NY Post: "Airlines, TSA Seeking Advanced Security Screening Devices"
Bill Sanders writes in the New York Post that the TSA is looking for more high-tech ways to pointlessly violate your rights. Naturally, he means the sort with all sorts of logic boards and wiring.
Here are two actually logic-guided "advanced screening devices":
In the next seven to 10 years, passengers will be able to breeze through security without even noticing they're being electronically scanned for weapons and contraband, if airport security experts have their way.No longer will passengers have to suffer the indignity of pulling off shoes and belts. They will go through a security experience that seems more like passing through a hallway than enduring the angry cluster of humanity they are familiar with today.
"We see it as a walk-through process," said Perry Flint of the International Air Transport Association, an airline group.
Instead of metal detectors, software hooked up to video cameras will ensure safety by assessing passengers mannerisms to help screeners determine whether they're threats.
Of course, some of the screeners I've had would be lucky to "assess" their way through the terminal to McDonald's.
Furthermore, as Dr. Bella DePaulo and other solid researchers on lying caution, it's hard for even highly trained intelligence officers and other experts to determine whether a person is lying.
Here's my suggestion for meaningful airport security -- two logic-guided "advanced security screening devices":
1. A human brain with a high level of intelligence (probably not a feature in those unskilled workers who consider airport "security" a desirable job).2. Probable cause -- trained, actually intelligent intelligence officers doing targeted detective work to root out people who could reasonably be suspected of plotting to blow up a plane, etc. (These people are not palsied children or 88-year-old grandmothers known as Mrs. Schlomovitz.)
Hah! "Assess Mannerisms?" I bet it ends up looking like the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch.
Frank at June 26, 2012 6:06 AM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/06/ny-post-airline.html#comment-3244791">comment from FrankBehavioral researcher Ekman himself profiled a guy as a danger -- a guy who was found to look as he did because he was going to his brother's funeral.
Amy Alkon
at June 26, 2012 6:24 AM
There will never be another 9/11 attack. That threat ended less than 1 hour 10 minutes after Tower II was struck. I'm not going to post my rant for this one.
Now another Lockerbie 103 bombing is possible. Even prior to 9/11 the possibility of a bomber on an aircraft was the same as on a bus, a train, etc. was pretty likely.
The problem is that explosives are very hard to detect no matter what you do. In addition, carrying a large enough explosive to actually take out an aircraft is hard. If the panty bomber had actually exploded, it probably would have taken him out and given the aircraft a sun roof, but they would have been able to land.
The shoe bomber might have been different considering they were over the middle of the Atlantic. Even then it would probably have not damaged the aircraft to cause it to crash.
You need to understand how an aircraft is built. The frame of an aircraft is built around I-Beams. To cut through an I-Beam to collapse a building takes, essentially, a direct contact from a high explosive to cut it.
The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah involved about somewhere around 4800 pounds of ANFO from less than a quarter mile. IIRC, the demolition company of the Murrah building used less than 300 pounds of plastic explosive (PETN) directly attached to the girders to bring down the remains of the building.
Then there is Aloha Flight 243. They were flying island to island in the Hawaii area. The roof ripped off and they lost a stewardess in the draft, but the rest of the passenger survived.
If you think that someone walking onto a plane with a pound of explosive in the cabin is dangerous, get to know your stats. That is effectively a joke.
I'm not even a flight engineer. I'm just reading and analyzing. All this data is available from googling. I'd like to see some refutation. If I'm full of shit, I like to be told, on a factual basis.
Jim P. at June 26, 2012 8:12 PM
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