Are we not scientists, engineers, mathematician, or interested inthose fields? What is the best measure of effectiveness here? How about bombs caught per billion dollars? Or bombs caught per billion passenger hours wasted? By either measure, TSA has a bIg fat zero. All of the bombs caught have come from passenger intervention or intelligence actions. With the exception of some early bomb plots stopped after enhanced interrogation, the remaining intelligence catches have been from walk-ins, my conclusion - train and arm passengers and buy walk-ins.
Ray Parks P.S. The same logic applies to clearance investigations and the Box. From: Owen Densmore [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 02:16 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] More Light, Less Touchy-Feely I'd love to know what the risk-benifit trade off is. Do we harass 10^6 people at a cost of $10^9 for one discovery of note, one which would stop an air-bomb? As I understand it, the best info is not scanners etc but community members reporting suspicious behavior. Maybe we should ask help from the Islamic community? I realize they feel victimized, but throw the same $$ at that sort of program would likely create better results. The last "event", the package bomb, was not meant to destroy the aircraft was it? I think there were two packages sent to "enemy" land addresses. To tell the truth, I think I'm willing to risk it by tossing the scanners etc, using sensible (and PC incorrect) social methods, and hope the odds are not as bad as people think. -- Owen On Nov 21, 2010, at 1:57 PM, Russell Gonnering wrote: Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of political correctness. So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what will our response be then? What about the surgically implanted explosives? The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being blown up. The choice is between acting like idiots or doing what actually is necessary to prevent terror. So far, we have chosen the former. Is it really worth it to spend billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to be “fair” to everyone? I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market. Russ #3 Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> www.emergenthealth.net<http://www.emergenthealth.net/> <PastedGraphic-3.tiff> On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:33 PM, [email protected]<mailto:[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 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org<http://www.friam.org/> ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
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