RE: FAA's new air passenger surveillance system

[Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>]

I've posted about these sniffing machines too, having been
swabbed a couple of times.  Or rather, my laptop case.

The machines display a bar chart of detected levels of a list
of 6 fun chemicals.

I suspect they are (or have) acquiring false-alarm data,
and finding gardening, plinking, and angina meds
(nitroglycerin, gives you *nasty* headache, like
most nitrates, e.g., poppers; Solomon got a prize
for showing that NO is a short-lived transmitter in
the vascular system, and Viagra is based on this.  
Now back to your regularly scheduled digression..)

Since I fly a lot, and since I live under flightpaths,
and I don't store my explosives near my laptop :-), 
I think its not so bad that they're *trying* to keep the skies safe.

Remember that the person who took the Lockerbie bomb on board
was given the ghetto blaster by her boyfriend.  Who didn't
expect to see her again.  Clever and ruthless.

On the other hand, the last time I was on a plane, some
dimwit was using his cell phone as we were waiting to take off.


On profiling: 
As someone married to a darkee furriner/US citizen who was once stopped
upon returning from home and passing customs, in the receiving area by 'an
official',  until I said I was with her (I'm white; didn't figure this out
until later, or that they though she was a *mule*, or I would have gone
fucking ballistic, and that was *before* I was reading this list) I
think they had *best* keep the number of 'profiles' down low enough
to be disguised in the 'noise' of 'random' inspections.

And all of what you know about a false sense of security
is, alas, true.  Good reason for Uncle Sam to keep out of trouble, no?

-Joe Citizen



At 10:47 AM 4/21/99 -0700, Michael Motyka wrote:
>/*
>At Logan, I've also had the security drones
>run a piece of filter paper over the shoulder
>strap of my carry-on, and stick it into a machine
>which sniffed for explosives - I don't know what
>the detection method was.
>*/
>Probably NMR. Just wait, someday you'll get your butt reamed because you
>were feeding your roses or doing a little plinking before you left on
>your trip.
>
>/*
>The thing that bugs me every time I hear a need
>for increased 'security' measures at airports
>is that (in the US at any rate), the current 
>systems already works perfectly. How long is 
>it since a criminal or terrorist successfully 
>smuggled a bomb (or even a gun) onto an airliner 
>taking off from a US airport?  I'm not sure, but 
>it's at least 15-20 years. 
>
>I don't care how much you spend on equipment, 
>or how many delays, indignities, or invasions 
>of privacy you institute, once  you're at 
>100% effectivness, you can't improve security.
>*/
>I've always had a different opinion - the security for boarding
>passengers is somewhat effective but really is more to make the
>passengers feel good than to accomplish 100% security.
>
>The time period from lift-off to a thousand feet is relatively
>vulnerable and has almost zero security effort applied to it. I can
>think of a few ways that nasties could exploit this opening. No need to
>get into methods but I think it's possible and certainly a lower risk
>attack point than moving goods onto planes. There is no need for random
>harassment to limit that vulnerability.
>
>