A Nude Awakening — the TSA and Privacy 728
DIplomatic writes "The Oklahoma Daily has a well-written editorial about the current state of airport security. Though the subject has overly-commented on, this article is well worth the read. Quoting: 'The risk of a terrorist attack is so infinitesimal and its impact so relatively insignificant that it doesn't make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly. There's no purpose in security if it debases the very life it intends to protect, yet the forced choice one has to make between privacy and travel does just that. If you want to travel, you have a choice between low-tech fondling or high-tech pornography; the choice, therefore, to relegate your fundamental rights in exchange for a plane ticket. Not only does this paradigm presume that one's right to privacy is variable contingent on the government's discretion and only respected in places that the government doesn't care to look — but it also ignores that the fundamental right to travel has consistently been upheld by the Supreme Court. If we have both the right to privacy and the right to travel, then TSA's newest procedures cannot conceivably be considered legal. The TSA's regulations blatantly compromise the former at the expense of the latter, and as time goes on we will soon forget what it meant to have those rights.'"
Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
will give up any freedoms because they are "supposed to" in order to "be safe".
Other people will argue that speed limits and income tax are a violation of their natural born freedoms and need to be abolished.
Most people just want a sane middle ground. Too bad the noisy people get all the results.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather go down in an awesome fireball of death rather than expect everyone to be groped by the TSA. At least they'd live with dignity.
Re: (Score:3)
It is not you on the plan the TSA cares to keep safe. It is what the plane can crash into.
And how exactly is a bomb smuggled on board going to enable a terrorist to commandeer a plane and crash it into something?
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
So the choice is to open the cockpit and let them kill the plane full of people + X at their target, or just kill the people on the plane? Seems an easy choice to not open the door.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the choice is to do what they say, live a bit longer, and possibly survive, or die immediately. And if you don't realize that people will gladly take that teeny chance, you're living in a fantasy land.
I know that the popular thing to say these days is "Oh, in the POST-9/11-WORLD ... blah blah blah", but human nature doesn't change. Passengers might be more likely to take small risks these days, but when faced with certain death on one hand and the possibility of survival on the other, most will go with the latter.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
However, after 9-11, just about everyone realizes that your choices are certain death now, or certain death later when we crash the plane into a juicy target. We've already seen that passengers prefer the former, as it happened that very day to when they forced the fourth plane to crash.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
Let him at the controls, and the chances get worse.
And, furthermore, as long as it is made clear that the passenger policy is to fight hijackers no matter what, the fewer hijackers there will be. Appeasers like you just raise risks for the rest of us.
Re:Some People (Score:4, Informative)
when faced with certain death on one hand and the possibility of survival on the other, most will go with the latter
Which is exactly *why* today people would storm a terrorist.
Do Nothing = Certain Death
Attack Terrorists = Possiblity of Survival
It's why passengers pounced on the shoe and underwear bombers.
Re:Some People (Score:4, Informative)
Pure nonsense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings#2000s [wikipedia.org]
Stop making shit up.
Re: (Score:3)
Whomever in the HELL that modded you "insightful" wasn't thinking clearly.
The thinking you espouse is what the terrorists from 9/11 were BETTING ON to be able to accomplish their task with mostly only box cutters and a bit of balls.
In truth, your life is forfeit the moment an aggressor threatens it. How you redeem it back is what remains at that point. You get it back by dumb luck. You get it back by intervention by another. Or you get it back by action either as an individual or a group.
If you hold the
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
The most recent evidence is that anyone trying the above would be mobbed fairly quickly.
Until 9/l11 passengers understood that the safest thing was to sit and wait for rescue.
After 9/11 (actually after only three of the four planes crashed) passengers quickly realized that the ONLY hope for survival was the immediate and violent incapacitation of any would be bomber.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Funny)
Best case though would be the TSA dies groping my awesome, dignified fireballs.
Re:Some People (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the government should allow each airline to offer, say, 50 flights per day in which you don't have to go through all the security theater. That way people can take a calculated risk on whether they want to be molested, photographed nude, or none of the above.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with that is that so many of the flights today are overbooked that you would still have no choice in the matter. I.e., the chance of getting a seat on one of the 50 flights would be so miniscule that you would have to take a groped
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
You, sir, are an idiot. Let's say someone exploits this and blows up a flight somewhere. Or, they manage to hijack the plane and fly it into some building (the how is irrelevant). I don't see any of the people killed by the collateral damage opting out of getting killed.
Either collateral damage matters or it doesn't. Either we should be protecting the lives of the potential three thousand dead by stopping futher hijackings, or we should never have killed the nearly two million civilian Iraqis, poisoned their ground water, multiplied their cancer risks, etc. Can't have it both ways, America.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
you miss one important detail - hijacking is no more.
Aftermath of 9/11:
- cockpits are locked and you are unlikely to terrorize the pilots
- governments won't negotiate, air force will shoot the plane down right away
Passengers in such situation know that they are dead either way and will try their best to stop the baddies in their tracks because 1% chance of survival is better than 0% chance.
Planes are only good for their PR impact: you know - fiery ball of fire, inevitability of death, corpses shredded to pieces. Blowing up some train or subway station during the rush hours is 100x easier and would cause plenty of casualties (as shown in Madrid). As a bonus the baddies don't have to suicide and can leave the scene before the attack happens.
Fixation with planes is clouding your judgement.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
If a terrorist wanted to hit "Western society" and rack up the body count, they'd send some of their bombers out during Black Friday to Walmarts, malls, and other shops. They would scare people into avoiding stores (affecting the US economy) and would kill more people than your average plane holds. By the TSA's logic, we should go through "Freedom Fondles" every time we walk into a store.
What an expansion of the Walmart greeter role! Get a patdown and groin grab followed by "Welcome to Walmart!"
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some People (Score:4, Insightful)
and somehow you are not afraid that someone hijacks a truck full of gasoline and rams your house with it. How come?
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
The TSA's latest "security measures" are just a nice way of making money for some companies and it makes them look like they're doing something.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Reinforced cockpit doors
2. Passengers no longer reacting passively
Those 2 things alone will prevent another 9/11 from ever happening again. 9/11 wasn't about bombs it was about controlling aircraft and using them as bombs. Flight #93 is proof of that. When the passengers fought back, the removed the control that the terrorists had and so the terrorists crashed the plane.
The only thing I'll disagree with you on is this
weapons or bombs, both of which are of little use outside of a direct confrontation with the passengers and crew
Bombs are quite useful outside of direct confrontation. If the underwear bomber or shoe bomber had been able to detonate without being interrupted, damage would have been done and we all be getting our colonoscopies for free during our strip searches at the airports. The planes may not have crashed but that wasn't ever the goal of those plans. Just scare us into reacting and they worked perfectly.
That's it exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)
9/11 killed a few thousand people...far less than die every year on our roads. The property damage was signifigant...but less than we've been spending on the TSA and our nation building. Osama knew the American people had an absurd expectation that their government's foreign policy could never come home to roost in that way. Who knew that training killers to stir up civil strife and kill other people backed by our enemy in a third nation would come back to bite us in the ass! Everyone over-reacted after 9/11 and we've been punked like nobody has been punked before...by ourselves.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Unlike 9/11, people now know that if they don't react they're just about certain to die AND to cause the death of hundreds.
Well said. Every single event used to justify the groping and scanning since 9/11 was thwarted by Joe Passenger.
And Joe is not required to read anyone the Miranda card, or produce reasonable proof that lighting one's shoes on fire in the window seat warrants a laptop to the head and a chokehold by five overweight middle age guys and a stewardess with a hand full of zip ties.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I was a medic once upon a time... Have you ever heard of testicular torsion [google.com]? There are fates worse than death, and in extreme cases they might kill you too!
Thank you, Venture Brothers, for teaching me what's on the other side of the link so I don't have to find out now, and scream in agony while at work.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Some People (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you sir are an idiot. No offense.
I fly all the time as well...or, to phrase it better...I used to fly alot before the TSA and DHS decided that the 4th Ammendment is null and void while proceeding through a security checkpoint at an airport.
Yesterday, before the Porn Scan and/or Freedom Fondle, I had approximately a 1 in 25,000,000 chance (Soruce: TFA) of dying in a terrorist attack on the plane.
Today, with the Porn Scan and/or Freedom Fondle, I have an approximate 1 in 25,000,000 chance (Source: TFA) of dying in a terrorist attackon the plane.
So between yesterday and today, I have gained nothing & lost my rights.
Sounds like a fair trade to me. Personally, I'd rather die free than live in fear. But that's me.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Some People (Score:5, Informative)
I'm old and not the most robust specimen these idiots have ever messed with, but I have a secret weapon, I wear an incontinence undergarment (diaper) and the next time I'm not going to clean myself before going through (I'm gonna be real pissy) and I even may let it fester for a while, who knows maybe I'll make em puke!
I'm NOT kiddin!
Re: (Score:3)
False Dichotomy.
Your options are some less than risk of being killed by live stock risk of being killed by terrorists or some even lower risk than that at the cost of billions of dollars and your privacy.
Neither option has a high chance for fiery death and neither option totally removes that possibility.
Re: (Score:3)
I like my life and have no plans to choose a "fireball of death".
You understand that you're not any better off, as far as your chances to go out in a "fireball" go, for all the TSA groping and porn scanners, right?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, it goes way beyond that. They call a dim silhouette of a naked body "pornography", demonstrating that they don't understand the meaning of the word. They call a professionally detached pat-down "sexual assault", proving that they have never known sexual assault and have never spoken to anyone who has actually been sexually assaulted.
But this is all just a sideshow. The most interesting part of this story, and how it c
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Some People (Score:4, Interesting)
I would really like to be more outraged on this topic. But the propects of fondling and pornography are just too titilating to me. Damn prudes :-P
Then again, I haven't actually flown all that recently. Maybe my opinion will change after I fly cross country with the kids later this month.
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
I would really like to be more outraged on this topic. But the propects of fondling and pornography are just too titilating to me. Damn prudes :-P
I am a straight, sexually-active male, with no image issues -- completely comfortable with my body, my sexuality, and the size of my penis. I don't have any sexual hang-ups, enjoy pornography [especially watching with a partner!], and don't have any "compensation" issues.
But getting my body and penis felt up because I choose to exercise my right [yes, right -- see Shapiro vs. Thompson] to interstate travel, or even intrastate travel for California flights, because I decline the 'privilege' of stepping through a Rapiscan? My body is my business -- and those who I let touch it my business. I have sex on my terms. Similar to the "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" approach, no one can touch my body without my consent.
Making a joke about people being "prudes" because they don't want to have some random person they have not chosen for a sexual relationship to get intimate with their body is completely undermining the issue. This is a serious matter. If somebody gets touched without consent, it is rape. And, despite what prison-jokes ["he'll get his in jail"] or victim-blaming ["she was asking for it"] jokes you ascribe to, this is a horrible ordeal -- especially for those who have been abused/traumatized and may incur flashbacks as a result of this.
I opted out twice [on business travel, not personal travel where I could have driven] on the week of Thanksgiving [not on opt-out day], and while my 'pat-downers' were extremely friendly about the whole ordeal, it's still something I'd not want to repeat. Especially the second time, when I had to wait thirty minutes for someone to come over and pat me down -- as many of the male staff would get asked and say they did not want to touch anyone -- while my carry-ons sat barely in my vision, and not under close security eye 30 feet away. While I was waiting to be screened, and trying to make sure no one lifted any of my possessions, the female TSA "officer" near me kept making jokes about "opt-out day". When I eventually got screened and scrutinized, I had to run to the gate to catch my flight. A full 70 minutes after getting in the security line.
Then again, I haven't actually flown all that recently. Maybe my opinion will change after I fly cross country with the kids later this month.
Yeah, let's see how you feel when some person you don't know gets to second base with your children. Doing a full body rub, going up their legs to the groin until the "officer" feels "resistance" -- by their definition. Having a full press done on their chest, covering the entire surface. Having their backsides rubbed [with the back of the "officer's" hands, of course]. If some random man or woman did this to your kids on the street, you'd kick the crap out of them and call the cops. Here, it's for our "safety".
Let's not even touch the name on these things -- rapiscan -- I dunno, does that root sound similar to rape? Not doing any conditioning or anything...
Re: (Score:3)
That would be the medi*slap*
Re:Some People (Score:4, Insightful)
That is because today's "political climate" is pwned by Rush Limbaugh and his spores.
If the left doesn't get its shit together and redefine what the center means, it will never win another election.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Does anyone else think WikiLeaks might have inadvertently helped the TSA?... attention being drawn to something else is precisely what the TSA needs.
Outside of slashdot, the responses to the porno scanners or gate rape that I was hearing were all sheeple responses of "well, I guess we have to weigh liberty VS safety" with no further analysis. That was about all I was getting from the public. I'm reminded of the quote, apparently by Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." News stories about how foolish these procedures are weren't going to motiv
Re:Hope this is the beginning of the end (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the wrong part of the election cycle for that sort of hope.
Two months ago this would have made for interesting politics.
Now, lame-duck congress, weakened party of the President, and 22 months until the next election, it'll be old news and nobody will give a damn before anything engages people in their choices.
Re: (Score:3)
It's sad you lump the two together. It's the difference between your employees monitoring what you do in private at home, and you monitoring your employees while at work.
It has never been about security (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
If the goal was to make people feel secure, then fondling them and ogling them through their cloths with x-rays was a really bad decision. In puritan America, with all the hangups that people have about their bodies, they couldn't have made a worse decision.
Re:It has never been about security (Score:5, Insightful)
and has always been about making people feel secure.
I disagree. I think it's all part of the "power grab" that "LE" has been conducting full-tilt since "9/11". It can be seen at *every* level from local to federal. A great example is the manipulated hysteria that justifies even the smallest Police Departments in Podunk Oregon or wherever spending many 1000$ on bomb robots. We saw it last week in Denver where the cops blew up a 10 inch tall toy, because - you know - it could have been a bomb. Think of the children, and when did you stop beating your wife? You must *want* the terrorist to win.... Blaw, blaw, blaw...
It has never been about rationality (Score:5, Insightful)
'The risk of a terrorist attack is so infinitesimal and its impact so relatively insignificant that it doesn't make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly.
Your fancy statistics and rational thought got no place in American politics and national policy. Not these days anyway. Right now Glenn Beck [washingtonpost.com] and Sarah Palin [washingtonpost.com] are more popular than Stephen Hawking and James Watson. Good luck preaching about statistics to the populace that is justifying these privacy violations with fear!
Re: (Score:3)
If it were about that, then they failed from the outset.
It's never really been about making people feel secure. It's about control and making people be led to believe that the ones in control are "doing something" about the problem of "terrorism".
Re:It has never been about security (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from anything else, the scanners cannot deliver what they claim to. A number of experts have stated that someone determined enough can sneak sufficient explosives to bring down an airplane past these scanners.
One could almost understand this if it was a sacrifice of liberty for real security. But it's not even that, it's a sacrifice of liberty for the illusion of security.
Re:It has never been about security (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly, the sacrifice of liberty for the illusion of security isn't even a scam that someone is running on us. We're demanding it. We're basically jumping up and down screaming, "Oh my GOD! 9/11 happened! Please strip search us all to make sure nothing dangerous ever happens anywhere!"
We want the security theater. We don't care that it's ineffective. And everyone has to play along so that when the next attack happens, they can say, "It's not my fault, I was strip searching everyone!" You can't blame the TSA; they're just covering their own asses.
Re:It has never been about security (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I don't explicitly blame the TSA. They're listening to their political masters. To some extent I don't even blame the politicians. They're doing what politicians always do, looking stern and tough and resolved, even as they secretly go "Fucked if I know whether it will work or not!"
You're right, it's Average Jane and Average Joe that are the problem. The inability to put the risk of terrorist attack in perspective to other far more risky behaviors is the root of the problem.
Re: (Score:3)
I'll go ahead and blame politicians if you won't. Rather than setting an example and trying to calm people and show that they don't have to be afraid, they whip up the public into a fear frenzy with an all too helpful media and it just builds up and builds up into worse and worse responses.
Re: (Score:3)
The whole thing is so goddamned delusional anyways. Life is nothing but a bunch of vignettes of risk strung together. Walking out your front door (ignoring the many risks inside your home) is a leap of faith to some extent.
The fact is that your odds of being killed in a car accident on your commute to work far outweigh the risks terrorists pose. McDonalds and Burger King will probably kill far more people than any religious fanatic will ever manage. Part of the problem is that humans suck at risk assess
Re: (Score:3)
Clearly they would just make you be pre-screened. You would need to go through a pre-security check point, before the security check point. Seems simple enough.
Re: (Score:3)
isn't it special (Score:5, Insightful)
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, John Pistole said they can't profile because it might not be Constitutional. As opposed to all the other things they're doing which might not be constitutional.
Senator Chuck Schumer proposed a bill to make it illegal to redistribute porno-vision image. Wrong problem, wrong answer. How about: it is illegal and unconstitutional to generate porno-vision images or perform an enhanced patdown without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
Money (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about anything other than money. Follow the money. EOM
Re:Money (Score:4, Informative)
The money to the companies is mostly just a sweetener.
Re: (Score:3)
He's correct and so are you (except about him being wrong). Michael Chertoff, ex Secretary of Homeland Security, ran a consultation group, Chertoff Group. Rapiscan Systems was a client at the time he was pushing for scanners while he was the current Secretary of Homeland Security.
It's a pork project to sale security scanners... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a pork project to sale security scanners.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Inasmuchas everything has to be built somewhere, saying things are pork is not sufficient to prove that's the only reason they're being done.
Re:It's a pork project to sale security scanners.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please mod up insightful (since we have no "succint")!
Let's take this just a bit further, btw:
Say a terrorist for some reason decides to take over a plane with a bomb, either for traditions sake, or because he is misinformed.
If he manages to get on the plane, his death toll will be rather low - the chance of killing more people than are at the plane are miniscule.
If he is discovered, he can detonate where he is and kill more people.
So, the TSA procedures are far more likely to help the terrorist kill more people.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, it would be if the goal was actually to save the people. But if the goal is to save the aircraft, it's not. Now, consider all the things the government has not spent money on to save people: Highway deaths, smoking, fast food, avoiding foreign wars... now, what do you think it is they are most likely trying to protect here: You? Or the airline?
Benjamin Franklin quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Benjamin Franklin said it best, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
New fundamental rights test (Score:5, Insightful)
It used to be that there were three different tests for determining whether some government action that, on the face of it, appeared to violate one's rights, was nevertheless permissable. There was the "rational basis" test, which allowed the government to perform the rights violation if it could show there was some rational basis for doing so. There was the "strict scrutiny" test which insisted the government have some compelling interest in doing whatever the law was doing, and that there be no better way to do it. This was applied to certain rights considered particularly fundamental, like freedom of speech, religion, and the press. And there was the "heightened scrutiny" test somewhere in between, which tended to show up in equal protection cases.
Now we have the "irrational basis" test, replacing all three, which says that if the government can come up with any scenario where allowing their violation might be good, or any scenario where protecting the right implicated might cause harm, no matter how implausible and farfetched, the government's action is allowed.
Personally I find strict scrutiny to be insufficiently strict, and prefer the "rights are rights" test, but I'm one of those wild-eyed radicals.
Wil Shipley got it right (Score:5, Interesting)
Wil Shipley posted a (ficticious) interview [wilshipley.com] with the TSA that I think covers the problem perfectly.
There was also a post on Reddit today that pointed out that the TSA would save more lives (statistically) if all they did was listen to people's hearts, check their blood pressure, and refer them to a doctor if it was outside the normal range.
Oh, boy! This again! (Score:3)
People seem to have picked an odd point at which to become suddenly outraged. This has been going on for years, and I've been hearing the "trade essential liberty" quote to the point that it's tattooed on my retinas.
This one seems to have provoked especial outrage, and I can't help but see it as politically driven. Your average civil-liberties-minded Slashdotter has been roughly consistent, but I feel as if for much of the population it was different when The Last Guy was in charge. Now that The Other Guy is in charge, gosh, those other civil liberties violations were Necessary to the Security of a Free State, but this one's too much.
Or maybe it's just the prurience of it all: oooooh... nekkid pictures and groping. Sounds like headline news to me.
I just don't feel like we've suddenly crossed some line, where the other rights we gave up weren't Fundamental, but these are. Americans threw a hissy fit when the Shoe Bomber and the Underwear Bomber and the Toner Cartridge Bomber managed to almost cause serious harm, but you've got two choices: either accept the occasional death-by-bombing, or the occasional massive personal intrusion. (There's also the Israeli option of spending ten times as much on security and standing in line while they quiz everybody, another unpopular stance.)
My point being... if all you've got to offer me is "I hate this", well, yeah, I knew that. When you've got an option that doesn't also generate "I hate this" from practically everybody, you've got News. Until then I feel like this story has been about biting dogs for way longer than is of any interest.
Re:Oh, boy! This again! (Score:5, Insightful)
You are incorrect. I didn't like it before but it was primarily a nuisance. Now they've instituted new policies that violate my mores. You can argue all day that I'm incorrect for feeling the way I do (it's already been done above) but the bottom line is that I experience these things on a visceral level. I'll take my shoes off, put my laptop in it's own bin, fit all my gel and toothpaste in a little bag, etc. It's stupid and annoying but I can deal.
When I'm told my choices are to either be photographed naked or be felt up, I start losing the ability to be detached and unemotional. When it's my kids that are facing this choice then I'm really upset. It's the culture I grew up in that these things are completely wrong. I've spent time explaining to my children that there are places where no one is to ever touch them, that if they do they are to tell me immediately. Now I'm supposed to let some flunky with TSA do it to me right in front of them, and to them as soon as they turn 12.
Feel free to mock my upbringing all day, I can't go back in time and grow up in a completely different culture.
And if anyone could show that any of it makes sense or is effective - I'd take a stab at trying to change the way I think about it. But since the whole things is a bad joke, I'll stick with trying to change the policy rather than myself.
So is it all because there's a democrat in the Whitehouse? No - that's ridiculous. I voted for that man. I voted for Napalitano when she ran for Governor of AZ. She did a good job. Is it "prurience"? If you want to put it that way but I'm not sure why that's something that should be thrown aside just because you have a different set of values.
Re: (Score:3)
TSA employee versus gynecologist; TSA employee gropes your junk or looks at your junk on a monitor; gynecologist feels your wife's pussy or stares deep into it; or both.
So, if I cut you open and remove an internal organ, it's okay because a doctor can do it???
Re: (Score:3)
Chance of cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the odds of getting killed by a terrorist are less than one in 60 million.
The TSA claim their searches are 'reasonable'. Then why do they say that congressman don't have to go through it? If it reasonable, then everyone should have to do it.
They consistently say things like "You give up your rights when you buy the ticket."
No. Our rights do NOT go away. The law is clear - the rights remain. The definition of reasonable is what changes. And no reasonable parent man would allow their 14 year old girl pictured nude or fondled. Similarly, no reasonable person would allow the searches the TSA has demanded. This includes the basic stuff and the more viable junk like harassing women for traveling with breast milk, or Armed US soldiers traveling with rifles (OK - let them go) and nail clippers (NO! YOU CAN'T HAVE IT. GIVE IT HERE.), stealing watches, cash from purses, etc..
The TSA has NEVER, not ONCE caught an actual terrorist planning on committing a hijacking that they were not previously given the name. Not once has any metal detector or pat down discovered a terrorist that we were not already looking for.
Re:Chance of cancer (Score:4, Insightful)
No. The definition of reasonable is constitutionally explicit: ...and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Were you presented with a warrant? Did they show probable cause to believe you were carrying something illicit? Someone swore or stood witness to that? There was a description of what they thought you were carrying?
That's what "reasonable" means. It isn't some vague, variable hand-waving thing the government gets to define one way on Tuesday and another in Hoboken.
Wikileaks VS Airport scanners (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm astounded that these two issues are seperated, and yet, no one looks beyond the surface to see what it's REALLY about... Privacy.
I'm sure the same people calling for Assange to be hanged are the same people that also say "if you've got nothing to hide..." about going through an airport scanner. They want to have that nice cozy feeling that the nanny state is protecting *them*.
So, they don't want to hear about Wikileaks, and they want to be seen naked at the airport *if* they think that'll make them sleep soundly at night.
This is about privacy. And if the average citizen can't expect any at the airport, why the hell should the government think it deserves *any* privacy? When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you.
So Wikileaks and Airport scanners. Two great tastes that taste great together! Too bad the government doesn't get the irony of being so upset about Assange while they strip away our rights. Too bad the media doesn't get it either. These two events are happening at the same time and both are about an expectation of privacy.
Maybe if the government got rid of the scanners, Wikileaks would calm down.
Follow the funding (Score:4, Interesting)
A massive new agency, funding, private interests and new equipment, contracts to keep it all running and ongoing upgrades.
A new closed system with few new players. Make an issue about it as a contractor and http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3454/show [opencongress.org] Section 815 will see you blacklisted in other DoD contracts.
A few well connected people are going to get very rich, stay rich and move into other areas.
Airline Security (Score:5, Insightful)
In my opinion, I think you should be permitted to carry anything you can legally carry in any public place on an airplane.
Also, the TSA should become an educational service for airline employees. Train all airline staff how to defend the plane, give them the ability to arrest and detain unruly passengers. Lock the cockpit, make it bullet proof,and arm the pilots.
Once you do that, any terrorist would be INSANE to try anything on a plane. You'll have passengers who have pocket knives, multi-tools, etc on them. Airline staff that can actually do something, and armed pilots in a protected location who can all stop the "bad guys".
Empower the passengers and crew, because for everyone who won't do anything, there that many who would do something as simple as stick out a foot, slide out their carry on bag or smack 'em with their Macbook to thwart it.
Stop being scared. You're letting them win. (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that by perpetuating this ridiculous paranoia of terrorist attack, and the subsequent removal of our rights, freedoms and privacy, our own governments continue to reward the terrorists with much greater victories than they could ever possibly achieve on their own.
Duh! (Score:3)
Yes, that was Bin Laden's plan all along. Right now, in a cave someplace is a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished". He might even be wearing Bush's flight suit too.
Re:Stop using risk as basis of argument (Score:5, Informative)
We know the rate of attacks before these measures. The 80s was a busy time for airplane-related terrorism, with a few hundred affected in peak 5 years IIRC (either killed, or held hostage for a considerable time). It's reasonable to conclude that with just the old-style metal detector, and X-Ray for baggage, the death toll would be less than 100 per year. Per that recent Cornell study, there are about 600 deaths per year now from people who choose to drive to avoid the hassle of flying. Is that not enough data to make the judgement to remove the TSA, even setting aside the (more important IMO) concerns about liberty and dignity?
Also, for all the security theater, there's still quite minimal security for food trucks and maintenance workers and the like. We continue to harden the front door, but the back door is unlocked (and even so, there are so few incidents).
Re:Stop using risk as basis of argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Risk management is exactly what the TSA isn't doing. They are taking a past threat and building security they *think* would protect the current system from it. Only, that's not really what they're doing.
If we had learned anything from 911 planes would takeoff manually, land and fly on autopilot with a remote operator ready to take over in case of automation failure. A co-pilot who can only take control if the remote override is toggled would suffice to prevent the entire situation of flying bomb. Now you think we can't do that? We can put a missile through a window at 500 feet above the ground, we can fly a large lumbering bird through clear skies to a known destination safely and eliminate the threat. We don't want to do that, since it would mean "the terrists" won. Instead we put on a kindergarden play and let strangers touch our no-no places.
And WWII warfare was not security theater, it was misdirection. Totally different. The TSA is telling the world what they're doing is real security, they're buying real security devices and creating completely irrelevant measures.
And yes there is nothing currently in place to stop another rectum bomber. And yes, we know what the risks are without these measures. We flew hundreds of thousands of flights since air liners started to be used as a weapon of terror in the 70s.
As a security professional I must say what the TSA does is a mockery of real security.
Re:Stop using risk as basis of argument (Score:5, Insightful)
The plain fact is you can determine how needed this security is by dividing the cost by the lives it saves. If it comes out over $X million/head it is useless, because that money could save more lives applied elsewhere. What the risks are can be analyzed and are. At this moment the risk is so low, that we would be better off without the security and spending a tenth of that money on, healthcare, fixing potholes, inspecting food products, any of that would give more lives saved per dollar spent.
We are spending billions on something that kills less people per year than farm animals. Would you support spending billions a year to protect farmers from their livestock?
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think so. I think what you're looking at here is an attempt to save airline companies from loss of multi-million dollar chunks of hardware. Not an attempt to save people's lives. If the government is so hot to save lives, there are so many areas they could have been working to do so, but aren't; and there are many areas where they waste US lives profligately (Iraq, Afghaqnistan are good ex
Re: (Score:3)
People are irrationally risk averse, but we should at least try to make informed and accurate cost-benefit analyses. The cost of a security measure is the number of times it is performed times the time and liberty lost any time the measure is applied but doesn't stop an attack. (We should probably also add the marginal cost in fuel and accidents when people use alternative travel methods, such as driving.) The benefit is the number of times it stops an attack times the expected loss due to an attack. Wh
Re: (Score:3)
Additionally, the reason that 9/11 worked was that the passengers weren't expecting to be hijacked into a kamikaze attack and the airlines were too cheap to pay
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Stop using risk as basis of argument (Score:5, Insightful)
But to me it's absurd to claim that we should drop security measures that may be preventing terrorist attacks because of the rate of said attacks being so low. As in, we have no idea how likley they are wihtout these measures.
Well, since 9/11 I've been taking care to always carry my lucky rabbit's foot when I travel. We have no way of knowing how likely terrorist attacks would be if I didn't have my rabbit's foot.
Seriously, though, there IS a way to determine the effectiveness of security protocols. We can enumerate potential attack vectors, examine each one's potential cost and likelihood of success, examine the various threat mitigation options available, evaluate their expected effectiveness and then test them to determine their actual effectiveness against the postulated attack vectors. We can also look at the potential damage of various attacks and factor that into the overall risk management strategy.
Doing that sort of analysis on my rabbit's foot would quickly show that it doesn't mitigate any real risks. I may find it comforting, but that's all.
Doing that sort of analysis on the TSA's security procedures shows roughly the same, for exactly the reason the author of the article mentions: TSA security is reactive, while terrorism is innovative. There's a wide, wide world of possible attacks... far more than we could possibly defend against with any specific set of countermeasures. For every threat vector successfully mitigated by the TSA's procedures, there are dozens more that are ignored. The article mentioned one very simple, obvious and already-proven method of completely bypassing the pat-downs and backscatter scanners -- body cavities. Unpleasant, yes, but very workable.
And that doesn't even get into the question of whether or not the TSA countermeasures successfully prevents the specific attacks they're supposed to guard against. Witness Adam Savage's experience of passing through the backscatter x-ray machine with a pair of 12-inch razor blades. Even more to the point, the TSA has more or less admitted that it doesn't run penetration tests against its procedures because when it does the penetration is usually successful.
So we have security measures that don't stop what they're supposed to stop, and don't even attempt to stop a whole bunch of other stuff that's just as bad. How is that any different from my rabbit's foot? Well, other than being a lot more expensive, intrusive and obnoxious.
If anything we've been doing since 9/11 is responsible for the singular lack of successful terrorist attacks, it's our investment in intelligence and police work. Especially tracking down and stomping on the money supply. In actuality, I'm not sure that the real risk even justifies THAT investment, but at least that is an approach that has some possibility of working, by getting ahead of the terrorists. Instituting additional rounds of "security" countermeasures that might, maybe, thwart the last bozo's failed attack -- which, we should note, was thwarted without the new security countermeasure, is just doing something for the sake of doing it. Like my rabbit's foot, it might make people feel better, but it won't actually make them any safer.
Re: (Score:3)
Unfortunately, the message for TSA security measures are simple: "Terrorists Bad, Must Stop Them"
The message against TSA security is more difficult to understand: "4th amendment violations are not the appropriate response."
Gaining a national mindset on a complex subject requires simplicity. If you look at abortion, the choices for a view are simple "Pro-Choice" or "Pro-Life". I think the views on TSA security should be equally simple.
You are "Pro-Security" or "Pro-Liberty"
It should also be clear to everyo
Re:Right to Privacy ? (Score:4, Informative)
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." the 4th amendment.
That covers the government not being able to violate your privacy without cause and specific warrant.
Re:Right to Privacy ? (Score:4, Informative)
but no explicit right to privacy.
There doesn't have to be. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Don't be an idiot. I have the right to travel.
I can't force an airline to carry me, but presumably they have no objection if they've sold me a ticket. When the Feds step in and force me to submit to intrusive, unjustified searches just to board the plane, they're denying me my right to travel.
Sure, I can drive, but that just proves they're full of shit unless they're going to start a Federal Highway Patrol with random stop-and-search under penalty of confiscation of my car for refusal.
I have every right und
Re: (Score:3)
No we weren't. We were attacked by a dissolute terrorist group that was hiding out there. We went in with poor planning, poor resourcing, and no goal by an administration more concerned with routing money to their pet corporations than doing a damn bit of good.
Had we focused on going in, finding bin Laden, and dragging his ass out instead of "nation building" and "lib
Re:He had me until... (Score:4, Insightful)
We were attacked by Saudis you fool. Afghanistan lacked the ability to catch Osama and so far it seems we too lack that ability.
Re:He had me until... (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, what? Of the 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudi, 2 from UAE, 1 was Egyptian, and one was Lebanese. The funding came from Saudi Arabia, and continues to ome from Saudi Arabia from this day, as current US diplomatic cables explicitly lay out [nytimes.com] (the money quote: "Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda.") Afghanistan (and Iraq) had absolutely nothing to do with anything about 9/11 other than being places we could bomb the hell out of without compromising our petroleum supplies.
And before you start spouting any of that "but Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan" silliness, they're in a score of other countries too, most notably Saudi Arabia, where the attacks actually came from.
Re: (Score:3)
We have a right to travel. The government has no business placing unreasonable burdens upon people wishing to travel by any means, which they are definitely doing in airports these days. I can't force an airline to carry me, but as I said earlier, if they've sold me a ticket then it's a done deal.
Re: Not Well Stated (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly anyone who suggests closing air travel to save lives is a moron. More people would die in the resulting rise in car travel. Heck, the current security system already does this and it will kill ~600 more Americans every year.
The pat down or nudity are not resented for prudish reasons but for their very basic infringement on civil liberties.
This is literally a case of the cure being worse than the disease.
Re: (Score:3)
I had a friend that died from AIDS. Several friends, in fact. The fact that the money that could be going into research for a cure or treatment is instead going into this useless security theater that isn't going to stop anyone, and instead will just get more of us killed on the highways as we opt to travel by car instead, sickens me.