"Opt Out"

[zoog]

Re: "Opt Out"

Perhaps you're referring to this one: Invasion of the Body Scanners: Airport Security May Not Work, But It Does Cause Cancer, or to the letter from New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt mentioned therein.

Yeah that's it, or at least similar.

Dr. Brenner has pointed out that the majority of the radiation from X-ray backscatter machines strikes the top of the head, which is where 85 percent of the 800,000 cases of basal cell carcinoma diagnosed in the United States each year develop.

That's what I was seeing as well (just on this thread, and only last night.)

A wire got crossed somewhere (they do still program computers with patch cards and jumper wires, don't they?)

P.S. -- I'm still seeing this glitch over a day after I first saw it, though the glitch is still just on this thread.

Someone let the magic blue smoke out. Just hope it doesn't migrate to other threads.

[swgprop]

Re: "Opt Out"

Christopher Hitchens shining a beacon on the impotence of Homeland Security ....

>>
Don't Be an Ass About Airport Security

The enemy is inventive and imaginative. Our response is neither.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Nov. 29, 2010, at 11:49 AM ET



I did not pay any attention to last week's feeble-minded attempt at a civilian-sponsored go-slow at airport security checkpoints. When the best that the children of a revolution can do for the defense of their inalienable protection against unwarranted search and seizure is to issue the pathetic moan, "Don't touch my junk," a low point of humiliation has been reached. It will soon enough be forgotten, as have the low points that preceded it. And it is destined to be succeeded by even lower and more humbling ones.


Consider: The decision to make us all take off our shoes was the official response to the scrofulous "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. The ban on liquids and precisely specified quantities of gel was the best we could do by way of post-facto thwarting of a London-based scheme to mix liquids in-flight and cause a mid-air detonation. The decision to inquire more closely into our undergarments was the official response to the "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The more recent decision (this was a specifically British touch of genius) to forbid the shipping by air of any print toner weighing more than 500 grams was made after some tampered-with toner cartridges were intercepted on international cargo flights leaving Yemen a few weeks ago. (Fear not, by the way, you can't have these hard-to-find items in your carry-on bags or checked luggage, either.)

In the more recent instances, the explosive substance involved was a fairly simple one known as PETN. Now consider again: Late last August, the Saudi Arabian deputy minister of the interior, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, was injured in the city of Jeddah by a suicide bomber named Abdullah Hassan Al Aseery. The deceased assailant was the brother of Khalid Ibrahim Al Aseery, the suspected bomb-specialist of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and the man sought in connection with the underpants and toner attempts. In the Jeddah case, the lethal charge of PETN was concealed in the would-be assassin's rectum.

Perhaps you can begin to see where, as they say, I am going with this. In order for us to take them even remotely seriously, our Homeland Security officials should by now have had no alternative but to announce a series of random body-cavity searches some months ago. At least that might have had a deterrent effect and broken the long tradition of waiting for the enemy to dictate all the terms, all the time. It is a certainty that this deadly back-passage tactic will be tried. It is equally a certainty that it will find us even more defenseless than before.

Let me recommend regular reading of the magazine Inspire, the flagship publication of AQAP. It is remarkable for its jauntiness and confidence and sense of initiative. The cover of the most recent issue shows the tail of a UPS jet with the headline "$4,200." That was the estimated outlay, for AQAP, of the toner operation that disrupted international air cargo for several days. Inside is a telling comment on the only countermeasure to be taken so far: the ban on toners of a certain weight. "Who is the genius who came up with this suggestion?" jeer the editors. "Do you think we have nothing to send but printers?" (Incidentally, I recommend this analysis of the latest issue of Inspire, written by Shiraz Maher of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College, London.)


The authors of this propaganda show a natural talent for psychological warfare. It is, one might say, "part and parcel" of the campaign they slightly unoriginally call "a thousand cuts." But the simplicity of that scheme is as self-evident as its cunning. By means of everyday devices and products, plus a swelling number of human volunteers willing to die and kill, they can strike at will and even afford to taunt us in advance. While we pay salaries to thousands and thousands of dogged employees to glare suspiciously at shampoos and shoes and toners, the homicidal adversary discards those means as soon as they are used and switches to another. How they must chortle when they see how sensitive we are to the "invasion of privacy" involved in a close-up grope or a full-on body scan. In preparing their own bodies for paradise, they know no such inhibition. If they guess that we will not even think about how to pre-empt the appalling anal strategy, they so far guess right.
In Robert Harris' brilliant political thriller The Ghost, the Tony Blair character becomes exasperated with facile liberalism and says:

You know what I'd do if I were in power again? I'd say OK then, we'll have two queues at the airports.
On the left, we'll have queues to flights on which we've done no background checks on the passengers: no profiling, no biometric data, nothing that infringes on anyone's precious civil liberties, use no intelligence obtained under torture—nothing. On the right, we'll have queues where we've done everything possible to make them safe for passengers.

His angry challenge to his critics is to see which line those flying with their own children would choose to join. It's a useful thought experiment. At the rate of current progress, however, I rather fear that AQAP might accept that very challenge and make it a point to blow up a plane full of passengers who had stayed in the ostensibly secure line. Or to give up on aviation altogether and start again with trains, which would come to our protectors as a total shock. The new tactics and propaganda of the enemy show them to be both inventive and imaginative. The response of our security state shows it to possess no such qualities.

http://www.slate.com/id/2276166/

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: "Opt Out"

I rather fear that AQAP might accept that very challenge and make it a point to blow up a plane full of passengers who had stayed in the ostensibly secure line.

On the other hand, if it is really some psychopathic Western control freaks behind many of these "terrorist" threats, then I would rather fear that the challenge would be to blow up a plane full of passengers who had chosen no security measures.

[Sharky]

Re: "Opt Out"

On the other hand, if it is really some psychopathic Western control freaks behind many of these "terrorist" threats, then I would rather fear that the challenge would be to blow up a plane full of passengers who had chosen no security measures.

Flying on a plane where the government has not instituted controls does not mean the flight would not be secure. For example, a few law-abiding passengers with handguns would go a long way toward deterring hijackers.

In the end, I side with Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" I would rather risk losing my life to some (perhaps mythical) terrorist than to definitely give up my liberties to an increasingly oppressive regime.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: "Opt Out"

Flying on a plane where the government has not instituted controls does not mean the flight would not be secure. For example, a few law-abiding passengers with handguns would go a long way toward deterring hijackers.

The "Free" plane would be more secure from hijackings than the "TSA sanitized" plane; I'll grant that. The passengers on the free plane would be a far more reliable group when it came to standing up against a hijacker.

However such a plane would not be safe from a determined attack by the darker side of those would be our tyrannical overlords. There are many ways to bring down a plane that can not be countered by passengers, no matter how determined or capable they are. A plane full of fully armed and alerted Navy Seals can be brought down.

In the end, I side with Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" I would rather risk losing my life to some (perhaps mythical) terrorist than to definitely give up my liberties to an increasingly oppressive regime.

Agreed. If I had to fly, given a choice of a "free" plane versus a "TSA sanitized" plane, it's a no brainer. Fly free and take the risks on that side of the ledger.

[flintlock]

Re: "Opt Out"

NOt only that, but some have mentioned the underwear bomber would have not been found even using of the scanners. Also what everyone is missing with the underwear bomber ïs that his own dad reported him. IF anything it was bad handling of information. Much like 9-11, where alot of information that could of prevented it was overlooked.

Also 9-11 would of never happened had cockpits been locked and pilots armed but the TSA line at the time was "comply" so passengers and crew complied...

All of this is what convinces me that our safety is not even high on the list of agencies like the TSA. This is about power and justifying their own existence. This Dog and Pony show is designed to show us how hard they are working and why we should continue to fork over the money and the power to them. What concerns me most is how brainwashed the people who work for these agencies have become. They seem to question nothing that comes down from above. With no concern for personal liberties. America is being conditioned to accept more and more of this authoritarian behavior. There is very little left today that sets America apart from the rest of the world. It's respect for the individual used to be near the top of the list. Not any more.

[Sharky]

Re: "Opt Out"

However such a plane would not be safe from a determined attack by the darker side of those would be our tyrannical overlords. There are many ways to bring down a plane that can not be countered by passengers, no matter how determined or capable they are. A plane full of fully armed and alerted Navy Seals can be brought down.

Very true -- although no amount of TSA-style screening will help in that case either. Just look at TWA 800. However, you can also get struck by lightning or die in a car wreck on the way to the airport. No one can absolutely guarantee your safety; being alive means there are risks.

Here's quote from a recent article in Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/29/tsa...y-milling.html

To make travel safe, improve foreign policy rather than violate our rights.

"According to government statistics, there are 620 million domestic passengers per year. The average number of flights per trip is about 1.5, so there are 410 million gate entries. At 10.8 million domestic flights per year, there is an average of 86 on board.

Let us generously stipulate that there is an average of one terrorist incident per year that is not stopped by current security practices, a 0.75 probability that the nude scanners and enhanced pat-downs would preempt these incidents and a 0.5 probability of a successful attack once the terrorist is on board, given technical glitches and vigilant passengers. The probability of dying in an attack that would have been prevented by the new measures is thus 8x10 to the negative eighth power.

In other words, Americans are having their genitals and breasts imaged and groped, and TSA employees are being made to execute said imaging and groping, in order to prevent an outcome for which the odds are less than half that of dying by lightning strike."


(continues)