
Schneier on Security: Ass Bomber - billpg
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/ass_bomber.html
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byrneseyeview
Amazing. A reddit commenter (pica, for those who were there from the
beginning) once suggested doing exactly this as a way to mess with the TSA. He
also suggested forcing the TSA to do racial profiling; if a shoe-bomber means
everyone with shoes is a suspect, what does an Afro-bomber mean?

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idm
I wonder if there's any value in "lobbying" the TSA to implement rectal
searches on the basis of this story. It's the reducito ad absurdum tactic: if
the lobbying were successful, there's no way there _wouldn't_ be backlash,
right? As a result, we'd have people lobbying for sensible security, right?
Please?

Of course, the worst case scenario is that the TSA caves in to the pressure,
starts rectal searches, and keeps doing it... and then _I_ get searched.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Or you stop flying and start taking the bus.

~~~
mahmud
I drove to Australia, mainly to limit my carbon footprint but also to avoid
the merciless torture that is in-flight entertainment. Delta runs the golden
collection of _Adam Sandler: Auteur_.

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rfreytag
Here comes millimeter-wave scanning
([http://www.manolith.com/2009/05/18/whole-body-imaging-is-
who...](http://www.manolith.com/2009/05/18/whole-body-imaging-is-wholly-
frightening/))

~~~
jrockway
It is interesting that people are so upset about being "naked" on a screen
somewhere. I find it much more troubling for someone to root through my
consciously-collected possessions. That says a lot more about who I am than my
standard-issue body that is pretty much the same as 3 billion other people's.

Yet nobody has any problems with that -- only being "naked".

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derefr
That's the point: people got to pick their stuff, so they're generally proud
to show it off. People didn't get to pick their bodies, so they're generally
embarrassed by them.

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tomjen2
I wonder what TSA is going to do now. The public won't stand for anal-searches
each time they are going to fly, but on the other hand they would have to
appear to be doing _something_.

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GiraffeNecktie
"The public won't stand for anal-searches ..."

Well, you certainly can't expect to do them sitting down!

~~~
die_sekte
"Now slide your pants down and sit on that gloved hand."

Well yes, you can.

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webscaler
I prefer Una Bomber.

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tfh
People will always figure ways out to harm the guys opressing them. The best
way to avoid that is not to give them a reason.

I admid that millimeter-wave scanning is really useful but not in the field of
preventing terrorism.

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jerf
That's terribly naive.

I challenge you to find one person in the world that there isn't at least one
other person who wants to kill them. You can't. No matter who you pick,
someone wants to kill them for their race, or because they are mixed race and
therefore traitors. In fact, you can find someone for each component race.
Someone wants to kill them for their religion, regardless of what it is.
Someone wants to kill them for their economic system, regardless of what it
is. Someone wants to kill them for their position on abortion, regardless of
what it is.

And don't forget the crazies, because some of them are actually capable of
pulling stuff off, despite their crazy.

How much more so for entire countries.

~~~
eru
I only need to find someone that wants to kill everybody including himself for
your thesis to come through. But what do we learn of it?

Nobody's going to attack the Swiss.

