Security
- ⇒ A pilot on airline security (link from Jul 24, 2007)
Dave Mackett, President of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance writes a compelling argument for the dangers of paying for the illusion of safety rather than paying for the more difficult task of actually making airline travel safer.
What needs to happen across all segments of airline security is a philosophical change from trying to prevent an attack (which doesn’t work in a system this size) to defending against one (which does — a la Flight 93).
Almost six years after 9/11, it is inexcusable that — in an environment where TSA misses more than 90% of weapons, RON aircraft are not secured, and ground employees are not screened — fewer than 2% of our airliners have a team of armed pilots aboard, fewer than 5% have air marshals, and the flight attendants have no mandatory tactical or behavioral assessment training. $24 billion dollars later, we are not materially safer, except in the areas of intelligence that prevent an attack from getting to an airport. Once at the airport, there is little reason to believe the attack won’t succeed.
- ⇒ TSA detains woman over infant's sippy cup (link from Jun 15, 2007)
So this woman is humiliated by inept TSA personnel, then misses her flight, because she didn't use brand-name nursery water in her child's sippy cup. People keep asking me why, when we go to Washington DC next week, we aren't flying - this is exactly why.
- ⇒ Snitchtown, by Cory Doctorow (link from Jun 12, 2007)
When you watch everyone, you watch no one.
This seems to have escaped the operators of the digital surveillance technologies that are taking over our cities. In the brave new world of doorbell cams, wi-fi sniffers, RFID passes, bag searches at the subway and photo lookups at office security desks, universal surveillance is seen as the universal solution to all urban ills. But the truth is that ubiquitous cameras only serve to violate the social contract that makes cities work.