alanR

And increase several fold the number of people who need checking without improving security as all you do is move the threat to somewhere outdoors.

BTW do you have a good coat, I understand that Chicago can be cold at this time of the year.

Maxwell Smart

TSA blog just posted a statement about how they will have "behavior detection officers (BDO), explosive detection technology, canine teams and Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams, among other measures both seen and unseen" before the checkpoints.

And they're also patting themselves on the back about BDO's catching a guy in 2008 in Orlando with a suitcase full of potential bomb-making parts, conveniently ignoring the fact that that was not an active bomb, and the guy was trying to ship the stuff, not try and detonate it.

And, of course, they're ignoring the fact that the one of the reasons for the "crowded areas on the public side of the airport" is pointless ID checks and slow security processing in general!

maniac78

I thought about a fourth more unlikely but possible scenario as to why we haven't seen more attacks other than some completely brain dead schemes. Maybe what AQ is doing is just keeping the focus on avation. Keep the DHS/TSA/CIA/FBI focused on airport threats while working on the next real big attack. In my mind I'm thinking nuclear strike or some such similar massive attack. Unlikely but it could be reality.

Wally Bird

"You have been assimilated."

mrx900

how do you know it wasnt the work of an outside state funded intelligence agency like the Mossad, simply to cast blame on the 'obvious' perpetrator(s)?

I mean, lets keep things in check...someone says jump, and we jump. Thats not saying much for critical thinking. A day before Davos and this happens...one has to wonder...

GUWonder

The "Al-Qaeda" hydra have been attacking a lot since 9/11, and aviation-related targets are a very, very small fraction of the objects at which they've been throwing whatever resources they have at their disposal. If they've been "keeping the focus on aviation" it really doesn't show except in governmental and select public/media reactions to what little they've done to aviation since 9/11.

Apparently when the targets are ethnically and/or economically more akin to "us", then "we" seem to value the risk to "our" lives/livelihood greater than "we" do when the lives/livelihood at risk are those of "the other" -- "the other" being poorer, innocent persons of a "more" "alien" appearance in the minds of the prejudiced. It's a trap people should best try to avoid.

Perhaps if you are selected on the basis of the above "confession", you can be set up in a sting operation or made into a patsy for some troublemakers, governmental or otherwise. That's how these things have gone before, so that too is a trap people should best try to avoid.

maniac78

I didn't say I care. I don't live in the US. I'm not a target. I am a target of the gropes and nudie scans and other crap thanks to my government caving to US demands. Don't get me wrong here I do mostly like the US still but boy it's getting hard to defend the place with friends and family.

As for confessing wth seriously? Confessing to what? Hating security screening as much as the next guy?

polonius

No doubt some morons in the TSA will agree with you. It will not be long before some terrorist figures out the best place to inflict large numbers of casualties is at the queues for the security check points. So the TSA will screen people before the checkpoints, and they'll hit people waiting in the check-in lines. So they'll screen people coming into the terminal and they'll do pre-screening at the entry to the airport. And they'll hit the queues there and they'll implement pre-pre-screeing on the approach roads. And every time they do this, OBL will be ROTFLHFAO in his cave, so intensely he and his lieutenants will need fully 20 minutes before they can stop laughing long enough before they're able to look at each other and say, "can you believe they fell for that AGAIN??"

The TSA can call new checkpoints "increasing security". Al-Qaeda calls it "creating new and easier targets".

FriendlySkies

What about people that just have to visit the ticket counter? There are times that I visit the airport just so I can ticket a held itinerary with VDB certs. I do not want to go through security that will grope me, and take away my regular sized water, when I have to intention of flying.

GUWonder

If anyone thought I was actually referring to you, my apologies to you and them. Rather than referring to you, I was conveniently referencing what you posted so as to further demonstrate how governments have been functioning for some years with regard to online postings that are supposed "confessions" of intent in order to do the kinds of things I mentioned in the post above yours -- that being, amongst other things, sting operations and goading people into all sorts of other despicable schemes.

For ticketing-related reasons, some countries have ticket counters/offices outside facing outside of the terminal building in which passengers check in with the airline.

GUWonder

Russian government arrests 15-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl who are the siblings of Russian-government-identified 20-year-old bomber identified as perpetrating this act of terrorism at DME. The Russian government (inclusive of its local stooges) claims that his teenage siblings knew what their adult brother was going to do but did not inform their parents of the plot.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/...irport_bombing

Not as savage but no less absurd is the DHS/TSA blacklists applied to even domestic passengers for who knows what connection.

battensea

This is really pathetic.

GUWonder

What's also really pathetic is the Russian government's intent do for Russian airports and flights all that DHS/TSA suggests. Copying all that the TSA has done for US airports and flights is a recipe -- at best -- for a lot more waste.