fatbrit

Read: http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Pri...ven-if/127461/

NSBlake

This is about matters very different to being scanned at the airport..........

Oh, and people love to write these articles as it sells their books and they get fellowships at Uni's...........

Is the use of short answers (and therefore not drawing attention to yourself)an attempt to circumnavigate the governments plan to frame you? Damn, I think they might be onto you now, sorry ;-)

Bob

But it won't, that's the problem. It's just as easy to get a job at a contract cleaning company that clean the planes or prep the food and to slip a bomb in the bogs or in the food trolley and use a barometric switch as the trigger to go off at a certain altitude rather than at a time.

You're also disguarding the whole point they made of having a couple armed marshals on every flight.

The whole thing about the US is peoples freedoms and when they are eroded to nothing, you have no freedoms and you have lost your fight with the oppressor. Not to mention it is impossible to travel with little kids in a smooth manner with these rules and people got on the hump with pissed off kids as it was before hand.

Octang Frye

The pilot is not opening the door for anything these days. 9-11 won't happen again. The paradigm has changed.

No-one hijacks commercial aircraft with guns or bombs anymore. This isn't the 70s. The back scatter x-ray machine wouldn't have found the underwear bomber's device.
It's all bullshit, for simple minded folk who think the authorities are looking after them.

As to the "you've got nothing to hide" retort - it terms of idiotic sentiments, that has to be in the, oh, top two of all time. Tell that to the Guildford Four, the MacGuire Seven, the Birmingham Six, Jean Charles de Menezes, Stephen Waldorf, etc, etc.

Octang Frye

Bob, fatbrit - you're nailing it time with every post.
<golf clap>

fatbrit

Thick as...

NSBlake

LOL - (I'm hiding as well..........)

Seriously, I love all of this - I bet you all live "down south" with tins and tins of food in the basement waiting for it to all kick off and the government to start to use us for fuel! :-)

However, I think Bob lives in MA so I must be "Thick as......"

Octang Frye

It's like the frog in the saucepan. If you chuck a frog into a saucepan of boiling water, he'll leap right out. If you start off with cold water, and gradually increase the temperature, he'll sit there.

People that make excuses and are apologists for this nonsense are blind to history. Can you really be this obtuse? Can you not see where we are heading?
Every time you roll over and accept these measures, they will push further and further. To the apologists, I want to say to hell with you all, and watch and laugh and say "I told you so". But there are still those of us who value freedom and individual liberty. I want my son to grow up in that country.

robin1234

I just think that you started out with unreasonably high expectations of the United States. Apart from empty rhetoric, there never has been a better chance of freedom and individual liberty in the USA compared to other comparable countries such as western European countries (the United Kingdom being a good example.)

zargof

It's one of the paradoxes in this country where the emphasis is all about rugged individualism and an intense dislike of Gubmint interference in anything and everything. Yet this is all thrown out the window along with peoples' dignity in a deluded attempt to protect everyone from the boogie man.

NSBlake

"But there are still those of us who value freedom and individual liberty. I want my son to grow up in that country".

Look at it this way - being scanned allows you to "travel more safely" and enjoy your freedom ;-)

Hey, one of my favourite and also the most worrying films I have seen is V for Vendetta - so I know where you are coming from, but I don't think you can bunch the scanning at airports in with the goverment watching your every move.

I think you either think one way or the other.............in about 20 to 30 years we will find out who was right.

sir_eccles

Technically the paradigm changes after each attempt as a new stable door is installed.

People look at Richard Reid and I can't remember the name of the underwear guy and think these terrorist are stupid. The foot soldiers are indeed pretty stupid brainwashed pawns. The actual terrorists orchestrating things are pretty smart and we should be wary of underestimating them. But our whole approach is wrong. For every penny the terrorists spend on underwear we spend millions on big flashing lights etc.

The best security is that which you do not see. The behind the scenes intelligence. That's the only thing that will stop them. No one is suggesting getting rid of all airport security, all you really need is standard metal detectors and bomb sniffer dogs all backed up by intelligence.

NSBlake

But then you'll have people shouting - "my baby doesn't like dogs" and having hysterical fits............

Also, and I'm assuming this, dogs are much more expensive than TSA staff/agents :-)

Thankfully we are all independent security consultants and know best ;-)

tonrob

Maybe they have, maybe they haven't. We'll never know. The fact that thousands of people are still allowed airside through metal detectors rather than back-scatter machines at many airports simply by choosing which queue to join makes a bit of a mockery of the need for the newer, more invasive technology anyway. They were installed purely to make money and win votes, and not in response to any credible threat that this technology has the capacity to thwart.

tonrob

If the only things holding your argument together are sarcasm and the impossibility of proving negatives then this conversation really isn't worth carrying on.