Speedier Screening May Be Coming To an Airport Near You 163
First time accepted submitter Rickarmstrong writes "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is pushing for private contractors to create a screening machine with 'screen and walk' capability for use at the nation's 160 international airports and thousands of federal facilities. The agency recently requested information from high-tech companies and other private firms about any new technology that can help speed up the security checkpoints managed by the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Protective Services."
Re:I know how to make it go faster... (Score:5, Informative)
How about just going back to a reasonable quick scan on the way to the plane? The whole premise was that anything you could get through such a scan was worthless.
Yeah, but then how would they be able to justify forcing people to throw away their bottles of water, shampoo, etc.? "That might be a bomb, throw it in that trash can over there!"
I went to SF for a conference, and bought a snow globe for my in-laws, as is my habit when I travel. They wouldn't let me take it because it could contain "bomb making materials", which is ludicrous. They told me I could either surrender the package, or go to the post office to mail it. If I went to the post office, I'd miss my flight and it was a $4 snow globe, so I told them I'd surrender it. I was highly frustrated and busy putting my stuff together that they had pulled apart, so I was too distracted to notice that they kept not just the snow globe, but the bag that had all of the other souvenirs I had bought, including t-shirts and Ghirardelli chocolates I got for the rest of my family. The TSA is a pack of thieving, security-theater perverts. [politico.com]
Re:I saw faster screening at Orlando (Score:5, Informative)
I think the problem is that we've created artificial supply and demand.
Now if you'll just bend over, I need to insert this probe for national security reasons. Or you could pay me $20 and I'll find someone else.
Re:That will actually improve security. (Score:5, Informative)
The question I have is, why hasn't this happened?
If you accept the argument that terrorists principal goal is to create, well, terror, then you would expect terror attacks with the only real goal of creating chaos and news.
Given the chaos and headlines created at the mall in Kenya or the hotel in India, you would expect something like that to happen in the US. It's not hard to get ahold of guns, there are presumably a fair number of motivated attackers, and there are plenty of targets available.
As an example, coordinated attacks on 3-4 shopping malls simultaneously would be in the news forever and probably have a non-trivial economic impact from people avoiding malls alone, let alone the expected costs of all the security you'd expect to be demanded/added.
Either security is that good or the actual threat just isn't there. I find the former hard to believe.