Filed under: Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Failure, Health, Privacy, PZ Myers, Science, tech, Travel
I just took my blood pressure. Because of past problems with hypertension, I keep a pretty close eye on it. Here are three readings, using a very good automatic digital monitor:
- 123/85
- 121/88
- 115/81
This is how they usually recommend doing it – taking several readings over the course of a few minutes, to help get a good sense of where your bp actually is since there are natural variations and just one reading can be misleading. And those numbers are pretty good – showing that my blood pressure is under control thanks to a combination of diet, exercise, and drugs.
Happily, my doctor trusts me to keep an eye on my bp, because whenever I go in to the clinic, my numbers jump. The readings above would probably be a good 20/10 points higher, if not a lot more. See, I have a mild case of “white coat syndrome”. I just dislike almost any kind of testing by strangers like that (one of the reasons I am happy to work on my own, in my own business, and on my own time).
I also hate traveling. Well, more accurately, I hate having to put up with the hassles and intrusion on my privacy that goes along with dealing with airport security. Flying is fine. So is driving around in a new place, seeing the sights, experiencing a new culture. But dealing with the TSA or any similar entity? Gah – I hate it with a passion.
And if the latest debacle of an idea to provide ‘security’ comes to pass, I’m probably going to hate it even more:
Terrorist ‘pre-crime’ detector field tested in United States
Planning a sojourn in the northeastern United States? You could soon be taking part in a novel security programme that can supposedly ‘sense’ whether you are planning to commit a crime.
Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.
Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person’s gaze, to judge a subject’s state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.
Charming.
Of course, scientists are skeptical:
Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a think-tank based in Washington DC that promotes the use of science in policy-making, is pessimistic about the FAST tests. He thinks that they will produce a large proportion of false positives, frequently tagging innocent people as potential terrorists and making the system unworkable in a busy airport. “I believe that the premise of this approach — that there is an identifiable physiological signature uniquely associated with malicious intent — is mistaken. To my knowledge, it has not been demonstrated,” he says. “Without it, the whole thing seems like a charade.”
As well they should be. Even the DHS spokesperson says that the FAST system was only “70% accurate” in lab tests. As PZ Myers notes:
Feeling anxious about the job interview you’re flying to? You will be strip-searched. Angry because the incompetent boob at the ticket counter bumped you from your flight? Your body cavities must be inspected. Steely in your resolve, forthright in your determination to strike the infidel? Welcome aboard!
More security theatre. Wonderful.
Jim Downey
3.5 million square miles of desert: a meteorite-hunter’s dream. Here’s an excerpt from this fascinating account:
Dar al Gani
Small in size at 80 x 50 km (50 x 30 mi), Dar al Gani is the most important Saharan strewnfield, with nearly a thousand itemized meteorites, Lunar and Martian rocks, various achondrites, etc. At least 150 different falls are represented. When you approach Dar al Gani from the west, the first thing to strike you is its whiteness, as if you were looking out over mountain-tops covered in snow: a mirage in the desert. First comes a succession of terraces which then open on to a smooth, rolling expanse of white, without rocks or vegetation. Meteorites have been falling here for thousands of years, and it goes without saying that strewnfields like this one are of scientific interest. Unlike Antarctica, where ice shifts concentrate meteorites and wind scatters the fragments, things here stay in the same place from one millennium to the next. I often think of Dar al Gani as a photographic plate recording all falls over a significant time-scale of 20,000 years or more. The terrain is gentle and preserving, so that thousands of years worth of data are at present accessible.
The author and his brother make one of the most important finds ever. Very cool, and with some great pictures.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Constitution, Cory Doctorow, Failure, Government, Privacy, Travel
Two items to share about the agency everyone loves to hate.
First, a state legislator has come up with a great idea down in Texas:
Texas Legislation Proposes Felony Charges for TSA Agents
Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview) introduced a package of bills into the Texas House of Representatives on Tuesday that would challenge the TSA’s authority in a number of ways. The first bill, HB 1938, prohibits full body scanning equipment in any Texas airport and provides for criminal and civil penalties on any airport operator who installs the equipment. The second bill, HB 1937, criminalizes touching without consent and searches without probable cause.
In theory, Texas may be able to do this, under the 10th amendment of the Constitution. In practice, I bet the federal government would threaten to pull all funding support for airports and other transportation options, as well as challenge the law in the federal courts under the Commerce Clause, and the Texas legislature would cry "uncle" in short order. Shame, really, because it would be nice to reclaim our privacy rights and stop the groping.
But not only will we not be allowed to reclaim those privacy rights, the TSA wants us to pay even more for the privilege:
TSA Wants To Increase Airport Fees Because You’re Not Checking Your Bags
To avoid bag check fees, travelers are routinely opting to carry on their bags, but the TSA says that the cost is just getting shifted to tax payers, to the tune of $260 million a year. That’s because the more bags that don’t get checked, the more bags the TSA has to inspect by hand at security checkpoints. Now the TSA is looking to get a cut of some of the checked baggage fees the airlines collect.
* * *
The TSA has also been pushing for an increase in the airport security fee travelers currently pay. Currently passengers pay up to a $5 fee each for a one-way ticket.
Five bucks? That seems low to me – don’t sex workers usually charge more for such hands-on activity? No wonder the TSA wants to increase the charge.
Jim Downey
Via Cory @ BB. Cross posted to dKos.
Interesting news from the Indian Space Research Organization: discovery of a very large lava tube which looks like it’d be very suitable as the basis for a habitat/research facility on the Moon.
From the Calcutta Telegraph:
New Delhi, Feb. 23: A giant volcanic cave beneath the moon’s surface discovered by Indian scientists last year through an analysis of archived images from the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft may be a candidate site for a future human habitat.
Researchers at the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, analysed 3D images from Chandrayaan-1’s Terrain Mapping Camera to identify the 1.7-kilometre long cave in a region of the moon called Oceanus Procellarum.
The hollow structure created by ancient volcanic lava flows on the Moon may provide lunar explorers a natural shelter from radiation storms and extreme variations between day and night temperatures encountered on the lunar surface, the SAC scientists said.
Glad to see someone is thinking about the future of humans in space.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Government, Politics, Predictions, Privacy, Society, Terrorism, Travel, Violence
I was reading a discussion about this article concerning foreign students, and came across the following comment which really rang true:
You do realize that many of us who live outside the US consider that it is a Police State?
posted by adamvasco at 6:23 PM on January 11
I was a foreign-exchange student in West Germany in the summer of 1974. It was a wonderful experience. As part of that wonderful experience, the group I was with took a trip into East Germany. And yes, it was pretty much exactly what you would expect from hearing stories from that era, complete with Stasi minders, random security checks, and guards coming onto our bus and conducting searches multiple times.
Perhaps this is part of the reason why I object so to the expansion of a “security state” here in the U.S. – I’ve seen what that can lead to. Personally, I don’t think we’re there yet – but all the pieces are in place, and all it would really take would be for someone in power to start actively using this structure not just to ‘provide security’ but to impose an actual police state. And it is very sobering to hear from outside that this is how our country is perceived.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Emergency, George Orwell, Government, Politics, Predictions, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Terrorism, Travel, YouTube
The Miami-Dade Police Department recently finalized a deal to buy a drone, which is an unmanned plane equipped with cameras. Drones have been used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war against terror.
* * *
MDPD purchased a drone named T-hawk from defense firm Honeywell to assist with the department’s Special Response Team’s operations. The 20-pound drone can fly for 40 minutes, reach heights of 10,500 feet and cruise in the air at 46 miles an hour. “It gives us a good opportunity to have an eye up there. Not a surveilling eye, not a spying eye. Let’s make the distinction. A surveilling eye to help us to do the things we need to do, honestly, to keep people safe,” said Miami-Dade Police Director James Loftus.
This quotation, slightly altered, is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
(CNN) — If you get arrested in California, better hope there are no incriminating texts or e-mails or sensitive data stored on your phone.
On Monday, the California Supreme Court ruled that police in that state can search the contents of an arrested person’s cell phone.
Citing U.S. Supreme Court precedents, the ruling contends that “The loss of privacy upon arrest extends beyond the arrestee’s body to include ‘personal property … immediately associated with the person of the arrestee’ at the time of arrest.”
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Metro anti-terrorism teams will immediately start random inspections of passengers’ bags and packages to try to protect the rail and bus system from attack, transit officials said Thursday.
Police using explosives-screening equipment and bomb-sniffing dogs will pull aside people carrying bags for the inspections according to a random number, Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn said. The searches might be conducted at one location at a time or at several places simultaneously. If people refuse, they will be barred from entering the rail station or boarding a bus with the item, Taborn said. The inspections will be conducted “indefinitely,” he said.
“You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.”
If you’ve ridden the subway in New York City any time in the past few years, you’ve probably seen the signs: “If You See Something, Say Something.”
In Washington, D.C., Metro riders are treated to a recording of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging them to report suspicious sights to the proper authorities.
Now, Wal-Mart shoppers across the country will see Napolitano’s message in a video as they stand in the checkout line.
“We are expanding ‘See Something, Say Something’ in a number of venues,” Napolitano tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. “It’s Wal-Mart, it’s Mall of America, it’s different sports and sporting arenas, it’s transit systems. It’s a catchy phrase, but it reminds people that our security is a shared responsibility.”
“All this means that the people of any country have the right, and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities or are consecrated by time and custom. Here are the title deeds of freedom which should lie in every cottage home. Here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind. Let us preach what we practice — let us practice — what we preach.”
In ancient times, Gorgon was a mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them. In modern times, Gorgon may be one of the military’s most valuable new tools.
* * *
This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
Bryce Williams wasn’t expecting to walk through a metal detector or have his bags screened for explosives at the Greyhound bus terminal near downtown Orlando.
But Williams and 689 other passengers went through tougher-than-normal security procedures Thursday as part of a random check coordinated by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.
The idea is to keep off guard terrorists and others who mean harm, thereby improving safety for passengers and workers. There was no specific threat to the bus station on John Young Parkway south of Colonial Drive.
I can’t help but feel that we took a wrong turn somewhere.
Jim Downey
*Of course. Cross posted to dKos.
Filed under: BoingBoing, Constitution, Failure, Government, Guns, Society, Travel, YouTube
. . . you will quickly find yourself punished, even if you are a deputized Air Marshal and airline pilot.
That’s about the only conclusion one can draw from this story:
Pilot in Hot Water for Exposing Security Flaws
An anonymous 50-year-old airline pilot is in hot water with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) after posting on YouTube a behind-the-scenes tour of what he says are security flaws at San Francisco International Airport.
While airplane passengers go through security screening — such as with metal detectors, full body scanners and pat downs — the pilot shows in one of several video clips, recorded with his cell phone, that airport employees at SFO simply swipe a card to go through an unmanned door.
* * *
According to sister station ABC7 in San Francisco, the disclosure resulted in federal air marshals and sheriff’s deputies showing up at the pilot’s home — an event the pilot, a deputized federal air marshal, also recorded — to confiscate his federally issued handgun.
There’s a nice video clip there on the news site about the whole incident. Which contains this great quote from the TSA in a letter sent to the pilot after Federal Marshals showed up at his home to confiscate his handgun that says “A FFDO (Federal Flight Deck Officer) must not engage in … conduct that impairs the efficiency of TSA … or causes public loss of confidence in TSA.”
There’s also an interview with the TV station’s aviation consultant who worked at the airport in question for 47 years who confirms that the problems the pilot documented are as characterized.
So, while the traveling public has to deal with enhanced groping and potentially dangerous scanners, anyone with an access card gets to take whatever they want out onto the airfield and onto planes being serviced. But if you’re in a position to document that fact and publicize it, you should expect the TSA to come down hard on your ass.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Emergency, Predictions, Preparedness, Terrorism, Travel, YouTube
Gah. One of the things I kept seeing/hearing from those who support the TSA security procedures is that if you don’t like the groping or scans, just take a train or bus. When countered with the response that these procedures at the airports could be extended to train and bus stations, it’s common to hear the comment: “Nah, they’d *never* do that.”
Guess again:
Jim Downey
Via We Won’t Fly.
No doubt, even if you don’t read my blog regularly and only pay minimal attention to the news, you’ve heard of the increasing aggravation and frustration over the new TSA security procedures. Even the President and Secretary of State have said that they find the procedures problematic:
WASHINGTON – Would Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton like to submit to one of those security pat-downs at airports?
“Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean who would?” she told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in an interview broadcast Sunday.
It’s bad enough that there are semi-organized efforts to jam the system on this Wednesday, expected to be the busiest day of the year for airports:
CHICAGO – As if air travel over the Thanksgiving holiday isn’t tough enough, it could be even worse this year: Airports could see even more disruptions because of a loosely organized Internet boycott of full-body scans.
Even if only a small percentage of passengers participate, experts say it could mean longer lines, bigger delays and hotter tempers.
But the procedures are “necessary”, as the head of the TSA just re-affirmed:
WASHINGTON – The head of the Transportation Security Administration on Sunday acknowledged that new full-body scanners and thorough pat-downs can be invasive and uncomfortable, but he said that the need to stay a step ahead of terrorists rules out changes in airport screening procedures.
John Pistole told CNN’s “State of the Union” that, despite the public uproar over new screening techniques, “we are not changing the policies” that he said were the best ways of keeping the traveling public safe. TSA screeners, he said, are “the last line of defense” in protecting air travelers.
* * *
“Clearly, if we are to detect terrorists who have proven innovative, creative in the design and implementation of bombs that are going to blow up airplanes and kill people, we have to do something to prevent that,” Pistole said.
Absolutely. Stopping terrorists from attacking our air travelers has to be placed above every other concern. But the new procedures won’t do that, as evil-doers could just conceal bomb components in their body cavities, as they have done before. No, this won’t suffice.
But there’s a simple, obvious solution which would eliminate the risk of any kind of terrorist destruction of airplanes: just stop people from flying. Shut down the whole system, within the US and incoming flights from other countries. That’s the only certain way to stop the attacks and thwart the diabolical plans of those who would want to harm us.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Failure, Government, Predictions, Privacy, Society, Travel
I haven’t written a lot about the most recent outrage over the “porno scanners” though it seems that my predictions almost a year ago are certainly coming true. And now the folks at Gizmodo have a nice addition to the mess:
One Hundred Naked Citizens: One Hundred Leaked Body Scans
At the heart of the controversy over “body scanners” is a promise: The images of our naked bodies will never be public. U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner. These are those images.
A Gizmodo investigation has revealed 100 of the photographs saved by the Gen 2 millimeter wave scanner from Brijot Imaging Systems, Inc., obtained by a FOIA request after it was recently revealed that U.S. Marshals operating the machine in the Orlando, Florida courthouse had improperly-perhaps illegally-saved images of the scans of public servants and private citizens.
* * *
Yet the leaking of these photographs demonstrates the security limitations of not just this particular machine, but millimeter wave and x-ray backscatter body scanners operated by federal employees in our courthouses and by TSA officers in airports across the country. That we can see these images today almost guarantees that others will be seeing similar images in the future. If you’re lucky, it might even be a picture of you or your family.
Something to look forward to from our fine friends at the TSA.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 