"Terrorists known to wear clothes to aid with their terrorism - Clothes are known to keep terrorists warm, helping them to kill innocent civilians. We should think very carefully about banning clothes all together"
While we're at it, on a recent flight to the US I was asked "Where are you staying. You need to provide an address etc" (Security reasons apparently - I guess terrorists slip up there and reply "Oh I won't actually be landing... oops!"). I didn't have a clue of the address, I only know how to drive there. The guy checking me in just said "Ah don't worry, I'll put 'holiday inn, SFO'.
Either security like that is important, or it's not. If it's not, get rid of it!
I once wrote "Dad's house" in there and this was enough to get me searched. I didn't know the address off the top of my head. What I've found even funnier there is that I have US citizenship and still have to fill that out -- like, what are they going to do, not let me back in if I don't know where I'm staying?
Terrorists are beyond being able to look up a valid address on the internet. It's way too difficult for them. Once they work out how to do that, we're all in big trouble.
Just like at the moment, they haven't been able to figure out how to separate a large bottle of explosive liquid, and put it in lots of little bottles which are then allowed through security.
"... "Where are you staying. You need to provide an address etc" (Security reasons apparently - I guess terrorists slip up there and reply "Oh I won't actually be landing... oops!") ..."
Pretty standard questions to check to see if you are really doing what you say you are doing. Visiting? Business or holiday? Where are you staying? Got enough cash to cover that stay? The best thing to do is pre-book, take a print-out of where you are staying on your itinerary. Just doing their job - looking for travelers not sticking to their plan.
Not to defend the theater aspect, but my (rather limited) understanding of effective security interview involves a series of questions and evaluation of performance across the responses. A single question by itself may not have much inherent meaning, but the composite can be quite effective.
Can be. Not saying that's what they are doing in this instance.
"... effective security interview involves a series of questions and evaluation of performance across the responses ..."
True.
Add demeanor, body language, appearance to these questions. I think there a lot of non-verbal questions being asked by the person looking at visitors. One of the most useful is the ability to read"body language" and fit. Does this person fit the right pattern? Are they hiding something documentation and other procedures missed? Of course this will get a lot of false positives like the parent post.
It was LHR->SFO. United also ask you where you're staying etc.
The other funny airport thing I had was just after the hand baggage restrictions got tightened. I had my hand luggage searched by hand, except I'd packed it so tightly with various gadgets, leads, electronics etc, the guy took one look when he opened it, and you could see his face/expression - "sod that, I'm not packing all that back in". And he closed it right up again.
"Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences"
yeah, I have to admit, I grew up in Kansas and went straight into the military after high school. It has taken a long time to recognize and undo the damaged values they instill you with.
They're not like us. So, you know we should be scared of and hate them.
"Terrorists could theoretically use ..."
What couldn't terrorists theoretically use? The next successful attack will use things they didn't think of. It's not like we had thought of crashing planes into skyscrapers. Oh wait, we did.
This sort of "intel" is an utter waste. The signal to noise ratio sucks so bad it just gets ignored. Military and our leaders need actual information on what the opposition is doing, not theoretics.
This is just security theater meant for internal military consumption.
Well, there's a plant in Japan that's apparently blogging. And the Swiss have recognized some set of plant rights. By that measure, vegetarians might be no better than murderers. In fact, their relentless focus on the exploitation of flora might even be viewed as a form of terrorism.
When they were using technologies like PGP there was reason for concern. When they start using stuff like Twitter I think it's great news for all of us non-terrorists.
I found that, but I still can't find the full text of the report. It looks like all they have is a link to FAS's main site, so I'm currently digging through their site. If anyone has the link to the report, they'd be much appreciated.
"Terrorists known to wear clothes to aid with their terrorism - Clothes are known to keep terrorists warm, helping them to kill innocent civilians. We should think very carefully about banning clothes all together"
While we're at it, on a recent flight to the US I was asked "Where are you staying. You need to provide an address etc" (Security reasons apparently - I guess terrorists slip up there and reply "Oh I won't actually be landing... oops!"). I didn't have a clue of the address, I only know how to drive there. The guy checking me in just said "Ah don't worry, I'll put 'holiday inn, SFO'.
Either security like that is important, or it's not. If it's not, get rid of it!