relangford

Doesn't the word "TRANSPORTATION" in their name mean anything? Maybe change it to "TOTAL Security Agency"!

Let's go with the implantable RFID injected upon birth to every baby (retroactively, for us older)!

It seems George Orwell was right, but missed the date.

TSORon

ROTFLAMO!!

You guys crack me up, seriously!

The TSA knows nothing more about what happened than anyone else (you included), yet you guys are trying to make predictions about how TSA will react?

Why not wait until something actually turns up before doning tin hats and predicting the end of the world? Anyway, I just had to see what type of silly was going on here because of that incident, or non-incident, depending. Nice to know that some things never change. Seriously, you guys are funnier than Don Rickels.

relangford

That's not hard to do!

The point is: it doesn't matter why MH370 was lost, it's that TSA will over-react and use any excuse.

Letitride3c

"Gate checking" will take on a brand new meaning on the jetbridge, steps away from the aircraft, regardless of whether you are using doors on the left/#1 or on the right/#2 - hereon, mark my words for it.

For those of us flying TPAC to places like SGN, PVG, and of course, PEK - think about the secondary screening at/near the boarding gate plus the random screening/uniform "officer" as you approach/after passing the GA ...

That is, at least until they figure out what happened to the missing 777 and can possibly relax some rules again. Ok, girls & boys - start lining up for boarding T-90 now.

BF263533

I wish the TSA or another security agency knew something more. Taking a 777 and disappearing for hours. A real lack of effective security.

Dr. HFH

Define "work." You need to see what the original ones showed. Compare the current TSA technology of a rough human outline with amorphous red zones warranting further inspection to what the original Nude-o-Scopes showed. On the originals, a gun looked like a gun; a knife like a knife. No big red dots. You could see precisely where they were on the person, which way they were pointing, etc. You don't think that a TSA officer would like to know whether s/he's looking for a gun, a knife or a stick of dynamite? Those big red dots don't really provide much useful information to the officer.


Those cost-benefit assessments are interesting creatures. The auto industry faces it all the time; I wonder how they do it. But what's it worth to you to keep an explosive device armed terrorist off the flight that your child is on? Is there an amount above which you would say that it's not worth the expenditure?


I was unaware that they use x-rays, interesting piece of information. My assessment is that I have a much better chance of surviving a slightly increased exposure to x-rays than I do an explosion on my flight at 37,000 feet. I don't get the medically unnecessary reference. Are you saying that the only legitimate uses of x-raying people are all medical in nature and that we shouldn't use them on people in any other way?

More to the point, however, the TSA is already using scanners, which, as you say, are driven by x-rays. They've just dumbed down the information displays of what is found in the scan. But the scan still is done.


Your example of body cavity searches is inapposite because Nude-o-Scopes will find items like guns, knives, bullets, bombs, etc., just as easily in a body cavity as they will in a pocket or strapped to the outside of your body. One of the reasons to use them, IMO.

I assume that your question about balancing freedom and security is rhetorical, -- of course they must be balanced. The scans are already taking place. The person who reads them already cannot see who is being scanned. The only change I'm advocating is to provide the TSA officers with additional information, information which is already being generated by the equipment but then not shown to the officers.


True. And each of the five examples you cited is, to a great extent, preventable. The least preventable one on the list is cancer, and many cancers are preventable, too. If we're willing to make certain sacrifices to reduce the risk of heart disease (smoking, fatty foods, etc.), for example, why would we not do the same to reduce the risk of being killed in a plane crash?


First, I'm not advocating "mass surveillance." We already scan pax at airports, -- we're only talking here about providing the TSA officers with more detailed information from the scans which are already being done. Highway safety and medical research are ongoing efforts, with annual expenditures which will go on for a long time. Nude-o-Scopes are one-time purchases. Once an airport has them, it has them.


As I said above, please tell me the amount of money spent on making your child safe on a plane above which you think that it's not worth the expenditure.

FliesWay2Much

The point is that the the actual cause of the crash and the TSA's reaction doesn't have to be congruous. The TSA is in the threat business. In order to perpetuate itself, it has to continually do three things:

1. Invent threats that only they can eliminate;
2. Maintain a level of fear in the public in order to force the population to have to rely on them for their very existence; and,
3. Institute a very visible change to its regulatory procedures any time there is a contingency event in the transportation sector.

Example: For months, the TSA had wrestled with shoes on or off. The TSA really wanted to make everyone take their shoes off but didn't have a reason -- not even Richard Reid. The implausible liquid bomber event happened and the TSA immediately required all shoes off. What do underwear bombs and shoes have in common? Absolutely nothing.

Second example: The underwear bomber. This was a great excuse to ramp up use of nude-o-scopes and trace detector systems that can't tell the difference between chemicals in explosives and the same chemicals in lawn fertilizer, heart pills, and hand lotion. There is no incentive to design such as machine, because sending ordinary citizens into the mandatory private room so a clerk can fondle their genitals with the front of their hands three times keeps the public fear at an appropriate level. The fear level was so high that people willingly allowed themselves to be irradiated with ionizing radiation known to cause cancer and which was concentrated on the skin and the eyes.

So, I look at what the TSA really wants to do but hasn't had an excuse to implement. "What's left?", I ask myself. "Interrogations" is my answer to my own question. Pistole desperately wants an excuse to expand the SPOTNik program to include Israeli-style interviews of all passengers. That's been a pretty consistent theme of him for the past couple of years. MH 370 is his opportunity to implement this. Who will question him? Not the president...not Congress...and certainly not the traveling public who just want to catch their flight. The flying public who would complain the loudest has been taken out of the debate thanks to the PreCheck extortion racket.

petaluma1

Where do you get your information from? (And BTW, I don't believe that you were allowed to see your own scan.) If NOS could see into body cavities, women by the score would be pulled out of line because they were using a tampon. One of the reasons why NOS is so ineffective is because it CANNOT see into body cavities.

mikeef

Precedent.

If it were done on a true cost/benefit analysis, then the answer would be close to zero. The odds of a terrorist being able to sneak an explosive onto a plane, based on what the TSA does today, are microscopically marginally lower than in pre-9/11 days.

But look at it this way: Your odds of dying in a car accident on that drive to the airport are way, way, way higher than a terrorist sneaking a bomb onto a plane. But I'm not willing to set the speed limit at 20 MPH and let the police set up checkpoints every five miles, which surely would have a higher cost/benefit result than what the TSA does.

Mike

Schmurrr

Please do some research on these devices re: their capabilities and the backscatter x-ray and millimeter wave technologies.

Irrelevant. A better question is, "How much taxpayer money do I want the government to spend violating the Constitutional and human rights of every flyer in the U.S. when the terror threat is infinitesimal and the funds could be far better spent fighting threats that pose greater danger to my child, your child, and the child who does not fly?"

Dr. HFH

I completely agree.


Well, let's assume that you're right. (I have no idea.) When was the last time that a flight which originated in TLV was victimized by terrorists? We need to consider the effectiveness of the approach.


Your belief doesn't change reality. As unlikely as it may seem now, it happened. LHR T4, where I was heading for the QF flight to BKK. I was the only one in line at the time. As I mentioned, it's how I found out that I needed to work out. It was in the early days of the scope use, when there was still a novelty component to their use, and before such use became as controversial as it is now.


Um, no. They see into bodies in the same way that x-rays do. That's one of the complaints about them. Tampons look like what they are, cotton or paper (cellulose). Not threats.


Absolutely.


That's exactly the question which societies have to answer. What types of and how much cost and inconvenience are they willing to bear for how much of an increase in safety?


Instead of asking me to do research, why don't you just share what you know which, I gather, you believe will disprove something I've said? Easy to challenge someone with a rhetorical challenge ("do some research") which provides no contradictory information, and is the equivalent of one ten-year-old saying to another, "prove it!!"

I could as easily say the same to you, -- Do some research into what these devices used to show before they were dumbed down. But that doesn't add any substance to this conversation, now, does it?


Agree that the terror threat is extremely small. One problem, however, is that the mortality rate from the average in-flight terrorist act is much higher than that from the average car crash. As I said above, this is one of the hard choices which societies have to make to make.

Himeno

o.O Car crashes happen more often, even after accounting for the difference in amount of cars on the road and flights. The ratio of car accidents:cars on road is far higher then aircraft related incidents:flights.
You are comparing the wrong numbers.

BOB W

I'll have what he's having. Gotta be some good S**T

Dr. HFH

No, not the wrong numbers, just different from the ones you're using. No question, car accidents occur with a much higher frequency. I'm just saying that if you look only at the universe of accidents, air accidents have a much higher chance of being fatal that car accidents.

chollie

Still faulty.

I suspect there are relatively few people who spend more hours in airplanes than they do exposed to car accidents (as drivers, passengers or pedestrians).