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What should you be subjected to in order to fly on airplane?

What should you be subjected to in order to fly on airplane?

  • Total voters
    59
Metal Detectors cause cancer!!11
 
Kandahar said:
They don't need to ask you. They have machines that can virtually strip you.
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have you even bothered to look at any of the images these scanners generate? freakin much ado about nothing.

get all worked up and bitch and moan about stupid BS like this, while the govt robs us ****ing blind to pay for useless bailouts and stimulus pork packages and no one says ****ing boo about that.
 
Gipper said:
Well, as you've alluded to, a right is not dependent upon situational factors. If you get naked out in public, I can snap pics of you. If you're naked at home, I'm not allowed.

Outside those four walls, I'm free to do many things that many people may consider an "invasion of privacy". However, they have no legal leg to stand on to prevent almost all of it.
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Well if I'm outside naked, I probably have other worries than you photographing me. But if I were naked and you did photograph me when I was in public, sure. But I don't make a habit of running around naked. That gets you on lists these days. I wear cloths, and that means I don't want people looking at me naked. Furthermore, what the individual can do and what the government can do are two very different things. The government is still limited in the way it can act against our rights. They need proof to do so. Merely being in public does not unchain the government to use whatever force they deem necessary against my rights and liberties.
 
OscarB63 said:
have you even bothered to look at any of the images these scanners generate? freakin much ado about nothing.

get all worked up and bitch and moan about stupid BS like this, while the govt robs us ****ing blind to pay for useless bailouts and stimulus pork packages and no one says ****ing boo about that.
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you and barb, two peas in a pod. we're discussing scanning machines, not bailouts. and from the tone here, it seems you're the one who is upset. btw, i just looked at what councilman posted, pretty revealing imo.
 
OscarB63 said:
while the govt robs us ****ing blind to pay for useless bailouts and stimulus pork packages and no one says ****ing boo about that.
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Which is why it is important to keep in mind the proper restrictions upon government. Whether it be about them stealing our money and giving it to the people who caused our economic collapse or infringements upon our right to protection against unreasonable search and seizure. It is important to keep the government constrained, particularly as it relates to the free practice and exercise or our innate and inalienable rights.
 
liblady said:
so why does our gov't have a right to take pictures of us naked when we are fully clothed?
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Because national security trumps your self-image concerns.

I'm as libertarian as the rest of my folks, but I'm not about to risk infinite lives and billions in damages because the TSA guy can see your nipples.
 
I'm beginning to agree with the senator who just said the TSA should be privatized. It would eliminate the 'the government is restricing my rights' bull****.
 
Gipper said:
Because national security trumps your self-image concerns.

I'm as libertarian as the rest of my folks, but I'm not about to risk infinite lives and billions in damages because the TSA guy can see your nipples.
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You're not though. Terrorist bombings are a very very low probability event. Cars are far more deadly and offer a much higher probability of injury or death than terrorists do. As such, proper constraint of the government will not significantly alter the probabilities at stake. As such, the rights and liberties of the individual win out. Trading liberty for safety leaves you with neither.
 
Whovian said:
If I'm ok with it, and you're up in arms about it... yes, you are.
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You're overreacting to ONE GUY who stuffed some explosives in his undies in the entire history of air travel, out of tens of millions of flights that originate in the United States every year (and incidentally, that flight did NOT originate here). Now the feds need to examine EVERYONE'S undies to make sure there are no explosives in there?

Sorry, but one isolated incident doesn't justify this invasive garbage. I ride the metro every day and no one has ever tried to blow me up, despite the fact that I don't so much as pass through a metal detector. :roll:
 
Whovian said:
If I'm ok with it, and you're up in arms about it... yes, you are.
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But we're the ones who are ok with accepting the low probability even of terrorist activity while you guys are all up in arms about it. There are far greater dangers to my life than anything a terrorist can pose.
 
Whovian said:
I'm beginning to agree with the senator who just said the TSA should be privatized. It would eliminate the 'the government is restricing my rights' bull****.
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I would support that. If the airlines want to put on this show to pretend that they're keeping us safe, so be it. Some might be OK with a simple metal detector, others might prefer the shining-a-flashlight-deep-inside-your-asshole approach, and may the best policy win in the marketplace.
 
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Kandahar said:
I would support that. If the airlines want to put on this show to pretend that they're keeping us safe, so be it. Some might be OK with a simple metal detector, others might prefer the shining-a-flashlight-deep-inside-your-asshole approach, and may the best policy win.
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Now there's a thought! If it were truly private and there were variations amongst the airlines over the type of security measures taken; actual competition. The people can choose. Do you go the standard route, or do you go the horribly invasive route? If there was real choice in the matter, there would be well less argument to be had against it.
 
Ikari said:
Given the likelihood of being bombed, yes it is. My rights trump your irrational fears any day of the week.
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The likelihood of a terrorist attack is more like 300 million to one, especially since OBL, the money source, is out of the picture.

World wide unconnected terrorist events are being manipulated as possible US threats by our politicians and media, but nobody seems to care.

ricksfolly
 
Apparently my last post in this thread did nothing. To bad. Well, I'm not going to continue repeating myself over and over to the same arguements presented by those that seem to be in such a tizzy over security.
 
Kal'Stang said:
Apparently my last post in this thread did nothing. To bad. Well, I'm not going to continue repeating myself over and over to the same arguements presented by those that seem to be in such a tizzy over security.
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Ya well gotta have that top noch security so we can get those terrorists YAY America woo hoo!!! I Know!!! lets start strip searching people and then do a full cavity search cause you never can be to carefull. ;)
 
Kal'Stang said:
Apparently my last post in this thread did nothing. To bad. Well, I'm not going to continue repeating myself over and over to the same arguements presented by those that seem to be in such a tizzy over security.
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I know, right? Some people seem to think that we should have infinite security without trying to understand what that would actually mean for the free exercise of our rights. There's only so much "security" one can have before the government begins to infringe upon the rights and liberties of the individual. A free state is necessarily a dangerous state.
 
Ahhh, good ol' Ron Paul. If only more folk in Congress were like him.
Introducing the American Traveler Dignity Act

Mr. Speaker, today I introduce legislation to protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse by federal Transportation Security Administration employees conducting screenings at the nation’s airports. We have seen the videos of terrified children being grabbed and probed by airport screeners. We have read the stories of Americans being subjected to humiliating body imaging machines and/or forced to have the most intimate parts of their bodies poked and fondled. We do not know the potentially harmful effects of the radiation emitted by the new millimeter wave machines.

In one recent well-publicized case, a TSA official is recorded during an attempted body search saying, “By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights.” I strongly disagree and am sure I am not alone in believing that we Americans should never give up our rights in order to travel. As our Declaration of Independence states, our rights are inalienable. This TSA version of our rights looks more like the “rights” granted in the old Soviet Constitutions, where freedoms were granted to Soviet citizens -- right up to the moment the state decided to remove those freedoms.

The incident of the so-called “underwear bomber” last Christmas is given as justification for the billions of dollars the federal government is spending on the new full-body imaging machines, but a Government Accountability Office study earlier this year concluded that had these scanners been in use they may not have detected the explosive material that was allegedly brought onto the airplane. Additionally, there have been recent press reports calling into question the accuracy and adequacy of these potentially dangerous machines.

My legislation is simple. It establishes that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person. It means they are subject to the same laws as the rest of us.

Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.

I warned at the time of the creation of the TSA that an unaccountable government entity in control of airport security would provide neither security nor defend our basic freedom to travel. Yet the vast majority of both Republicans and Democrats then in Congress willingly voted to create another unaccountable, bullying agency-- in a simple-minded and unprincipled attempt to appease public passion in the wake of 9-11. Sadly, as we see with the steady TSA encroachment on our freedom and dignity, my fears in 2001 were justified.

The solution to the need for security at US airports is not a government bureaucracy. The solution is to allow the private sector, preferably the airlines themselves, to provide for the security of their property. As a recent article in Forbes magazine eloquently stated, “The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility.” In the meantime, I hope we can pass this legislation and protect Americans from harm and humiliation when they choose to travel.
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Like I said (possibly in the other thread)... I don't have a problem with privatizing the TSA. Then, when they do the same thing they are doing now, no one can whine like little girls about the government violating our constitutional rights.
 
Whovian said:
Like I said (possibly in the other thread)... I don't have a problem with privatizing the TSA. Then, when they do the same thing they are doing now, no one can whine like little girls about the government violating our constitutional rights.
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And it would be well more responsive to claims of abuse, complaints and concerns of the passenger. It's the airlines which have money on the line; not the government.
 
BTW, there's no conclusive evidence which indicates the damage that these millimeter wave radiation can have; but there is indication that it is highly damaging to DNA.

How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA - Technology Review

Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes , paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance.

The way terahertz waves are absorbed and emitted can also be used to determine the chemical composition of a material. And even though they don't travel far inside the body, there is great hope that the waves can be used to spot tumours near the surface of the skin.

With all that potential, it's no wonder that research on terahertz waves has exploded in the last ten years or so.

But what of the health effects of terahertz waves? At first glance, it's easy to dismiss any notion that they can be damaging. Terahertz photons are not energetic enough to break chemical bonds or ionise atoms or molecules, the chief reasons why higher energy photons such as x-rays and UV rays are so bad for us. But could there be another mechanism at work?

The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. "Some studies reported significant genetic damage while others, although similar, showed none," say Boian Alexandrov at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and a few buddies. Now these guys think they know why.

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they've found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That's a jaw dropping conclusion.

And it also explains why the evidence has been so hard to garner. Ordinary resonant effects are not powerful enough to do do this kind of damage but nonlinear resonances can. These nonlinear instabilities are much less likely to form which explains why the character of THz genotoxic
effects are probabilistic rather than deterministic, say the team.

This should set the cat among the pigeons. Of course, terahertz waves are a natural part of environment, just like visible and infrared light. But a new generation of cameras are set to appear that not only record terahertz waves but also bombard us with them. And if our exposure is set to increase, the question that urgently needs answering is what level of terahertz exposure is safe.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294: DNA Breathing Dynamics in the Presence of a Terahertz Field
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Ikari said:
BTW, there's no conclusive evidence which indicates the damage that these millimeter wave radiation can have; but there is indication that it is highly damaging to DNA.

Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes , paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance.

The way terahertz waves are absorbed and emitted can also be used to determine the chemical composition of a material. And even though they don't travel far inside the body, there is great hope that the waves can be used to spot tumours near the surface of the skin.

With all that potential, it's no wonder that research on terahertz waves has exploded in the last ten years or so.

But what of the health effects of terahertz waves? At first glance, it's easy to dismiss any notion that they can be damaging. Terahertz photons are not energetic enough to break chemical bonds or ionise atoms or molecules, the chief reasons why higher energy photons such as x-rays and UV rays are so bad for us. But could there be another mechanism at work?

The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. "Some studies reported significant genetic damage while others, although similar, showed none," say Boian Alexandrov at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and a few buddies. Now these guys think they know why.

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they've found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That's a jaw dropping conclusion.

And it also explains why the evidence has been so hard to garner. Ordinary resonant effects are not powerful enough to do do this kind of damage but nonlinear resonances can. These nonlinear instabilities are much less likely to form which explains why the character of THz genotoxic
effects are probabilistic rather than deterministic, say the team.

This should set the cat among the pigeons. Of course, terahertz waves are a natural part of environment, just like visible and infrared light. But a new generation of cameras are set to appear that not only record terahertz waves but also bombard us with them. And if our exposure is set to increase, the question that urgently needs answering is what level of terahertz exposure is safe.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294: DNA Breathing Dynamics in the Presence of a Terahertz Field
Click to expand...

How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA - Technology Review
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A... never trust computer models as 100%
B... all sounds pretty 'maybe/maybe not' to me.
 
fully body cavity searches and coffee enemas
 
Whovian said:
A... never trust computer models as 100%
B... all sounds pretty 'maybe/maybe not' to me.
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Nope, but the models then back observation. In the end, it is not conclusive at this point. There has not yet been enough study and investigation to understand the full effects that millimeter wave radiation can have on the body. But given that physicists have discovered this large potential for DNA unzipping, one would think that the rational thing to do would be to find out a bit more before subjecting people waiting to board an airplane to the radiation source.
 
Whovian said:
Like I said (possibly in the other thread)... I don't have a problem with privatizing the TSA. Then, when they do the same thing they are doing now, no one can whine like little girls about the government violating our constitutional rights.
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Sounds good to me. Maybe one of the airlines could specifically market itself to the passengers who are terrified of the infinitesimal risk of being blown out of the sky by terrorists, and probe each of their assholes to make sure there is no trace of explosives. Maybe they can advertise their deep cavity searches on TV to make people feel extra-safe. :mrgreen:

And all of the rational people who just want to get from Point A to Point B can opt for the airlines which are OK with simple metal detectors. We'll see which strategy wins in the marketplace.
 
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