I was watching the news just before Christmas, and they were discussing a new body-searching technique in use by some airport's security personnel. I guess in Russia some female Chechyan rebels hid plastic explosives in their bras, so now a few airports are paying extra close attention to female passengers.

It really looked like these women were literally getting felt up. The screener's fingers went under the lower part of the bra cup, around the sides, over the top, and then in between the breasts. I blushed just watching it on TV. It looked so naughty.

At least now my time at the airport can be a little more interesting. I wonder if they'll employ that same technique to a man's groin, or when we'll all have to strip, squat, turn our heads, and cough... <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

There was a news interview with the local head of the airport security service and while he didn't comment directly on the search procedures he did say that if you have a bad experience with an airline that you would find another airline. If you have a bad experience or two with security, you will stop flying. I think that the airlines would all be bankrupt before we would get to the point of flying without apparel.

My wife and I have decided that we will travel by car for out 10th anniversary. We decided that a road trip would be more fun anyway, we rally got to talk and know each other on those 250mile trips to my parents in before we were married. In my old truck with only an AM radio there was nothing to listen too we talked and really got to know each other better then. Were going to pick some destinations and hit the road like the old times. No need to be strip searched or treated like a criminal just to travel.

While getting felt up is not fun I am sure, it does serve its purpose to a point. The new see thru xray should eliminate that in the future, the sooner the better.

Treated like a criminal? I think not. You are treated like a citizen who demands safe air travel and deserves it no less.

You are doing the right thing by taking a car if not wanting subject yourself to security proceedures. Air travel is a private industry and is not a god given right. You either put up with the security measures or find another way.

It is that black and white.

flip

Here we go again....

Profile, quit picking out buxom women and old ladies .

I'm about to get kinda crude. If that sort of thing bothers anyone, hit "next" now.



The backscatter xray stuff doesn't penetrate skin. Judging from some of the pr0n out there,
a fairly decent sized cylindrical container could be smuggled aboard by either sex.
I don't want to start the TSA argument all over again. What I _am_ interested in is the following...

The vulnerability exists. No method, current or planned, screens for non-metallic items smuggled
aboard in this fashion. What would you have us do? Cavity searches?

If not, then why bother with intrusive "pat down" searches when they're so easy to defeat?
What purpose does it serve to touch someone in way that is humilating and embarassing when
the person behind them may well have 14 cubic inches of Bad Stuff hidden where no amount of
poking, patting, scanning or sniffing will detect?

(Yes, I'm aware this is right up to the line, and possibly over the line for this board. I apologize in
advance. OTOH, consider that while we hesitate to even discuss this particular possiblity,
it does exist, and probably both the TSA and our potential enemies rely on us having these
cultural blind spots. Makes both of their jobs a lot easier. )

This isn't a troll... I'm honestly interested in what the pro-security members of the board think
about this.

Amen .... I'm not sayin a word... I have grown wiser (and grayer <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />). I think Flip either despises American culture or just refuses to understand it. Or maybe... just maybe... he's the one doing the trolling (whether intentional or unintentional).) Ah crap I said I was staying quiet. Oh well, I think Confusious once said that "a wise man is the man who knows that he still has much to learn". If he didn't then he should have. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Now I'm staying quiet...for real this time! <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

No troll here,

I am serious I don't want to be a ball fire in the air. Screw culture its why 911 happened in the first place or have you forgotten <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />. Funny, its much of the same people complaining about new security measures who cried blue bloody murder after 911 happened and wanted heads to role.

You can't have it both ways.

Cavity searches are done all the time now by customs as part of their profiling. Of course its unpleasant but if it saves one plane with 300 ppl on it I think its worth it. They just don't cavity search ppl for no reason, there is a whole host of profile criteria that must be met first to have cause to do so.

Its simple realy dont like the intrusion take a bus. Culture and rights have nothing zero zip to do with it. It is not in the charter of rights that you must fly with no inconveniences

Flip

Your making the same arguments as those for gun/knife/whatever control. Assuming me guilty until a pat down prooves me innocent does nothing to stop terrorists. Banning items does nothing to stop terrorists. Banning people like me who carry at least a leatherman that I would use as self defense if necessary does nothing to prevent planes from being taken over.
The next wave of terrorists will simply buy their operatives a gym membership instead of any banned weapons so they can overpower the defenseless sheep with their bare hands. The end result will still be the same except we will have wasted more tax money hiring people to steak SAK's and sell them on ebay.

The only thing needed to protect ourselves from terrorists of this sort was the knowledge of what the terrorists were capable of. Before 9/11, it was inconceivable that this was possible, and the procedure was to let them have their way until they let the hostages go. The assumption was that the terrorists wanted to live to see their plan succeed. But on 911, before the 4th plane could damage anything, the passengers found out what was happening and saw to it that they failed. Any terrorists who now try the same sort of trick will fail, even with the same security measures in place before 9/11. All of our new security measure are simply window dressing, to make it seem like we're doing something, and to scare the PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. into reelecting our current politicians.

Damn, and I was going to stay out of this.

Yeah. Me too. *sigh*

Flipper appears to work in Halifax (his IP address, 142.176.14.228, reverse maps to a machine at
Halifax Regional Water Commission). I think we're having our chains yanked. Those darn
Canadians... :-)

AFAIC, this thread is closed.

During the blitz in WW2 G.B. fired heavy artillary during air raids. It was utterly useless and never downed a single german bomber. It did make a big noise and comforted the civilian population. In all conflicts the aggressor is always by nature one step ahead of the defender. Poland had mounted lancers facing panzers because they worked very well during hundreds of years on the great european plain, oftentimes with Poland herself the aggressor. We have nuclear bombs. Nuclear bombs fail miserably against terrorist cells. We are playing catch up, and in many ways the government is making noise like those british cannons. It is to be expected. What we must never do, is unquestionably surrender freedom to our own government or corporations to deny external forces that same role. Posters to this thread and similar have stated their opinions, insults and inappropriate language sufficiently. Take it elsewhere.

Something i have not seen in any statistics is the cost in lives of all of this security that is for our own good. We have added even more cost in dollars and time to the safest way to travel all in the name of making flying safer. As flying becomes more expensive and down right unfriendly more and more people are going to drive which is substantially less safe. Are there any statistics that show how many more people will die because they didn't fly?

And i know that peoples perceptions have a great deal to do with the "value" of increased security. As an example, my sister in law worked for a banking transaction company and she was part of the disaster recovery team. She and one of her coworkers were required to go to another data center several states away for a disaster drill. Now this was before 911 and my sister in law and her coworker were not allowed to fly on the same airplane because of safety concerns, but they were allowed to drive together to get from the office to the airport. When i asked her about it being more dangerous for the two of them to be in the same car than on the same plane, she replied that when several people in the same company die on a plane crash it makes national news. So management decided that this was a perceived threat that the company could avoid whether or not it made sense.

It is just a matter of time before we will be flying naked, which should prove to be either entertaining or really really scary...

Well, I believe the statistics indicate that approximately 3,500 people in the United States die in automobile accidents every month. Let's assume (I'm just making this number up, it's not even an educated guess) that the number of people on the road or the amount that people drive increases by 1%; this would increase the number of deaths on the road by approximately 35 per month. Multiply that by 12 months to get 420 deaths per year, then multiply that by the time since 9/11 to get approximately 1300 additional deaths caused by the inconvenience of the TSA security measures over the past three years. At this rate, the death toll from the "security" measures will exceed the death toll from the 9/11 terrorist attacks by the end of 2008.

According to what I can find, the annual number of deaths from motor vehicle accidents has remained fairly constant at 40,000 to 42,000 since 1991; however, the number of deaths per mile travelled has gone down by approximately 20 percent, from 1.9 per 100 million miles travelled to 1.5 per 100 million miles in 2003. This seems to indicate that the roads are safer but people are driving more miles. With between 40,000 and 42,000 deaths per year, it's likely that an increase of fewer than 1,000 deaths per year would be lost in the noise, at least for the first several years. Maybe after ten years it will be possible to identify a trend but right now I doubt if we could do more than speculate on whether the "security" measures are causing an increase in the annual death rate from motor vehicle accidents.

http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/03may/02.htm

www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_m3724/is_6_66/ai_105408443

and a perhaps politically-motivated opinion piece:

www.writingshop.ws/html/scare_tactics.html

and an article by Brock Yates taking a different point of view:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/051603A.html

states "Keep in mind that while the number of fatalities increased, NHTSA reports that Americans drove 48 billion more miles in 2002 than the year before. " At an annual death rate of 1.51 per 100 million miles driven, this equates to an additional 720 deaths caused by the additional miles driven. Of course, I have no way of knowing how many (if any) of those additional miles can be attributed to the "security" measures and how many resulted from other causes.

Someone once said "The gazelle wakes up in the morning knowing it has to outrun the fastest lion. The lion wakes up knowing it only has to outrun the slowest gazelle." In a courtroom trial, the DA is in the position of the gazelle - he/she has to make sure there are no holes in the state's case - and the defense is in the position of the lion (they only have to find one hole in the prosecution's case - at least, in theory).

Generally, in warfare, the terrorists are the lions (they can attack anywhere and anytime they want) and the people are in the position of the gazelle.

The key to good security lies in finding a way to make yourself the lion and not the gazelle. This doesn't necessarily mean thumping your chest and throwing your weight around; it means putting the terrorists on the defensive. (A good example, IMO, is the technique, described in another thread, used by Israeli screeners to identify terrorists by asking increasingly detailed questions of potential suspects, until eventually the terrorist comes to the end of his/her prepared story and has to start improvising.)

The fact that some posters find it difficult to discuss this topic in a civil manner, does not mean that the topic is not worth discussing. Flipper may be a Canadian; I certainly am. I believe that Canadians, and Brits, and Frenchmen/women, Germans, and many other nationalities are dying unnecessarily as a result of the "security" measures which have, by and large, been forced on us by the US, and therefore I believe it is a topic worth discussing.

Having said that, I am now making a sincere effort to avoid repeating arguments I have made in the past, or descending to personal attacks.

Ha Ha!

Saw a post on another forum. This guys wife, her mother and grandmother were flying together. TSA said that 3 females travelling together was "suspisious". So they Bra Searched the guys wife only. He posted a pic of his wife and it would seem that there was another motive for the search, judging by the pic.
Dave

The TSA can get away with just about anything now. It's good to be the king.

Groo:

I would hate to see it happen, but with logic like Flipper's, they will probably institute the dreaded E. F. E. procedure.

Bountyhunter <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

... because if you write to the TSA, you will get a form letter back, expressing concern with the fact that you felt like you were abused/manhandled/fondled in some way. All they need to know in order to deal with the problem is:
- the exact date, time, location, screening location/number and lane you were in at the airport.
- the full names and badge numbers of all the screeners involved in any way in the alleged incident.
- the full name and badge number of the supervisor on duty at the time of the alleged incident.
- a complete transcript of everything said by everyone at the time of the alleged incident, including yourself, any TSA personnel, bystanders, law enforcement if they got involved, etc.
- a complete, detailed description of every action taken by every screener during the alleged incident ...
You can see where this is heading. I think I'll save the postage next time.