Posted on 12/01/2005 8:55:03 AM PST by af_vet_rr
Wired.com does not allow material to be posted which is a shame, because this is a great article, so you'll have to visit the site to read it (the link I put here will just take you back to FR).
Admins, if this is still not okay, please lock it.
He mentions what I call the "let's search granny and ignore certain people from certain regions" mentality.
He brings up how the no-fly lists don't work, and mentions how some of this stuff is moving us closer to a "Papers please" society.
Last, and most important, he mentions the only two things that have contributed to airline security - reinforced cockpit doors and passengers who know they have to fight back.
This isn't some run-of-the-mill journalist; besides being a member of the Secure Flight Working Group on Privacy and Security (government group put together to study airline safety), he's written extensively on security (both computer and otherwise). Some of you may have heard of him after reading the book 'Cryptonomicron'. His website
I was going through the security check for a domestic flight 2 weeks ago and they had everybody take off their shoes. PWEEEH.
He missed on that one.
Details? Unless your talking about Teddy Kennedy being on the no-fly list, lol.
So why don't they fix the flaws?
But you could still post the link to the article.
They don't fix the flaws because it's not about security - it's about citizen compliance. If you ever have occasion to buy a one-way ticket, prepare for "special screening". Gee, I wonder if the bad guys'll figure that out?
As I'm sure you know, the Feds are slow to fix anything. Also, I doubt the folks running the list think it's flawed. In their minds, inconveniencing the many to stop the few is OK.
On this issue, I would disagree. The shit the TSA pulls at it's check points is about compliance, but not the no-fly list.
The agencies involved in the no-fly list are actually trying to keep people from flying that actually may pose a threat to the plane.
Keeping knitting supplies, lighters, small knives, ect off the aircraft is about compliance, not security.
The article doesn't really say anything we didn't already know, that Homeland Security is a massive bureaucracy with nobody at the steering wheel and zero intelligence. But it's valuable glimpse into things because the author actually had the chance to get up close and confirm what the rest of us know from a distance.
Or from reading Parkinson's Laws concerning the behavior of bureaucracies many years ago.
Basically, President Bush took a bunch of incompetent federal agencies, shoveled them all together into a huge bureaucratic mess, and then the Democrats insisted that all the airport inspectors had to join the government union, so they would be sure to get more votes out of it, everyone is paid double, and nobody can be fired. A recipe for failure at very high costs.
I see your point and you obvioulsy know more about it than what I see as a sometimes fly (which is only when there's absolutley no other way to get where I need to be).
Is your "marine inspector" handle related to the maritime trades?
No. Click on my screen name.
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