So... Have you been pat down yet?

[Volcompat321]

It's not about having nothing to hide, it's about privacy. I mean, I guess some people wouldn't mind letting a random airport employee take a nude body scan of them, or let them grope and feel all over their bodies for the sake of security, but others aren't too keen on either of those choices.

Pretty much.
Plus, I think it's the principle of the matter.
I don't want to let someone I don't want to look at me, look at me. (if that makes sense to you guys).
If it's some chick I have a personal interest in, it's different than letting a stranger look at nude pictures.

Like I said, I personally have no issues with public nudity, but if I don't want to be naked at that time, then I'm not going to be. If I chose to be clothed, then I will remain clothed, which means at the time, I don't want to be seen naked. Therefore, I don't want anyone to be able to see me naked/partially naked while walking through the detectors.

So a question. Are airports going to drop that indecent exposure thing? I mean, since we're required by law to do so?

They should...

But yea, next time I go anywhere, I'm driving.
I do not plan on going out of the country, unless it's when I'm in the military, and I do not plan on going on any long trips without moving, so I don't exactly have to worry about going on an airplane for now.

[amtalx]

Are you kidding? How about we keep things relative. How much crotch grabbing happens in Canada? How much Terrorism? How much happens in Mexico? How much Terrorism?

If you are comparing America to what happens in the middle east, you are crazy. We are in a different hemisphere. Being paranoid is the work of a terrorist and you are playing right into their hands.

Canada and Mexico aren't pillars of capitalism and religious freedom like America. That's not to say that Canada and Mexico don't have that to offer too, but the US has actively marketed itself as the forerunner for free speech and religion. Our money grubbing-attitude and open society are the Cliff's Notes version of what makes us a target.

I'm not comparing the type and frequency of attacks in the Middle East to attacks in the US. Attacks in the Middle East are due more to different interpretations of the Quran, and have been an ongoing conflict for quite some time. Attacks on the US are motivated more by our general way of life.

That's not necessarily true, because none of the terrorists we've been fighting against are really "trained." The term "death blossom" comes from the way Iraqi and Afghani insurgents notoriously spray wild, undisciplined spirals of bullets at their enemies' positions with AK-47s they can barely hold up properly, much less aim and keep under control when the trigger's pulled. They certainly are powerfully motivated by psychotic religious leaders and a desperate desire for vengeance (after all, we have killed around a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians), but first of all they don't really have training because suicide bombing doesn't require any sort of knowledge and can be perpetrated by a 12 year old kid, and second of all, acquiring "proper materials" for a bomb consists of a quickly searching the internet for a tutorial and then making a trip or two to Home Depot.

In other words, any terrorists that are already on our soil could very much be a threat to security-less public transportation. They're just not attacking it because in spite of a few incidents in London and the frequency with which it's done in Israel, they're looking to inflict damage that a giant beast of a country like the U.S. will have a bit harder time shaking off, like flying commercial airliners into buildings.

What I mean by "trained" is organized cells of terrorists that are part of a command structure. Their proficiency with firearms notwithstanding, they are capable of the proper planning and reconnaissance required to actually pull off an attack. The 9/11 hijackers were no slouches. They were well funded and brought people with the right skill sets to do what they needed to do. They didn't bring a mechanic and an insurance salesman to play it by ear when they boarded the plan, they brought trained pilots with a plan. This is a far cry from the domestic terrorism we've seen, which have been poorly planned and uncoordinated attacks by individuals not strongly associated with a larger group.

Looking up a list of materials for building a bomb on the internet, and actually acquiring those materials are vastly different matters. That doesn't even include assembly. Obtaining the nitrogen rich fertilizer need to make a bomb from Home Depot is plainly false. Ammonium nitrate fertilizer has much tighter control on it than before the Oklahoma City bombing in the 90s, and has been largely replaced by a different compound that's not combustible.

[Split]

What I mean by "trained" is organized cells of terrorists that are part of a command structure. Their proficiency with firearms notwithstanding, they are capable of the proper planning and reconnaissance required to actually pull off an attack. The 9/11 hijackers were no slouches. They were well funded and brought people with the right skill sets to do what they needed to do. They didn't bring a mechanic and an insurance salesman to play it by ear when they boarded the plan, they brought trained pilots with a plan. This is a far cry from the domestic terrorism we've seen, which have been poorly planned and uncoordinated attacks by individuals not strongly associated with a larger group. Looking up a list of materials for building a bomb on the internet, and actually acquiring those materials are vastly different matters. That doesn't even include assembly. Obtaining the nitrogen rich fertilizer need to make a bomb from Home Depot is plainly false. Ammonium nitrate fertilizer has much tighter control on it than before the Oklahoma City bombing in the 90s, and has been largely replaced by a different compound that's not combustible.

It's still not that difficult to make a bomb, and you don't have to have a big elaborate game plan and be organized all these separate teams with various assignments to bring it on a bus in a backpack during afternoon commuter traffic in a busy city and detonate it, and yet no one ever does in the U.S., that's all I'm trying to say.

[desturel]

Canada and Mexico aren't pillars of capitalism and religious freedom like America. That's not to say that Canada and Mexico don't have that to offer too, but the US has actively marketed itself as the forerunner for free speech and religion. Our money grubbing-attitude and open society are the Cliff's Notes version of what makes us a target.

The US isn't being a pillar of religious freedom or capitalism right now. People who aren't Christians are being persecuted openly in the media. For example, the two blocks away from ground zero community center. Companies that go bankrupt and drive the economy into the toilet are "too big to fail" and get propped up artificially. For example Goldman Sachs.

Do you honestly think the average person in Pakistan gives a damn about what religion we are practicing in the US? Nope. The same way the average person in the US doesn't give a damn about the people living in Pakistan. Religious freedom and capitalism aren't the reasons why we are targets.

The reason why the US is a target is because we fund both sides of the wars in the middle east. If you are playing both sides of a fight, some people are going to get angry and come after you. They are more than happy to accept our funding in their conflicting battles, but once we stick our nose into their business as the world police, they tell us to butt out.

If we de-funded both sides of the war and stopped policing the Middle East, then there wouldn't be terrorist attacks.

The problem is we can't afford to discontinue funding over there since they (all of the middle eastern countries) are important trading partners with the US. Not just oil, but trade in general. We also can't keep out of their personal conflicts because it's beneficial to us in many ways for them to remain peaceful, so we try and tell both sides to play nice. That doesn't go over well and the whole cycle starts over again where we are attacked because we are supporting their enemy even though we are also supporting them.

It's a mess and it would be nice if we could be a completely independent nation in terms of energy and materials, but that won't happen, at least not in this lifetime.

I'm not comparing the type and frequency of attacks in the Middle East to attacks in the US. Attacks in the Middle East are due more to different interpretations of the Quran, and have been an ongoing conflict for quite some time. Attacks on the US are motivated more by our general way of life.

Again attacks on the US are not motivated by our general way of life. If that was the case Australia and England would be frequent targets of terrorist attacks. They aren't. Japan is a capitalist nation through and through and there there is more religious diversity there than there is in the US. They aren't attacked either.

Using the "they hate our freedoms" excuse blatantly ignores that we are instigating the ages old conflict that has been happening in the Middle East since well before anyone currently alive in this world was born.

And again, I come back to the point of funding. The DHS received $42.7 billion in discretionary spending, 7.8 billion of which went to the TSA. Do you realize that is about 1/3 of the GDP of Pakistan (about 165 billion). We are spending 1/3 of the GDP of the nation that harbors the terrorists to screen for a splinter group of untrained people numbering less than 10,000. 4.3 million dollars per possible terrorist.

There are about 15000 airports in America according to the CIA, about 5000 of those airports are covered by the TSA (in other words, major airports that can accept commercial grade aircraft). 1.56 million dollars per Major airport is spent to grab your crotch.

Meanwhile the terrorists could just go to a bus terminal and blow that up or explode a subway in a major city and take that out. While you are sitting there being paranoid about airport security, domestic terrorists have crashed an airplane into an IRS building, hijacked the Discovery channel for the squirrels, and Shot security at the Holocaust Museum.

The amount of money we spend on pointless endeavors is amazing. If a terrorist wants to target America "for our freedom", there are plenty of ways to do it including blowing yourself up at the airport terminal's security station. It's a great location, lots of unarmed citizens standing clumped together in a nice confined space. Plus if you get a good enough explosion, you'll get multiple flights worth of people. All of that just because you wanted to take a few extra seconds to ogle some woman's breasts.

But okay continue chasing phantoms and show them how tough we are by spending ourselves into debt. It's all good.

[amtalx]

It's still not that difficult to make a bomb, and you don't have to have a big elaborate game plan and be organized all these separate teams with various assignments to bring it on a bus in a backpack during afternoon commuter traffic in a busy city and detonate it, and yet no one ever does in the U.S., that's all I'm trying to say.

I'm certainly not saying that it's impossible to make a bomb from "everyday" materials. Any college level chemistry course will have enough to make something explode, and there is very little defense defense against an incredibly driven individual. My point is that those incredibly driven individuals are generally kept at bay, and those that are located domestically are usually being watched or grossly inept.

@desturel:

I would be naive to say that our financial investment in middle eastern conflicts isn't a significant part of why the US is a target, but you would be equally naive saying that divesting in those conflicts would make everything go away. It's not that simple. Extremist hatred of the US is as much idealistic as it is financial.

Personally, I'm not particularly paranoid about terrorism. It's important to do our due diligence to protect ourselves, but there is no defense against someone convicted beyond all reasoning. The real questions we should be asking are: "How far is too far?" and "How far is far enough?" It's a tricky question with no correct answer, but I dropping all security measures is not in the realm of reasonable possibilities. If someone really wants to break into my house, there is very little I can do to stop them, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop locking my door when I leave.

It's also important to separate random acts of terrorism from the unified effort of Islamic extremists. I'm no stranger to the one-off random act of terrorism. The Discovery Channel building is three blocks from my office. As an aside, it's very weird having CNN update you on what's going on right down the street, although I'm sure any New Yorkers easily trump that experience. Anyway, single incidents of terrorism perpetrated by unbalanced people are not really what's under debate here, it's the collective effort by extremists.

[Kent]

Nope - I won't be travelling for a while anyway, so I haven't had the opportunity to be gate-raped yet.

The US isn't being a pillar of religious freedom or capitalism right now. People who aren't Christians are being persecuted openly in the media.

You obviously haven't been to America and seen media outside of Fox News. Christian/Cathaholic-bashing pops up everywhere any time a Priest gives an altar boy a hot beef injection and then the Pope promptly forgives them. That, and if you look at more sensible and free forms of media that aren't after ratings and appeasing the republicans, you'll see all kinds, delivering all kinds opinions and facts on religions.

For example, the two blocks away from ground zero community center.

The logic behind people complaining about this is that misguided fanatics of a splinter-group of religion X committed a major act of terrorism; therefore, putting up a "church-like" installation near the location of said major act of terrorism is simply an insult to the country. It's being seen as something along the lines of "Muhammad wuz heer," however untrue that point of view might actually be.

I don't think anyone will argue that news media will blow up over the most ridiculous things, but if you're judging the amount of religious freedom in this country by what you see on televised news, then it's my professional opinion that you should come out from under your rock.

[Sinue_v2]

Sinue, I just read this on yahoo.

"There are actually two types of scanners, both of which require you to step into a booth and raise your arms. Millimeter wave machines use electromagnetic waves to create an image of the body, while the more controversial backscatter devices beam low-energy X-rays to produce a picture. The government says the radiation emitted from those devices is minimal, equal to the natural exposure during 2 minutes of flying, though some research suggests it's higher.

This was covered in that NPR article I linked to. The concern being that the .02 microsievert was an average over body area, not total exposure. Even when taken total body exposure into account, which is being generous, the additional radiation exposure is still negligible. Of greater concern is the nature of it's implementation; namely of it's scale and widespread adoption without sufficient time for the proper studies to be done, and potentially too quickly for proper training and qualification to be administering the radiation. The average development cycle of a new drug or treatment to go from Pre-Clinical to clearing Phase III is about 14 years. So even going into this knowing it's safe from a health perspective... it's cutting a hell of a lot of corners which should not be cut.. because *IF* an unforeseen factor or set of circumstances are discovered which do pose a health threat, you need to know that while the technology is still being used in small and controlled samples.

Because the backscatter machines use low-energy X-rays, most of the radiation is absorbed by the skin and doesn't penetrate the body, as medical X-rays do.

It's not absorbed by the skin. That's how it works, by passing through clothing and reflecting, backscattering, off of the skin. Were the radiation absorbed, then there would be nothing for the sensors to pick up and construct the image from. IIRC, the X-Rays don't even penetrate the stratum corneum - the top layer of the epidermis which is composed of dead skin cells.

But some experts think that could raise the risk of skin cancer or sperm mutations, especially in frequent flyers.

Again, I'd say passengers are pretty much fine, even the frequent fliers. If I were worried about any risk group - it would be the flight crew, and even then it'd be a matter of tipping points considering how much radiation they're already being exposed to by spending extended periods of time at high altitudes.

But perhaps the biggest fear about using X-ray scanners at airports is the possibility of a software glitch or operator error that exposes passengers to excessive doses of radiation.

I would consider that, as mentioned above, to be a bigger concern... though again, still rather negligible considering how low a dosage of radiation is being delivered. Even having it miscalibrated to give off .1 microsievert (which may not even be possible depending on how the machine operates and procedure concerning with tolerances) wouldn't be significant.

Now, I'm not familiar with how credible Consumer Reports is, but would you say that your conclusion is accurate? It's not that I doubt you per se, I just want to be sure that whatever conclusion I come to is fact. Thanks.

I understand completely, and you should doubt me. I am by no means an expert or even well versed on radiation. What I would do in your situation is to talk to those who are well versed in dealing with radiation. That may entail writing a few emails to some Physics professors asking their opinion, talking to your local hospitals radiologist, and reading up on studies done in the peer-review literature. PubMed is an excellent archive, but beyond the abstract it's not free. Sometimes there's a link-out to an open access version, or you could try to see what's available on PLoS (Public Library of Science, which gives the full paper for free). Hell, even Wikipedia can be a good option provided you follow up on the sources and find whether or not they're credible.

But if it's a matter of trusting some guy on the internet, consumer reports, or "the gub'mint"... then that's all you're going to have to go on, is trust... because none of those are held to the rigid standards that peer-review and practicing experts are held to.

[Red Ring]

Only fondle the ugly people. Hot sexy people don't blow themselves up

[Sinue_v2]

You obviously haven't been to America and seen media outside of Fox News. Christian/Cathaholic-bashing pops up everywhere any time a Priest gives an altar boy a hot beef injection and then the Pope promptly forgives them.

Er, well that's usually because the vast majority of American Christians are not Catholic, and the Catholics have made a lot of enemies among the various Protestant congregations - especially the Evangelicals. Coming out and admitting that Darwin and Galileo were right didn't win them many friends among them, surely. Even the Anglicans are catching hell for backing the Catholics up on that. So yeah, mocking the Catholic Church's gaffs and foibles is a well honored Christian tradition here in the states. You tend to hear less of folk like Kent (It's god's tax-exempt money, I'm just managing it for him) Hovind or Ted (Meth fueled gay sex parties at my place) Haggard. You almost never hear about folk like Ken (Wedge Document) Ham or the Texas BoE's resident dentist, Dan (Somebody has to stand up to the experts) McLeroy who are trying to replace education with indoctrination.

Sure they get a little air time here and there, usually sympathetic in nature if not at the time - then a few months later after the scandal has broke. Nothing on the scale of what the Catholic Church gets bashed for. But even with all that aside, there's good reason for the extra heat on the Catholic church... they were sodomizing children and covering it up.

[Chukie sue]

This was covered in that NPR article I linked to. The concern being that the .02 microsievert was an average over body area, not total exposure. Even when taken total body exposure into account, which is being generous, the additional radiation exposure is still negligible. Of greater concern is the nature of it's implementation; namely of it's scale and widespread adoption without sufficient time for the proper studies to be done, and potentially too quickly for proper training and qualification to be administering the radiation. The average development cycle of a new drug or treatment to go from Pre-Clinical to clearing Phase III is about 14 years. So even going into this knowing it's safe from a health perspective... it's cutting a hell of a lot of corners which should not be cut.. because *IF* an unforeseen factor or set of circumstances are discovered which do pose a health threat, you need to know that while the technology is still being used in small and controlled samples.



It's not absorbed by the skin. That's how it works, by passing through clothing and reflecting, backscattering, off of the skin. Were the radiation absorbed, then there would be nothing for the sensors to pick up and construct the image from. IIRC, the X-Rays don't even penetrate the stratum corneum - the top layer of the epidermis which is composed of dead skin cells.



Again, I'd say passengers are pretty much fine, even the frequent fliers. If I were worried about any risk group - it would be the flight crew, and even then it'd be a matter of tipping points considering how much radiation they're already being exposed to by spending extended periods of time at high altitudes.



I would consider that, as mentioned above, to be a bigger concern... though again, still rather negligible considering how low a dosage of radiation is being delivered. Even having it miscalibrated to give off .1 microsievert (which may not even be possible depending on how the machine operates and procedure concerning with tolerances) wouldn't be significant.



I understand completely, and you should doubt me. I am by no means an expert or even well versed on radiation. What I would do in your situation is to talk to those who are well versed in dealing with radiation. That may entail writing a few emails to some Physics professors asking their opinion, talking to your local hospitals radiologist, and reading up on studies done in the peer-review literature. PubMed is an excellent archive, but beyond the abstract it's not free. Sometimes there's a link-out to an open access version, or you could try to see what's available on PLoS (Public Library of Science, which gives the full paper for free). Hell, even Wikipedia can be a good option provided you follow up on the sources and find whether or not they're credible.

But if it's a matter of trusting some guy on the internet, consumer reports, or "the gub'mint"... then that's all you're going to have to go on, is trust... because none of those are held to the rigid standards that peer-review and practicing experts are held to.

Thanks for your input and understanding.