Fight terrorism by arresting terrorists, not by looking at our genitals at airports
I like this Bruce Schneier quote from a CNN article on the TSA's new whole body scanner, which lets TSA inspectors look at your genitals through your clothes:
Bruce Schneier, an internationally recognized security technologist, said whole-body imaging technology "works pretty well," privacy rights aside. But he thinks the financial investment was a mistake. In a post-9/11 world, he said, he knows his position isn't "politically tenable," but he believes money would be better spent on intelligence-gathering and investigations.Damned right. It's amazing how many people mistake terrorism's sworn cause as eliminating air-travel. Al Quaeda are not anti-aviation activists. They want to create terror, not ground airplanes. You fight that by arresting them, not by sticking airports in safes and throwing away the keys."It's stupid to spend money so terrorists can change plans," he said by phone from Poland, where he was speaking at a conference. If terrorists are swayed from going through airports, they'll just target other locations, such as a hotel in Mumbai, India, he said.
"We'd be much better off going after bad guys ... and back to pre-9/11 levels of airport security," he said. "There's a huge 'cover your ass' factor in politics, but unfortunately, it doesn't make us safer."
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They could give you a free STD screening while they're imaging your genitals. That would save more lives than what they're doing now.
It seems like this may be much more about drug smuggling than about purely 'terrorism' - in an attempt to choke the supply chain for the money that funds terrorists.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/888jx34048383166/
"Abstract Radiological imaging may enable the recognition and documentation of acts of terror. Search by X-rays can assist in the detection of weapons, drugs, contraband, and hidden persons. Fluoroscopy, backscatter imaging, and computed tomography are being employed for the evaluation of luggage, humans, trucks, and containers. The identification of drugs and explosives is possible by additional spectral analysis. . ."
and the real crime is that the bad guys are laughing their collective asses off, watching us create all these silly-ass rules and regulations for air travel.
The next shocking attack won't come from the air -- they've already done that, and they know that someone's expecting it.
The next one will be something most of us haven't even thought of yet -- with any luck, people like Mr. Schneier will be a step ahead of them.
Maybe they are keeping records of who follows the Covenant of Abraham? Some kind of pro or anti-yidden plot...
As for me, if they wanna see my schlong in all its glory, thats fine, but somehow I think my wife might object to any similar requests.
This is a bold plan to draw yet another class of miscreants into government service. The liars and crooks already go into politics, the bullies (and bullied) likewise join the police force, and soon we'll have the pedophiles and assorted other perverts signing up to join the TSA peep squad. Great.
Maybe that's what the full-body scanners are for?
I, for one, welcome our new peeping tom overlords.
"If terrorists are swayed from going through airports, they'll just target other locations, such as a hotel in Mumbai, India, he said."
I'm not sure that's a reason not to try to protect airports, though, is it? Sounds rather like circular logic to me. Why protect anywhere? Or am I missing something?
@8 His point is that there is a limit to how many precautions you can add to an airport and still increase security. Sure, security is nice, but ultimately at some point there is a queue or gathering of people outside the "secure" zone, and this can always be targeted.
I'm waiting for this headline:
TSA refuses flight to passenger over insulting tattoo on member.
guernican @ 8: that's exactly the point Bruce Schneier is making. Instead of investing a lot of time and money to protect against the last terrorist attack (which is unlikely to happen again in exactly the same way), the resources would be better used to investigate and capture the terrorists.
#8
#10
then at the last moment surprise everyone and attack in the exact same way again!
I'm not really bothered by any privacy/peeping-tom elements to this. I mean, come on - if looking at anonymised freaky hairless x-files style renderings of the average air traveller gets you off then, well, good luck to you. What a waste of money though.
WARNING: I am about to make a very good case (I hope, otherwise I'd watch a good movie) that should prove to be quite depressing for any American citizen. I intend to expose an important part of the problem, to the best of my limited aptitudes. It will end up being depressing because the only solution would be a massive crash course for the entire population of the US into what is really at stakes, what is really happening, what kind of courage and spirit of sacrifice is needed from them and what kind of resolve they must have.
There was 9/11.
Then there were repeated terrorist assaults on everything American by the US powers themselves: these are what is making the terrorists laugh their asses off. For them, mounting another attack on American land would be the worse strategy ATM.
The politicians will always cover their asses. If they do it in stupid ways it is not because they are stupid: most of them are actually quite clever people. They are doing stupid things because these work the best at covering their collective asses. Why are these the best? Because they are the ones that the public, in the present context fear without present,concrete threats, is demanding. For the public to be reassured there has to be glaringly visible elements in the action undertaken. Since the war isn't adequately reported (and frankly has become the protracted affair that the government needs to insure its power), long files at the airports, big, heavily publicized, (thanks BB, signed your government) machines, big prison camps, 'bold resolve' in applying 'any mean necessary' (don't imagine that torture hasn't been popular or wouldn't regain popularity), big fat budgets, big weapons, big words...
If the methods for fighting terrorism were to be reverted to what actually works, intelligence gathering, actual arrests and eliminations of actual terrorists, financial starvation of terrorism and COMPETENT DIPLOMACY AND FOREIGN POLICY then the terrorists would mount another bold, extremely successful attack, just to keep the self-destruction wheel oiled, something that only the best intelligence and international cooperation can prevent.
They're bound to succeed with the present backing of all those politicians and the American public, aren't they?
13Tales, good for you for being so confident in your body. (Not being sarcastic. Anybody who has managed to grow to adulthood and still feel normal about their body has accomplished something in my book.) But I can think of two populations who would find this invasive right off the bat:
a. religion. People who follow many different religions have verry specific ideas about who they can allow to view their body. Joe and Jane TSO definitely not on the list. I Do Not Want followers of these religions to dictate *my* decisions about *my* body, but absent a medical emergency or probable cause, I don't see why they should have to go against their beliefs just for this theater installation.
b. folks whose gender presentation and genital configuration don't match up. With the cost (and effectiveness) of genital reconfiguartion surgery making it a non-option for many trans people, this airport nudie machine presents a special dilemma. Screeners are going to see your body as unusual, which to them =threat. What do you do in that situation? Carry a doctor's note? Because those have historically not worked so well with the TSA.
Add to the list folks who would just prefer not to have to flash their junk around the airport in order to travel.
So many people have said "They won't change our way of life". Terrorists do want to change our way of life, and they have.
-will
@4 "As for me, if they wanna see my schlong in all its glory, thats fine" - yeah, cos even the TSA need a good laugh ;)
again america leads the way in OTT stupidity. we are not far behind in the UK. There has been some interesting stuff on BB about abuses of UK anti-terror law.
Unless you're Brad Pitt or Prince William with your own private jet, get used to it.
These machines have been in other countries for years. I've walked through several airports that have these devices and provided the photos don't begin to get circulated on the Internet (i.e.: Flash Mountain), I don't see this as a problem.
I do, however, have issues with having to leave my luggage unlocked and the general way the airlines treat our luggage like pillows. And I have no reason to believe that getting on a plane should be any more or less difficult than getting on a train or a city-to-city bus.
I have never been stopped by security at any airport, so perhaps if I was I may have a greater outrage for all the security steps that are being added at airports. As of now, I take issue with the PET bottle ban and some of the other foreign-object bans... but metal detectors and inferred cameras? I don't have a problem with them.
In Germany, plans vor a roll-out of such body scanners had to be withdrawn last year following massive critism by both the public and some politicians.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bundesregierung-Keine-Nackt-Scanner-an-deutschen-Flughaefen--/meldung/117922
erm. Isn't whole-body imaging a form of intelligence-gathering?
I'm with the show'em your schlong crowd.
Seriously...the US needs to get over their preoccupation with nudity. Oh's No's!!@!! Someone might sees meh nekkids!
Me? I'll simply pull out a photo and hand it to the guy at the checkout line and say This Is What I Use To Look Like...Your Wife Might Remember.
It is always strange, the same crowd that is adamant on telling others how they better put all their information out into the ether for free is the that gets up in arms the minute someone tries to do the same to them. Maybe I'm a hypocrite in this regard too...who knows.
@3, the next one will come through the sewers, with trained alligators flushed down toilets re-emerging at inconvenient moments.
The solution? Easy: equip all toilets with cameras. Much cheaper, too, as simple webcams will do the job, no through-clothing scanning necessary.
This argument is so ridiculous. We're terrified of people blowing up our planes, but we're apparently even more terrified of a total stranger who could care less seeing a pixelated representation of our junk.
You can argue that there's too much security at airports but the difference between "too much" and "just right" is not whether or not someone can almost make out a nipple.
can you see this?
I can handle someone oggling my sinful parts as long as I can keep my bottle of explodey water.
Take off all your clothes. You'll get them back after you've disembarked. Much cheaper, and effective.
I really wonder what's going to happen if any terrorists are actually smart.
Even with all this hightened security, people like Schneier, and others with engineering mentalities, always easily find gaping holes. Everything is, and has been, horribly insecure for a very long time. Considering that, it's absolutely amazing how few actual successful attacks there have been.
The only explanation I can come up with is that people who are smart enough to pull off attacks are also not crazy, evil terrorists. And the reverse, people who are crazy, evil terrorist types are not smart enough to get around this innefective security.
Imagine if someone as smart as Bruce were evil. They could trivially orchestrate the most devastating attack the world has ever seen. It would be Katrina in every major city all at once.
Stupid terrorists are not smart enough to get around trivial security. Smart terrorists, which thankfully don't seem to exist, can't be effectively stopped with any sort of security short of finding them and arresting them.
As usual Schneier's got a good practical point. We only have finite resources, so we should use them wisely. And airport security could be a lot more efficient and effective.
What I don't understand is the article of faith among some that hijacking airplanes is somehow off the menu now. Terrorists understand finite resources too, and if airplanes and airports are again seen as practical targets then there's no doubt that they'll go that route. I don't think they'll be discouraged by disappointing reviews accusing them of being unimaginative.
If they don't look at our genitals (and take our water, nail clippers, etc), the terrorist win!
My mom lied to the airline about my age, and put me on a plane by myself at the age of two. Everyone was nice. The stewardesses gave me extra peanuts, and were friendly. The planes arrived on time, too. This was 33 years ago, though.
What happened to my country, the land of the free?
There doesn't seem to be much I can do to fix this. I try to drive whenever I can -- it is cheaper, I can smoke, and I can get to my destination much faster, if it is within 500 miles.
You can't even stop the car near the airport. You either have to pay $35 to park in the lot, or drive around in circles until the person you're picking up gets out of the plane -- there's NO STOPPING anywhere near the airport.
Personal airpunk dirigibles seem to be the way to go these days.
@14 roast beef,
As a Jew I'm subject to very specific limitations about who can see me or my wife undressed. Fortunately our Rabbis are able to logic their way out of many tight situations. I'm willing to bet I could find a Rav to say that this is not actually unclothing anyone's nakedness or violating the rules of modesty because they are not actually directly seeing anyone, its more like an x-ray or MRI than a photograph. (side note, anyone who has had an MRI of the lower half of the body, did you notice that your thighs look like sliced ham or that your twig & berries just look plain weird?).
OTOH I'm sure it would be easier to find an Ultra Orthodox Rabbi willing to start a complete shitfit over this too. As they say, two Jews, three opinions.
Yeah, I'm wont to believe that this type of technology is a distracting, lazy, ineffective way to fight terrorism. Better training and investing in personnel is the way to go. Plus it adds jobs!
Hey Clif - Mr. Funny Guy. I would like to be around when you tease the TSA. They really are good sports about that sort of thing. Perhaps we can have a nice chat someday after they pull you and everyone in your party aside for a strip search or two and let you cool off in a sealed room for about 4 hours while they add you to the 'no fly' list. Yeah, it will be a hoot. Notice all those car bombs that aren't going off in every major U.S. city? That's because there aren't any terrorists here, not because law enforcement is on the job.
Because that's what this is really all about. It's about people who want to torture, beat, maim, and otherwise harm other living creatures, because it gets them off. Those people, the Bush/Rove people, are trying to build the kind of culture that existed in mesoamerica before Cortez the Killer. A culture that fulfills Orwell's vision, a culture with no room for happy mutants.
The Christian Right and the Bubbas are just tools being used.
Aah, Kiddy Porn. This should turn out well. I feel safer already.
Maybe we should spend more time and money infiltrating local groups of religious extremists, encouraging them to plan spectacular attacks that they would never be able to accomplish on their own, and then sell them the fake weapons to attempt those attacks. Throw in some N.Y. synagogues as the "targets" and you've GOT something, baby!
It might not actually make us any safer but it sure FEELS good to see "terror plot foiled" on the evening news.
Please leave your opinion on TSA's electronic strip-search machines on their blog as a comment in response to their May 17, 2009, "Will Children be Screened by Whole Body Imagers?" or May 18, "CNN Article: Airport security bares all, or does it?" posts.
@20 LOBSTER & most everyone else.
The original post was not privacy versus security. it was, and I quote, "It's stupid to spend money so terrorists can change plans"
The problem, as Schneier framed it, was not that we're sacrificing privacy for security - it's that we're spending a ton of money on something that protects against one specific type of attack, instead of investing all that money on investigation.
No one has unlimited resources, and once you've hardened a given target to a certain point, it's no longer an efficient use of finite resources to continue hardening that specific target. I think Schneier is arguing that air travel hit that point some time ago.
Schneier has a nice point this causing terrorists to change plans. Somehow I think this new security is as much or more about smuggling, though.
We COULD spend this money on intelligence and arresting. However, the so-called terrorists are not, as the post alleges, terror-enthusiasts. They are motivated by what they perceive as Western meddling in their home nations, and/or with their religion of choice. THAT is the cause of terrorism. Perhaps if we could address those perceptions, we would not have an endless war on terrorism, to go along with our war on drugs and our war on poverty.
Somehow I don't think that people enraged by our meddling will be mollified by more intense and better-funded meddling. But who knows? Maybe we're just one more Predator attack or rendition away from peace.
Secure the airplane and the next logical attack would be the airport security lines. A suitcase of RDX can get right up to the screening station, and it would only take a piece the size of a golf ball to bring the roof down on everyone in the line, literally. A 25lb shrapnel bomb in a wheel on suitcase would do a lot more. Keep in mind that on a crowded holiday weekend there are considerably more people in the security line than on the plane.
These scanners close an important hole in airport security. It's technology that can *actually* make you safer, unlike all the security theatre bullshit we put up with now. But...
What's even better than than these scanners at making you safer is eliminating the source of the problem. You want to make terrorists go away? Give them jobs that keep them busy. In short, make them richer. That's a hard sell to the retarded "No Free Lunch Unless I Get Mine" American public.
Crippling Poverty + Access to Weapons == Terrorism. Since we *armed* these fuckers in the first place, and propped up their horrible governments, we've got no one to blame but ourselves.
You can't really bomb that though.
#29 HungryJoe - "Perhaps if we could address those perceptions, we would not have an endless war on terrorism, to go along with our war on drugs and our war on poverty."
I think I'm preaching to the choir here, but I think that there is a mistake assumption that the perpetrators of this mess are interested in ending these wars.
They're a damn fine excuse to keep your own population under control and live like a fucking king while you're at it.
See figure 1. The United Kingdom.
a bomb in the airport would cause as much disruption and damage as a bomb on an airplane.
Actually catching them is the better use of time and money.
yes, less money should be spent on creating terrorists by looting other countries resources and corrupting their governments to aid big American business...this is true.
I wouldn't mind them looking at my junk. . . IF it was bigger.
Oh wait. . . is that it? Do terrorists have larger penises?
DAMN YOU Bin Laden!!!
We have intelligence reports that say the next terrorist attack is likely to be coming from your penis.
The terrorists have won. The only way they lose is if we admit they have won and decide on that basis to go back to normality. Then WE win.
(E.g. the IRA did not win, because we did not give up our liberties to allegedly "counter" their UK-mainland bomb-based terrorism.)
@roast beef
It's hardly "flashing your junk around the airport". The precautions they've taken to anonymise people seem reasonable and sensible. The screeners who are looking at the photos won't be the ones who actually see you. If you *can* manage to find those scanner images arousing, well, there must be easier ways to get yourself off. Like perving on store mannikins, dolls, or dare I say it - the billions of free photos of actual normal looking naked people on the net?
The religious/cultural angle is a reasonable objection - although I'm not certain whether everybody would view it as nakedness (you're not taking your clothes off, and sure it's preferable to an actual strip-search or pat-down?)
Trans-folks, intersex people, and others whose gender presentation and genital configuration may not match is another reasonable point. However, much of their gender presentation will be invisible to the scanner (clothes, make-up), the screener will not see the actual person (and the person ushering them into the scan-o-tron won't see the images), and really, if they're not packing any dangerous foreign objects there is no arguable angle whatsoever for them to be investigated further. I'd be more worried about medical protheses being an issue, as it'll be visible on the scanner as a foreign object.
I'm not arguing FOR the scanners. I think they're a colossal waste of money. Neither am I arguing FOR any degree of competence on the part of the TSA or border protection or whatever. They were competent and reasonably efficient when I made my first trip to the states the other week, but I've heard (and believe) all the horror stories.
All I'm saying is that the "ZOMG!1 They'll be giggling at us naked, selling the images, and jerking-off in the screening room!" argument is pretty silly. I'm with whoever else (can't remember and I'm lazy) said it above: the US needs to get over its phobia/obsession with nekkid people.
I wonder what they'll make of the extra penis?
Joo wanna affect terrorism? Then affect the roots of terrorism, i.e., poverty and the like.
Ah, yes. We're making the classic Navin R. Johnson error.
"He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!"
So now I need tin foil undies to go with the tinfoil hat?
tin foil undies automatically makes you a terrorist. They can actually hurl you into a cell, hold you without charge and torture you - unless existing laws are changed. See? The people in the helmets WERE right.
Speaking of, I'd really like to see a tin foil helmet making contest. We could all send in pics of our best efforts and the winner could get stalked by someone yummy.
So I don't bother with the undies then & just cover my helmet in tinfoil? ;)
checked google images, yep, definitely a shortage of high quality tin foil hats. Something Must Be Done.