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karl wrote:All this talk of taking down airplanes has me curious. Why are terrorists expected to hijack another plane with all the scrutiny? As far as I know, detonating a bomb in the middle of hundreds of Christmas travelers waiting in line to be examined would be more productive in terrorizing the citizens of this country. But since our legislators are so convinced these methods work, we might as well start putting these checkpoints at our front doors. Every time you walk out of your house you'll be subjected to a pat down. It's for the good of the public, folks. These security measures are as necessary as big government.

Many army generals have wanted to fight the last war. I see the anti-terror campaign as being no different. The terrorists try new things and the security people simply add those things to the list of items that they say that they are addressing.

There will be shock and dismay when the next attack bears no resemblance to the previous attacks. In the mean time, we have an ever growing bureaucracy to condition us toward instant compliance. Secretly, everyone knows that the next terrorist agents will be wheel chair bound octogenarians in soiled diapers and six year old girls.

PBratton wrote:

Dave2 wrote:

loadedliberal wrote:

rp_photo wrote:Like most other intrusive law enforcement practices, it will incovenience and "false positive" good people while having little effect on wrongdoers.

Wake up, sheeple!

What do you suggest we do?

See, that's the catch. If someone really wants to bring down a plane, there's not much we can do to stop them. It's kinda like the "analog loophole" for music piracy -- the music files can have all the fancy DRM in the world, but that can't stop me from sticking a DI box in front of the speakers and pushing the record button. The only way to keep bombs off planes is to not let anything or anyone (they might've stuck it in a place "where the sun don't shine") on the plane in the first place, and that sorta defeats the purpose.

You guys realize that there is a much higher risk of the cargo taking a plane down than a passenger, right?

A vast majority of the cargo stuffed in the belly of airplanes are not inspected, the shippers are being 'trusted' to keep their cargo secure...

And when you couple that with the high rate of TSA failures to detect, based on their own tests of their screening process, most of the "security" that anyone feels on an airplane has limited basis in fact. The huge presence of uniformed employees and the impressive looking equipment in the screening process definitely will scare off the dumbest of those who might want to try to take down an airplane. It isn't going to faze the smart ones.

We are playing one heck of a price in dollars, dignity and freedom for a limited deterrent effect. The pre-crime machine looks like it has the potential to snare even more innocent travelers than the backscatter x-ray does.