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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
Janet Napolitano
Monday, November 15, 2010 9:31 AM
AURAPTOR
America loves a winner!
Monday, November 15, 2010 11:23 AM
Monday, November 15, 2010 12:33 PM
RIGHTEOUS9
Monday, November 15, 2010 12:43 PM
KWICKO
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)
Monday, November 15, 2010 1:28 PM
WHOZIT
Monday, November 15, 2010 9:15 PM
FREMDFIRMA
Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: Seriously, who's totally o.k. with any of this ?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:20 AM
CANTTAKESKY
Quote:Originally posted by Kwicko: I'm seriously NOT okay with this. What's the message it sends our kids? "Don't let a stranger touch you there - unless he's wearing a uniform, or you're in an airport, or he threatens you."
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:26 AM
Quote: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 is NATIONAL OPT-OUT DAY! It's the day ordinary citizens stand up for their rights, stand up for liberty, and protest the federal government's desire to virtually strip us naked or submit to an "enhanced pat down" that touches people's breasts and genitals in an aggressive manner. You should never have to explain to your children, "Remember that no stranger can touch or see your private area, unless it's a government employee, then it's OK." The goal of National Opt Out Day is to send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change. We have a right to privacy and buying a plane ticket should not mean that we're guilty until proven innocent. This day is needed because many people do not understand what they consent to when choosing to fly.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 4:16 AM
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 5:45 AM
JONGSSTRAW
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 6:17 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Jongsstraw: If you don't want to be felt up then go through the machine. What's the big deal?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 8:41 AM
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:07 AM
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:15 AM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Quote:would Barry want his girls put in that situation? Groped or scanned, for some TSA agent's cheap thrill
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:16 AM
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:22 AM
Quote:Posted by Rappy: This is GOVERNMENT. The very folks some think can save our planet and give us FANTASTIC healthcare.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:25 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: But to put it on Obama,
Quote:But that anyone ENJOYS it, or that Obama is to blame for it, is stupid in my opinion. Not saying Raptor is stupid, just that it's a stupid comment.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 12:30 PM
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:10 PM
MAL4PREZ
Quote:Originally posted by Jongsstraw: If you don't want to be felt up, then go through the machine. What's the big deal?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:21 PM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: Anyone who thinks that we don't live in a police state should go visit a foreign country.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:44 PM
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 1:58 PM
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:03 PM
Quote:Originally posted by canttakesky: You don't think pedophiles and frotteurs and voyeurs are making a beeline for these TSA jobs? Certain jobs attract certain folks. Those who detest it will likely change jobs, to eventually be replaced by those who enjoy it.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:06 PM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: Quote:Originally posted by Jongsstraw: If you don't want to be felt up, then go through the machine. What's the big deal? The big deal is that *I* own the right to take nude photos of myself, the fucking government does not. Second, these scanners come up with false positives all the time and you might very well end up with some stranger touching your junk anyway. How in the hell did it suddenly become all right for security people to be touching folks everywhere and even looking into women's panties? (According to a comment here: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/the-full-body-backlash/#more-3551) I'm mad as hell over this. If I could manage it at all, I'd take buses or trains, and never fly again. But I have a few work trips coming up, one of them with students. I will have to get on that plane, so I'll have no choice but to have my privacy violated. Talk about government mandates. To live in this modern world of travel, you have to hand over your body to The Man. And to say that Bush wouldn't be all for this is ridiculous. Of course he would. He was all about giving rights up out of fear. And Lieberman - absolute BS. As soon as we start believing that we have to give up our rights in order to be safe against something that is statistically insignificant, the terrorist's job is done. Yeah, Osama won all right. And you know who else won? The companies who got millions in govt contracts building these useless, invasive fucking scanners. I took a flight that stayed within New Zealand a few years ago. I got on the flight with nothing but a quick scan of my carry-on, and I even carried a coffee. The sanity of it all was nearly overwhelming. Anyone who thinks that we don't live in a police state should go visit a foreign country. Oh, but that would involve getting photographed naked and groped first. ----------------------------------------------- hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:40 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: I don't think those who get a kick out of the scanning process would necessarily gravitate toward being a security person. For one, some of them wouldn't make it, since if they're THAT hot on it, they've probably already been arrested at least once. Second, after a few thousand fat or wrinkled or whatever bodies, I think it would wear off. JMHO.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:44 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Kwicko: You win the internet with that post!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:52 PM
Quote:Originally posted by mal4prez: I think there ought to be a protest day when every traveler strips bare fucking naked before they go into those scanners.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:54 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: As to New Zealand, well, they hven't exactly been the target of much terrorism, have they?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 4:08 PM
Quote:Originally posted by canttakesky: Next Wednesday is National Opt Out Day. http://www.opednews.com/Diary/Wednesday-November-24-20-by-101115-349.html?show=votes And here's a semi nude airport protest in Germany
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 5:20 PM
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 5:30 AM
PIRATENEWS
John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!
Quote:Originally posted by Righteous9: More implications of these scans... Joe Lieberman makes a stand...on the wrong side of the issue as usual.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 7:05 AM
PIZMOBEACH
... fully loaded, safety off...
Quote:Originally posted by canttakesky: This is a PDF, so I can't copy and paste. But it details radiation concerns from the faculty of U of California, SF. Very clearly and intelligently stated. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ucsf-jph-letter.pdf
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 7:53 AM
Quote:Originally posted by pizmobeach: So what else you got if you don't like this? What's your security solution?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 9:25 AM
Quote:While North America's airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification. That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel's, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience. "It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago," said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He's worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world. "Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don't take s--- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, 'We're not going to do this. You're going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport." That, in a nutshell is "Israelification" - a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death. Fliers urged to opt out of airport security en masse Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel's largest hub, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that? "The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport," said Sela. The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from? "Two benign questions. The questions aren't important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said. Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of "distress" — behavioural profiling. Sela rejects the argument that profiling is discriminatory. "The word 'profiling' is a political invention by people who don't want to do security," he said. "To us, it doesn't matter if he's black, white, young or old. It's just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I'm doing this?" Once you've parked your car or gotten off your bus, you pass through the second and third security perimeters. Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. At Ben Gurion's half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer. "This is to see that you don't have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious," said Sela. You are now in the terminal. As you approach your airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer takes your passport and ticket. They ask a series of questions: Who packed your luggage? Has it left your side? "The whole time, they are looking into your eyes — which is very embarrassing. But this is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds," said Sela. Lines are staggered. People are not allowed to bunch up into inviting targets for a bomber who has gotten this far. At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a purpose-built area. Sela plays devil's advocate — what if you have escaped the attention of the first four layers of security, and now try to pass a bag with a bomb in it? "I once put this question to Jacques Duchesneau (the former head of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority): say there is a bag with play-doh in it and two pens stuck in the play-doh. That is 'Bombs 101' to a screener. I asked Ducheneau, 'What would you do?' And he said, 'Evacuate the terminal.' And I said, 'Oh. My. God.' "Take Pearson. Do you know how many people are in the terminal at all times? Many thousands. Let's say I'm (doing an evacuation) without panic — which will never happen. But let's say this is the case. How long will it take? Nobody thought about it. I said, 'Two days.'" A screener at Ben-Gurion has a pair of better options. First, the screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive. Only the few dozen people within the screening area need be removed, and only to a point a few metres away. Second, all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation. "This is a very small simple example of how we can simply stop a problem that would cripple one of your airports," Sela said. Five security layers down: you now finally arrive at the only one which Ben-Gurion Airport shares with Pearson — the body and hand-luggage check. "But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America," Sela said. "First, it's fast — there's almost no line. That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes. They're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela. "Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes ... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys." That's the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes. This doesn't begin to cover the off-site security net that failed so spectacularly in targeting would-be Flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — intelligence. In Israel, Sela said, a coordinated intelligence gathering operation produces a constantly evolving series of threat analyses and vulnerability studies. "There is absolutely no intelligence and threat analysis done in Canada or the United States," Sela said. "Absolutely none." But even without the intelligence, Sela maintains, Abdulmutallab would not have gotten past Ben Gurion Airport's behavioural profilers. So. Eight years after 9/11, why are we still so reactive, so un-Israelified? Working hard to dampen his outrage, Sela first blames our leaders, and then ourselves. "We have a saying in Hebrew that it's much easier to look for a lost key under the light, than to look for the key where you actually lost it, because it's dark over there. That's exactly how (North American airport security officials) act," Sela said. "You can easily do what we do. You don't have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit — technology, training. But you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept." And rather than fear, he suggests that outrage would be a far more powerful spur to provoking that change. "Do you know why Israelis are so calm? We have brutal terror attacks on our civilians and still, life in Israel is pretty good. The reason is that people trust their defence forces, their police, their response teams and the security agencies. They know they're doing a good job. You can't say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don't trust anybody," Sela said. "But they say, 'So far, so good'. Then if something happens, all hell breaks loose and you've spent eight hours in an airport. Which is ridiculous. Not justifiable "But, what can you do? Americans and Canadians are nice people and they will do anything because they were told to do so and because they don't know any different."
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 9:57 AM
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 10:26 AM
Quote:Originally posted by pizmobeach: Here's the thing: if people have such little faith in the TSA and their agents now, then why would they suddenly have faith in them to perform these behavior pattern recognition BPR tests? And even with it, it's still just one part of the process at Logan.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 10:54 AM
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 10:57 AM
ANTHONYT
Freedom is Important because People are Important
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 12:39 PM
Quote:Originally posted by AnthonyT: Or is it possible that we did all that stuff for negligible benefit, when all the money, blood, and tangible intangibles are accounted for?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 1:32 PM
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 2:25 PM
Quote:Originally posted by canttakesky: The point is, though, it is a whole different mindset--a whole different way of looking at the same problem. Instead of an authoritarian mindset of people-must-do-as-we-say-or-everyone-will-die, it is a mindset of we-cannot-let-terrorism-cripple-our-lives. We will run business as usual, and let security for terrorism interfere as little with it as possible.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 3:05 PM
Quote:Originally posted by pizmobeach: Humans, whaddy going to do? They make a mess of just about everything.
Quote:Here's something else to consider: do you really think that Mr. Rafi Sela, the guy doing Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport's security is going to tell a reporter exactly what their security is and why it's successful? For all we know Israel has every entrance to the airport scanned with high resolution x-rays and they just aren't telling anyone.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 3:14 PM
Quote:Originally posted by AnthonyT: What if planes were flying again by 9/13/01? What if construction on replacement identical towers began on 9/11/02? What if we still wore shoes at airport screenings after 12/22/01? What if we didn't attack any countries in 10/07/01? What if we didn't create the Patriot Act, or the Department of Homeland Security? What if we didn't X-ray passengers or caress their genitalia? What if, after the catastrophic loss of life and the destruction of property caused by the Terrorist attacks... We just yawned and got back to work? Would America be destroyed now? Did we save it by becoming a hysterical people obsessed with Terrorism? Did all our fears and commotion and wars and reduction of civil liberties culminate in heroically saving America? Are we all heroes? Or is it possible that we did all that stuff for negligible benefit, when all the money, blood, and tangible intangibles are accounted for?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 3:52 PM
Quote:Originally posted by canttakesky: Quote:Originally posted by AnthonyT: What if planes were flying again by 9/13/01? What if construction on replacement identical towers began on 9/11/02? What if we still wore shoes at airport screenings after 12/22/01? What if we didn't attack any countries in 10/07/01? What if we didn't create the Patriot Act, or the Department of Homeland Security? What if we didn't X-ray passengers or caress their genitalia? What if, after the catastrophic loss of life and the destruction of property caused by the Terrorist attacks... We just yawned and got back to work? Would America be destroyed now? Did we save it by becoming a hysterical people obsessed with Terrorism? Did all our fears and commotion and wars and reduction of civil liberties culminate in heroically saving America? Are we all heroes? Or is it possible that we did all that stuff for negligible benefit, when all the money, blood, and tangible intangibles are accounted for? That is one of the most moving and stunning commentaries I have ever read regarding 9/11. You should put that on a blog somewhere. It'll probably go viral. Bravo, Anthony. YOU'RE my hero. Bravo. ---- Arrogant and proud of it.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 5:37 PM
Wednesday, November 17, 2010 7:03 PM
Quote:Watching it again, notice the TSA official’s comment that screeners should “come up with some kind of game” to entice children to be inappropriately touched by strangers. Such deceptive tactics come right out of the child abduction/pedophile handbook, no?
Thursday, November 18, 2010 8:38 AM
ANTIMASON
Thursday, November 18, 2010 8:50 AM
Thursday, November 18, 2010 9:03 AM
Quote:Originally posted by antimason: its fundemental... and its maddening that privatizing security is not part of this whole debate. we've accepted the premise that government decides what the conditions of flight are.
Thursday, November 18, 2010 9:05 AM
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