Loss of Privacy

Despite the fact that airports are very busy places, we haven’t seen many terrorist attacks on them. The Total Airport Security System, or TASS, claims that we are under threat and need their system to protect us from the terrorists who aren’t attacking us.

Some major flaws in this video is that a lot of things have to happen for a supposed terrorist attack to happen. What happens when the person dispersing the biological agent is actually authorized to be in that area? Nothing will happen until the person actually releases the gas or powder into the system.

Does TASS even begin to understand how many thousands of vehicles are illegally parked every single day at an airport? Trying to figure out which ones are just regular people and which one is there to pick up a terrorist or set off a car bomb is impossible to do.

Facial recognition is not perfect and there are too many false positives currently in the systems for it to be accurately relied upon. Many terrorists or suspected terrorists aren’t going to go to the airport. They are going to pick someone with no record so they won’t be detected. Also, how is an RFID detector going to keep track of the person? Presumably, they have an RFID chip in the passport, boarding pass, or both. What happens when that person puts their passport and boarding pass in an RFID safe wallet or sleeve? It won’t be detected and the police won’t be able to track them so easily.

While the truck in the cargo area could be a legitimate threat, not all trucks have electronic seals and there would be no way to know if the cargo was actually opened. Even then, TASS only sets up monitoring on the truck, based on a presumed GPS device within the truck. If this were some sort of plot or something dangerous, simply monitoring it isn’t going to stop any kind of explosion.

TASS then assumes that because all of these things are happening at the same time, there must be a multi-targeted attack about to happen. The fact that any or all of these things are easily explained away points to overreaction and paranoia instead of some type of attack. Given the fact that no one has attempted to do any of these things individually, yet alone combined, suggests that TASS is not only not necessary, but a huge waste of money.

The Department of Homeland Security has moved its “see something say something” program into the hotel industry in an effort to stop all the terrorists that are, apparently, staying in hotels.

The PSA, which will be interspersed with other messages on the welcome screen, will be the same in all 5,400 hotels that LodgeNet serves. It ends by telling viewers to contact “local authorities.”

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says that reaching the “millions of guests that stay at hotels and motels each year is a significant step in engaging the full range of partners in our Homeland Security efforts.”

The federal government gained access to hotel TV sets by forming a partnership with the hotel industry’s largest association — the A
American Hotel & Lodging Association — which connected DHS with LodgeNet, the industry’s largest TV-content provider.

By entering hotels at a time when the hospitality industry is on the rebound, the government has the power to tap a growing, captive audience. Recent research from LodgeNet says 98% of hotel guests turn on their hotel TV, and the average guest keeps it on for more than three hours per day.

Ann Parker, a LodgeNet spokeswoman, is completely behind the new initiative.

“It’s about everyone doing their part to help keep each other and the country safe,”

But critics of the campaign point out potential pitfalls. Josh Meyer of the Washington-based National Security Journalism Initiative predicts it will generate “a huge amount of potentially baseless tips that will inundate local, state and federal law enforcement authorities.”

DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard, however, cites successful citizen interventions, such as the May 2010 incident in which two street vendors helped thwart a car bombing attempt in New York City’s Times Square by noticing a smoking vehicle and reporting it to police.

The difference here is that you are unlikely to see overly suspicious behavior in a hotel. What you will see is people acting normally and going about their day. You do not know who the employees of the hotel are, so there is no way for you to report if a person is doing something wrong. Comparing a smoking vehicle to people in a hotel is like comparing apples to oranges. This program is only used as a way to instill fear.

Out of the ordinary doesn’t equate to terrorism. Stepping into other people’s private business under the pretense of preventing terrorism, however, seems to be the modus operandi of the government.

via reddit.

A new poster from the ACLU.

The TSA has expanded its program, Known Crewmember, that allows pilots to skirt the security lines at airports.

The program, devised by the airline industry and pilots, lets uniformed pilots from 22 airlines show two forms of identification, which is checked against a database called “Cockpit Access Security System.” A recent photo of the pilot pops up on a laptop screen, with either approval or disapproval to proceed without heading through metal detectors or other scanners.

So far, 40,000 pilots have avoided regular security lines since the Known Crewmember program began Aug. 9 at Chicago O’Hare and was expanded to Miami, Seattle, Minneapolis and Phoenix.

The experiment will be tried at Boston’s Logan later this month, with a decision coming in January on whether to take the program nationwide.

We already know that the full body scanners are not safe and passengers are complaining in massive numbers about it. The TSA has already indirectly admitted this by letting pilots avoid the scanners due to the numerous times per week they would have been forced to go through the scanners. It appears that everyone has forgotten that 1) the full body scanners are extremely dangerous and pilots are excluded due to union pressure, 2) pilots should be considered high risk individuals when looking for people to commit acts of terrorism, and 3) the DHS, TSA, and every “security” enhancement and program they create for our safety is merely another part of security theater.