Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

[nitroglycol]

OTTAWA -- Boasting he could easily slip through one of Canada's new full-body scanners with enough explosives to blow up a jumbo jet, a leading Israeli airport security expert says the federal government has wasted millions of dollars to install "useless" imaging machines at airports across the country.

"I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747," Rafi Sela on Thursday told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.
"That's why we haven't put them in our airport."

Sela, former chief security officer at the Israel Airport Authority and a 30-year veteran in airport security and defence technology, helped design the security apparatus at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport.

He told MPs on the House of Commons transport committee via video conference from Kfar Vradim, Israel, that he couldn't reveal how to get past the virtual strip-search scanners, but said he can provide briefings to officials with security clearance.

Source. Whatever you might say about the Israelis, they are second to none with regards to airport security. So why are we paying for these bloody things again?

[don]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

I think you've partially answered your own question.

[Ghent12]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

I can think of at least two reasons, although I don't really agree with them.

1) The first step of all protection is presence. A simple "Protected by Broadview Security" and a pair of muddy boots on the porch and a car in the driveway will go a long ways towards deterring a home break-in. Scale it up to industrial security, and things like random bag searches and full body scanners can provide a level of uncertainty and risk that a potential assailant might deem too high in their cost-benefit-analysis.

2) Security theater as policy. "Your leaders are keeping you safe." The feeling of doing 'something' even if it is the wrong thing or useless. Like economic policy during Hoover's administration.

[flintlock]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

I'll add a third reason. Big money for the people who make this technology.

[chr5648]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

We're paying for the illusion of safety.

[Rajiv]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

A fourth reason: Legitimizes the "Perpetual War on Terror" in the minds of the "sheeple"

[don]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

A fourth reason: Legitimizes the "Perpetual War on Terror" in the minds of the "sheeple"

You nailed it, Rajiv. It's not "We're paying for the illusion of safety" but rather "We're paying for the illusion of fear..."

[Kimmons]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

Ok I'm not sure how he was intending on getting past these scanners...but when I see these full body scanners pitted against someone who is planning to kill himself for his cause, all I think is, these guys are planning on dieing already, you don't think they are committed enough to just swallow the contra ban, or put it up there #$%#$%^ and get it when they need it? There all going to be wearing loaded underwear??? Couldn't we assure our safety if we just banned underwear on flights all together? I don't fly a lot :-).

[nitroglycol]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

2) Security theater as policy. "Your leaders are keeping you safe." The feeling of doing 'something' even if it is the wrong thing or useless. Like economic policy during Hoover's administration.

A fourth reason: Legitimizes the "Perpetual War on Terror" in the minds of the "sheeple"

I'm not sure this counts as two different reasons. Isn't #2 simply a means to #4? But overall I agree with the reasons posted (my question was more rhetorical than anything).

[c1ue]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

Source. Whatever you might say about the Israelis, they are second to none with regards to airport security. So why are we paying for these bloody things again?

So near minimum wage DHS and TSA folk can see this everyday:

scanner-ap.jpg

[Ghent12]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

Ok I'm not sure how he was intending on getting past these scanners...but when I see these full body scanners pitted against someone who is planning to kill himself for his cause, all I think is, these guys are planning on dieing already, you don't think they are committed enough to just swallow the contra ban, or put it up there #$%#$%^ and get it when they need it? There all going to be wearing loaded underwear??? Couldn't we assure our safety if we just banned underwear on flights all together? I don't fly a lot :-).

Well the factors of ease and likelihood of success are part of every plan's decision calculus, even if the planner is a psychopathic terrorist. Ostensibly, every layer of added security complicates and exacerbates the potential threat's decision calculus. This theoretically results in delays of plan execution, scaling-back of planned attacks, and making all plans increasingly complex and therefore increasingly difficult to pull off "successfully" by the standards of the assailants.

Even if a way to get around a body scanner is to swallow something or to otherwise hide it inside the body, that means that any potential assault has to account for this. That means they need to develop a system to both hide and retrieve the explosive as needed, and they need to avoid getting caught doing this. Ostensibly, that means the scanner is enhancing security even if it fails to detect the explosive.

[reallife]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

The reason behind these purchases of technical means is that we are afraid to be 'politically incorrect' and screen people based on their racial and social characteristics.

[Rajiv]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

Particularly after the Joe Stack affair -- You never know who might express their discontentment in what way. And people are getting mighty discontented!

[reggie]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

The purpose of Full Spectrum Dominance is to demoralize the enemy.


From Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ~

"If it is remarkable when a nation has become indifferent to its constitutional theory, to its national sentiments, its ethical customs and virtues, it is certainly no less remarkable when a nation loses its metaphysics, when the spirit which contemplates its own pure essence is no longer a present reality in the life of the nation."

"Once the spirit has reconstituted itself, all attempts to preserve an earlier culture are utterly in vain."

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Full-body scanners 'useless': expert

The purpose of Full Spectrum Dominance is to demoralize the enemy.

From Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ~

"If it is remarkable when a nation has become indifferent to its constitutional theory, to its national sentiments, its ethical customs and virtues, it is certainly no less remarkable when a nation loses its metaphysics, when the spirit which contemplates its own pure essence is no longer a present reality in the life of the nation."

"Once the spirit has reconstituted itself, all attempts to preserve an earlier culture are utterly in vain."

Who is the "enemy"? Who is being demoralized? Which nation(s) are becoming "indifferent to [their] constitutional theory, to [their] national sentiments, ...?

I honestly cannot tell whether you meant this way, but the way I read what you wrote, it applies the U.S., inter alios.