As a New Yorker, this has been an interesting thread to read. A well-
timed subway bomb--conventional, firebomb, or poison bomb, as in Tokyo
a decade or so ago--could wreak much more damage in terms of people it
affects, than anything that you can do with a single plane. I do not
notice anyone standing up for backscatter scanners (or any other kind)
at every subway entrance.
This could imply that (a) no one cares how many New Yorkers go down in
an attack; they're all left-leaning loudmouths anyway, or (b) it
would be difficult to persuade New Yorkers that this was for their own
safety, and anyway, the costs would be prohibitive, or (c) this is all
about protecting airplanes, not the lives of human passengers, or (d)
the airport stuff is the theater we all suspected and plays better for
most of the country than a genuine program of protection in the
subways, or (e) New York authorities, recognizing how lame HSA was
from the beginning, put together their own intelligence unit (this is
true) and we *are* being as well-protected as is reasonably possible
without the theater.
I honestly don't know.
That we follow El Al's procedures seems to be a problem of scaling up--
it works for a small country like Israel, not so well for a large,
heterogeneous country like ours.
On Nov 21, 2010, at 3:33 PM, [email protected] wrote:
I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual
mixture of shock and incredulity. Do people object because it’s
offensive or because it’s ineffective? It would be unpleasant but,
for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the
enhanced scanner. But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive
judgment. In particular on two matters. It seems that new bomb
compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the
body without detection by the old scanners. I thought that the Xmas
underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk,
handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for
planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if
detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.
If correct this is pretty awful news.
The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed
through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned
flight. If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this
by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and
withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try
again another day.
In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior
person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics
necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost.
So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen,
and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect,
and rightly so.
Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures
Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.
1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728
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"And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far
from it. No urban night is like the night there....Squares after
squares flame, set up and cut into the ether: Here is our poetry, for
we have pulled down the stars to our will."
Ezra Pound
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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