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Over the past year and certainly over the last few months, fears about the effects of radiation on passengers passing through whole-body scanners have been splashed across newspaper headlines. The bottom line from researchers: Its OK. It would take something like 1,000 screenings per individual per year to exceed radiation standards. We are safe! Radiation won’t kill us. But, what about all of those TSA screeners?
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Where are our Congressional watchdogs these days? When it comes to counter-terrorism issues, they are all hiding. No one wants to seem to be soft on terror even as our pockets are being picked by misdirected spending and millions of Americans are facing more and more travels hassles.
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If you’re unlucky enough to have a medical emergency on a plane, your flight attendants are trained to help. Same thing goes for other public places, like restaurants and schools. But an internal memo circulated to employees at one airport suggests the TSA would rather you take your heart attack elsewhere.
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Ned Levi examines TSA’s new random hand swabbing program to detect explosive residue on airplane passengers and finds that it’s unlikely to work, despite claims of security experts, mostly because they’ve focused on the equipment, and not the overall security program of which they are a part.
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The Consumer Travel Alliance feels that this effort is a step in the right direction for airport and airline security. Unlike the whole-body scanners that have not been fully tested, that admittedly cannot detect many explosives in powder form or when hidden in body cavities, and that subject Americans to the indignity of a virtual strip search, ETD provides an acceptable layer of security. It is focused on explosives, it has been tested extensively over years of use, and the method is non-invasive, protecting personal dignity.
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British Airways will test using city waste for jet fuel, security scanner firms up marketing, biofuel power grows for air industry
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Back in January, Bruce Schneier on his blog, announced a TSA Logo Contest. Above are the finalists. For those of you who missed this, myself included, here is an excerpt from his blog with a call for entries and with some of the proposed logos.
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Student detained by TSA and the FBI for learning Arabic with flash cards; Canadian security says, “Put your hand in your pants”;The annual Running of Congress
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Though, this was the first time I had heard of studies attempting to unlock the secrets of how dogs smell, these studies have been being conducted for decades at our national labs and in private labs. A canine’s nose functionality is still a mystery for sensory scientists. Dogs have been trained to sniff and search for bodies under rubble, explosives, drugs, banned foods and even the presence of cancer.
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What we have here, based on fairly basic research, is an expensive new whole-body scanner technology being deployed nationwide by TSA over the howls of numerous privacy groups, without independent testing, using the manufacturers’ claims, all being lead by the former head of the Department of Homeland Security saying, basically, trust us.
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