Bruce Schneier vs. the TSA 741
An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier has posted a huge recap of the controversy over TSA body scanners, including more information about the lawsuit he joined to ban them. There's too much news to summarize, but it covers everything from Penn Jillette's and Dave Barry's grope stories, to Israeli experts who say this isn't needed and hasn't ever stopped a bomb, to the three-year-old girl who was traumatized by being groped and much, much more."
Another reader passed along a related article, which says, "Congressman Ron Paul lashed out at the TSA yesterday and introduced a bill aimed at stopping federal abuse of passengers. Paul’s proposed legislation would pave the way for TSA employees to be sued for feeling up Americans and putting them through unsafe naked body scanners."
Re:Thanks Congressman Ron Paul (R)! (Score:4, Interesting)
... aaand the fact that he is, amongst other things, also a religious loon who wants to remove the separation of state and religion and that he wants the US government to establish an Official Religion (it would be one of those few very critical remaining functions his much-much-smaller government would perform) has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it ... its just all us lazy slouches here trying to avoid "responsibility!" Its a conspiracy of the hippies, I tell you!
Body scans for good bodies (Score:5, Interesting)
A few weeks ago, I flew out of Lihue, Kauai. They have one 'scanner'. I guess thats what it is. A fancier version of booth then the usual metal detector that they optionally put people through. As I waited in line, the only person they subjected to the extra scan was one hot looking blonde lady wearing a flimsy blouse, cutoff shorts and flip-flops.
Where do I sign up for one of these TSA jobs?
It doesn't end there... (Score:1, Interesting)
Our rights are being stripped. This is but the tip of the ice berg. The government Borg are forcing through S.510 to take away our control over our own food, NAIS and other things. The Patriot Act was just one example of this occulsion of freedom.
Israeli Airport Security folks are professionals (Score:5, Interesting)
My employer has a lab in Haifa, and I know a number of folks who have traveled to Israel on business. They have also traveled to the US, post 9/11. They all state that the Israeli security folks are really detectives, who are very intelligent, ask misleading questions and evaluate the responses. All very "human / personal based." They all felt safe when entering the plane.
The US security seems to be base on technology. You have security folks, who are only capable of identifying a terrorist if the machine beeps.
This reminds me of how despite all the high tech satellite surveillance of Iraq, the wrong conclusions came out of the US intelligence agencies. Allen Dulles ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles [wikipedia.org] ) was much better at recognizing the higher value of "human intellegence" (HUMINT).
So what am I ranting about? I would rather be grilled a Inspector Columbo at a security check, than scanned by a machine operated by some doofus.
That would make me feel much safer.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (seriously) (Score:5, Interesting)
John Pistole (head of TSA) tipped his hand when bragging about the effectiveness of the screening.
His brag is that he has thwarted terrorists, by siezing terror tools such as marijuana and a heroin needle.
Now, marijuana and a heroin needle will not bring down a plane, so what's really happening here?
A DEA agent, or police officer, cant run around shoving his hand down everyones pants looking for drugs. Without cause, that would be an illegal search, and the evidence obtained would be useful.
However, when the illegal search is made privately (I shove my hand down a strangers pants, then call the cops when i find a baggie of weed), the evidence is admissable. I may be charged with assault or something, but the point is the DEA has now made an end run around the 4rth amendment.
That is what this is. The TSA are *not* police, the search is obstensibly for security purposes, but when they find that baggie of weed, it's turned over to the cops and DEA who do their whole civil forfeiture routine.
You might remember a scheme to have postal employees 'on the lookout for terror' right after 9/11. Same thing there. The dumb old constitution limits police power, and they fucking hate it.
The country is bankrupt. They need to sieze more houses, cars, and boats. This is just a loophole through the constitution, and a brand new (illegal) battlefield for the War on Drugs, which is much more profitable than the War on Terror. More people die in a day crossing the road than have ever died of terrorism in the USA. They know there's no real threat.
So, once this is accepted, the TSA will move the road show to train and subway stations, and then start random roadside searches of cars. Look to see more bullshit agencies created by executive order, to illegally search - i mean safety screen - you in other venues as well. After all, a Phish concert certainly is a decent terrorist target, right? We want all those people to be safe, after all.
IANAL, and perhaps a real one could clarify what I'm saying, or tell me why I'm wrong.
Searches are a net loss (Score:5, Interesting)
The TSA searches are causing greater loss of useable lifetime than terrorists ever could. Each year, about 800 million people have to arrive one hour earlier at the airport to wait in lines and now suffer increased humiliation. Human beings only live for 700,000 hours. The TSA is wasting over 1000 lifetimes each year.
Re:Biggest legal issue, IMO (Score:3, Interesting)
"how is scanning teenagers not considered manufacturing CP?"
The scans have no Pedobear seal of approval.
Employer liability - traveller job description (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Unsafe" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Israeli Airport Security folks are professional (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly right. The excuse that Israel is smaller and has less to protect is bogus, considering that the US has 1/3 of a billion people, which means a larger pool of trainable people than Israel has.
The people who are so paranoid that they demand everyone on the plane they ride in be scoped and groped before they fly, those people need to stay home, because no one else around them is assaulted by the government looking for weapons.
The types of people who want to run your life, want you to be so terrified of your fellow citizen that you won't look to one another for help, you'll run to the nearest government agent first. That gives them the power they crave.
First Amendment + Fourth Amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the airline screens are Government and nolonger private, I thin there is a First Amendment argument here.
The pat downs obviously would violate the fourth Amendment there is no probably cause to suspect you of a crime just because you are in an airport and wish to board a plane. The procedure also takes in excess of 10min in some cases so even if there was cause it may exceed the bounds of a Terry stop; finally people have attempted to turn around and leave the airport rather than submit and been denied which makes everyone feel that we are not free to leave; which than becomes false imprisonment.
Now the knee jerk response is going to be "but you don't have to go to the airport and get on a plane" its not a right; and therefore you cannot evoke the fourth. What if I live in New York and want to assemble with others in California later that afternoon? I could do so but for the fact the government is not letting my on a privately owned aircraft, that I purchased a ticket to get onto from a private carrier. By demanding I submit to my fourth amendment rights being violated they are infringing on my first amendment rights.
Re:Biggest legal issue, IMO (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll bet you're the type that would turn a parent in for taking naked pictures of their kid in a bathtub.
And the government is the type who would base charges on it. Thus the hypocrisy.
Not posing "lasciviously"? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what you're saying is that under current law scanning ceases to be legal as soon as teens start posing suggestively?
Re:What is wrong in America? (Score:3, Interesting)
But don't worry. The anti-government wave of the 2010 midterms woke some people up. The GOP finally adopted a secular, economy-focused message and was very successful with it, and if that means this country shifts back toward libertarianism (you know, how it originally started), that's fine with me.
Thanks! I needed a good laugh. What you wrote is just as delusional as Obama's "Hope & Change". We are getting screwed by both sides and the Tea Party is too stupid to realize they are being used by those who want to keep the status quo.
Deterrence or Recruiting Tool? (Score:3, Interesting)
The primary value of catching the "perpetrators" is deterrence for others.
The primary value is stopping further activity by the perpetrators. The secondary value is deterring others. By treating this as a war, we have not only failed to take out the perpetrators (remember that guy, what's his name.. oh yes, I remember now: Osama bin Laden), we have recruited many thousands of fighters for al-Qaeda and related groups. When you engage in police activity, you target the perpetrator. When you invade two countries and engage in military operations in several others, you turn people who would otherwise be bystanders into combatants.
Putting terrorists in jail will not deter those in the future - they are already willing to die for their cause, no threat of punishment will prevent them from going ahead.
What cause? Initially they had a small cause. Now we have made it a much larger one. As for threat of punishment as a deterrent, you are assuming that all terrorists are suicide bombers, which is definitely not the case. Suicide bombers make up a third [yale.edu] of the people who engage in terrorist acts across the globe.
So the idea that you are going to identify the "criminals" and put them in jail/execute them presumes that you will just take the hit, no matter the cost, and deal with the aftermath. That's why the "policing" concept has utterly failed.
You seem to be basing your entire argument on the belief that police activity does not deter criminal activity. That is simply untrue. It also presumes that the alternative the US has used, engaging the enemy with primarily military means, somehow is a more effective deterrent, when study after study has shown that it has turned many otherwise politically ambivalent people into combatants.
Further, you state that policing has failed. The United States hasn't even tried that approach.
Re:Libertarians do believe in government (Score:3, Interesting)
But the Civil Rights legislation was as good an example of the hated social engineering as you will ever see. Not only were governments at the state and local level forced to treat blacks fairly and decently, but why, even private businesses could no longer discriminate. Surely telling citizens what they can or cannot do with their own restaurants, pubs, laundromats, taxis and so forth is tyranny, right?
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Libertarians do believe in government (Score:3, Interesting)
Forgive me, but this implies that you feel Black people are somehow truly inferior to white people when it comes to potential earning power. Why do you feel this is true?
The disparity between earning power that I have seen stems from either endemic biggotry, or from statistical lack of education (which stems from a socially engineered condition, stemming from the first.)
I have seen no evidence that colored people are biologically inferior to non-colored people in any way. In fact, some of the smartest people I have ever known were black. A good friend of mine used to work at TI in the 70s, and helped design some of their early general purpose CPUs. Guess what-- He holds 2 degrees, AND is black. (he is also bad-ass awesome, and hates racism, especially the earlier mentioned self-induced spiral of dependence resulting from social biggotry.)
The question I have for you, is why are you so paranoid about colored people? Does it bother that the person in the cubicle next to you might be black? Does it bother that he or she might be paid more than you for competence reasons? (or even at all?) If so, why?
Re:Biggest legal issue, IMO (Score:3, Interesting)
Are we supposed to amend what we tell our children to "no one can touch you there, unless they happen to have some kind of perceived authority over you or if they're wearing a uniform"?
That would be doubleplus good, yes.
Re:Thanks Congressman Ron Paul (R)! (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, economics isn't science, so saying that any school of economics can be discredited scientifically is absurd.
Second, the central tenant of the Austrian School is "central banks bad, money based on commodities good"; I can't see how that's been proven incorrect, given the drubbing the central banks have given to the world economy over the last century. Or are you one of those people who thinks we've actually grown wealthier as our currency is consistently debased? Here's a factoid: my wife and I make a combined income of over $200,000 per year, and yet have a harder time providing for our family than my dad did when he was my age, making $20,000 per year (with a full-time housewife, I might add). So explain to me how a given amount of money today is somehow worth less than 10x that amount was 30 years ago is a good thing?
Re:Wants US government to establish Official Relig (Score:3, Interesting)
Women are targeted more than men (Score:3, Interesting)
On the ABC Evening News they ran a story about how now, women that wear skirts will be taken aside and physically STRIPPED.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GP_qlJAIA&hd=1 [youtube.com] (pay attention starting at about the 2min mark)
Women with large chests get "special attention" too. I know this as fact from friends.
I have to fly next year. I have metal implants in my body, broken bones in an accident.
I set off metal detectors from half a mile away. I also happen to have a large chest.
I prefer to wear skirts. Though I think I would rather not when I do fly next year.
I have been warned that because of the metal in my body I will be made to go through enhanced screening which will likely include a PORNO SCAN and a GROPE UP by a thug with a gun and a badge. When they grope you now, they squeeze and manipulate your breasts and they take time to feel your female parts. Each and every little detail of your girly bits, you know, just in case they are like, a bomb?
With the metal setting off the metal detectors and my chest setting off the, um chest detectors, I know they are going to more or less do the same thing to me a rapist would do, short of penetration.
This has gotten way out of control.
Re:Israeli Airport Security folks are professional (Score:2, Interesting)
Elicit any false confessions with it [www.cbc.ca] yet? Funny example to use to make a point about "proven" interrogation techniques, as Reid as proven to in fact not work (assuming you goal is to learn the truth, and not just to "break" a suspect).