Loss of Privacy

From Slashdot:

“As millions of fans sit glued to their sets next Sunday, one part of the game they will not see is the massive deployment of federal and local law enforcement resources to achieve what is being called the most technologically secure Super Bowl in history, an event that has been officially designated as a National Security Special Event (PDF). At the top of the list are gamma-ray cargo and vehicles scanners that can reportedly see through six inches of steel to reveal the contents of large vehicles. ‘We can detect people, handguns and rifles,’ says Customs and Border Protection Officer Brian Bell. ‘You’d be a fool to bring something into that stadium that you shouldn’t. We’re going to catch it. Our goal is to look at every vehicle that makes a delivery inside the stadium and inside the secure perimeter.’ Next is the 51-foot Featherlite mobile command center for disaster response that will support the newly constructed $18 million Regional Operations Center (ROC) for the Marion County Department of Homeland Security that will serve as a fusion center for coordinating the various federal agencies involved in providing security for the Super Bowl. One interesting security measure are the ‘Swiveloc’ explosion-proof manhole covers (video) that Indianapolis has spent $150,000 installing that are locked down during the Super Bowl. In case of an underground explosion, the covers lift a couple of inches off the ground — enough to vent gas out without feeding in oxygen to make an explosion bigger — before falling back into place. Finally the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI has installed a network of cameras that will be just a click away for government officials. ‘If you had the right (Internet) address, you could set up a laptop anywhere and you could watch the camera from there,’ says Brigadier General Stewart Goodwin.”

Holy shit! Who would want to spend any time in a stadium with that much unnecessary security? This is just proof that the terrorists won a long time ago and people are far too willing to give up their rights and freedoms for a little bit of perceived security.

From WFAA:

Police suspect Clayton Keith Dovel, a Transportation Security Administration baggage inspector at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Terminal E, of stealing iPads from checked luggage.

Here’s a tip folks, don’t put electronics in checked luggage. The TSA workers cannot be trusted.

TSA workers at La Guardia airport in New York City found two pipes in a passenger’s bag so they removed them. Although they were determined to not be dangerous, the pipes were confiscated anyway and the TSA tossed them in a nearby bin that the TSA uses at their checkpoints. Everyone forgets the pipes are even in the bin.

Six hours later, a new shift comes on to work. This shift of TSA workers freaks out because no one knows how these pipes got in the bin, so the TSA workers call the police bomb squad out of “abundance of caution.” This “abundance of caution” does not apply to passengers because, at no point in time is the airport evacuated and no portion of the airport closed while the bomb squad investigates.

So, just what were those pipes?

Several law enforcement sources told CNN the objects were determined to be homeopathic medical devices.

Image is from the CNN story.

The TSA caused a security scare at LAX, causing delays after mistaking a woman’s insulin pump for a gun.

The incident occurred around 7:30 a.m. as the female passenger was being screened at Los Angeles International Airport. She went through electronic screening, which detected an item shaped like a weapon, the sources said.

But before screeners could search her, she walked away toward the boarding gates. Concerned Transportation Security Administration officials immediately alerted LAX police and the LAPD of a possible security breach.

So the screeners are so incompetent that they can’t stop one woman from walking away, nor can they detect the difference between a gun and an insulin pump? Their first thought was to call the police instead of stopping her?

Sources familiar with the incident said security staff scrambled to determine what happened but eventually realized the “weapon” was actually a medical device.

The woman was briefly detained and questioned. Authorities delayed some passengers boarding for up to an hour, according to sources.

How did this realization come about? According to the report, the realization came first, then they detained and questioned her. Just exactly how incompetent is the TSA?

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