Are you looking for the actual answer, the facts, or are you wanting another cookie-cutter "I hate TSA" answer?

Dogs are great but they have limitations they can be used for about 20 minutes and after that they lose focus,
Also they are not very consistent they have good and bad days.
you use a dog to pinpoint the exact person / location of drugs or explosives after you have a general suspect located with other methods.

Please - provide one, two or all three if you can. It's a very very common question.

If you read my posts, you would see that I don't hate the tsa. I just want to see that my tax dollars are being used wisely. I don't know, usually people want a good return for money spent? Is it wrong to expect the government to at least try to make sure that what they are doing really makes a difference? Is it wrong to expect the government to make wise decisions on how they spend money on airport purchases in this current economy? I honestly don't believe that the body scanners will stop terrorists any more than using dogs. I'm just an average young person who sees airport security as security theatre. If I think that, what do the actual bad guys see?

If you have nothing to hide.....

Starting today on the Connecticut commuter trains and Amtrak

From - http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/l...120690874.html

The news this morning said golden labs, but the picture was of a German Shepard, so not sure what they will be using.

So the answer is apparently they can be used to check 750 to 1,000 people boarding an afternoon commuter train, but not at airports.

Color me confused. Gonna put a huge dent in the weekend "lets pack up some drugs and head to the country" crowd :rolleyes:

Re: Why no dogs?
 

>> Can someone please explain to me why we can't use dogs to sniff for explosives at the airports? <<

It'd be more effective, cheaper, less intrusive... and dogs are cuter besides.

But man, not to be cynical, I think the answer is pretty obvious:

Because there isn't a big corporation out there that stands to make billions of dollars through the deployment of beagles.

The body scanners are not making us safer. But they are making somebody very wealthy, rest assured.


PS

www.askthepilot.com

As GH said (also in a private message, not sure why but there you have it), they are cuter than most TSO’s. Not all for sure, I have seen some really ugly dogs working as BDT’s, but for the most part they have that warm fuzzy thing going for them. :)

Other than that he is pretty much off-base. Operating a Bomb Detection Team is quite expensive, far more so than a handful of TSO’s. And over time even more so than AIT systems. An effective BDT needs weeks of training, ongoing training, special facilities, special medical care, and much more. BDT teams are usually about 70% effective, and still require that the human part of the team know what their partner is telling them. They also have a limited service life each day. Usually in the area of 3-4 hours in any 12, and usually at best 30 minutes at any one stretch. They also have significant limitations on deployment. Crowded environments reduce their effectiveness to nearly zero, far too many distractions for the animal, and airports tend to be crowded environments. Aircraft fuel, being petroleum based, also affects the animals sense of smell, reducing their effectiveness even further.

Only one of these things affects AIT systems, and that is the operator learning to recognize what the device is telling them. And of course the occasional mechanical breakdown, but that is common with any man made device. There are far more effective places for BDT’s to be used, and the constant bustle of an airport is not one of them.

Metal detectors detect metal. The threat against an aircraft has far more dimensions than that posed by metal objects. Hence the need for AIT systems. As many have pointed out, hijacking is a significantly reduced threat now days, armored cockpit doors and reactive passengers pretty much make that a given (not that it is not attempted every now and again), the threat now is more closely related to explosives or biological/chemical exposures. Metal detectors just cannot detect those. AIT systems can, as long as the operator is on their game.

It has already been proven that things can get pass the TSA screeners who are viewing the images and it may not have anything to do with training. It may be simply because they yawned, sneezed or looked away from the monitor screen for a second. Impossible to stop a TSA screener from doing those things. The only way to solve that problem is to make the NOS/WBI read the image itself and find the suspicious items, but that isn't full proof either since a machine can also miss something due to mechanical failures. So really the TSA screener or the NOS/WBI neither one is all that effective since they both can let dangerous items get pass them and onto the plane.

All of that is absolutely correct. Humans and just that, human.

But if we take as a given that some form of checkpoint security is required at airports, how do we do such a thing without humans being involved?

It cant be done. Lets be honest, it just cant be. So, we do the best we can. The folks here spend hours second guessing that every day, mostly from ignorance. As I have attempted to show, security is a very complicated business, and few without experience or training can discuss the subject intelligently. The argument about dogs is just one case in point, some here claim that they are the answer to the TSA and all of our procedures and equipment, and they make these arguments completely from ignornace about the subject.

Because the threat comes in so many forms, and from so many different directions, the only intelligent way to address the threat is with a comprehensive and layered approach. Thats a basic idea, the very first one that must be acknowledged before the conversation can go any further.

Nope, it's not complicated. We can pretend to provide security much cheaper with a cute doggy that doesn't find explosives, as a slovenly bunch of overpaid rejects that doesn't find explosives.

Is it bad that I laughed at this?!!! It was a long day at work today and I even brought home stuff to finish. It's been a long evening staring at paper.

Now, I don't hate the tso's and don't think all of them are "rejects". I do have to say that all the tso's that have yelled at me for trying to opt out were all very overweight. No offense or anything. In college, it was cool to go to the gym and work out so maybe I'm used to a different standard. As to the TSA pay salary and job security (even more when they unionize), it's hard to observe and not get mad that our tax dollars could be spent on more effective security methods? Now, this is more the fault of the people higher up, not your average tso. Most recent college grads struggle to find jobs, let alone one that is secure and permanent. Many college students worked hard to earn their degrees and I'm sure some of them make less per hour than the tso's.

Explosive sniffing dogs is not a fool-proof system.

It takes a lot to train the dogs (including having specific scents that they respond to). They also cannot work for long periods of time, meaning you would need a big pack of dogs per airport to handle the traffic at all the checkpoints.

unlike the big pack of over-weight, under-performers that inhabit the checkpoints currently?

I understand what you are saying, but it isn't the human factor that is the problem. It isn't having security at the airport that is the problem. It is the fact that a policy has been put in place where the passengers can be mistreated and those who are in charge don't seem to care.

I'm not picking on you. So don't think I am. But when the new screening requires the hand of a total stranger to be ran up ones inner thighs until that hand meets resistance and stuck in the waistband of pants and skirts and breast be touched. Some of us don't like that we are being forced into a situation where we are having to submit to something that from a small child we have been told that we don't let strangers do. It doesn't matter how nice the TSA screener is. It doesn't matter if if they are following SOP and doing everything correctly.

Pistole and Napolitano put this in place and what most don't get is that when you walk into that airport and get into the line at the security check point.

The fear of the unknown takes over and the fact that Pistole and Napolitano decided that the passengers should not be allowed to know what is going to happen to them is a big mistake. It makes it a stressful situation that can cause problems when suddenly you have a TSA screener who has a attitude and a passenger who is stressed and it turns into an incident.

If there was more openess and honesty from the higher ups who implemented these new policies when it comes to screening the passengers and they would treat us as human beings instead of objects that have no feelings.

You all might find that we aren't as crazy as some make us out to be. It is just that we don't like the attitude that TSA/DHS seems to have of we can do what ever we want to you, but we don't have to tell you what we are going to do to you and if you don't like it well we don't care.

Would you or your wife go to or take you child to a doctor or a hospital for a procedure. If the doctor or the hospital had secret rules where procedures were considered SSI and they wasn't willing to tell you what they were going to do to you, or your child before they actually started the procedure. Would you be that trusting to go along with that situation without thinking those are some creepy rules and thinking that the information should be available before the procedure gets started not when they are about to do it to you, your wife, or child.

Because that is what we are being asked to do when we go to the airport to fly on a plane. We are suppose to just trust everything that is being done to us without question because Pistole and Napolitano have decided that this is what they have come up with to keep the bomb and other dangerous items off the plane. But we weren't allowed to have any say in the decision they made about the things the screeners were going to be allowed to do to us, because they did it in secret and they don't understand why we are having problems with these new procedures.

I will say this... The we can't tell you because the terrorist will beat the system is ridiculous to me. Because if and when the terrorist decides to beat the system. All they have to do is pay someone, alot of money or threaten someones family, who is allowed to by pass security because they are someone who is exempt from being screened. Because they are considered so high up that they are considered totally trust worthy simply because of who they are.

But would they be so trust worthy if someone was holding a gun to their wife and children's head and told their family would be dead if they didn't get the bomb on the plane.

If everyone and every thing isn't being screened the exact same way the passengers are being screened. The back door is standing wide open. So saying that what they are doing to us is going to keep the bomb off the plane. Isn't going to be successful when a terrorist decides to slip through the back door with the flashing big neon sign that says Terrorist Enter Here.

They either screen everything that gets near or on the plane up to its resistance, in it's pants etc, or they need to back off just abit on the passengers.