Daily Archives: November 18, 2010

TSA Could Have Chosen A Less Intrusive Screening Machine

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The McClatchy news article, TSA Could Have Chosen A Less Intrusive Screening Machine, discusses an alternative to the controversial machine being used in the U.S.

Unlike the backscatter imaging devices that provide revealing body images and which have stoked concerns about radiation, the system at Schiphol uses radio waves to detect contraband.

The Woburn, Mass., firm that manufacturers the system, L-3 Communications Security & Detection Systems, claims on its website that the radio waves are “10,000 times lower than other commonly-used radio frequency devices.”

If the software identifies a passenger carrying explosives, an outline of the problem body area is displayed on a generic mannequin figure instead of on the actual image of the passenger’s body. The mannequin image, which appears on the operator’s control panel, “can then be used by security personnel to direct a focused discussion or search,” the company website reads.

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On Wednesday, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, John Pistole, the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, acknowledged that the new target recognition imaging was “the next generation.”

“The only concern I have about that is there are currently a high rate of false positives on that technology, so we’re working through that,” Pistole testified. “But we are currently testing that today. We have been for several months.”

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On Wednesday, Pistole admitted the pat-downs have been more aggressive. But children under age 12 are exempted from the searches, he said.

I included the last sentence to show how ridiculous this security stuff really is.  Now that the TSA has told the terrorists where the hole in the security barrier is, how long will it take them to go through it?  Older gang members in this country already use minors to carry their guns for them, because minors don’t face the stiff penalties that adults do.

As for the worry about false positives of the new machine, I guess that implies that there aren’t very many false positives with the machines now in use.

According to the TSA, airport security has detected more than 130 prohibited, illegal or dangerous items this year thanks to the new scanning equipment. And more than 99 percent of airline passengers choose the imaging technology over alternative screening methods.

It would be interesting to hear how many pat down searches have been done in this time frame where the 130 items were found.  Any number above 130 would be from false positives.

I have decided that the numbers in this article put the story in the Greenberg’s Law Of The Media category.

I can think of several more devious methods that terrorists could use than they have used so far.  In the off chance that they have not already thought of them, I am not going to name them here.  That just means I won’t be able to say “I told you so” when they do start using them.  However, I feel safe in disclosing that I have thought of them.  They are so obvious that there is really no need to kidnap me and waterboard me to find out what they are.  If the terrorists lack imagination, I am sure they can find these ideas on Google.

Report Sounds Alarm On China’s Rerouting Of U.S. Internet Traffic

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The article, Report Sounds Alarm On China’s Rerouting Of U.S. Internet Traffic, discusses  a report submitted to Congress on Wednesday by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

The report points to two specific incidents earlier this year where actions taken inside China had a direct impact on Internet traffic in the U.S. and other regions of the world.

In one of the incidents, traffic to and from about 15% of all Internet destinations was routed through servers belonging to China Telecom, a state-owned telecommunications company.

In an e-mailed statement Wednesday, China Telecom rejected the claims, but offered no further comment.

The rerouting happened on April 8 and lasted for about 18 minutes. The traffic hijacking affected U.S. government and military networks, including those belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Commerce, NASA and the U.S. Senate.

Commercial sites including those belonging to Microsoft, Dell and Yahoo were also affected.
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“The takeaway here is that the foundation on which the Internet is built is insecure,” Alperovitch said. “It is based on trust. We trust ISPs to tell us which networks they own. There is no validation [of the information.]”

“Not only can this problem happen again, but it probably will,” he said.

Maybe there are just not enough crooked engineers in the profession so that, when these things are designed, the possibility of dishonesty is taken into account.  If this post weren’t inherently political enough, I’ll connect it to the Friedmanian/Feldsteinian radical free-market economists who don’t factor  dishonesty into their idealistic description about how world economies ought to work.  With the way they fudge the data to prove their points, they should have been aware of the possibility of dishonesty.