I always thought the whole "master of disguise" plot device was unrealistic, cheap, and best suited for Scooby Doo mysteries.
But now Canadian authorities are detaining a young Asian man who boarded an Air Canada flight wearing a high-quality head and neck mask which disguised him as an elderly white man. For whatever reason, he decided to take off the disguise mid-flight.
(CNN video.)
Well, there goes one argument for racial profiling. A high-grade silicone mask is all it takes to change your race or age and avert TSA scrutiny. But I'm sure our Homeland Security is already dreaming up countermeasures. Maybe in addition to the new freaky groin and breast pat-downs, TSA can also try to peal off your face!
As many others have said before, all this airport hassle and humiliation is not making us safer. We already took the most important measure which was reinforcing cockpit doors. Passengers are also very alert now and will not let some idiot with a knife commandeer a flight. All this other expensive security theater can be bypassed by anybody who is marginally smart and highly determined.
Speaking of airport humiliation, EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to suspend the deployment of body scanners at US airports, pending an independent review. They allege that the naked scans these machines produce violate the Fourth Amendment, the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act.
Amazingly* nobody got a video of the fed-up JetBlue flight attendant who cursed at an unruly passenger, quit his job, grabbed a beer, and exited via the emergency slide, but here's an animated reenactment:
Of course, what the video doesn't show is that the flight attendant, Steven Slater, was later arrested at his home in Queens and charged with felony counts of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment. He has since been released on bail.
And what about the jerk of a passenger? Aren't we all sick of this type on flights... or anywhere actually? Okay, I might sound a little vicious, but I can't wait for the passenger to be identified!
However, I'm still not going to call Slater a hero, but I will say if you're going to have an on-the-job meltdown, it's best to take the nearest exit rather than resort to violence.
I'm not sure if it was this catchy little showtune or the subsequent date scene that caused the Palin family to go into their notorious Facebook rapid response mode:
People are asking me to comment on yesterday’s Fox show that felt like another kick in the gut. Bristol was one who asked what I thought of the show that mocked her baby brother, Trig (and/or others with special needs), in an episode yesterday. Instead of answering, I asked her what she thought. Here is her conscientious reply, which is a much more restrained and gracious statement than I want to make about an issue that begs the question, “when is enough, enough?”:
“When you’re the son or daughter of a public figure, you have to develop thick skin. My siblings and I all have that, but insults directed at our youngest brother hurt too much for us to remain silent. People with special needs face challenges that many of us will never confront, and yet they are some of the kindest and most loving people you’ll ever meet. Their lives are difficult enough as it is, so why would anyone want to make their lives more difficult by mocking them? As a culture, shouldn’t we be more compassionate to innocent people – especially those who are less fortunate? Shouldn’t we be willing to say that some things just are not funny? Are there any limits to what some people will do or say in regards to my little brother or others in the special needs community? If the writers of a particularly pathetic cartoon show thought they were being clever in mocking my brother and my family yesterday, they failed. All they proved is that they’re heartless jerks. - Bristol Palin”
So they think Family Guy mocked Trig? Let me recap the episode. Chris has a crush on a mentally disabled girl in his math class, and he asks her on a date. They go out together and over dinner the girl tells Chris, "My dad's an accountant, and my mom's the former governor of Alaska." That's the closest thing to a Palin family reference I could find.
The date goes downhill from there. The girl is way too bitchy and demanding for kind-hearted Chris.
It was inevitable that the dysfunctional Palin family would one day clash with the dysfunctional Griffin family, but this episode wasn't even about the Palin family! "My mom's the former governor of Alaska" is a throwaway joke. Maybe we're supposed to interpret that line as the girl making a sarcastic jab or an obvious fib. I never know how to interpret Family Guy's random pop culture references.
In fact, I don't really like Family Guy, but I completely approve of putting disabled characters in cartoons like South Park, for example. Remember Timmy? Whether in a rock band, traveling back in time, training a stunt turkey, or being chased by NAMBLA, he was always right there participating with his able-bodied peers. Most people with disabilities (I am one and I know quite a few others) wish the world was more like that... well, minus the NAMBLA part. My point is that the depiction of the mentally disabled high school student doing all the normal high school things is pleasingly progressive.
I'm tired of Sarah Palin using her son Trig as a political prop to attack all things she perceives as elitist and liberal. When she quit her job as the governor of Alaska, I naively hoped that she would use her celebrity status to advocate for the disabled, but the woman simply has no clue. All we've seen from her are fabrications about death panels and a new Republican form of political correctness.
Where is her outrage over the recent story of TSA screeners forcing a 4-year-old to remove his leg braces and walk through an airport security checkpoint unaided? Against the TSA's own rules! Hey Sarah, these are the real cruelties facing real children with disabilities.
Retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney wants to be very serious and harsh about profiling. He wants to strip search all 18-28 year old Muslim men at the airport. This isn't "racial profiling" according to him. It's just "profiling."
Also, relying on stereotypes is ineffective and dangerous. Being against this type of profiling is not "political correctness."
And I said this a few days ago, but it's worth repeating: this isn't security. It's a useless, knee-jerk reaction.
On a related note, another bloviating radio host wants to "scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul." What? She's not even on American Idol anymore. Leave her alone.
I debated whether the Christmas Day Underpants Bomber was worthy of a blog post. I wasn't at all surprised. We're still threatened by terrorists? No shit. I wasn't intrigued. Somebody tried to bring down an airliner? You're kidding me? And I wasn't frightened. Dangers exist in the world? Even on Christmas?
The modus operandi of this near disaster was funny though... like something from every wannabe comedian's act. Will TSA ask us to take off our underpants now? Well, not if airports get these naked scanners:
The real story here is our reaction. That's all we do when it comes to security -- react. It starts with the 24-hour news channel coverage loop which is clearly designed to scare the shit out of us. Then, TSA implements new flight restrictions like asking passengers to stay in their seats for the last hour of the flight. So now any potential terrorist has to launch his plot 65 minutes before landing. Golly, that ought to stop them.
The fact is that every "security hole" we plug has existed since the beginning of commercial flights. That's right. We've always been at the mercy of liquid bombers, shoe-bombers, and underpants-bombers. When somebody actually attempts it, we react. And then somebody will attempt something else, and the fear feeds the endless loop, and maybe one day the airports will give us all paper hospital gowns, anesthetize us, and still.. somebody will find a way to cause harm.
At least one security expert has it right. Bruce Schneier has been saying this for years:
Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.
Everything else is a useless, knee-jerk reaction. As a nation, we still act ridiculously naive on these issues.
Anyway, I'm going back to playing with my Christmas toys. Stay safe.
It's a slippery slope. First TSA takes our babies (or not) and then they take our snowglobes. Both contain liquid, but only the snowglobes have been banned from flights.
Confiscating liquids at airport security checkpoints is, of course, the ongoing reaction to the 2006 terrorist plot to bring down airliners with liquid bombs.
But I'm not being totally snarky with my remark about babies containing liquids. We all do, and many of the ingredients for explosive mixtures, such as potassium nitrate, ammonium nitrate and phosphorus, were originally manufactured from putrefied urine, though that process seems a little too complicated to carry out in an airplane lavatory.
So anyway, just consider this blog post a friendly holiday warning to pack your favorite snowglobes in your luggage, and if by chance your wintry tchotchkes mysteriously disappear, look for them on eBay.
I'm starting to feel a little guilty about my light-hearted swine flu posts earlier this year. I'm afraid that karma is going to bite me in the ass and it's really going to hurt this time.
The H1N1 vaccine -- just like the seasonal flu vaccine -- is produced by growing the virus inside eggs which come from secret farms. These farms are considered so important to national security that among the first to get the vaccine are the egg farmers themselves. I assume they don't object to the privilege.
Which reminds me, I'd like to thank 60 Minutes for not interviewing a single moronic celebrity for their report. Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius put it bluntly, "I tend to like to get my health advice from doctors and scientists. And that's what we would urge people to do."
Yes, I agree with her, but a lot of people don't. Fear and skepticism about the vaccine is being fueled by the likes of Glenn Beck, Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher. It was almost funny watching Bill Maher attempting to backpedal and debunk himself on the Realtime season finale two weeks ago. I wonder if his feelings were hurt by that open letter from the editor of Skeptic magazine.
Indeed it's not a laughing matter. A recent and excellent article in Wired explained how the antivaccinationists are creating a panic that is endangering us all:
The [Los Angeles] Times found that even though only about 2 percent of California’s kindergartners are unvaccinated (10,000 kids, or about twice the number as in 1997), they tend to be clustered, disproportionately increasing the risk of an outbreak of such largely eradicated diseases as measles, mumps, and pertussis (whooping cough). The clustering means almost 10 percent of elementary schools statewide may already be at risk.
This is the key to a public health catastrophe. People want the right to make individual choices, but the greatest protection comes from herd immunity: "in diseases passed from person to person, it is more difficult to maintain a chain of infection when large numbers of a population are immune. The higher the proportion of individuals who are immune, the lower the likelihood that a susceptible person will come into contact with an infected individual."
It's ironic that the parents who cavalierly refuse to get their children vaccinated never experienced the tragedy of a real epidemic because their own generation was vaccinated!
So when more H1N1 vaccines become available, I will try to get one, if that bad karma doesn't get to me first.
I was feeling a sort of primal rage as I read this mother's blog post titled TSA agents took my son. The post recounts a terrifying incident where a mother carried her infant son through a metal detector at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport and the baby's pacifier clip set off an alarm which then set off a series of shocking events. TSA agents did what nobody should ever attempt with any human or animal -- they took her child. They carried him away out of her sight, and as she screamed, all other security agents ignored her.
Separating a parent from his or her child is explicitly against TSA rules, but I have such a low opinion of airport security that I would not doubt the incompetence. I started to wonder if maybe there was a farm where TSA employees are bred and emerge from their pods looking exactly like humans but devoid of emotions.
But then TSA did something sensible and responded to the story with their own blog post which includes an 11 minute CCTV video of the incident. And it's not at all likes the mother's story!
We see her carry the child through the detector. She's still clutching the child as she waits inside some kind of dehumanizing acrylic holding cell (really, what the hell are those things?). Once security agents are ready to deal with her, she takes a seat still holding her child. Then it appears that an agent pats down the child while he is still on the mother's lap. Then the mother herself places the infant in his stroller and sits back down no more than two feet away from him. The agents take their sweet time patting down the mother, but finally both mother and son are free to go.
We have heard how eyewitness testimony can be unreliable, but this unreliable? Really? Somebody can't accurately remember their own personal experience 24 hours after the event?
I know that recent news stories (balloon boy, I'm looking at you now) don't merit hundreds of hours of MSM coverage, but they do serve as a real world MacGuffin -- something that catches our attention but is not the pertinent part of the story.
The issue here is that in the current era of reality television, some parents will lie, scheme, and shamelessly exploit their own children and the sympathy of others for a fleeting taste of fame and fortune.
American Idol meets DHS in ABC's new reality show Homeland Security USA. Tonight, I watched it so you don't have to.
From the start, a faceless and booming voice-of-authority tells us how brave men and women safeguard our country and enforce our laws while patrolling our borders. I assume they mean these border regions that nearly 2/3 of the US population lives in, and the ACLU refers to as a "constitution-free zone."
So how do you turn an absurd bureaucracy with an Orwellian name into fun family entertainment? Well, you have to have some zany characters like the Swiss belly dancer who, in broken English, wanted to know if she would get a refund on her airline ticket because she was being sent back home. I was waiting to hear her sing, but then I remembered that show doesn't start until next week.
A reality show has to promise a lot of suspense. Oh look, we caught a terrorist using his real name and birth date! Oh wait. A case of mistaken identity. But how nice of the kindly agents to tell the family, after traumatizing their children with guns, how to handle the situation in the future. (We don't hear what this advice is, by the way.)
The producers must have an easy time making this show. Everything is right out of the Bush-Cheney propaganda handbook. They stick to the official script that DHS is securing the United States from terrorist threats and attacks. But where were the threats? The umpteen pounds of drugs confiscated don't scare me in the least. Make them legal already. The barbecued bats from Thailand? That's definitely gross and they might have made a few people sick, but I wish our government could put the same effort into inspecting imports which are a very real threat.
Finally, we're treated to the new American experience of airport security theater. The bizarre scene of a boy around age 11 dutifully reporting the contents of his backpack to an agent made me wonder if Bush ever envisioned a Youth League. Hey, it's not too late, George. You've got two weeks left.
The message of the show was clear. Shut up. We're doing this for your own good. Now stand still while we put this collar around your neck.
I rate this show "code red." Be on high alert if you dare to watch it.
This is John McCain's analysis on nuclear power safety (if video doesn't show, click here):
So that's how he dismisses nuclear safety? "Blah, blah, blah?" I guess this shouldn't surprise me coming from the man who would sing "bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran." McCain is not a proponent of careful analysis, and neither are his fans. In fact, they applaud his flippancy. (Check out the impostor Sarah Palin right behind him).
Considering the fact that a nuclear plant houses more than a thousand times the radiation as released in an atomic bomb blast, the magnitude of a single attack could reach beyond 100,000 deaths and the immediate loss of tens of billions of dollars. The land and properties destroyed (your insurance won't cover nuclear disasters) would remain useless for decades and would become a stark monument reminding the world of the terrorists' ideology. With more than 100 reactors in the United States alone, if one is successfully destroyed, just threatening additional attacks could instill the sort of high impact terror which is being sought by a new breed of terrorists.
If McCain wants to be so nonchalant about nuclear power safety, then voters should reconsider his credibility on the issues of national security.
Thanks to Crooks and Liars for reporting on the approaching police state. The Department of Homeland security would really like to put the electric- shock dog collar on all of us for our own good. Ok, I'm just kidding. Actually, it's a bracelet not a collar.
A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers.
This bracelet would:
• take the place of an airline boarding pass • contain personal information about the traveler • be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage • shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes.
I don't think it's a joke, but will the average person submit to this? Sadly and cynically, I think so. Look at the lack of resistance to the very real body-scanning machines installed in several airports. "If it speeds things up and I can keep my shoes on..." seems to be the prevailing sentiment regarding that technology.
But these shock bracelets... certainly people will resist? Or will the straps be colored red white and blue and emblazoned with "Support Our Troops"? This way everybody will know it's their patriotic duty to comply.
But certainly, everybody realizes there will be mistakes. Here is a scenario. Airport security wants to immobilize the obnoxious fist-waving drunk. They click the remote and kill your grandma instead... Which brings me to another question. How does this system work? Is the system set up so one button immobilizes everybody? Because how do you target the terrorist or obnoxious asshole? Ask him for his seat number first? What if the wrong passenger number is punched in?
Regardless, this system cannot make us safer. Here I go thinking like a terrorist again...
Add two new steps to taking over the plane. Step one, remove or disable your shock bracelet. Step two, use your hacked remote to trigger everybody else's bracelet. Then, effortlessly continue with your hijacking now that all the passengers have been immobilized.
Hey, if these bracelets are seen as a triumph in the war on terror, maybe we'll be compelled to wear them all the time. I mean not just at the airport but from cradle to grave. Probably implanted in our skin. Nobody will ever give the government crap again. Nobody will ever protest. Nobody will ever raise their voice. Nobody will ever resist. How could you?
Or how should we?
I see only one valid use for these bracelets. Put them on all politicians when they take office.
I certainly don't. With a tiny bit of brainstorming, I can come up with a few holes in this system.
Obese people can hide items under their folds of fat. Skinny people can conceal items in their body cavities. People can simply disguise things in their carry-on bag. Or multiple people can carry on weapon parts to be assembled on-board. And if a suicide-bomber is caught with a device, what's stopping him from detonating it right there in the airport killing hundreds? Keep in mind, I came up with these genius ideas and I'm not even a criminal mastermind.
The alternative to submitting to the indignity of the full body scan is a full body pat down. What baffles me the most is that people don't seem to mind this invasion of privacy. I'm hearing a lot of comments like "well if it speeds things up and I can keep my shoes on..." Are we getting too used to these humiliations? Today the airport, tomorrow the mall.
Another issue is who views these body scans? We are told a security person in a separate room views the image and immediately deletes it. Call me cynical, but I estimate in 6 months a voyeuristic body scan web site will pop up. Viewing primo celebrity shots will cost extra of course. They can call the web site "Security Theater."
Because that's exactly what the airports are creating -- ostentatious displays of expensive technology to give an illusion of safety. But so far the results are more like a dysfunctional sideshow that has cost the economy $26billion.
Flying the not-so-friendly skies is an inherently dangerous adventure. Planes crashed and sometimes exploded long before we were targeted by terrorists. Security measures should concentrate on keeping the bad guys out of the cockpit. That protects the people on the ground. The people on the plane are already taking a calculated risk.
