OH! . . . it’ll read “clean.”

(Actually that probably applies to most major cities).

I understand why they’re doing it, but it sure makes them look like Big Brother. They should try a different tack– petition the Federal Government for better standards for detectors sold in the US, OR offer some kind of free/cheap testing station so people can know if their detectors are accurate. If they are trying to stop false alarms this would help, and without making them appear so evil. Of course, cops rarely understand that they appear evil when they do these things.

United Nuclear has already been raped by the feds for selling supplies so kids could learn chemistry as they did decades ago – back when the USA produced scientists. Maybe they can help out here, until they are raided again anyway.
http://www.unitednuclear.com/geigers4sale.htm

I’m sorry, but if this passes, there is no hope.

If the police get to suggest & craft legislation, does that mean there is a police state?

Maybe we should consider a ban on spending any public monies to have law enforcement officers work on coming up with new laws.

The Glorious Union of Soviet Capitalist Republics welcomes you!

The regulation of passive sensing equipment is truly unprecedented in our country. It is wrong on so many levels. It is totalitarian and evil.

It also shows an incredible level of ignorance in regards to the fact that law enforcement and counter-terrorism really are minor aspects of our economy. Thankfully they are not yet the unquestioned rulemakers and this should die a quick death.

Just think of all science-fair students building sensors of various kinds. I suggest undercover police officers travel the show floor and make the necessary arrests before our future generation become a danger to themselves with their inquisitiveness.

(half in jest, there, but half not)

Democracy and the myth of an educated and informed populace is a political theory whose time has passed.

Welcome to the US Chicken Farm. Sheep have more sense than this, we’ve become a nation of chickens willing to live in the cages our keepers have helped us create. The only thing worse is the chickens with guns known as survivalists.

However, if it’s false positives they worry about, they should also instruct the fire department not to respond to any fire calls either, since most of them are false alarms as well.

The law was suggested by the Department of Homeland Security. It would require anyone who detects a terrorist attack to immediately report it to the police, government, etc. And this part of the law is trying to prevent false alarms, of which they expect quite a lot. XD

So I guess he’s not.

Cities, even sophisticated ones like NYC, are given little control — not to mention money — by DHS on the control and disposition of countermeasures such as vaccines. That they would be taking seriously further suggestions to centralize mitigation measures by DHS is surprising. The devices in question are one item that cities are given and NYC has more of them than other cities at several dozen. Whereas I can understand his need to minimize false alarms, this seems the backwards way to go about it.

When one looks at which systems worked during other calamities (e.g., earthquake, Katrina, 9-11) one that worked well and most consistently was the DECENTRALIZED one. Person-on-the-street stories cite countless selfless acts of bravery and ingenuity saving proportional numbers of lives and limbs.

Perhaps Flakenrath and others in his unenviable position should go the other way. Use some of the monies for rad-bio-chem attack prevention at the Federal level to develop/create a distributed network of small (industrial ones are still microwave-oven-sized because of the air throughput they need), *open-source* detectors, to be carried by volunteers and city infrastructure all over (e.g., mobile devices, lapels, automobiles, buses, subways, etc.), that would sniff around the clock and report to similarly distributed grid-computing apps where-when deadly materials are detected and that build-in the false-positives handling made possible by their ubiquity. These are sci-fi at this moment but unleash the dorks to work on the problem! A decentralized approach might minimize the need to try to evacuate/vaccinate an entire city after a small event and may help direct and coordinate appropriate response(s).

The wholesale outlawing of unlicensed detectors is exactly the wrong way to go about this problem.

It’s an editorial joke.

The ability to capture information about our world, whether in audio, photographs, video, or via sensors, is fundamental to the ability to exercise freedom of speech.

I can theoretically (under protest) accept ‘reasonable time place and manner’ restrictions, but the clear assumption must be that we can photograph and take sensor readings at will.

Including using remote sensing technology to capture information which ‘They’ don’t want us to have.

After the threat of nuclear war ended (*mmmph mmmph*), many of these expensive detectors (your tax dollars at work maintaining the illusion of rationality) were “recycled” by sending them to schools for science classes.

By the mid-1980s, one had to look very hard indeed to find a radiation detector. Possibly because it had been discovered that the main threat was not from bombs after all … and mere citizens were threateninig to use them to gather intelligence on SNAFUs (your tax dollars at work, etc.)