Life must be tough for a trophy wife :D

Getting OT
 

The thread is getting off topic. My two cents:

1. I believe that terrorist types are conducting passive surveillence of security and are probably conducting dry runs of some kind or another. I've got no proof of this other than it's what I would be doing if I were working for a terrorist organization.

2. We will never know for sure unless we either catch someone in the act (hard to prove unless they are committing a crime) or someone admits to probing security (not bloody likely).

Can you please tell us who these so called "terrorists" are that you speak of?

Do you also believe that, at this very moment, burglars are coducting passive surveilence of your house -- because "it's what [you] would be doing if [you] were a burglar"?!?

I would think it is a good guess that he is referring to Al Qaeda. Do you not consider them to be terrorists? If you do, why did you find it necessary to use quotation marks around the word?

That's an interesting question. Do you want me to give you names, or are you trying to fish a racist comment out of me?

I was not referring to any one particular person, but if I you want me to generalize, I will say Muslim extremists. Don't think they exsist? Go to either Speaker's Corner in London any Sunday afternoon or go to aljazeera.com and read the message posts.

I don't buy the typical conservative 'The sky is falling and there are terrorists behind every rock' philosophy, but I do agree that there are in fact small cells operating in the US and abroad gathering intel for the next possible attack. But I'm not going to be one of the folks on this board who say that there are no dangers out there and everything that our security forces are doing is just a blatent waste of time and money. That is a head in the sand philosophy.

Despite the masquerade of security portrayed by TSA, I don't believe they will stop anyone but the crazies that want to be "famous" and/or cause some sort of problem in response to and because of all the media attention and hype.

OTOH, whether the "bad" guys are doing dry runs or anything else ... they are likely not to be caught inside the airport. Either some of the intelligence operations, the phone tapping (y'know the stuff that ignore the fact we have a constitution and 3 branches of govt that are supposed to balance each other) or whatever will find them similar to the August bust in the UK or they will be successful. The subsequent probe will highlight the many (and I do mean many) gaps in the current security structure from cargo to flight crews to airport workers to passengers and airline employees, then it will be an "oops, should have done it better" and they will just screw it up again after a few more billion dollars flushed down the drain!

Cynical? You bet ya ... too much money spent, few results and an awful lot of pain and inconvenience to the flying public, not to mention the economic impact of these new measures that is coming but not yet felt (then again, they need an excuse for the failing economy and what's better than its "them terrorists fault" :rolleyes: )

Given the odds, I'd really like my water back, please.

That's not really a good example. If I were a burglar, I would conduct surveillence of a house before going into it. What's your point? It might be going on, but I'm not home right now. However, the police force in my community drives through the neighborhood doing security patrols to provide a deterrence against this.

Are you implying that the US is free and clear of all terror threats? Or that terrorist are just going to execute a plan without any kind of intelligence / dry runs?

I agree. There are a lot of holes, but what is the alternative? No security, and everyone justs walks in off the street and gets on the plane. That would be nice, but unfortunately there are evil people out there who want to do us harm due to ideology and religious zeal. And, yes, quite a bit of it is due to our country's political decisions. But, yes, the gaps should be closed. And I'm sure that when you identify them, you raise the flag to the appropriate airport security officials?

These days? I don't talk to them if I don't have to. They are doing a job and I appreciate that but I disagree with how its being executed - not their fault but its supposed to be their business.

The environment and culture that has been created by TSA and within the current government inhibits anyone from saying anything for fear or arrest or retribution. The feeling among many, some of whom have experienced the other side of it, is if you breath the wrong way they have the "right" to arrest you, and geez if you were to breathe they missed X or Y - you'd be the one getting the secondary. Why bother?

Why is that word in quotes? because its not a "right" as defined previously in our country or is any way reflective of what this country has been about in the past, you know freedom of speech, expression with rights of personal privacy and protection. That is sad but that is a FACT and that's what the current administration has wrought. :td: :mad: and just damn SAD!

I do sympathize and agree with most of your last paragraph. Hopefully there are others in TSA besides Bart and crew who read these posts and take the good ideas and use them. When the current bans started, I couldn't help but think it was to placate the average person travelling. Safety and Security are one of the most basic and powerful human needs, and unfortunately, the average person does not see beyond the eye candy.

I would like to think, and this may be naive, that a letter or email to TSA or an airport manager informing them of a possible security problem would not go unheeded or uninvestigated.

But I too look forward to the day when a little bit of normal comes back to our airports.

First - what exactly would you want to share with them? Something that would undoubtedly make this stupid process even more onerous for everyone. Leaving that aside, go ahead and shoot them a letter. IF they read it, I'd put money that you'll have an SSSS or a visit in your future :eek:

It's a time of fear mongering and flashbacks to europe in the late 30s/early 40s, need to change the administration to begin to switch this tide and even then it'll be generations before we can expect anything near the level of respect this country used to garner. Too many in this country pay too little attention to what's going on or understand the implications of the actions and events currently underway.

Along the same lines as above:

While 1939's talk is back in fashion with people inside the beltway, the "knock on the door" does happen even today. FBI and Secret Service knocking on doors investigating kids' role-playing game scenarios or hot-air-only words of anger has happened before -- even before 9/11. It's not unique to the US either. :eek:

[QUOTE=GoingAway]First - what exactly would you want to share with them? Something that would undoubtedly make this stupid process even more onerous for everyone. Leaving that aside, go ahead and shoot them a letter. IF they read it, I'd put money that you'll have an SSSS or a visit in your future :eek: QUOTE]

I'm not so sure about the dreaded SSSS. I got one of those two days ago, and I checked in using my military ID, so I'd have to guess that it is somewhat random. My fellow SSSS compadres were an older Asian couple.

What would I want to share with them? How about my genuine concerns of a possible security breach? If they don't read it, at least you tried to do the right thing. If they do read it, and address the perceived problem, what harm has come? I really can't buy into the notion that men dressed in black are going to converge upon my house because I decided to bring up a concern over security.

Not necessarily "men dressed in black", but raising a security concern will sometimes result in a visit. Best to communicate the thing to a legislative rep's office and let them determine if they want to follow up, drop the ball or just write it off. That's far less likely to result in the government's gas bill from rising yet again.

Unfortunately, very true.

There was a kid in my hometown (pop. 1950 or so) who wrote something that might be construed as a childish threat to Clinton, who was the President at the time, on a $1 bill. Perhaps 5 words in total. He then spent the $1 bill at a department store.

A few days later, the Secret Service DID pay him a visit. Someone at the bank noticed the "message" on the $1 bill and contacted the store, who was able to ID the kid, at which point they turned it over to Secret Service. They interviewed his parents, teachers, classmates, etc. Seemed a huge waste of taxpayer $$$$ to me.

There are also of course the much better publicised cases such as the woman asking about a flight simulator game at a store and getting a visit from DHS.

Honestly, I don't think that TSA's going to be the one keeping terrorists off of planes. As we just saw, it's going to be the intelligence agencies in conjunction with law enforcement that get these nuts off the streets.

TSA's pretty much a last ditch effort just in case. Things need to be screened, and they can be with the proper technology. However, we don't have to play chicken little like they're currently doing right now.

Either they are very slow learners, or I am.

The incidents which prompted the (ahem) article were in-flight discovery of water and bomb threats (note and phone). So what were these phantom terrorists probing ? How to openly display a smuggled bottle or how to force the evacuation of a plane ? Somebody explain to me a scenario in which either would conceivably be of use in a planned attack, the object of which is slaughter and mayhem. In simple words if possible.

There may be casing going on, but this wasn't it. There may be another attack, but the TSA won't foil it.

Well, another poster allegedly turned in our good friend Spiff for making alleged threats against What's-his-face and What's-his-name (a/k/a Chertoff and Hawley), but I see Spiff is still posting so I guess either the poster was just full of horse-hockey or the FBI doesn't care. But then again, wasn't either the FBI or the CIA notified on more than one occasion of suspicious actions by individuals who turned out to be among the 9.11 perps and ignored the warnings?

Thank you for your last sentence.

Unfortunately, you are likely seeing the new "normal." Methinks that the liquid ban isn't going away anytime soon. As one poster pointed out in another thread, it's easy enough to your toothpaste/shaving cream/make-up in your pocket, but the liquid ban makes for good optics. It's not stopping anybody.

As for what we should do about security? Yeah, I'd go back to pre-9/11, although with some modifications. Real bomb/explosive detection equipment. We've already got the reinforced cockpit doors, so that's okay. Move the FAMs to the back of the plane, since somebody rushing the cockpit is probably less of a threat than someone trying to blow something up. Turn down the metal detectors so that I don't have to strip every time I walk through.

As it pertains to the security feints, I don't know better than anyone else on this board what the terrorists are doing. Are they sitting around planning how to destroy this country? Of course there are some wackos out there. But they aren't going to be caught by the guy shouting "female assist," and we can't shut the network down because we're afraid of the guy with the bottle of water. As Bart has pointed out about a thousand times, we need to be in the business of risk management, not risk avoidance.

Anyway, sorry for going OT.

Mike

OK. A lot to respond to, so here goes:

I don't believe the 'water terrorists' in the UK were dry running (bad pun). But I do think that there are some domestic intel gatherers operating to a limited degree, and looking for weak spots to maybe exploit later.

It's true, the water ban has nothing to do with anything except showing the American people 'Look, we're doing something about the new threat'. I really wish the media had just kept this whole darn incident quiet, and let the police in the UK get at these people on their own.

Think back pre-9/11. How were the security checkpoints any different then (water / gel bans excluded)? They really weren't. Box cutters and other small cutting articles were allowed, but that is really the only security screening difference I see. Now those articles are prohibited (as they should have been in the first place). Taking off the shoes is a pain in the rear end, but it is easy enough. Granted, I am also a healthy person, so bending over and taking them off is no big deal to me. I know for others that it isn't.

As others have posted, there have been several good steps taken, without the need for overkill. Got it. And for the most part, I agree.

Wally Bird, I'd have to break out the Poor Man's James Bond and see if there are any kind of explosives that can be made in that manner. I know that Bleach can be mixed with other substances for some pretty nasty gaseous effects; I'm not sure about explosives. I don't know if gasoline or rubbing alcohol smuggled in a plastic water bottle would melt the bottle, or if enough could be brought in to do damage, but it could start a nasty fire on board, causing panic and other mayhem. I would say that you could probably fashion Det cord into shoelaces, but the explosive sniffers would probably catch that. I guess that a toothpaste tube could theoretically be filled with C4 or PETN or RDX or some other nasty explosive compound.

Now, is it enough of a worry to ban all of these common articles? Not to me, but how about the average American voter? I don't mind checking this stuff, if only the airlines could get it back to the luggage carosel quickly after the flight. And some airports are better at this than others.

What evidence do you have, other than your imagination?!?

Not a new threat. Liquid explosives were part of Bojinka.

And that's all that should have been changed. The TSA admits that the X-ray machines will not detect explosives in shoes.

We're way past overkill here -- very deep into insanity valley, I'd say.

No one has been arrested and no one has been injured attempting to enter my home without a warrant. ;)

I hadn't broken any laws so I just put the little rat on ignore. Worked well. :D

'What evidence do you have, other than your imagination?!?'

None whatsoever. My theory is just that: a theory, an educated guess, a probability based on our current world situation.

I'm not one, however, to just ignore the likelihood that we are being watched. Not like McCarthyism with a commie behind every tree, but by patient, intelligent people who are either being well paid or are zealous enough in their religious beliefs to want to harm us. The fact that the British caught these people in the UK preparing for an attack should indicate that there are plans afoot. Or the person arrested in Germany for putting a bomb on the train that did not go off. These people are out there.

Al Qaeda is a cancer, and we are helping to spread it with our foreign policy. But I still don't want to see anymore people of this world get killed by religious whackos who think that killing people who believe in a different fairy tale is a morally sound thing to do.

It is probably safe to say that we are being watched - in a Bloopers and Practical Jokes sense. Take a trip through the Islamic world, and I am in the moderate part of it now; we look pretty funny to them right now.

Indeed, the misguided and apparently not very bright blokes in the UK believed (or at least the one who did the video believed it) that they had a workable plan to bring down airplanes. However, the fact that they blogged about for months would indicate some possibility that there might also have been an attempt to impress friends / maybe some girls? Once again, we are not talking about the brightest lights on the block here. They must not have done much research on their plan, otherwise they would have known the Ramzi Yousef actually exploded a nitroglycerin (much worse than TATP) bomb under the window seat of an airplane and was only successful in killing the poor Japanese businessman in the seat...everybody else landed safely in the plane.

I agree that Al Qaeda needs to be removed and that as long as people like that exist that we all need to be vigilant. However, jumping at shadows and then reacting by using a shotgun approach to security is not helpful.

And if we continue to overreact to lame-brained threats by restricting individual liberties further, then Al Qaeda has already won the war...hasn't it.

I couldnt have said it better.

Deleted

Agreed on all the sterile bought stuff, Bart. That's just common sense. Same for the original, sealed bottle.

I also think that if you take a swig of the stuff and don't start doing the dying cockroach on the airport floor, that is a pretty good indicator that the liquid is safe. Chemists out there---are there any liquids that can be consumed and still be potentially hazardous?

I had also hoped that after the initial hubbub, that things would cool down somewhat. Maybe they have in some places.

Deleted

I'm not a chemist, but the chemisty in my background says "no" to that. The false-bottom bottles were the way around that, or so we hear. The sorts of compounds needed to create an explosive are pretty nasty.

Take TATP, for instance, which due to the London subway bombings is often cited as the "binary" explosive of choice for would-be terrorists (despite the fact that it isn't binary in that you don't just mix two reasonably inert substances together to get an explosive--the mixing takes hours, not seconds, and despite the fact that its sensitivity is such that it's not well-suited to anything but blowing oneself up whilst making it).

With TATP, the ingredients are nearly-pure acetone and 30% or greater hydrogen peroxide, neither of which can be consumed at a checkpoint without an obvious reaction--immediate gagging, vomitting, possible chemical burns to the mouth, etc. MEKP, another peroxide explosive with a lower yield, would involve drinking methyl ethyl ketone or peroxide, again with similar results. Nitroglycerine would require drinking a toxic liquid (nitroglycerine itself), or acids that would immediately be apparent in their effect.

Of course, having someone drink the substance in question only works for beverages. A lot of us also would like to be able to carry small amounts of toiletries with us so we don't have to get them at the destination, check a bag, or ship them ahead.

Or getting it wrong so that it doesn't go off at all, just fizzes a bit. (The 'second' London subway bombers.)

Well, I must confess that I had a good hand pulled English Bitter a couple of mornings ago in Heathrow as part of my breakfast while waiting to come back stateside, so I can certainly sympathize with the young lass.

I'm guessing that the overall water restriction is not here to stay. I hope that I'm not proven wrong.

Chemistry in the hands of idiots can be a very dangerous thing for all concerned. Acetone, if my limited knowledge of chemistry is right, is nail polish remover. I imagine that it would take about half a plane of people's worth of nail polish remover to create a big enough bang to maybe bring down a plane. And nitroglycerin, although a common enough prescription medicine, would also require quite a bit of it.

False containers are an interesting topic, though. Can the x-ray detect the false compartments?

Sigh. You have tried before to dismiss these incidents as 'legends'. No matter, I'm happy to help your memory.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/milk.htm

I don't remember the girl-and-crab thing, so I suspect it is a morphing of this:
http://archives.californiaaviation.o.../msg21490.html

You're welcome.

I didn't express myself clearly enough. My point wasn't that they might be seeing whether they could smuggle liquids aboard, but that having possibly done so why on earth would they then advertise the fact to everyone on board ? Which is what precipitated a couple of the 'incidents'. Seems a strange sort of probe.

Deleted

Thanks, but I truly don't care where these urban legends come from or if they are proven incidents. My point is that requiring people to drink out of containers is not an effective security measure.

I think that you are referring to the people in the states who have brought their own water on board and then drank it in front of everyone as to say "Look, I got this past TSA. What a bunch of a**-clowns". I'm not implying that an actual terrorist dry run would be doing this. Of course, they would want to be as low key as possible.

I don't think that the people who have caused diversions have intentionally tried to get it past the TSA and then broadcast that fact; they may have been intentionally trying to circumvent the rules (I suspect that to largely be the case), but then they drink from them in flight.

Can you expand on this second point, Bart? What liquid explosives are drinkable? What components of binary liquid explosives can be drunk when they are in the concentrations required to effectivley mix up a bomb onboard the aircraft?

I suspect it's more along the lines of the fact that containers could have false bottoms, and that there are legit liquid containers (such as medications, shampoo, etc.) that one could not drink from.