All the security theater is doing more damage to our country than a genuine terrorist attack would.

I wo9nder if the Small-Govt Teabaggers are in favour of abolishing the Air Marshalls, and TSA as a whole. Seems like a good place to make a quick win in terms of federal money spent.

Wouldn’t that be ironic – the Teabaggers doing something that’d probably enrage their ‘base’, yet simultaneously get most Boing Boing readers on board!

Hearing info: < http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Hearings&ContentRecord_id=9ad9e372-c415-4758-805a-4b4a295ccb8b&ContentType_id=14f995b9-dfa5-407a-9d35-56cc7152a7ed&Group_id=b06c39af-e033-4cba-9221-de668ca1978a&MonthDisplay=11&YearDisplay=2010>

Commerce committee members: < http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=CommitteeMembers>

A pilot cannot hijack a plane, because they’re already in charge of flying it in the first place.

If a pilot wants to use a plane for the purposes of terrorism, they don’t need a gun or bomb to do so. We’re already entrusting these people with the safety of everyone on board, so they should be allowed to carry more than 3oz of water etc.

Presumably the airline and the other staff members know who’s supposed to be flying which flight, and scan / properly go over pilot IDs, so a uniformed terrorist probably couldn’t con themselves into the cockpit. (Change in the bathroom, get on the plane dressed as a regular passenger + whatever contraband you just moved through security, done.) The TSA folks, though, don’t have access to that sort of information.

We’re doomed! DOOMED!!!

In any case, 9/11 tightened the security bottleneck. Richard Reid stole our footwear. And this latest indignity to our sacrosanct crotchal areas has been brought to you by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Once we start seeing airborne terrorism by small gangs of determined yet apparently unarmed men, no matter how limited the havoc they wreak, how long can the American air travel industry survive? How can they defend against terrorism in the form of brute-force mob uprising? Will they simply have to install a self-destruct on commercial 747s? Have they already?

When will they realize that defending against last week’s attack provides no safety whatsoever against next week’s? When are we finally going to realize as a nation that we just kinda have to take our chances, hope for the best, and try a bit harder not to alienate so many people?

I feel odd having to tell a mod this, but there’s really no need to be snippy.

Besides all that, is this making anyone safer?

I suppose it will continue to escalate as long as there’s money in it. We have greed and lobbies to thank for these devices. Security is just lipstick on the pig.

The vast majority of doors on commercial airlines are plug doors-the cabin pressure actually pushes them closed,

Of course. I meant to say the cockpit door. I don’t know how those are secured, other than they’re supposed to be pretty impregnable these days, but I don’t imagine it’s cabin air pressure that’s holding the cockpit door closed, unless the pilots are in pressure suits these days.

I wonder, though, just how much damage this hypothetical unarmed-gang-of-12 could do.

Hmm. On a long flight, I imagine an opportunity would arise sooner or later. Until the cockpit gets its own galley and head, anyway…

Well! Y’all enjoy your long holiday weekend travels. Me, I’m staying in L.A. for Thanksgiving this year. It turns into a ghost town for four days, there are plenty of good seats at the movies, and my only groping experiences will be solicited and/or welcomed.

Cheers!

Now I’m not usually gonna agree with a Tennessee Republican, but yeah… this is not money well spent. We’re going about this all wrong.

Call your senator now, today, and politely, calmly and reasonably bitch at them (well, their staff) about this policy.

More info is here at FlyerTalk, together with phone numbers and home pages for key senators’ offices. Even if your senator isn’t on the list, talk to them and let them know this affects you.

Also it looks like the standars for exposure were more than doubled in the last year. How convenient.
The Dose from Compton Backscatter Screening
Peter Rez,*Robert L. Metzger# and Kenneth L. Mossman
http://www.public.asu.edu/~atppr/RPD-Final-Form.pdf

From the above links it looks like the manufactures still haven’t released what their units put out, only that they meet guidelines and specifications. No disclosure.

First avoid the impact. Next minimize any impact. Then mitigate for the remaining impact. It’s kind of like the reduce, reuse, recycle triangle. You get more if you start at the beginning.

Opt out. Make some theater of your own.

I grant that microwave can be called “radiation” and too much is unhealthy, and I certainly agree that some indication of “dosage will not exceed [number generally accepted as safe]” would be appreciated — especially for pilots, who spent more time at high altitudes than most of us and hence may pick up a bit more natural dosage. But this sounds like a case of the R-word being used because it’s scary rather than because it’s a valid description of the risk.

(Maybe all it needs is a renaming. After all, people are less scared of MRI than of NMR, just because they don’t like the word “nuclear”.)