TSA destroys the RepRap's first child
This year's OSCON was treated to a chance to see the first RepRap "progeny." RepRap is a deluxe 3D printer that is capable of printing copies of itself.
On the way back, the TSA opened the case it was in and destroyed the printer.
On the return journey from OSCON, baggage handling found themselves outclassed. Instead of simply smacking the box around a few times as had happened on the outbound trip, the TSA dismantled the custom hard-case for the RepRap by removing the 16 bolts securing the top panel rather than undoing the 8 bolts marked "Open".Link (Thanks, Steve!)Unable to fit the panel back on again - it was not meant to come off so the nuts were not captive - they simply sent it on its way with the panel detached. I retrieved it from the conveyor - as opposed from the fragile/outsize section despite clear "Fragile" stickers on every face...
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Next time just FedEx it.
What do expect? Take a bunch of illiterate, underpaid unemployables, give them uniforms (can guns be far away?)and no accountability and guess what? Even these dim bulbs can figure out that if they roust everybody and break everything, pretty soon THEIR "WORKLOAD" GOES AWAY! Do a job badly enough and they won't ask you to do it again. People are stopping travel and air shipping things in droves. Think they will lay off all the now redundant TSA? The TSA is just a new tax. It's never going away.
I, for one, would rather not have to share my flights with self-replicating machines of ANY sort, although it does seem a bit arbitrary to pick on the mechanical ones and not the fleshy kind.
and if nobody does anything, they'll keep breaking tech like this and call it a victory!
what idiots.
Only the TSA can prevent gray goo! Send all nanobot assemblers through airport security periodically as a method of limiting replication.
I have an image in my mind of uniformed simians grunting and smacking the box a la 2001.
I can see it now: The Airport of Tomorrow: vast empty spaces with sagebrush rolling through while herds of slow moving soiled uniforms sip their stock of confiscated beverages, scratching and farting while they line-dance and wait for their next pay check to turn up....
I keep seeing the scene in Twelve Monkeys where it's the security guys that insist that the viral containers be opened, thereby exposing everyone to the contagions therein. Monkeys indeed!
Could this be a convergence of the War On Terror and the War On Copying? Think of the catastrophic loss of scarcity if these printers become widely available!
Seriously. What can we do about this? How can these morons be stopped? I don't know what I can take with me when I fly. I don't know what is going to be confiscated. The took away my bagel with cream cheese! It wasn't dangerous! It wasn't even liquid! It was half eaten!
PanAm 103 was destroyed by a bomb disguised inside a tape deck.
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/dec03/panam121903.htm
Any competent terrorist will make his bomb look like something screeners see hundreds of every day, not like something strange and unique. Of course, that sort of abstract reasoning is beyond the mental capabilities of anyone who works for the TSA.
#6 That was funny, it reminded my of Zoolander when Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson were trying to figure out how to work the iMac, Hilarious!
I don't think anything the TSA does anymore surprises me. You could post that a TSA employee demands the immediate sacrifice of a families youngest child and I doubt I'd do more than 'meh'. ....isn't that the problem though? We are becoming accustomed to government sanctioned stupidity and cruelty (referring to the earlier post of a disabled man being forced to strip for a TSA moron).
A strange disgusting grotesque and disturbing extirpation of a first-born.
and does anyone have any recourse if a TSA screener destroys anything tech or art or whatever? TSA The destroyers of culture and society, in the ineffectual name of safety.
Goons. Idiots. Terrorists in your midst, paid for by your taxes.
BTW - anyone (re)read John Sladek's novel The Reproductive System lately? Yow - what a book. Crying out to be made into a movie, too.
You won in any case. Rep rap made it to OSCON.
I for one was pretty pscyched to see him?her? (Rep rap's child) in the speakers' lounge room with you attending. It was even cooler in person that it was prior to OSCON on your blog.
Carl T.
I notice a reference to stupid/poor people naturally being idiots. There is a tendency amongst the wealthy to blame problems on the poor=stupid. Deficits? Poor people buying fur coats on welfare. Bad schools? We waste money on stupid people and unions, so cut them again. A basic definition of liberal is a person who understands that the wealthy steal us blind on a colossal scale, while the rightist believes -wrongly by the numbers - that the poor are robbing him blind and are causing all the trouble.
The problem here isn't the poorly paid(=stupid) employees. The problem is all the well-paid=not-stupid people waiting in line at airports who have not stopped the march of fascism in the United States, who have supinely let mysterious groups institute lists and searches that would not stop an attack by "terrorists". It's still verboten to state baldly that paramilitary thugs took over our airports overnight with no input by us. Presumably because those thugs will take away your ability to fly in retaliation. Or shoot you. You do see the machine guns they are pointing at you, no?
Is it wrong to fill your stuff with ping pong balls before flying?
why not? I always stow a half dozen for the cavity search surprise.
@ #19 omg now I am so tempted to find out.
And all I could think when I read this was one word:
ASSHOLES!
People are such absolute jerks when allowed to be. ARGH! It really pisses me off how little human beings think of other human beings when they're destroying things or poking around where they shouldn't be.
And I guess the lesson here is - don't fly with anything you want to see again.
ARGH!
ASSHOLES!!!
@#18 "...while the rightist believes -wrongly by the numbers - that the poor are robbing him blind and are causing all the trouble." The rightist doesn't really believe that. He just wants the sheeple to believe it long enough for him to 'get his' at the expense of the less fortunate.
"...the TSA dismantled the custom hard-case for the RepRap by removing the 16 bolts securing the top panel rather than undoing the 8 bolts marked "Open". " Those 8 bolts were obviously the trigger for the huge-ass bomb, and therefore to be avoided at all cost, right?
*double face-palm*
I, for one, would rather not have to share my flights with self-replicating machines of ANY sort...
I have had it with these muthafuckin'... never mind.
#19
Oh, Mr. Moose, you scamp! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Moose
Funny the TSA are poor stupid Chimps
but......
Two of our suitcases were badly damaged, my daughter's hard suitcase on a separate return flight was also destroyed. It was replaced by Air New Zealand with an apology for circumstances genuinely beyond their control.
hhmm they must have hired Baboons
I have an image in my mind of uniformed simians grunting and smacking the box a la 2001.
I was thinking more along the lines of an old American Tourister commercial.
Another moment in the endless parade of TSA idiocy and incompetence. I'm really running out of outrage here, since this happens literally on a daily basis, and that's only the stuff we even hear about.
Is there anything I can actually DO about it, other than not fly (which I don't, but it doesn't stop this stuff from happening to others)? No, still completely powerless? Then I guess I'll bottle up my sadness and rage at what's happening for the millionth time and continue dreading the day I actually have no choice but to fly somewhere... because by then, it'll be ten times worse.
How can this all end? A resigned populace of serfs, silently shuffling under the watchful eyes and clubs of goons? A sudden change and mass purging of corrupt incompetents? A mid-air explosion that kills hundreds and lances the boil of fear that makes people slaves now? Actual reform and improvement?
I'm betting mass death. You can only run people scared so long. Past a certain point, they don't care any more. Whether an al-Quaeda bomber, a Cheney-mafia dead-ender, a hopeless TSA reject or just a mis-read accident, the only way this is going to shift is when something BAD is made to happen. I think people in Israel live under constant fear of bloody death and function. The USA thinks 911 meant something that way, but as a first and so far single incident it doesn't.
They say people living in the camps changed profoundly, knowing they could die at any moment for no reason at all.
I spoke with Vik Olliver at OSCON, and he said that TSA had damaged his reprap on the way out too, but fortunately, not enough to prevent reprap from creating replacement parts for itself.
Perhaps the lesson learned is - always bring two repraps, so that if one is destroyed, the other can be used to build replacement parts.
Is there anything I can actually DO about it?
You could try voting.
About 48 percent of voting-age citizens cast a ballot in 2006, the highest since 1994 when the Census Bureau first began collecting this data.
Frankly, most Americans still don't care enough to participate in their democracy. And there is a significant number who really do want either a religious or political fascist state. They vote, you do not, why are you surprised? The Germany of today is a fairly liberal republic. They, like most of Europe, had to learn the hard way. I expect that the US will be no different.
#32
I'm assuming when you say "They vote, you do not", you're referring to "you" in the sense of the United States, rather than me personally (though according to your statistic, the odds are in your favor). I do vote, and will continue to do so, but when I always get outvoted by people who support a fascist state, I can't say it feels like it's making any difference. Not to mention that I doubt any politicians, even those I'll vote for, will actually care enough, or have enough public support, to reform the TSA.
And I guess the lesson here is - don't fly with anything you want to see again.
Amen.
If I hear one more story about a Stradivarius being put in the unheated luggage compartment when it's been bought it's own seat I'm gonna scream.
We've created an army of little dictators, and I fear we will pay for it.
@ # 18, 22, 30 - What I sense coming is not more of the same, you know lame authoritarianism, like the TSA, or presidential signing statements even. how about labor arbitrage? Or wealth consolidation, or just speculative corruption.
Nope, I'm smelling backlash. Nothing goes on forever, especially when the dollars dry up. Absolutely, less people will fly, not just because of the TSA, but also/mainly because of fuel costs passed on to ticket buyers. The retail economy will dry up too as the 2nd mortgage/ATM has dried up. The majority of the citizens in the good old USA are going to spend the next few years looking around, lighter a few thousands wealthwise, and say, "You know, this hasn't been such a good deal".
I see this as inevitable as the vast excess of the past twenty five years has been. Nothin' left to piss away, so sound economics are bound to rule, macro, micro, and ultra-micro (household level). People will awaken, as will their politics.
The good news is that the very nature of RepRap makes it possible for it to be regenerated. There might even be a few improvements. All they've really done is piss it off. It'll be back.
Hanglyman - Of course I meant third person "you". English is limited that way.
I always get outvoted by people who support a fascist state
I don't think so. They cheat. The last two presidential elections were stolen in my opinion.
For whatever its worth, and I'm not saying its worth much: I fly about once a month and always have to check a bag full of weird looking tools that always gets searched after I check it. So far (knock on keyboard) I've been really surprised by how well they always seal the bag back up after doing whatever it is they do. I always wrap tape around my bag, and they've always done a surprisingly good job of taping it back up when they're done. Sometimes I can't even tell they were there until I see the little "inspected by the TSA" love note.
But again, I'm not saying that in any way lessens the fact that they destroyed this guy's luggage. But hopefully this guy's experience isn't the norm and won't be any time soon.
So, ah... how long until the class-action lawsuit for the damaged, destroyed and wrongfully confiscated property?
You can sue the Government in the States, right?
of course you can.You just are not allowed to win.
TSA people ARE stupid. That's why they can only work low-paid jobs. Smart people have more options.
Yes, they do.
and the irony is it won't be the stupid of the rank and file foot sniffer that blows up a plane. That incompetence will come from the top. Just like before.
If I was going to pack a valuable piece of equipment around, I'd ship it Fed Ex overnight with insurance. Unless you carry it on boared, packing anything of great value on a plane trip is foolish.
HANGLY & NOEN: It's not that your vote doesn't count, it's who's counting the votes. In our current context we find ourselves in, this means that it is more important than ever to vote, because very dirty tricks are being used against Dems. Especially since 2000. All about keeping that world domination agenda for the New American Century or bringing about the rapture or somesuch bullshit.
Only by vigilance: a paper trail, exit polls, etc. as well as a stack of lawyers with some spine, can we try to ensure our democracy doesn't continue to be hijacked by extremists. This federal ID card is more of this BS. (It's a poll tax all over again, for starters.)
Or apathetically say voting makes no difference and stay home. That's exactly what they want you to do.
If you are interested in this and a deeper appreciation of exactly how fucked up it is in the middle east and why, please read Greg Palast's book Armed Madhouse. Yeah, it's the book the "Don't tase me bro!" guy was holding... Check it out anyway.
Couldn't have said it better myself Phikus. Yeah, I have the audiobook version.
=D
Was it the TSA or British Customs?
TSA Goonism IS amusing (and heartbreaking at the same time). But I guess the takeaway message really IS to ship anything that could conceivably cause a problem by FedEx or whatever. People should just make it a part of the traveling routine.
This is probably the most Boing Boingy a post can get!
Can there just be a separate tag for TSA screw-ups now?
I wonder how people travel with accordions these days.
TSA meets Bladerunner (apologies to Ridley and Dick"
BATTY: Then a "TSA" repressor protein that blocks the operating cells.
TYRELL: Wouldn't obstruct replication, but it does give rise to an error in replication so that the newly formed DNA strand carries a "TSA" mutation and you've got a virus again... but all this is academic... "RepRap", you are made as well as we could make you.
#44 Phikus: I would sort of agree, were it not for the fact that it is clear that the results *were* genuinely that close (in Florida and Ohio particularly.) The problem in the US right now is that the *voters that vote* are split pretty evenly (which is healthy and good), but the system is "winner takes all" (which isn't, and leads to the likelihood of electoral manipulation.) There is nothing that requires any sort of compromise if you are on the majority side - which is why, of course, the corruption and abuse of the system is endemic.
Not that in the UK (where I live) we are immune to the same problem - if anything, it may actually be slightly worse here, since our third legislative pillar (the House of Lords) is routinely ignored and has little real power. And it's not as though countries where compromise is essential function so much better (cf. Italy for instance!) so it's a lose-lose all around. Which does makes things difficult for those of us who do believe in democracy...
The story itself is a classic example of the maxim about even a bit of power corrupting. If there are no restrictions placed upon someone's actions (for what seems like good reasons), this is what will inevitably happen.
Of course, sending stuff ahead FedEX just trades you to a different set of stupid monkies.
Just got back from a trip where we had sent stuff ahead to the conference hotel where were presenting. The hotel hadn't the foggiest idea of where our stuff went. Most hotels wouldn't mess up like this - but when you book, you never know if yours has just had a change of management and has gone down the road of TSA-like boneheaded incompetence.
Noen at #37 says: "Of course I meant third person "you". English is limited that way."
If you consider the fact that a second-person pronoun isn't third-person a limitation, sure. But perhaps you meant "plural" instead of "third-person"?
Why wasn't it able to replicate itself right then? Stupid machines!
By now it should be obvious that the TSA hates geeks.
Here are the passive, non-violent protest steps you can take:
(1) On every flight, check a piece of hardened luggage that is bolted - or, even better, welded - shut. Put nothing in it, or maybe just pingpong balls. If even two or three people per day do this, they will expend an incredible number of man-hours on opening them.
(2) When you go through the security check, ask politely for everything you own to be checked thoroughly. Open all of your cases and spread everything out. For each item ask, "Is it legal for me to take this on board?" Volunteer to be strip-searched. If hassled, insist that you are simply concerned for the safety of your flight, and hope that they are showing such complete diligence for each passenger. After all, you want to fly SAFE!! Again, if a few people do this each day, the system will grind to a halt.
(3) No matter how you are treated, ask for names and badge numbers for each screener and each supervisor in sight. Ask to see TSA rules documentation before you allow them to do each step. "Are you authorized to check my shampoo bottle? Please let me read the rule that authorizes that." They can't arrest and hold everyone.
In everything, be polite and compliant, but be firm about asserting your rights. Speak in a normal voice, and do not make a scene. Expect to be held, jailed, and maybe even beaten. You WILL be added to The List. So was Ghandi.
It's come to my attention that the obvious target for a bomber now wouldn't be a plane.
Why bother when a bomb going off in the seciruty line-up would kill just as many people (those in the line- up) and shut down the whole airport for days?
They keep trying to stop things that have already happened. and get their dumbest people to do it.
I think MANNY has the right idea.
Buy a cheap plane ticket and bring an accordion as your carry on. When the TSA asks to examine the instrument (or demands that you check it), insist on demonstrating its safety by hauling it out and playing a rousing rendition of "Roll Out the Barrel" or "Who Stole the Kishka" (or if you're feeling especially mischievous, the "Horst Wessel Lied"). Worth the price of admission, even if you don't make the flight.
Bonus points if you get the rest of the security line singing along, or you get arrested. Double bonus points if you get arrested at the Milwaukee airport.
*starts learning how to play accordion*
Conclusion I've come to: Don't even TRY to send it as accompanied cargo. If you can't carry it through easily, send it via a parcel service, insured. Most hotels will be glad to hold a package for you for a day or two if warned in advance; they're used to dealing with trade shows and similar business travellers who are meeting their presentation material at the destination city. And with what the airlines are starting to charge for luggage that might be cheaper too.
Neon,
You bring up a great point. Aggressive stupidity doesn't thrive where accountability prevails.
Conclusion; there's no accountability.
But what about the vote? you say.
Good question. The answer is "you don't have one". Your representatives have methodically and relentlessly diluted its value.
For details on the mechanics, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
The difference is not between those who 'participate' in democracy and those who don't. It's between those who think their vote counts, and those who know better.
Mr. Doctorow, I could be wrong, but the last I read of the RepRap, it cannot completely copy itself
Flew out of Denver today and was struck that the hundreds upon hundreds of people waiting in the security line were ripe for the bombing. (You know, just like all those millions of people in restaurants, parks, trains, offices, waiting lines, grocery stores, etc.)
Took an informal poll of the 20 or so people within earshot. Unanimous conclusion. Silly security theatre. Felt no safer.
Then I was yelled at for awhile because I forgot to put my cigarette lighter in my checked baggage.
could steam punk be the undeclared uniform of protest against the TSA?
could steam punk be the undeclared uniform of protest against the TSA?
All those metal buttons...
I heard of some researchers at Oxford in England who spent a few months purifying endohedral fullerene compounds to fly them over to their collaborators in the States for magnetic spectroscopy, only to have the TSA go
"shucks, looks like an unknown liquid to me! better empty and confiscate all these little phials!"
*headdesk*
tsa is dumb as a sackful of hammers.
which they would probably let you bring on board and distribute among your fellow passengers.
my voting 2¢ before I go to the greasy spoon for HAMBURGER:
Two Party System Is Irreparably Broken
It's Getting Worse
Vote Local
Think Autonomy
Plan Long Term (Look how well a 30-year plan worked for the Cheney cabal!)
Never Trust the Government
doesn't matter if the TSA is incompetent, the Pentagon has your backs(snort!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/01/hacking.hitechcrime
SCURRA@53: I am the first to admit that our Electoral College system is flawed (a legacy from our founding aristocrats) leaving it ripe for gerrymandering. (I live in redistricted Texas!) But it is the other forms of electioneering that have become business as usual in the US that I believe are a far more immediate danger. In Florida, Ohio (2000 and 2004 respectively), and even New Mexico (2004) votes were illegally, selectively thrown out by income / race demographics. If they had not been; if it had been truly one registered voter who wanted to vote = one vote, with none of the closing of polls in poor areas (creating hellishly long lines) / outright intimidating people from voting / Diebold shenanigans evidenced (additionally), the Dems would have won (in both cases.) Until these flaws can be fixed by law, and greater transparency of the process installed (as I listed above) all we can do is try to mobilize an even much larger majority.
ANON@62: Voting in the US lately has become somewhat existential, but that doesn't mean it's entirely sisyphean. Why don't you try being agnostic about it? What does it hurt to try, even if you don't believe?
TAK & ANT@65-66: So far it's just been a fashion / aesthetic statement. It could become a political statement, if we let it. This would be a great melding of two things that boingers love most (if our symbol is the unicorn, that makes 3, but lets make it a really pissed off unicorn!)
First one to design and start manufacturing steampunk wing-badge pissed-off unicorn-emblemed anti-TSA badges and post a link to BB is gonna earn themselves a fortune. (-Just sell them for $20 or less and give a huge chunk of the proceeds to the ACLU or something, please. -Someone able to start suing.)
xopher? (pissed off unicorn rampant....)
Let's start shipping some ping-pong balls!
Phikus@71. But what if the Democrats had indeed won? That wouldn't have changed the fact that approximately 50% of those who voted wouldn't have been represented by the victor.
As I said, it seems far too graphically evident that your recent elections have been systematically broken (I recall seeing the first comparisons of the exit polls and real results in 2004, where the disparity between Diebold counted states and other states was almost laughably obvious) and that's quite apart from the other issues you mention.
But I wish I could be convinced that somehow just electing a Democrat would make any difference to the fundamental flaws in the existing system - after all, a winner has absolutely no incentive to change the winning system, do they?
SCURRA@75: I agree. What do you suggest? It used to be that representatives we elected listened to their constituents. No longer. It is a partisan system. Even George Washington noted in his last speech that party politics would be the undoing of democracy.
In an ideal system, our elected officials would vote according to their constituents. How do we get back to that except by trying to elect officials that seem to honestly be listening and responding to their district, and not just always voting along party lines? These Republicans lately have been marching in lockstep, while the Democrats have been more free-thinking, on the whole (with notable exceptions of folks like Joe Lieberman and Ron Paul, who really vote like the opposite party.) Hey, I vote Green and Libertarian when I can, but when its a close race, I have to choose the only side capable of blocking the Reps. Too often we get stuck having to go with the lesser of two evils, and it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but what else can we do but try to participate in the campaigns of more honest seeming and voting folks?
Ultimately we have a lot of sheep in this country who are easily manipulated because they won't do more than scratch the surface of issues. Since the mainstream media is owned by 5 companies, how can we raise the real issues? I'll tell you how: By creating a political movement of non-violent protesters that stage events clever enough to be irresistible to the mainstream press, such as the Seattle Camerahead protests or our proposed steampunk pissed-off unicorn anti-TSA troopers (SPOUATT.)
I don't believe that simply electing a Democrat is going to reverse a lot of tragic policies (if that were true, Bill Clinton would have abolished the senseless War on Drugs) but I do believe that's the best shot we've got, to try to start moving things back in the direction of accountability and transparency in our govt. I do believe it is in the Dems best interest to close the gerrymandering holes in the system, because it is their voting block that is currently being threatened.
(Yes, I know Lieberman is now an Independent. I was speaking historically. Ron Paul needs to become one too, but his supporters are trying to take over the Rep party from within, at least here in Texas. This would be refreshing to see too.)
"Charging for checked luggage and legroom isn’t enough for some carriers — starting today, coach passengers flying aboard US Airways Inc. must pay for a drink of water.
This morning, US Airways began charging fliers $2 for bottled water and sodas and $1 for teas and coffees. First class members, trans-Atlantic passengers and a select group of others are exempt from the extra fees."
TAK: We need to start loudly boycotting any airline that installs such policies. They'll reverse it if it hurts their bottom line.