Oh great... Wait for the headlines of "Airbus brought down by banana killers"...
US 'wasted billions on faulty terror equipment'
Telegraph
09/05/2005
America has spent billions of pounds on faulty anti-terrorism screening equipment, which they now have to replace. The troublesome devices include explosives detectors triggered by Yorkshire puddings ... Among the problems were radiation detectors unable to differentiate between nuclear weapons, cat litter or bananas.
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As Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab so nearly brought down Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, there are those who may be sceptical of Janet Napolitano's claim (she's the Department of Homeland Security secretary) that the security system "worked really very, very smoothly" in Detroit. Pipes is one of those sceptics, and here he concludes that because U.S. security agencies refuse to take the sensible precaution of concentrating their resources on the small target pool of suspects, namely Muslims, about 1 percent of the population, hundreds of millions of passengers must bear the burden of extra cost, inconvenience, and loss of privacy.
The System "Worked Really Very, Very Smoothly" in Detroit?
by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
December 28, 2009
Am musing on what punishment would be appropriate for the "civil liberties campaigners" mentioned below. Also I'll believe Adonis on profiling when I see it.
Air passengers face two body searches
The Sunday Times
January 3, 2010
...Controversially Adonis raised the prospect of more “profiling” of potentially high-risk passengers. “It is important that wherever there are any concerns that airport staff may have about passengers, whatever their backgrounds, they should have the search technology to hand,” he said.
Civil liberties campaigners have warned that proposed new scanners, which in effect “strip” passengers revealing the outlines of breasts and genitals, are an invasion of privacy.
The Christmas Day Airliner Attack and the Intelligence Process
Stratfor
January 4, 2010
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When Janet Napolitano or George Tenet say that the system worked after an incident, they mean not that the outcome was satisfactory, but that the process operated as the process was intended to operate. Of course, being faithful to a process is not the same as being successful, but the U.S. intelligence community's obsession with process frequently elevates process above success. Certainly, process is needed to operate a vast system, but process also is being used to deny people authority to do what is necessary outside the process, or, just as bad, it allows people to evade responsibility by adhering to the process.
Not only does the process relieve individuals in the system from real authority; it also strips them of motivation. In a system driven by process, the individual motivated to abort the process and improvise is weeded out early. There is no room for "cowboys," the intelligence community term for people who hope to be successful at the mission rather than faithful to the process. Obviously, we are overstating matters somewhat, but not by as much as one might think. Within the U.S. intelligence and security process, one daily sees good people struggling to do their jobs in the face of processes that can't possibly anticipate all circumstances.
The distribution of intelligence to the people who need to see it is, of course, indispensable, along with whatever other decision supports can be contrived. But, in the end, unless individuals are expected and motivated to make good decisions, the process is merely the preface to failure. No system can operate without process. At the same time, no process can replace authority, motivation and, ultimately, common sense.
The fear of violating procedures cripples Western efforts to shut down low-level terrorism. But the procedures are themselves flawed. A process that says that in a war against radical Islamists, an elderly visitor from Iceland is as big of a potential threat as a twentysomething from Yemen might satisfy some ideological imperative, but it violates the principle of common sense and blocks the authority and the motivation to act decisively.
It is significant that this is one of the things the Obama administration has changed in response to the attempted bombing.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced Jan. 4 that anyone traveling from or through nations regarded as state sponsors of terrorism as well as "other countries of interest" will be required to go through enhanced screening. The TSA said those techniques would include full-body pat downs, carry-on luggage searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology. The U.S. State Department lists Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism. The other countries whose passengers will face enhanced screening include Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. A rational system of profiling thus appears to be developing.
In all likelihood, no system can eliminate events such as what happened on Christmas, and in all likelihood, the republic would survive an intermittent pattern of such events - even successful ones. Focusing on the strategic level makes sense. But given the level of effort and cost involved in terrorist protection throughout the world, successful systems for distributing intelligence and helping identify potentially significant threats are long overdue. The U.S. government has been tackling this since 2001, and it still isn't working.
But, in the end, creating a process that precludes initiative by penalizing those who do not follow procedures under all circumstances and intimidating those responsible for making quick decisions from risking a mistake is bound to fail.
Hmm, wonder what blowing kids up does to their human rights?
I suspect it is the Mr Dowtys of this world that brought about the ludicrous rules that stopped me taking photographs of my nephews jumping on a bouncy castle at a local sports centre recently.
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Full body scanners may break child pornography laws
Telegraph
05 Jan 2010
The full body scanners being introduced to Britain's airports risk breaking child protection laws against making indecent images of children, campaign groups have claimed. The pictures created by the scanners are so graphic they are tantamount to "virtual strip searching", according to privacy campaigners who oppose the use of the security devices.
Ministers may be forced to consider making under-18s exempt from the scans and civil liberties campaigners are demanding measures to ensure the images, which will include those of celebrities, are not leaked onto the internet.
Airport officials say the images from the £80,000 scanners are only seen by a single security officer in a remote location before it is deleted. But a 12-month trial at Manchester airport of scanners which reveal naked images of passengers only went ahead last month after children were exempted.
The decision came after Terri Dowty, of Action for Rights of Children, gave warning that the scanners could breach the Protection of Children Act 1978, under which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a "pseudo-image" of a child.
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