Full body scans for US bound flights

[tmyer2107]

CNN just posted another article on the issue. This one mentions their use in the US.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/12/30/airport.security.screening/index.html"

 

[mgb_phys]

We all KNOW which sub-population SHOULD be singled out as the most likely source of terrorists, and hence, which it is entirely appropriate to burden with discriminatory rules regarding safety regulations.

Well in the UK it would be Irish people - so anyone Irish on an Aer-lingus or Ryanair flight should get extra screening, it would obviously be a major security risk to have any Irish crew on these planes. In Canada the highest risks would be Sikhs and Quebecois.

In the US apparently Cubans are still the greatest threat according to the recently leaked TSA document.

 

[qsa]

just think of the scanning guy as your doctor he will be sick of it in no time. Anyway I think he will go blind "doing it" to himself in a month.

 

[mheslep]

As long as one doesn't let reality make a pre-selection of targets that should be fully scanned, this will be an extermely costly, and worthless effort.

We all KNOW which sub-population SHOULD be singled out as the most likely source of terrorists, and hence, which it is entirely appropriate to burden with discriminatory rules regarding safety regulations.

Agreed.

 

[rootX]

I don't see any alternative and easier solution. Would it be optimistic to assume that this conflict will be resolved within one decade?

 

[mheslep]

Well in the UK it would be Irish people - so anyone Irish on an Aer-lingus or Ryanair flight should get extra screening, it would obviously be a major security risk to have any Irish crew on these planes. ...

Wasn't the Irish that blew up your tube on 7/7, nor as I recall have 'the troubles' ever spread onto an aircraft.

 

[rootX]

As long as one doesn't let reality make a pre-selection of targets that should be fully scanned, this will be an extermely costly, and worthless effort.

We all KNOW which sub-population SHOULD be singled out as the most likely source of terrorists, and hence, which it is entirely appropriate to burden with discriminatory rules regarding safety regulations.

I agree as far following sub population is concerned:

The suspect's name was in a database indicating "a significant terrorist connection" although it did not appear on a "no-fly" list, said New York congressman Peter King, a member of the US House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.

But for the sub population that is Islamic/has Islamic names, Would you assure that all the Islamic terrorists can be identified through a pre-selection process and this wouldn't lower the security checks done on the people who are not in that sub population due to finite resources and use of discriminatory rules?

 

[mgb_phys]

Wasn't the Irish that blew up your tube on 7/7, nor as I recall have 'the troubles' ever spread onto an aircraft.

Casualties from 'the troubles' 3500
Casualties from Muslim terrorists 52 (also not on planes)

 

[mgb_phys]

But for the sub population that is Islamic/has Islamic names

The no-fly list is a joke

I worked for a company that developed AI datamining software. Our main business was the OFAC list, a list of foreigners that US companies must not do business with.
The list was a joke put together by a dozen different agencies, there were names of people, vessels and businesses all mixed in.
No standard spelling - we counted more than a dozen different spellings of the Libyan president.
The agencies obviously employed nobody that had ever met an Arab, half the entries had 'Al' or 'Bin' as a first name along with the rest of the name as a surname.

Assuming the airlines are just doing a match (and not using our very expensive software) there is no way anybody on the list with an arabic (or even French) name is going to be matched. The only people inconvenienced by the no fly list is anyone called "John Doe" or "Michael Mouse"

 

[edward]

The guy wasn't even on the no fly list, just the watch list along with over 500,000 other people.

A man who pays cash for a one way ticket and carried no luggage for a two week stay should have been a big red flag.

He had a two year American Visa issued in 08. Yet he was refused a visa to enter England in May.

Apparently our intelligence agencies are still not sharing data with each other.

The Spy Factory on PBS.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/program.html

The segment on intelligence overload is especially worth watching.

 

[LBloom]

If seeing my crotch area will save us from a terrorist attack, then by george I'll show it!






btw, there are some interesting articles about what Israel does w/o the body scanners and they haven't had an incident in 30 years.

 

[Galteeth]

Perhaps we should allow for separate planes for those that don't want to be scanned?

I like this idea.

 

[Math Is Hard]

The no-fly list is a joke

I worked for a company that developed AI datamining software. Our main business was the OFAC list, a list of foreigners that US companies must not do business with.
The list was a joke put together by a dozen different agencies, there were names of people, vessels and businesses all mixed in.
No standard spelling - we counted more than a dozen different spellings of the Libyan president.
The agencies obviously employed nobody that had ever met an Arab, half the entries had 'Al' or 'Bin' as a first name along with the rest of the name as a surname.

Assuming the airlines are just doing a match (and not using our very expensive software) there is no way anybody on the list with an arabic (or even French) name is going to be matched. The only people inconvenienced by the no fly list is anyone called "John Doe" or "Michael Mouse"

I remember that list. It was sent to us when I worked in database marketing because we were to suppress all of our client's mailings to anyone on the list. It was terrible to work with - sometimes you got complete addresses, sometimes it just gave you cities or countries that were the last known whereabouts.
I remember a bunch of records like: Al Mohammed, Lebanon; Al Mohammed, Paris, France; Al Mohammed, Jordan, etc.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Crotch checks? That's why I love the Dutch - they are so progressive!

Eventually, I expect the chemical sniffers to win the day.

 

[arildno]

Well in the UK it would be Irish people - so anyone Irish on an Aer-lingus or Ryanair flight should get extra screening, it would obviously be a major security risk to have any Irish crew on these planes. In Canada the highest risks would be Sikhs and Quebecois.

In the US apparently Cubans are still the greatest threat according to the recently leaked TSA document.

Quite right.

That is why each society has the right, and obligation, to find out WHICH sub-populations they'll need to focus their attention on.

The trivial fact that such sub-populations will differ from country and country, and from decade to decade has not the slightest relevance here.

Only the incidence level, and degree of over-representation matter.

 

[Cyrus]

Quite right.

That is why each society has the right, and obligation, to find out WHICH sub-populations they'll need to focus their attention on.

The trivial fact that such sub-populations will differ from country and country, and from decade to decade has not the slightest relevance here.

Only the incidence level, and degree of over-representation matter.

Search every middle eastern person that gets on the plane. Because really, what percentage of the airplane is going to be middle eastern, 1-2%? Let the rest of the people have normal random searches. Then you don't clog up the system searching old white ladies or military. I was at the airport and behind me were a bunch of marines. They too, had to take off their watches, shoes, belts, hats, and go through a chemical detection machine and a metal detector. REALLY you think this group of Marines are going to hijack an airplane?

Give-me-a-break. I told the marine "This aint right" when they told him to take his belt off.

(I guess that means I have to search myself when I go flying in my airplane )

 

[cristo]

They already have these scanners being trialled in Manchester airport in the UK. You can, however, refuse to go through them, and opt for the usual pat down search. I also heard that Muslim women were exempt from them for "religious reasons"...

REALLY you think this group of Marines are going to hijack an airplane?

Didn't you have an incident very recently where a mass murder took place inside an army base?

My understanding of profiling is that everyone is subject to the minimum security, but that some certain subset of the population is required to undergo a more thorough screening.

 

[Cyrus]

They already have these scanners being trialled in Manchester airport in the UK. You can, however, refuse to go through them, and opt for the usual pat down search. I also heard that Muslim women were exempt from them for "religious reasons"...



Didn't you have an incident very recently where a mass murder took place inside an army base?

My understanding of profiling is that everyone is subject to the minimum security, but that some certain subset of the population is required to undergo a more thorough screening.

But that guy was middle eastern (and already deemed to be nuts based on his previous actions. He was a psychiatrist and went to a medical convention and gave a talk about how everyone there were going to hell for being infidels), and should have been screened!

Besides, those marines were white.

 

[Monique]

I have a funny/sad story of an American getting onto a "flying list". He visited Amsterdam and promised a friend of him to bring back cigarette-rolling paper with the Amsterdam logo on it, as a souvenir (an innocent present). In a random luggage search they found the paper and asked if he had been doing drugs and they confiscated the paper.

The next time he had to fly he found out that he had been flagged as someone carry drug paraphernalia (!). He immediately had to come along with security personnel, was strip searched and even was asked to bend over. So now every time he flies he is treated as a drug trafficker, because some lame security officer is not able to recognize ordinary cigarette-rolling paper.

 

[Monique]

I was at the airport and behind me were a bunch of marines. They too, had to take off their watches, shoes, belts, hats, and go through a chemical detection machine and a metal detector. REALLY you think this group of Marines are going to hijack an airplane?

Give-me-a-break. I told the marine "This aint right" when they told him to take his belt off.

Wouldn't it be too easy to dress up as a marine and skip a security check? It is a basic human right to be treated equally, so I think everybody should.

 

[Borek]

Besides, those marines were white.

And McVeigh was blue?

Last pictures I saw he was orange.

 

[Cyrus]

Wouldn't it be too easy to dress up as a marine and skip a security check? It is a basic human right to be treated equally, so I think everybody should.

As an American, I don't want any more airplanes blowing up or crashing into buildings where I live. I think your idealism is not founded on any form of rationality.

 

[Cyrus]

And McVeigh was blue?

Last pictures I saw he was orange.

How many Muslim terrorists were white?

As a side note: Janet Napolitano was an idiot saying "the system worked." If she thinks that is 'working' she should be fired.

 

[Monique]

As an American, I don't want any more airplanes blowing up or crashing into buildings where I live. I think your idealism is not founded on any form of rationality.

And as an American you also think that Marines should not have to go through security checks, I don't think your idealism is founded on any form of rationality.

I have a story for you: drug trafficking was a big problem from flights out of the Caribbean. These drug traffickers were usually people who looked like Caribbean people, so what did they do? They started thoroughly screening every person who looked Caribbean. What did the drug traffickers do? They started enlisted tourists to traffic the drugs for them. These people are not stupid.

There are also going to be white American people who are willing to perform terrorist attacks on airplanes. There are white American people who have already performed terrorist attacks out of extremist motives, ignoring that would be stupid. (not to mention the other non-terrorist motives that people could have to hijack airplanes)

 

[Borek]

How many Muslim terrorists were white?

Not many, perhaps none. But you are making a mistake assuming that Muslims are the only source of danger and that it is so obvious that white Marine can't be a Muslim terrorist. I suppose that's what Monique means and all are equal is not an idealism - she just points to the fact that everyone can be a terrorist and should be treated in exactly the same way.

Edit: she already posted that in the meantime.

 

[Cyrus]

And as an American you also think that Marines should not have to go through security checks, I don't think your idealism is founded on any form of rationality.

Do you think police should go through security checks at airports? Why do you think uniformed marines should be subjected to taking of their shoes, belts, and hats so they can walk through a bomb detecting machine?

I have a story for you: drug trafficking was a big problem from flights out of the Caribbean. These drug traffickers were usually people who looked like Caribbean people, so what did they do? They started thoroughly screening every person who looked Caribbean. What did the drug traffickers do? They started enlisted tourists to traffic the drugs for them. These people are not stupid.

There are also going to be white American people who are willing to perform terrorist attacks on airplanes. There are white American people who have already performed terrorist attacks out of extremist motives, ignoring that would be stupid. (not to mention the other non-terrorist motives that people could have to hijack airplanes)

You are basing this on an extrapolation of exactly zero cases where this happened. This is absurd.

 

[Cyrus]

Not many, perhaps none. But you are making a mistake assuming that Muslims are the only source of danger and that it is so obvious that white Marine can't be a Muslim terrorist. I suppose that's what Monique means and all are equal is not an idealism - she just points to the fact that everyone can be a terrorist and should be treated in exactly the same way.

Edit: she already posted that in the meantime.

White muslim terrorist count: zero. . Everyone should not be treated the same way. Middle eastern people should be more throughly screened.

 

[Borek]

Do you think police should go through security checks at airports? Why do you think uniformed marines should be subjected to taking of their shoes, belts, and hats so they can walk through a bomb detecting machine?

Because anyone in marine uniform looks like uniformed marine.

You are basing this on an extrapolation of exactly zero cases where this happened. This is absurd.

Assuming someone may use commercial flight as a flying bomb to destroy building was an absurd before 9/11.

Middle eastern people should be more throughly screened.

Which doesn't mean others should be not.

 

[Cyrus]

Because anyone in marine uniform looks like uniformed marine.

You do realize that marines have proper military ID, right? This is a bit of a cartoonish argument here Borek.

Assuming someone may use commercial flight as a flying bomb to destroy building was an absurd before 9/11.

This unrelated fact validates her point...how? (It does not)

 

[Monique]

White muslim terrorist count: zero. . Everyone should not be treated the same way. Middle eastern people should be more throughly screened.

http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=article&articleid=14021"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirsad_Bektašević

And as said, non-muslim white people also perform terrorist attacks: Timothy McVeigh & Terry Nichols, Theodore Kaczynski, Eric Robert Rudolph, Samuel Bowers, Michael Bray, Richard Grint Butler, Robert Edward Chambliss, David Lane.

Or have you been brainwashed to think that the only people who are capable of doing bad things are black Muslims?

 

[Cyrus]

http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=article&articleid=14021"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirsad_Bektašević

And as said, non-muslim white people also perform terrorist attacks: Timothy McVeigh & Terry Nichols, Theodore Kaczynski, Eric Robert Rudolph, Samuel Bowers, Michael Bray, Richard Grint Butler, Robert Edward Chambliss, David Lane.

Or have you been brainwashed to think that the only people who are capable of doing bad things are black Muslims?

Monique, what does a terrorist in serbia have anything to do with what we are talking about? Is this supposed to be more of a stretch of the imagination with irrelevant examples?

Now,...please. Give me a relevant example next time. I don't need to see another link to an unrelated article about McVeigh. This is not making your point.

 

[Monique]

You do realize that marines have proper military ID, right? This is a bit of a cartoonish argument here Borek.

Anyone who is willing can make a fake ID card.

Monique, what does a terrorist in serbia have anything to do with what we are talking about? Is this supposed to be more of a stretch of the imagination with irrelevant examples?

Now,...please. Give me a relevant example next time. I don't need to see another link to an unrelated article about McVeigh. This is not making your point.

This person had ties with al-Qaeda in Iraq, you don't think that is relevant?

 

[Cyrus]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but you are incredibly naive. The reality of national security does not allow me to share this view with you.

 

[Monique]

Who is naive?

Bektašević allegedly was an Internet recruiter, under the alias Maximus, for young Muslims to join the insurgency in Iraq. According to the British newspaper The Times, citing police and intelligence sources, Bektašević had visited the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and run one of his web sites. Bektašević also went by the alias Abu Imad As-Sandzaki on various internet forums.

In particular, Islamic radicals are looking to create cells of so-called white al Qaeda, non-Arab members who can evade racial profiling used by police forces to watch for potential terrorists. "They want to look European to carry out operations in Europe," said a Western intelligence agent in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and Montenegro, adjacent to Bosnia. "It's yet another evolution in the tools used by terrorists."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/30/AR2005113002098.html

 

[Borek]

You do realize that marines have proper military ID, right? This is a bit of a cartoonish argument here Borek.

This unrelated fact validates her point...how? (It does not)

It doesn't validate Monique's point, it invalidates your point. You seem to be sure that you can base your preventive actions based on past experience. That was done earlier and was not effective. And if you ASSUME that some groups are not suspected for any reason, you can be sure terrorists will try to use it against you.

 

[drizzle]

Some people are just so pathetic! ...IMO, all should go through the same process equally, if there is any needed.

 

[arildno]

First off, OF COURSE discriminatory screening will induce those actually leaning towards terrorism to make themselves more invisible (i.e, to gain a position in the relatively unsupervised group rather than the more supervised group).
This is just a perfectly normal arms race, and there's nothing wrong with that.

HOWEVER, any such added effort the would-be-terrorist must make in order not to get busted is a COST for him, one way or the other.

By always following a "one-step-behind" policy (it is impossible for the government to be one or more steps ahead) towards these perpetrators, the perps will enter the diminishing-returns-zone, where the increased costliness necessary to remain effective will become a barrier to their plans to begin with.
I.e, the number of attempts that will be successful, ALONG with the number of attempts tried will plummet/be significantly reduced, until we reach what we could call the "acceptable risk"-zone.


Secondly, let us say that the average time for a full body scan of any passenger is half a minute.
For a domestic flight with 300 passengers, at least 150 minutes, i.e, 2 and a half HOURS of screening time will be needed to scan everyone. If 20 minutes of total security delay is acceptable, this will require the installation of about 8 or 9 scanning devices and a similar number of separate operating crews on every airport that is an initial take-off site for such planes.

Of course, this is WAY too expensive, and at the very least, something that cannot be installed overnight, or even within a year or so.

What is, therefore, the necessary result?
SAMPLING PROCEDURES of passengers to be scanned WILL develop, whether we like it or not!

Since, in the given example, a 10% sampling pool will suffice for a single scanning device in order to be within the 20 minute delay, the only rational thing to do is to pick that 10% on basis of characteristics well-known to have within their midst a gross over-representation of terrorists, rather than picking our sampling pool out of a confused, irreflective policy, which is precisely what we would get if you, for example, left the criteria for sampling up to thousands of half-educated airport personnel.


That terrorists then will gradually shift their characteristics away from the initial sampling criteria should be expected but should merely result in a requirement of continuous monitoring, and a willingness to change the sampling criteria as the situation evolves.

 

[Cyrus]

Some people are just so pathetic! ...IMO, all should go through the same process equally, if there is any needed.

Why?

 

[Cyrus]

It doesn't validate Monique's point, it invalidates your point. You seem to be sure that you can base your preventive actions based on past experience. That was done earlier and was not effective. And if you ASSUME that some groups are not suspected for any reason, you can be sure terrorists will try to use it against you.

I'm not going to argue in hyperbole with you.

 

[drizzle]

Why?

Why for what? for being pathetic or for being treated equally as others?

 

[Cyrus]

Why for what? for being pathetic or to be treated equally as others?

Being treated equally is this biggest load of nonsense someone can say. Let me spell this out for you: no one is treated equal. The laws that apply to me, a US citizen, DO NOT apply to you a foreign national. You WILL NOT be treated equally when coming to my country, nor I to yours. If you are visiting my country from the middle east, I want you and your bags searched. You don't like it, don't visit. Not having airplanes blow up is more important than your feelings of misgivings for being searched at the airport.

 

[Monique]

The United States still has to abide the laws put forth by the United Nations High Commissionar for Human Rights. It it not right to be treated as a terrorist based on some general characteristic, the same as it is not right to be treated as a drug trafficker based on an incident.

 

[Cyrus]

The United States still has to abide the laws put forth by the United Nations High Commissionar for Human Rights. It it not right to be treated as a terrorist based on some general characteristic, the same as it is not right to be treated as a drug trafficker based on an incident. I sympathize with arildno's point of view, he actually seems to have given the issue some thought.

There is no right to 'equal airport screening'.

 

[arildno]

The United States still has to abide the laws put forth by the United Nations High Commissionar for Human Rights. It it not right to be treated as a terrorist based on some general characteristic,

Complete nonsense.

It is eminently rational, for example, to deny homosexual men to be blood donors due to extreme over-representation of HIV positives within that group. (Being gay myself and not engaging in high-risk behaviour in that department, I still have not the slightest resentment against that policy)

To gain sufficiently detailed information about any arbitrary group so as to expect minimal variance WITHIN that group (i.e, that the group can be regarded as homogenous in a salient aspect) is an extremely COSTLY procedure.

That is why it is more rational to single out some general, (fairly) readily identifiable characteristics, that are strongly associated with "high risk" (i.e, grossly over-represented), and take important decisions based upon that.

We always have limited resources available, and must put them to use most efficiently.
And such efficiency is NOT gained by fussing about variance-minimizing information gathering, because it is..too costly.

 

[arildno]

Didn't you have an incident very recently where a mass murder took place inside an army base?

That merely shows that Muslims should be more thoroughly screened relative to others before being allowed to serve in the Army.

 

[arildno]

http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=article&articleid=14021"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirsad_Bektašević

And as said, non-muslim white people also perform terrorist attacks: Timothy McVeigh & Terry Nichols, Theodore Kaczynski, Eric Robert Rudolph, Samuel Bowers, Michael Bray, Richard Grint Butler, Robert Edward Chambliss, David Lane.

Or have you been brainwashed to think that the only people who are capable of doing bad things are black Muslims?

Sure.

If you extend your list of prime suspects to also include committed Marxists and KKK's, you've covered most groups.

This means, for example, that tenured academics in the "humanities" departments, due to their Marxist leanings should be screened more often than others.

 

[cristo]

Some people are just so pathetic! ...IMO, all should go through the same process equally, if there is any needed.

They have been doing since Christmas day, which has resulted in 2 or 3 hour delays on flights to the US (at least from the UK). Hardly something that can be kept up long term!

 

[Vanadium 50]

Now,...please. Give me a relevant example next time.

How about Ann-Marie Murphy, a 32-year old 5-6 months pregnant Irishwoman, who was caught carrying 1.5 kilos of semtex on a timer on an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv?

Indeed, she was chosen specifically because she didn't "meet the profile".

 

[Cyrus]

How about Ann-Marie Murphy, a 32-year old 5-6 months pregnant Irishwoman, who was caught carrying 1.5 kilos of semtex on a timer on an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv?

Indeed, she was chosen specifically because she didn't "meet the profile".

I googled her name and interestingly enough ran across this article:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/15/60II/main324476.shtml

In it it says

What’s the safest airline in the world?

There's no question. It's El Al, Israel’s national airline.

What’s the safest airport? Ben Gurion, Israel’s international airport.

It's ironic, when you figure that Israeli aviation has been the single most desirable target for terrorists since the 1960s. Correspondent Bob Simon reports. What do the Israelis do that the Americans don’t do? Well, they’ve had sky marshals since the 1960s. And racial profiling...

Since Sept. 11, America has gotten serious about airline security - or has tried to. Dror asks how Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was ever allowed on that American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami.

"The first thing: Where is your suitcase? You are not going to the United States without any suitcase," says Dror. "How, where are you going to spend your time? Are you, are you going to sleep naked in the Central Park? What are you going to do over there without suitcase? So, this is the first question and that (will) raise a lot of red lights."

In fact, the Israelis got a chance to ask Reid a lot of questions, because he flew El Al last summer. They didn’t like the look of him, so they checked everything in his bags, and everything he was wearing, and then put an armed sky marshal in the seat right next to him.

 

[Monique]

So, who can show me some statistics on global aircraft hijackings? Apparently some people are convinced that only Middle Eastern people hijack airplanes, so I at least would like to see some raw data that proves that point.