Dr. HFH

No, not faulty. We're talking about two different things. I agree with you that people spend far more time in cars then in the air, and are thus much more exposed to car accidents. My point remains valid, however. If you are in a car accident, you are much more likely to survive it than you are likely to survive a terrorist act on a flight if you are on that flight. But, yes, you are much more likely to be involved in a car accident than you are to be involved in a terrorist act on a flight.

Or, put differently, you are much more likely to survive any given car accident than you are to survive any given terrorist act on a flight.

petaluma1

http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/backscatter/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray

If the NOS could see into body cavities do you think the TSA would have agreed to get rid of the backscatter machines and rely only on MMW with ATR?

Personal hygiene products are paper or cellulose and travelers get pulled over every day and are forced to prove that they are not a threat.

Dr. HFH

I just read all 22 pages of EPIC's comments. Their criticisms and objections seem to fall into several broad categories, 1) TSA didn't follow the mandated procedures for implementing the scanners, 2) the scanners are invasive, 3) TSA didn't establish that there wasn't better technology available, 4) potential health risks. I didn't see anything about ineffectiveness. And, on that point, there likely isn't any technology which can detect 100% of the potential hazards.

Let's also not forget that EPIC's name is Electronic Privacy Information Center. It's easy to see from the name that they are an advocacy organization. And like all or most, they start with a point of view and then look to support their point of view. Show me something from an objective organization and it will be easier to get my attention.

As I said, privacy of the scans is not a concern of mine. The scans are supposed to be invasive. As I also said, though, each society has to decide the degree of risk it is willing to bear in terms of a trade-off against things like cost, potential health risks and privacy concerns. I have my own feelings about that; you apparently don't agree. There is no right or wrong answer.

chollie

Absent evidence to the contrary, I don't believe that.

Other than 9/11, past history doesn't support your assertion.

Just a few weeks ago, an Ethiopian Airlines plane was hijacked to Geneva. No lives lost. Prior to 9/11, the assumption was that any terrorist taking a plane wanted to divert and land safely. The primary goal was not to take the lives of pax. It happened to a relative few, but not to entire plane loads.

You are basing your assumption on the idea that all future terrorist actions will involve successful suicide actions. Richard Reid and the underwear bomber are two examples of attempted actions that didn't result in loss of life, and the Ethiopian Air incident is an example of a non-suicide diversion.

WillCAD

Um, no. They absolutely do not.

The whole purpose of the WBI scanners is to create an image of the outside of the body, sans clothing.

Here is an example of a MMW image:


And here is one from the older backscatter x-ray scanner (BSX):


At extreme power, the BSX units have been known to pass through feet and hands and show the bones, but they don't do so in the torso, because they were specifically designed NOT to do so - they were designed to show the surface of the body and contrast it with solid items hidden beneath clothes.

The fact that you don't understand that basic fact of WBI technology undermines any and all arguments you make about those machines, including your assertion that a clerk took you behind the curtain to show you your own scan return.

[QUOTE=Dr. HFH;22566591]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?[/img]

That's a red-herring question.

The issue is not cost or "inconvenience". The issue is personal freedom and individual rights. The truth is, you should accept NO abridgement of your rights and freedoms in the name of safety, because your safety is inherently compromised by the loss of rights and freedoms. The less free you are, the more danger you are in from anyone who has any sort of greater authority over you.

Members of a free society are capable of defending themselves. Members of non-free societies face danger from both terrorists and from the government itself. Ask anyone who lived in East Germany, Communist Russia or China, Castro's Cuba, or in an extreme example, Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. Or, for that matter, in occupied France.

Okay, fine. Then YOU do it. Show some statistics from a reputable source that lend any weight to your following statements:

petaluma1

Interesting how you conveniently veered away from your argument that NOS can see inside body cavities by trying to denigrate EPIC's good works.

Dr. HFH

OK. All three of my statements you cite say more or less the same thing, namely that:

Where it says "that," I assume that it's obvious to you that it was a typo and I meant "than."

The Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives in Geneva keeps track of this stuff. "The primary goal of our organization is to collect, manage and archive all information relating to aviation accidents worldwide since 1918 till today." Their information shows that there are an average of 6.49 deaths per aircraft accident, obviously significantly higher than the number of deaths per auto accident.

For auto accidents, the U.S. Census Bureau tracks the information for the U.S. I was able to find information annually for 2004-2009. According to the Census Bureau, the average death rate per auto accident in those years was 0.00399 deaths per auto accident.

And with that, I will take my leave from this conversation. Clearly, you and I have different ideas of what is acceptable in the name of air safety. I've enjoyed learning and thinking about your point of view, as it's very different from mine. Ultimately, as I've said more than once, societies have to answer these questions. They're not easy; and there are no guarantees, regardless of the approach to air transportation security ultimately adopted and implemented.

jkhuggins

The piece that's missing from this analysis, of course, is the relative frequency with which people partake in aircraft flights verses automobile trips. The latter dwarfs the former.

Dr. HFH

Of course. I'm talking about the mortality rate once you're in an accident, not the chances of being involved in one.

Schmurrr

It was not a rhetorical challenge. It was advice. If you want to debate NOSs, study up on what you are talking about. Several others have already called you out on your misinformation. Search this board for links to facts. Search my previous posts. If you can manage only one source, try this short article from the New York Times about the health risks of backscatter NOSs.

Um, many more people die from auto accidents than from terror acts. Exposure is not something to ignore.

Flaflyer

Folks laugh at TSA cuz TSA is a classic case of “knee jerk overreactions” and “fighting the last war” after the barn door is open and the horses have escaped, which is usually reserved for generals at the Pentagon. Examples:

9/11™ uses boxcuttes = TSA bans boxcutters and nail clippers and 7 inch screwdrivers cuz an ebil tewwowist could spend an hour unscrewing the cockpit door totally unnoticed.

Shoe Bomber = TSA becomes the largest shoe sniffing organization in the world.

Underwear Bomb = TSA loves to feel up passengers to their gonad “resistance”.

War on Water, Yogurt and Toothpaste = Some British high school dropouts in a welfare flat invent a way to make water onto a high explosive and win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry while causing TSA to Freak Out.

See the TSA pattern?

No matter WHAT happened to MH370, it is a safe bet to predict TSA WILL overreact and install some regulations to "prevent" the last incident, which will NOT make the average flying pax any safer from the next incident.

But it will cause millions of TSOs to get paid to goosestep to the new regulations harassing two million passengers a day while making none of them safer.

WillCAD

You're listing the rates of deaths per incident, which are a ridiculous red-herring. If you want to show the survivability rates of air crashes vs car crashes, you need to take into account the number of people IN the vehicles.

Planes carry up to 150 people at a time, while cars carry 2 to 6.

The numbers that determine your likelihood of dying in a plane crash vs a car crash are the number of fatalities per passenger. How many total plane trips are made per year, and out of them, how many die? Vs how many people take a car trip every year, and out of them, how many die?

Show me those numbers to back up your assertions.

But you probably won't, since you have "taken leave" of this conversation and have nothing to back up your claims.

Clearly, you and I have completely different ideas of what is "evidence".

Paul56

TSA will insist on the following:

- that all newborns be implanted with an identification microchip

- that the rest of us be retrofitted with the id chip at our expense

- that they are provided with new scanning hardware that will
place the id on their screens as we pass through

- this information will have to match up perfectly with our existing
paper documents

- all surgeries will have to be approved by the TSA and the medical
team will need to certify the id chip was not replaced or otherwise
tampered with

- anyone without a chip will not be allowed to fly

- once inside the plane and the doors closed the chips will be
rescanned... if there are any anomalies they will need to be sorted
before departure

- upon arrival the chips will be rescanned before the doors are
open and passengers released... if there are any anomalies they will
need to be sorted prior disembarking

mre5765

The Ethiopian Air flight in February was hijacked by a co-pilot. The pilot that went to lav was locked out for the duration.

There is strong evidence is an MH370 pilot,hijacked and crashed the plane. Even if it was a hiajcker who started from outside the cockpit, nonetheless it still points to the same issue: cockpit security.

There is a solution, which PMUA implemented, and the aircraft manufacturers offer, but the airlines, including COdbaUA, currently reject. I predict that they are about to be overruled.

That is, that the secondary gate around the cockpit area is about to a mandatory part of all commericial airplanes that have a lav near the cockpit. Furthermore, once this gate is up, the cockpit door will be locked open so that the pilot in the lav can always reenter the cockpit.

What they will do for CRJ200s and other Barbie jets is anyone's guess, but I guessing it will either be diapers or remove some rows of seats to install a pilot-only porta potty.

I am much more likely to collide with another car or solid object in a car than in an airplane. On a commericial airplane I am far less likely to experience a mechanical failure.

While engines can fail on commercial airplanes, because there are two of them, I can survive that. On cars, engine failures cause death all the time: one makes a turn into the path of oncoming traffic, and sudden loss of power means it doesn't clear the intersection in time.

If the wheel brakes fail on a car, one will be in a collision (because when one needs brakes, one is needs to slow down to avoid a collision). I've been in a commericial plane where the wheel brakes failed. The pilot knew a hour before he landed that he had no brakes. He informed the pax and crew to prepare for an emergency landing. He informed the airport. We landed without incident because the runway was long enough at DEN. Had it been an airport with a shorter runway, we would have diverted.

As for your other posts that claim body scanners work, they didn't prevent a Salt Lake based OO pilot from boarding a plane to YYC with a hand gun.

As an engineer who blogs about aviation security documented, if one straps a gun on ones hip, the pre-cartoon body scanners won't find it. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012...o-showing-how/.

Given how many false positives they have (e.g. on Thursday, the cartoon said I had something on my knee. I have nothing on my knee) they likely have many false negatives.

GUWonder

What physical, direct evidence is there that the pilot of this flight willfully chose to crash the MH plane and did so? It seems like the current answer to that question is as follows: none.