Lets tallk.....BODY SCANNERS

i will answer your question by quoting myself and facepalming with my entire keyboard on my face repeatedly

did i ever say strip/cavity searches were wrong? no, i didnt. they are a measure of last resort to be done in private when proper tools and screening procedures fail. body scanners are like nuking an ant. its ****ing pointless.

 

If you want to fly with a firearm, knives, or bows, you can, you just cant have it in your carry on bag. It has to be in your luggage and responsible gun owners already know this. Its the irresponsible dangerous ones you have to watch for.
If you dont want to go through a scanner thats fine, but these people should get first class because they will hit the ground first.

 

Anyone who thinks this will stop terrorism is kidding themselves.

 

Well in my mind, a "non-invasive" security screening would not involve touching of the groin area or inside the butt crack.

So since you seem to be so fluent with how airport security works. Tell me; how are "proper tools" and "screening procedures" going to find a small bomb or a ceramic blade or possibly even a non metallic weapon implanted into the wearer?

 

Profiling works, just asks Israel, when was the last time they lost a passenger jet? Also we need to trust our pilots with pistols again, they used to allowed pilots to carry .45's. Since the pilot has access to an axe and has control of the plane, I don't think giving them a pistol is a threat.

 

I have more of a problem with the treatment and lack of reasoning by TSA employees, and their policy's.

Anti-profiling is the source of the problem imo. Treating everyone like a terrorist, no matter how obviously unlikely they are leads to a lot incidents, distrust, and contempt for them.

When they pull out the average American grandma with a bad back and leg and subject her to advanced body searches and questioning, while they pass up the group of young middle eastern males. There's a problem with the system.

 

I agree with that.

Also the policy's on prohibited travel items can be down right retarded.

 

my airport just had scanners installed, and people are selected at random to go through. if you decline, you get groped. neither are really proper or helpful as its an invasive procedural escalation thats completely unwarranted without some provocation. i dont have a problem with tiered escalating searches when metal detectors or the sniffers that search for explosive chem trails go off, anything along those lines.

i dont know **** about the nuances of it. i know if teams are trained properly, given proper tools (metal wands, chem sniffers/kits, xray machines for luggage, etc etc etc), and supervised 100% of the time they wont let things slip past them nearly as much as it occurs today. in current airports the staff is spread too thin, or sits on their ass unsupervised. easily correctable, but no, lets buy expensive invasive scanners to avoid doing real work instead! good idea. the only thing these scanners have going for them? plastic explosive and non-metallic weaponry detection. meanwhile portable surface/skin test kits for plastic explosive residue already exist and hopefully will be implemented in the near future. i would much rather grab a wand with some chemical spray on it, then be waved on than subjected to this 1984 bull****. as to the ceramic/non-metallic weaponry, i dont ****in know. im not a scientist OR a TSA officer. go ask one...but the fact that i cant answer doesnt help prove your point, because the onus of proof that these things prevent planes getting taken down is on you.

i vehemently agree


i am being belligerent, hmm must have been a long day at work or something?? im just a stout believer in personal liberty. dont hate me

 

its great to see alot of you are getting involved in this thread, and might I say..becomming quite "vocal" aswell. The whole isue about profilling is, i dunno..good and bad.

Fact of the matter is though, anyone can be a terrorist. But its not just terrorist they are protecting us from, its also people that for unrelated reasons wish to do others harm. Theres alot of angry people out there, and a old lady with a crook back and leg could well be someone wishing to do others harm, even though that sounds crazy.

Just got to look at school massacres. These kids are relativly normal, no-one would suspect anything was wrong or that they wanted to kill others. Yet, they do just that. So I think suspecting everyone is just something we will ALL have to deal with, like it or not.

And as for this stopping terrorism, well no...on a world-wide scale it wont. But on a basis of day by day, flight by flight, yeah it will work fantastic. But having said that, the cops get big guns, the crooks get bigger guns...and so on and so forth. So the authorities will use this as best they can, but oneday someone will get through it and the authorities will have to come up with something better.....man its messed up dont you think

 

Actually trained profilers can spot things that to other people look "ordinary". That is how Israel does it. I never specifically said racial profiling, you are profiling many factors including body language, age, gender, ethnicity, etc.

 

Ok granted, but how do they profile the mind? Someone could be dressed normal, be old or even have a family, but still decide they want to kill people. I dont think profiling is fool proof. If the only desire someone has to kill people is in there mind, then no-one how well trained can pick it up. I mean a terrorist would have to know things like body language etc. If you rockup at the airport all jittery, then people will no somethings us.

If you are cool, organised and perpared...mentally, I doubt weither anyone can spot you, because again, then deception your giving them to find is in your mind.

 

What a stupid question...of course we need them for peoples safety,simple as that.

 

Watch This week on Tech episode 274 22 min in as Leo Laporte and John C. Dvorak chime into this subject via Twit.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin

 

Rafi Sela, an Israeli airport security expert who helped design security at Ben Gurion International Airport, has said:

"I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747...That's why we haven't put them in our airport"

 

I agree.
They arent effective, are very costly, in the US they give power to the TSA who really shouldnt be allowed near power, the loss of liberty isnt something anyone should agree to, the images are stored and perved over and you are getting Xrayed regularly!!

Airports dont have to keep the TSAs services after the first 2 years, they can lawfully opt out of them providing security checks.
Lets hope they do and get rid if this ineffective control freakish system.

<then the UK might follow suit, fingers crossed>

 

No we don't need these. I do think these could save a few hundred lives, but I think the loss of liberty will ultimately cost far more than that.

All the terrorist has to do is swallow a small bit of explosive, drug smugglers already smuggle enough volume of drugs that if it were replaced with RDX it'd be more than sufficient to down a plane. It really does not take much explosive to take down a plane.

In the future enjoy your cavity searches at the mall, the ball game, city hall etc.

 

I'd rather avoid the added risk of skin cancer.
They are even officially classified as a carcinogen.

There's a reason you get a lead vest when the dentist x-rays your teeth.
You're supposed to keep your exposure to x-rays as low as possible.

So the x-rays they use are weak, and only go skin deep...
Well, skin cancer is extremely common. No need to make it more common.

20 years from now you'll see reports on increased cancer rates from scanners.
Then in another 5, you 'll see that 15 ago there were earlier studies that showed it but the government shoved them aside in the name of policy.

Sorry, but I'm getting older.
I've had cancer in cousins, their KIDS, grandparents, their siblings, uncles and aunts (by marriage and by blood). All over the place.

We've got cancer risks all over the place. We need to be removing them, not adding more.





edit :
How many people do terrorists kill per year?
How many people does cancer kill per year?
How many people does driving kill per year?

Yeah... I'll take my chances with the terrorists.

-scheherazade

 

Also, there's other far more deadly threats out there.

(etr: don't wanna give anyone any ideas)

The list of things people can do to kill us is pretty much endless. If we're going to throw away one liberty to protect ourselves we're going to end up throwing them all away because it's just ****ing impossible to stop EVERY attack. If you throw enough **** on a wall something will stick, same deal, if enough people want to kill us somebody is always going to get through. If after each time we sacrifice a liberty and let the government reach another inch up our asses, eventually that hand is going to get so far up our asses that we're nothing but meat puppets.

/rant

 

This whole "war on terror" is a complete fraud; and if that "insults" your sensibilities; then just go back to sleep! The scanners have more to do with taking away your rights and freedoms and exerting power and control, then making you "secure"; and the "pat downs" are nothing less than sexual assault! I bet those of you who swallow all this bull**** can't wait until these methods are in your local malls and libraries. If a person or group wants to kill a bunch of people, they're going to do it - period!

 

I don't mind showing off my genitals to others, but I can understand why many people do.

I'm still confused as to why there's so much focus on aircraft though. If they're trying to stop bombs, wouldn't they implement this type of device in more populated places? Like a mall or shopping center? Theme park even? Those places have zero security