Defending The Skies Against Congress And The Elderly 1230
theodp writes "After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father, forcing the frail and faltering 78-year-old to hand over his oxygen meter, stand at attention with arms spread for a wand search, take off the Velcro strap shoes that he'd struggled to put on, and strain to keep his balance as his belt was tugged repeatedly, a Newsweek columnist wonders: have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?" An anonymous reader writes "CNN reported that Kennedy wasn't alone in being listed in the airport watch list as reported in a Slashdot article. Rep. John Lewis, D - Georgia, a nine-term congressman, has been stopped many times because his name appeared on an airline watch list as told to Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on border security. He contacted the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security and executives at various airlines in an effort to get his name off the list, but failed. Instead, he received a letter from the TSA indicating he has cleared an identity check with the agency even though he might still be subject to extra security checks."
Re:Security? (Score:5, Informative)
linky link [yahoo.com]
Re:Oxygen you say? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:2, Informative)
"Attack Trees" by Bruce Schneier. (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, if he wanted to destroy the plane, he's put the bomb in his checked luggage and the remote detonator in his cell phone.
This isn't about how convoluted you can make things. The real terrorists seem to rather simplistic and direct in their approach. The simpler the plan, the fewer things that can go wrong.
The problem is that we are focusing on the once in a lifetime and never to be repeated incidents rather than looking at the actual problem.
It's the ILLUSION of safety that we're pursuing here.
If the only viable attack method the terrorists have is some old guy's medical kit, then terrorism has long since been defeated.
Re:Want to hear something else that's dumb? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Couple of problems here (Score:1, Informative)
Airport stops have to be random or else there are easily exploitable holes in it.
Your perception of political correctness and hostility towards it, puts us all in danger.
Re:Security? (Score:5, Informative)
Searching Medal of Honor recipients (Score:5, Informative)
Chip H.
Re:Is it any wonder why? (Score:5, Informative)
At the least they might be able to put you in contact with disabled people who travel and might be willing to help out with a ride.
We live in an area with a high number of tourists, and there are a lot of them who are disabled and on the road and would no doubt be very willing to give whatever help they could.
Definitely agree with you wrt to the bus and train system, even for non-disabled they have become, to a fair amount, useless. I won't comment on the flying situation except to say it's unlikely I'll ever fly, being more than somewhat agoraphobic (def. wrt to crowds).
Given what airports and airplanes are like, it wasn't that easy for a disabled person to travel that way even before 9/11. Neither of us know for sure, but we both can't believe there isn't *someone* out there who can help. There are a a couple disabled internet gurus I know, who travel quite a bit, and who I will inquire of; if I find out anything from them I'll respond here.
Another person I know locally and just called suggested finding someone to escort you and deal with the airport authorities ahead of time and during the security checks. She's not sure as to how effective it would be, but she used to provide escort services at JFK so she at least knows (or used to, as she said
Keep on looking and good luck.
SB
New 9/11 Report Blasts Customs Service (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/3672459/detail
The report, compiled by the commission's staff, says 13 of the 19 hijackers applying for visas presented passports that were less than three weeks old, yet their visa applications were met with no increased scrutiny.
Two of the hijackers, the report said, lied on their applications "in detectable ways" but were not questioned about those lies. And all 19 of the hijackers' applications had data fields left blank, or were incomplete in some other way.
Three of the hijackers were carrying Saudi passports "containing a possible extremist indicator" present in the passports of many al-Qaida members, the report said. While it's not clear what that indicator was, the report added that it had not been analyzed by the CIA, FBI or border authorities for its significance.
The report is one of two staff addenda to the commission's final report, which was released last month.
The other report released Saturday analyzed the hijackers' financing.
It concluded:
- There is no evidence that anyone in the United States, or any other country, provided substantial funding to the hijackers. Most of the money came from al-Qaida.
- Gaps remain in the intelligence community's understanding of how the terrorist network moves its money. "Because of the complexity and variety of ways to collect and move small amounts of money in a vast worldwide financial system, gathering intelligence on al Qaeda financial flows will remain a hard target for the foreseeable future," the report said.
The commission officially disbanded Saturday, when its congressional mandate expired. The commissioners had not approved the final text of the reports.Another inside view... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Security? (Score:5, Informative)
And while Osama was "living in a single-room rain-soaked mud-house with 8 family members and watching them die of hunger" (yeah, right), it seems he was also going to bars and nightclubs in Lebanon. In fact, "poor old Osama" seems to have inherited somewhere between 25-300 MILLION US DOLLARS after his father's death.
Poor Osama Bin Laden. He was so starved, hungry, and tired of death, that he asked the friendly US troops for help. Oh wait, no he didn't. He called them "infidels" and tried to kill every one of them in the name of Allah.
Don't believe me? Try reading for yourself. [wikipedia.org] Maybe you'll learn something.
Re:I am prior TSA (Score:1, Informative)
The same is true for France, and definitely for Canada where I fly often. I don't know about Japan, but my guess is that US-style security check is the exception rather than the norm: few other countries open and search checked-in luggage without the owner being present (and that only at border crossings by customs), and few other countries do an extensive search of random passengers at the gate.
Re:I don't understand the focus on airline securit (Score:3, Informative)
"SSSS" (Score:3, Informative)
They were all very polite and efficient about the whole thing---I learned a long time ago that the surlier you are with the people handling you, the surlier they're going to be. The older fellow doing the bag inspection joked about the title of one of my books---"Absolute BSD". He said "I know what BS is, what's the D stand for?"
When I left the security area, I realized two things. First, that I was flying on a one way ticket, all the way down the Atlantic coast, on a ticket bought by a third party at nearly the last minute. Add that to the fact I'm male and below 40 and you've got a very close match to the warning-bells profile.
The second thing I realized was that they forgot to check under my hat! All this song and dance and I could have had anything under there!
On the whole, an ugly fact of modern existance. So why search septugenarian invalids? Because if you only search guys like me, then you're profiling, I guess, and that's racist and naughty.
Atlanta, I vote the worst and most obnoxious airport out there, security-wise. I've seen lines stretch all the way through baggage claim, past ticketing and out onto the sidewalk on Monday mornings.
Re:You know what? I've got solutions for this. (Score:3, Informative)
The proposed solution *WILL* prevent hijackers from using aircraft to destroy landmarks - while they can still control the aircraft, the best they can do is determine the general area where the plane will be guided. No sane pilot would obey an order by a hijacker to ram a specific building.
Actually, being afraid of everything is still possible [imdb.com], , even if it is a remote Tom Clancy's style of worst case scenario.
Re:Oddly, the solution is racial profiling (Score:3, Informative)
In 1999, the total number of airline passengers was over 3 billion people [216.239.39.104]. If you consider a very generous 500 people per flight (equivalent of everyone flying in a maxed out 747 for every flight), that's still over 6 million flights per year. Your million to one odds would mean that a September 11th scale attack would happen every 2 months.
Re:I am prior TSA (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe. But in my view, also very paranoid, rude, and unnecessary. And as for efficient: nowhere else the long security lineups that you see at SFO, say. I travel frequently, worldwide (this year alone, to Hong Kong, London, Amsterdam, Canada, USA, Thailand, and soon again to New Zealand, Australia), so I see screening all over the place. Nowhere is it as silly and strict as in the US.
I remember the time that taking off shoes and belts (all the time, both, in my case, in the USA, and never in other countries) was for criminals. I remember the time that "police state" was considered a BAD thing.
Terrorism has always been around - for centuries. Seems to me that only the US and its politicians react by turning the place into a police state, thus giving the terrorists exactly what they want. Personally I think we should stand up and refuse to be intimidated.
Here's what we have acieved: Entering and leaving Libya or Saudi Arabia (I have done both) is now less intimidating than entering or leaving the USA (fingerprints anyone? Photographs?).
Is that the world we want? A sad indictment: I'd really rather enter and leave Libya than the US. And I am a middle-aged, greay, white business guy in a suit.
They have bigger problems than old folks (Score:5, Informative)
Eventually they sort out the problem, and my wife and I board the plane. We find our seats and get comfortable (well, as comfortable as one can be with 19 inches of leg room). A few minutes later a women stops at our row, and claims we are sitting in her seats. I profer my boarding pass, which shows me in the proper seat, she looks at hers - it has my name on it!
Now think about this. We were stopped and our IDs compared to our boarding passes at no less than 3 check points in the airport. This woman managed to get on the airplane with a boarding pass that not only didn't have her name on it, it had an obviously male name on it. She was quite obviously not male.
The entire system is badly broken. In my situation at least three different employees utterly failed to perform the most basic component of their job - validating ID. I have absolutely no confidence in our airline security systems. If they ever catch someone in the act, it will be purely accidental. My sole consolation is that, as others in the thread have noted, the 'evil-doers' of the world have most likely abandonned hijacking as means to whatever nefarious ends they seek, as the passengers are no longer likely to be so compliant as they were pre-9/11.
-josh
Still no photo on pilot's licenses (Score:2, Informative)
The Federal Aviation Administration still has not upgraded the basic pilot license to a photo id. I know this because I have one.
Re:You know what? I've got solutions for this. (Score:3, Informative)
Replies (Score:2, Informative)
As to the delays at SeaTac, the news keeps talking about waits being measured in hours, plural. Add that to the hour-long bus trip, and you can see that I'd need to be fully dehydrated to even think about it.
I can't drive - I have no vehicle that can take me and my Jazzy 1113 chair. Plus, I cannot drive, as my whole right side is about useless. No use of my right foot makes accelerating hard, and the stress from driving would bring on yet another attack, making my situation far worse.
A diaper? That'll hold me for, hmm, three, maybe four bladdersfull? Remember, I'm disabled, and changing my diaper would take a whole lot more ability than I have, even now. I think I'll save that option for when my mom IS dying.
Re:I don't understand the focus on airline securit (Score:3, Informative)
There is no smackdown possible. During an "emergency," the president can suspend any and all of the people's rights (e.g., freedom to travel, to own goods, to be pressed into a work gang, etc.). The last national emergency lasted from 1933-3-9 to 1976-9-14 (Google Public Law 94-412 [google.com] for more info).
The current "emergency" began in 2001-9-11, with no end in sight. All the Shrub has to do is sign a piece of paper and you get all your property and posessions repoed by Uncle, and you & your family get a one-way ticket to joining a work-gang, clearing shanty-towns along the Potomac for as long as his Shrubness desires!
Isn't that neat how this works?
Re:Security? (Score:3, Informative)
I am no lover of Usama, but this is some creative quoting. He rants and raves about the fact that the US attacked his nation (which he considers to be all Muslims) but his religious ravings about "converting" the west are only a small part (and I suspect considered to be least likely to be achieved) of the whole. Israel and "get the fuck outa here" features in his rant many times in many ways including the "religious" part. He like any religious fanatic seeks to reconcile his war against real opressors and thieves nearby with his religious dogma and thus in his mind all the pieces "fall together" in one grand solution: convert everyone to Islam. I think even he recognizes that as a pipe dream of his and in practical terms seeks only the immediate remedies. Terrorizing the US for its way of life alone is extremely unlikely, what has happened is that he thinks that way of life is somehow related to the tragedies Arabs have endured for the last few centuries. He might be right in some places (Israel, strange poliferation of Zionists among the ruling elites and media, oil-related oppression and warfare, etc) but if the effects go away, the "Islamization" would become more of a propaganda then terror war. "Allah's Satellite Channel featuring Usama's Late Show and Prayer Club" would be more likely then a bunch of terror squads. Why? Because then he would be the agressor and even he would recognize that as a loosing proposition in "converting" someone.
3k souls 9/11, 3k/month cars, 3k/week smoking (Score:3, Informative)
We have spent vastly more on our "War on Terror", the most compelling incident of which killed 3k people, than we have been spending on research to improve the safety of the vastly more dangerous automobile. If we had taken the many tens of billions of dollars that we spent on invading Iraq *alone* (and we'll leave off the question of why exactly invading Iraq was part of the "War on Terror") and instead put it into, say, computer-guided automobile research and possibly deploying experimental support systems (like transmitters or indicators along roads to help cars guide themselves), we would have saved *far* more lives.
Iraq is a classic case of an administration being able to sell people on stupid abuses of budget because it allowed them to have direct Executive Branch control over funding and funnel money to companies (Halliburton, as always, being the most infamous offender).
Re:Oxygen you say? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Security? (Score:2, Informative)
Your selective memory does not help your cause.