break it. All you would have to do is go a few hours early for your next flight with a pen a paper and sit in front of the gate. As you sit there you tally who gets searched (what do they look like, what are they wearing, etc.) and who doesn't. Do that for a month and you now have all the data you need to find the "perfect" terrorist.
For example, if you see that white teenage girls almost never get searched, then your next recruit will be a naive white girl you meet at a sorority mixer. She'll bring in the weapons for you and boom, you have your next terrorist attack, and it's much less probable that you'll get caught.
A random sample, even despite the 12 year olds and grandmothers, is inherantly more secure becuase you can't find a way to guarantee that you won't be searched with the right racial candidate. It is impossible to reverse engineer.
Re:You're right, it's been done (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Dear Tree-Hugging Moron, (Score:4, Insightful)
Learn to use the internet. [mit.edu]
And I know soriety girls are braindead, but I think they would know if a fucking arab was using them as a mule for explosives.
1) You could get someone who looks like the "good" profile, even if they are just acting.
2) You could get a real person who doesn't even have to know that they are carrying anything.
Let me try to clue you in on a little thing we like to call "reality", big guy. Profiling does not mean that the gaurds will only stop dirty, turbin-wearing foreigners. Profiling means that the airport security has enough sense not to strip-search children and grandmothers just because some "random" sampling rule tells them to. Profiling means you fucking stop anyone that looks suspicious. It's common fucking sense, not an act of racism.
You only have a limited amount of resources at an airport terminal. The guard can't search everyone, right? If the guard is searching only "suspiscious" looking people, then it's trivial to get past him.
For example, if the guard only has time to search 10 people every flight, then you get 10 of your terrorist friends to dress up in super-suspiscous clothes, but carry NOTHING dangerous. Then you get your one white terrorist friend to dress in a business suit and carry a suitcase full of x-ray transparent machine guns.
The guard, who is profiling, will choose the 10 suspiscous looking people, and the non-suspiscous person will get in with ease.
Parent
Data modelling and its dangers (Score:3, Interesting)
Stock market modeling seems like it would be much easier: you've got daily data on every single company going back 100 years, plus a whole lot more detailed financial information than you could ever get out of passengers (what's your book-to-bill ratio?). To top it off, performance can be measured in one absolute indisputable figure - profit - that is an attribute of most companies, whereas security has a fuzzy performance measurement(*) and few examples of what officials are looking for.
Another thing that concerns me is that, AFAIK, the jet blue travel database contains precisely zero hijackings, so it seems to me that -- according to any possible model that could be generated -- the old system worked perfectly and could not be improved. Nail-clipper weilding maniacs, sure - plenty of those, but no actual hijackers.
(* Pop quiz. Who killed more people, 9/11 or the airline "security" procedures that followed? If you added the expected life expencties of the people who died that day and got an hour number, that number is on the same order of magnatude of the extra time wasted in airports every year)
Like we need more monitoring (Score:3, Interesting)
Who's to say that they have not already started testing this system on actual travelers.
Also international travelers will not have any sort of credit profile so WHY do they have to include OURS as part of the system. It makes me sick how it's acceptible to discriminate on people becuase of poor credit.
As an example I have a score right above 650 but am currently a State Farm customer for my Truck's insurance. I decided to shop around to see if there were alternatives that were cheaper.
Geico and Progressive both quoted double my current premiums. When I asked a manager of the similarities at Progressive he responded both companies set your rates based in part on your credit profile. I asked what difference does it make on my driving and he said people with poor credit tend to drive worse.
I'd say that's bull since I know people that are well off and they drive like a bat out of hell. I had though that by being a responsible driver I would be rewarded but that's obviously not the case.
The point here is that credit ratings have nothing to do with how dangerous people are. I would question the Unibomber's credit rating if he had one at that time and what it really was.
I'm also sure that Tim McVeigh had good credit also.
Wait until the credit/insurance cos. get this data (Score:5, Insightful)
There's already been a flap in Minnesota about insurance companies using credit scores to influence auto insurance; they claim a correlation, which is probably there, but someone wisely called "bullshit" and took them to task for using criteria other than someone's actual driving record.
Further ironies abound, since those of us who don't carry a lot of debt and pay of our credit early get reduced credit scores -- and I thought responsibility was rewarded! (Yes, I'm aware that those of us that pay off early fubar the economic plans and machinations of the credit industry, since they plan to make all that interest income off of me).
But just wait until you apply for a loan and find out your interest rate is sky high or your insurance has gone through the roof because you're mistakenly labeled a "security threat". I've already read plenty of horror stories about people that couldn't fly and who spent months fighting the national insecurity apparatus trying to understand why they were considered risks and getting it changed.
I used to think that the foil hat crowd was a little off the deep end with most of their complaints about the collection of information, but now I'm starting to agree -- its gone too far, there are no controls, and its clear that Bu$h and A$hcroft have no compunction about giving this information away to their corporate allies.
JetBlue admits sharing (Score:3, Interesting)
Quoting:
JetBlue Airways confirmed on Thursday that in September 2002, it provided 5 million passenger itineraries to a defense contractor for proof-of-concept testing of a Pentagon project unrelated to airline security -- with help from the Transportation Security Administration.
The contractor, Torch Concepts, then augmented that data with Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information, including income level, to develop what looks to be a study of whether passenger-profiling systems such as CAPPS II are feasible.
Note that JetBlue has a privacy policy [jetblue.com] on their website that includes this statement:
The financial and personal information collected on this site is not shared with any third parties, and is protected by secure servers.
Time to start using the alternatives. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe, it's time for an alternative [moller.com]?
= 9J =
RESPONSE FROM JETBLUE (Score:4, Informative)
CUT CUT CUT
Thank you for writing to me so that I have an opportunity to apologize
to you personally and set the record straight.
Most importantly, JetBlue has never supplied, nor will supply, customer
information to the Transportation Security Administration, or any
government agency, unless we are required to do so by law -- not for
CAPPS II or for any other purposes, whatsoever.
However, I regret that, more than a year ago, we responded to an
exceptional request from the Department of Defense to assist their
contractor, Torch Concepts, with a project regarding military base
security. This project had no connection with aviation security or the
CAPPS II program and no data files were ever shared with the Department
of Defense or any other government agency or contractor.
We provided limited historical customer data including names, addresses
and phone numbers. It DID NOT include personal financial information,
credit card information, or social security numbers.
Torch further developed this information into a presentation, without
JetBlue's knowledge, for a Department of Homeland Security symposium.
We regret that this presentation included the personal information of
one customer -- although the customer's name was not used. Again, we
had no knowledge of this presentation until two days ago and we were
deeply dismayed to learn of it.
The sole set of data in Torch's possession has been destroyed; no
government agency ever had access to it. With Torch's help, we are
continuing to make every effort to have the Torch presentation with the
one customer's information removed from the internet.
This was a mistake on our part and I know you and many of our customers
feel betrayed by it. We deeply regret that this happened and have taken
steps to fix the situation and make sure that it never happens again.
I am saddened that we have shaken your faith in JetBlue but I assure you
personally that we are committed to making this right.
Sincerely,
David Neeleman
Chief Executive Officer
Re:Color Codes (Score:4, Interesting)
Any system beyond ROY G. BIV confuses the hell out of me, and I can't tell the diffrence between RO and G 1/2 the time making this a major issue making a judgement regarding threats, and BIV 100% of the time. Given that about 10% of all males are also red-green colorblind (according to my psych book anyway), it seems nuts to adopt yet more color codes.
Parent
Why red and green... (Score:3, Informative)
Green is the colour of most safe to eat plant-life (most ripe vegetation is green, dead vegetation tends to go black, etc), hence it's the natural choice to indicate safety.
Look around you everywhere, this red/green usage is almost universal. Traffic signs, emergency vehicles, motor sports, etc.
"Nuts to adopt yet more color codes"? I don't think so - red = bad and green = good is something that even small k
Re:Why red and green... (Score:4, Informative)
Red I confuse with brown and or green, esp iron oxide. When I think of danger, like a car wreck, i say shit... then i'm likely to do it. Human blood has an earthy tone, esp when exposed to air. Very low contrast on black making it totally useless to use red letters on a black background. Just can't see it.
But red berries are not blood colored at all, go figure. Nor is a blood orange, nor a stop sign. Stop signs typicaly are a mix of red delicious apple with just a touch of american mustard, and a touch of real mustard.
The only crayon that resembled the color of human blood was indian red, which from my understanding is an earthly clay with iron oxide. I was probally one of the reasons they renamed that color, cause dispite my ability to see the diffrence, I made all my native americans indian red colored. After all, the crayon said indian.
http://www.michiganapples.com/reddelicious.html is an immature one, or one grown below the 45th, or the photographer just got the color wrong.
http://www.nyapplecountry.com/reddelicious
Review: Blood looks nothing like a Apple nor a Stopsign. Blood looks like iron oxide, rust colored. [Good color vision, just not what you see]
Green is the colour of most safe to eat plant-life (most ripe vegetation is green, dead vegetation tends to go black, etc), hence it's the natural choice to indicate safety.
Green I sometimes confuse with red, more often then not orange, sometimes even grey. Ripe vegetation is orange to me, much like an "orange", bright healthy grass. Basketballs are "green" in the traditional sence, as in the color of dry grass. Really dead grass is grey. Rotten grass well turns brown.
Review. Living safe plants are orange, dying ones of green, dead ones are grey, rotten ones are brown. Orange = saftey by these standards.
Look around you everywhere, this red/green usage is almost universal. Traffic signs, emergency vehicles, motor sports, etc.
No sorry, I can't see it, as I said I'm colorblind specificly red-green color blind. It's not as if I can't memorize color codes, understand their rational, I just can't see it. Traffic lights I look at their position, in most cases I know the diffrence between the bottom light and the top light, the contrast is high enough in my eyes to make that judgement. I had a cop stop me because I stopped at one of those new fangled "blue lights" which don't seem to be very green even in people who have decent color vision. Single blinking lights are a bother though, amber flashing vs red flashing I couldn't tell the diffrence. San Joes is a bother because they use amber street lamps, which at night I can't tell which light is attached to traffic control [red yellow green] and which light is to light up the street [red, amber, whatever].
Further, when you put colors in print, they do not nessicarly conform to any real absolute standard. As in, what might look like red to printer and red to your majority population might might look "green" to someone like my self who is "red green" colorblind, or even brown, brown being a muck of colors and red also being a muck of colors to accent the primary red to look more realistic.
The DOL [Department of Licensing] at one time had a hardcopy display of traffic signal which in theory they used at one time to test people if they knew the meaning of the diffrent colors, and let me tell you their choice for red green yellow looked more like brown, brown, and blue. Traffic lights for the most part I'm dead on, as the green typicaly used is super bright, faids the color of near by plants, and a major contrast from the dull red. But in print, anyone be the judge. To this day, I still have NO clue what colors that sign was, which is fine because I look at lights.
Emergency vehicels, well I guess th
Parent
Re:Color Coding (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I think the color Green is the root of all evil. But you're probably right.
Re:It's a joke (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's a joke (Score:2)
Re:It's a joke (Score:2)
See the problem with racial profiling is that it?s the majority of uninformed people deciding that a minority is at fault. It?s not really based on real information. Here?s an example, if you take a pole you?ll find that most people think that the majority of welfare recipients are black, yet that?s not the case.
Re:It's a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
It's kinda like the "Blue Line," where the cops don't go into the bad neighborhoods because that's where all the crime and dangerous people are, but they make sure they're well seen cruising the ritzy neighborhoods so the residents there feel "safe."
Granny gets a little annoyed when they take away her crochet hooks and so she starts sneaking plastic ones in inside her Suphose, but hey, that just proves she really is terrorist scum, doesn't it?
In the meantime most real terrorists could work around the system if they really wanted to. They always have. They always will. That's the one grim reality no one really wants to look in the eye.
And what do you do about the terrorist on a bicycle? Even the Israelis haven't been able to crack that conundrum with half a century of trying.
You could try to put a cop in everyone's pocket, but the recursive nature of that is somewhat daunting. Not to mention the fact that it wouldn't even work.
The world isn't a safe place.
Bummer, huh?
KFG
Parent
Re:It's a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
You must be crazy to think that searching everyone doesn't "make us secure". Do you even know how much crap is confiscated from passengers during searches? My friend works for the TSA and they've confiscated, among other things, switch blades/knives, drugs (LOTS of it, and not just pot either), guns, etc... And almost all of the time these items are taken from white/american citizens.
Now imagine what would happen if that gun wasn't confiscated, got on the plane, and some nutcase decided to start firing at people for whatever reason.
Being "secure" means being certain that there are no holes in the screening process, even if it inconveniences you.
Parent
Re:It's a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, the Oklahoma City bombers were all white Americans. The Unabomber was a white American. Clearly, not all terrorists are "young, middle-eastern men". The sooner you get out of that mindset the better.
Using September 11th as an excuse to treat people with darker skin or of middle-eastern origin differently to everyone else is the slippery slope. What next, make them travel on seperate planes? (And, lest we forget, there was plenty of "get that Arab off the plane before you get us off the ground" hysteria amongst a lot of American passengers in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.)
Seperate planes first, seperate neighbourhoods next. Why not just round them all up and put them all in a ghetto now?
What you fail to realise, living with your head in the sand, is that by treating people differently just because of what they look like, where they come from or what faith they follow you rather are doing exactly what Osama bin Laden and other religous fundamentalists (Islamic and Christian) want you to do.
Al Qaeda's main objective on 9/11 wasn't to kill a few thousand people or to blow up some buildings, it's main objective was to promote conflict between Islamic cutures and western ones. The sooner you absorb that information the better.
Parent
Re:It's a joke (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, the terrorists in said area also started to use disguises, so that they look like a Jew or a member of the Israeli military.
Again, more real world examples of profiles failing. Profiles hurt the innocent and open up security holes for the bad people to get through.
The real solution is to improve our foreign p
Re:It's a joke (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you didn't see them hijacking your rights with inane laws regarding drugs and sexuality? It doesn't take a bomb to do terrible damage to the freedom of a nation.