Posted on 09/22/2007 6:37:50 AM PDT by Turret Gunner A20
You obviously know nothing about Europeans. Europeans's don't have the "real security" that you think they do. What you are referring to is the great charade of security that they put on to impress we American's with how difficult they can make our lives playing by TSA rules. I once watched as they turned an American inside out and upside down, and then announced that they knew that he worked for TSA and hoped that he was sufficiently impressed by their thoroughness(I was behind him in line).
You see, what you might not understand is that a lot of the rest of the world does not think that security rests on idiots waving badges and guns trying to intimidate everyone. For the most part Europeans believe that real secuirty is the result of intensive field investigative work to identify bad guys. It is amazing how fast they find someone when something bad does happen. Have you ever wondered why?
One thing that the European's don't do is tell me I am going to be found guilty at a jury trial merely because I traveled with a kid's toy which upon close inspection turns out to be a kid's toy, which is the idiotic comment to which I was responding.
I've been traveling through European airports since long before there was a TSA. And yes, the security is real - try it some time.
One thing that the European's don't do is tell me I am going to be found guilty at a jury trial
You really are provincial, aren't you. (Hint: most of Europe doesn't do jury trials.)
Have you really ever taken a scheduled airline flight?
Thanks for the reply, Bubblehead. I can see where you are coming from. OK but unless you get close enough how could you tell that it was a fake? First reaction maybe would be to stop her from blowing herself up and taking countless others with her.
She took her chances with her life with that stupid stunt. What if it were real and security hesitated? If she didn't cooperate they would have shot her. Assuming that they had not been close enough to see that she wasn't a threat
Some of the smartest people I have ever known are submariners. I completely understand the training and consequences that you and my husband were trained in subs. BTW, I think you (according to guarding nukes) and my Husaband could have had the same job.
Is it here ? or will someone have to wear a real bomb into an airport she should have worn it into the lawyers office then we would see what kind of OVERREACTION took place !
It is really simple. The flashing LEDs provide no probable cause to believe there is a bomb because you don't put flashing LEDs on a bomb because they have nothing to do with how bomb works. You need some other indicator that there is a bomb. Trying to evade a security inspection, refusal to cooperate with a security check, etc. So far as I can tell, she was guilty of none of the above.
Why do you believe it was a stunt? And why do you believe it was stupid? Because security folks who should know their business didn't and she should have known that?
Well, in the first place a real bomb might look more like a real bomb. First it won't have flashing LED's on it.
Second, it might look suspiciously more like a bomb than this one did to the extent of having a real mass that might hold real HE, and actually attached to real wires with a real detonator looking thingy on it as some dead give-away clues.
Now, you might not know the difference, but finding bombs on passengers isn't what you are trained to do. It is supposedly what these guys are trained to do, and their training might start by trying to identify what is a bomb and what isn't.
After you are suspicious, you can also use your bomb sniffing dogs to detect whether their are any high explosives, or you can use one of those thingies they run swipes of your PC through.
I presume that they actually pretty quickly determined that this girl didn't have a bomb. Idiots could not just let it go at that.
All the time. What I am commenting on, which apparently completely went over your head, is the funny little fact that the hassle factor on flying from a European airport goes way up when the flight is to/from the US where TSA rules take effect. Otherwise it is more or less routine. Makes you believe that they believe that our approach is nothing but show.
You see, you missed a key point. The American view of security is to try to guard everything and stop the bad guy at the point of attack. The professional security approach is to investigate and root him out at home. This is what real security professionals in the US do (and we do have some here, but it is a very small fraction) and what European police do. It is the old saw that the best defense is a good offense.
But our Thousands Standing Around can't do much more that stand around, look through the dirty linen bag, confiscate shampoo and get alarmed at flashing lights.
Ah, so no suicide bomber ever uses a dead-man's trigger? Furthermore, bomb aren't advertised, EVER. They don't have blinking lights on them. You see blinking lights, you see bomb, that's movie training, not real world bomb identification. God forbid you are given a gun and turned loose in a lite-brite factory.
Well, in the first place a real bomb might look more like a real bomb. What exactly does a real bomb look like??
Please identify the essential components in a bomb? What training courses / refreshers have you had on identifying potential bombs? What from your training led you to believe that flashing LEDs were a characteristic of an explosive device? etc.
rew: # 106 Well, in the first place a real bomb might look more like a real bomb. What exactly does a real bomb look like??
REPAIRS: >P> re: # 106
Well, in the first place a real bomb might look more like a real bomb.
What exactly does a real bomb look like??
She's 19 and was into computers and robotics. If she thinks an ugly circuit board, battery, and lights that looks like some elementary school kid's project is art she is not just clueless but also tasteless.
It just doesn't add up. Art takes some thought and creativity even for a clueless genius. This would have taken all of 5 minutes for her to put together.
What it doesn't look like is a battery hooked to a circuit breadboard with an IC and a bunch of flashing LEDs in a star shape, and nothing else that is pertinent.
It is the flashing LEDs that clued everyone to the fact that this might be a bomb, but flashing LEDs are one thing that you would never put on a bomb because it serves no function in controlling a detonation, and further has the obvious flaw of attracting an awful lot of idiot security folks who think that anything with flashing LEDs must be a bomb.
The solution to this problem is to train security personnel into what to look for.
Furthermore, once you have decided to investigate because you have nagging but inexplicable suspicions, you quickly rule out that it might be a bomb when you discover that there are no explosives involved, which you do by having trained dogs, as well as those machines that they use to analyze swipes of objects, like your PC, to ensure that they don't carry explosives.
Once you realize that not only do LEDs not have anything to do with bombs, but having further investigated and discovered that there were no explosives, you appologize to the young lady, let her go about her business, chalk it up to experience and add it as an item for staff training.
They are not always mutually exclusive, but if I had to choose between the two, I'd take the one which keeps your fingers attached when using power tools.
I recall reading the results of a study which claimed only 7% of the population is endowed with common sense.
I guess John Prine was right.
And the basis of this slander is?
Having actually seen a picture of the thing, I don’t see why anybody thinks this looks like a bomb. What’s the exploding part?
It was stupid to wear to an airport, but that is not a “hoax bomb.”
Everyone knows this? Really?
Maybe she was just a complete nutjob who forgot to take her meds that day and decided to wear her bomb outside her hoodie.
The police did the right thing.
In other stories airport personnel actually left the building because she didn't respond to questions about what was on her hoodie.
In other words, she did it on purpose
And you base your claim to having common sense on what? Your belief that anyone knows that a circuit with flashing LED's is a bomb? Like Regan said, the problem with liberals is that they know lots of things that just aren't so. Can you have common sense when you know something that just isn't so, like bombs might/must have flashing LED's.
Or is your view that common sense requires behaving in a manner that does not comport with common sense on the grounds that no one else has any common sense?
I have dealt with lots of things that have flashing LEDs, and I have dealt with lots of bombs, missiles, torpedoes and other explosive devices. So far the two piles separate cleanly into one or the other.
I have yet to experience a device with flashing leds that could or did blow up. I realize that Jack Bauer's experience is different. Maybe your claim to common sense rests on the fact that you watch a lot of TV.
I'll call. How many European airports have you been through that don't offer service to the US.
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