BearX220

You put your genitals on display where you want, and I'll put mine on display where I want. No, we're talking about forcing people to submit to degrading exposure in support of an unproven "security policy" with undemonstrated effects.

I don't mind getting naked for my doctors when necessary because they are trusted professionals. I fiercely resist getting naked for the TSA because they are not an organization of "professionals" -- the front-liners have a history of lying, corruption, and theft. Trollkiller is right to say the motives of TSOs studying pictures of naked people should not be trusted, given that so many of them have been caught abusing travelers, hiding their identities, stealing their effects, etc. The only rational attitude to TSA personnel is zero trust, total vigilance, and minimum necessary cooperation. They have earned this attitude with their own behavior. so i hardly think it's smart to provide these people with a digital parade of pictures of naked men, women and children without a serious fight.


Absolutely backwards. The latter can and should be much less cumbersome and cheaper. if the Dell website can call up the history of my six-year-old computer, out of millions they've sold, in about one-half of one second, it is possible to create a serious database for the world's troublemakers and have it accessible at every airport security checkpoint on earth.

This is so thoroughly wrong, so antithetical to the basics of our way of life, I don't know where to start. This is how fascism takes root. And besides, there is no such thing as a Nerf world free of sharp edges. It's ridiculous to promise or pursue one.

GUWonder

Good question, now let's see an effort at an answer from the person to whom you addressed the question.

The scenario you describe in your question sounds a lot like the scenario applicable to why prison searches are conducted. Much like the justification for prison searches, a police state will indeed be able to better preserve the "right to life", so support for a police state should resonate there. Fascism is unfortunately far more seductive than we wish it to be.

barfeld2

It applies only to flying.

There is nothing “random” about systematic searches of people who voluntarily present themselves to board an aircraft, which is a place where, if badly motivated, a person can do a huge amount of harm.

Unfortunately, our Fourth Amendment (“search and seizure”) protection has been badly cut down by the conservative Supreme Court in recent years, but our homes and cars are still relatively private, even if they are not as private as they should be. But airplanes are a different matter.

The point is, everything depends on the context. Flying is a special context. In fact, airline flying is possibly unique in the opportunity it presents for a single individual to bring death and destruction to hundreds or even thousands of others.

doober

But we read earlier this weekend that Michael Chertoff is campaigning to get WBI installed at NJ Transit stations:

Chertoff and NJ Transit

bcmatt

Well, that and trains, and underground systems, and perhaps cruise liners. And maybe people with a device in a large shopping mall or sports venue.

barfeld2

Yes, but Michael Chertoff is no longer a government official. His group was voted out.

However, you highlight exactly why it's so important to recognize and insist that airline travel is unique. If we say that flying is just like every other part of life, and entitled to the same privacy, then we'll end up with airport-type screening everywhere else in life, too.

Make no mistake. Whole body screening is coming to airports, and it's coming fast. The only question is whether it will be confined to air travel or, as Chertoff advocates, extended more widely as well.

Loren Pechtel

Make the containers resistant and arrange some other method of exploding them.

AINITFUNNY

948+4372= EVEN 5,320 ( US only)Soldiers killed, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, nearly a MILLION fighting, couldn't prevent a terrorist attack on a commercial airliner.

Minor threats and rather amateurish efforts at attacks have succeeded, not in downing an airliner, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, have caused the WHOLE WORLD to tremble in fear, strip each other, treat each other like criminals, spend untold amounts of money, made flying a totally unpleasant exercise in endurance, suspended our human and civil rights as innocent citizens, dismissed treating people with dignity and respect and generally turned us into passive, submissive sheeple afraid to freely even speak, individually surveilled and judged even on common demeanor under zero tolerance jackbooted overseers.

Frankly, I would take the odds and my chances on my flight getting attacked by a "panty bomber" (and the passengers stopping it from succeeding) If things could return to the "pre-terrorism" treatment of passengers by both the airlines and the government. THE "CURE" IS WORSE THAN THE FRIGGIN THING THEY WISH TO PREVENT!

UNTOLD numbers of people get killed worldwide driving cars and motorcycles and the "absolute prevention" of all those deaths would probably put us all hoofing it to get around, but the "safety at any cost" nuts would be happy.

I DON'T WANT ANYONE IN MY PANTIES, MY POCKETS, MY PURSE, MY SUITCASE, MY COMPUTER, MY PRIVATE THINGS. I don't want to submit to "nudie peep machine" exams or strangers patting me down. Unless they have evidence sufficient for a warrant, I want to LOCK MY SUITCASE and be secure in my person, effects and privacy. I wanted to be treated with dignity and respect and catered to as a PAYING CUSTOMER who must be wooed with service to keep returning to that airline.

I want it back the way it used to be. EVEN IF YOU THROW IN THE 911 deaths the threat nowhere even comes close to the automobile deaths in just a single month worldwide, let alone ten years of this sh*t treatment of people. We haven't gone JACK SH*T CRAZY, PARANOID about stopping every single potential auto accident yet, and neither should we.

I just wish they had a selective line that offered passengers to "OPT OUT" of secuity and fly on planes that "you pays your money and takes your chances" without all the security theater, and KEEPING all your rights as a citizen and person.

Hell, if even 3,000 people a year died in terrorist aircraft incidents it wouldn't be a tenth of the number(50,000 a year, just in USA) you don't mind dying for your privacy and right to drive.

onlyairfare

^^

And congratulations on reaching 100 posts!

Superguy

You do realize the VERY, VERY high risk for false positives that this would cause, right? Puffers detect things like glycerine that are in common, permitted items like hand lotion. Or the nitrates from someone's shoe that just had their lawn fertilized.

Lotion's very common on planes - people either bring it or the airlines even provide it in the lavs (at least some do in their premium cabins). So are we going to have emergency situations on virtually every flight because someone had the audacity to prevent dry hands with their lotion?

And what are the people going to do anyway if the alarm DOES go off? Knock no the door and ask them to come out? Arrest the person? Beat them up? How would you distinguish a false positive in that case from a real bomber? Throw them down, tie them up, and ask questions later? Is that what we're really coming to?

GUWonder

Oh my. The danger of actually thinking about outcomes is it makes you look wise in this era of foolishness run amok. I am sorry to inform you that you don't make the cut for a job in TSA HQ or even with the TSA pom-pom team. Nor do I.

Superguy

Oh darn. Is Spiff hiring?

vw-fl

check out this link. Dr. Brenner & Dr. Kalina have some good points - especially about the radiation calibration.

http://www.acr.org/SecondaryMainMenu...yScanners.aspx.


Is the TSA going to keep records of who traverses through the machines so that when they overradiate us they can contact us?

I would also imagine that since these machines cannot see through "body folds" (such as well endowed bosoms, overhanging stomache, etc.) that any person who has these attributes will automatically be designated for the full pat down.

onlyairfare

My understanding is that use of the "puffer" machines to detect explosives was discontinued due to the inability of the TSA to maintain the sensitive machinery in the airport environment, although they seem to be readily maintained in other manufacturing and industrial environment areas where it is important to do so.

Why would anyone believe that the TSA will be more successful with maintenance of X-ray equipment? Unlike X-rays, at least the puffers do not appear to have deleterious effects on pax if they are improperly calibrated and maintained. And what about the 5%of the population Dr. Brenner says are particularly radiosensitive? Are they just SOL?

williamsg4713

Originally Posted by barfeld2

As the very least, no one has the right to ask that other people risk their lives or the sake of his own modesty.

Ummm (and this depends on full body scans or strip searches or proctoscope exams or whatever being in fact effective, but we have to presume that in order to address the principle you seem to be stating)...I don't think that liberal democracy, with its principle of the liberties of the individual being foremost, takes that principle to mean that one person may exercise his liberties in a mannger that endangers another.

Maybe I don't have an absolute right to demand that you give up your modesty to increase my safety; but neither, I think, do you have an absolute right to demand that I give up my safety to preserve your modesty. And since we're all flying on the same aircraft, we have to strike a community- based, not an individually-based, tradeoff between the two values.