links for 2010-11-15

1. Only someone who has never been through Israeli security would believe that bull-crap article. I’ve been through Israeli security many times, both land borders and at Ben-Gurion. Yes, it’s very effective, but it’s also very invasive and time-consuming. I’m not one to easily be intimidated, but I was nearly ready to burst into tears at several points. I never entered Israel in less than 3 hours. Most times it was closer to 6 hours. Long interrogations, taking my suitcase apart piece by piece, looking carefully at every little bit of everything, etc.

   I had one of my co-workers from the same NGO that I was working with have his laptop bag blown up by a shotgun toting robot, similar to this lady.

   I used to be pro-Israel before I lived in Israel for 5 months. Now I’m equal parts pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian with a definite disgust for Israel’s ham-handed methods. I’m a freakin’ American citizen of Caucasian-descent doing work which an IDF Colonel who works with our NGO agrees is beneficial to Israel because the charity is coming from American Christians rather than Hamas. But yet, the simple fact of working with Palestinians subjected me to all sorts of incredibly long and invasive interrogations and searches.

   Please save us from Israeli-style security in the US! I’ll have my junk touched any day rather than have my whole life groped.

2. Obviously I want my identity secret for the above comment, but Waldo knows who I am and frequent commenters may guess who I am. Regulars can email Waldo and I’d be fine with him revealing my identity, just don’t post it.

3. Just to clarify my first comment: I said laptop bag and I meant laptop bag including laptop, papers, peripherals, etc.

4. I was disappointed by the “How jQuery Works” link — was expecting an overview of the internal architecture, maybe some discussion of browser-specific optimizations.

5. Sorry to keep yammering on, but I’m kinda enjoying the irony of a liberal talking admiringly about Israel and a conservative bashing Israel. :-D

6. Re: Deaf Dolphins – I refer back to my tirade against high-powered sonar of last summer. Bad policy. The same sounds we use to “paint” an entire ocean to pinpoint enemy subs will be intercepted and interpreted by enemy technology to give away the positions of our subs. Dumb, dumb, dumb sweetheart contract. Not to mention that it maims and kills marine mammals and who knows what else. Stay quiet, remain undetected is the motto of the sub force. Why aren’t some high ranking admirals coming out against this? Spineless yes men!!!

7. CGWOC, I didn’t know you’d spent any time in Israel! I’m awfully glad to hear the other side of that which, really, matches much more closely the bits and pieces that I’d gathered about El Al’s security. Thanks for your story.

8. You’re certainly welcome. Now do understand that I think we should *perhaps* imitate some of Israel’s psychological profiling methods, but their religious profiling methods which put me in the same boat as Muslims (because I worked with them) was quite unbearable. (Now, I understand that they’ve had trouble, at least they told me they have, with innocent Westerners with Muslim friends who have unknowingly transported altimeter bombs or unknowingly smuggled explosives on their friends’ behalf, but then it makes no sense to subject me to the next sentence.) But really the worst part was their ham-handed interrogation methods (accusing me of lying, asking me the same questions over and over for hours; fortunately they never blew anything of mine up) in order to put me under enough stress so that I would “crack and spill” was not very enjoyable, to put it mildly.

9. The comments from CGWOC mirror what a colleague told me about a rather unpleasant trip to Israel, ostensibly for pleasure. He counted 16 times that he was pulled from a line (bus, museum, etc) for interrogation. It has made me think twice about hopes I had for visiting. I’m waiting for Jesus to return to make it all peaceful before I go. :)

   On a more serious note, I also had a discussion with a fairly highly placed individual in the TSA hierarchy that the primary difference between American and Israeli security is that America scrutinizes one’s belongings while Israel scrutinizes the person. Within reason this seems more productive.

10. I just think it’s kind of great that conservatives and liberals are starting to come together on the civil liberties front.

    The TSA: A uniter, not a divider. :-)

11. Maybe I spoke a little too soon:

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/15/politics/main7057902.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

12. When, exactly, did the United States aspire to become like Israel? We are fundamentally different cultures, with different interests, and I have no interest in living in armed conflict with the people who share my plane ride, or the land across the river. And I’ve yet to find any plurality of Americans who support mandatory military service. So lets just quit kidding ourselves.

13. Michael, I suspect—or maybe just hope—that this is a matter of education. “X-rays”? Sure, why not! It’s just my bones! I think, as more people learn that they’re basically being seen nude, it’ll become a less popular thing. Also, as more people know folks who are subjected to these “pat-down” searches, that should bring the numbers down, too.

    Still, that’s a much higher rate of support than I expected.

14. Still, that’s a much higher rate of support than I expected.

    I was shocked it was so high. I was guessing maybe around 60-65%.

    I have multiple problems with the Rape-i-scan machines and was guessing more people did too.

15. I’m not going to weigh in regarding the question of whether Israel’s airport screening process is more-invasive or less-invasive than the TSA, but I do think there are some ideas worth incorporating from that article. Specifically, I’ve always been ill-at-ease about how in order to prevent terrorists from blowing up airplanes carrying 400 passengers, we tightly pack thousands of passengers every day into a logistical and tactical choke-point for the security check. Ultimately, all that does is create a new target of opportunity while securing another. The suggestion that bags should be screened away from passengers inside a blast-proof area secured by ballistic glass makes a lot more sense to me.

16. That’s a good point, Sam. We’ll soon have a security checkpoint in order to get to the security checkpoint. Using a reductio ad absurdum argument, you’ll just have security checkpoints all the way down.

    Something that may need to be looked at is why we have strict security measures at all. When you think about it, so much has been done to stop the hijacking of planes (locked cockpits. etc.) that the real threat now seems to be blowing up a jet mid-air (as opposed to using it as a missile as previously happened). We have millions of other situations around the country where hundreds of people could easily be blown up (stadia, schools, hospitals, random car bombs in cities, etc.) where there is little to no security. And especially not the type of TSA security in order to board a plane. So why subject ourselves to fairly invasive security procedures just in order to get on a plane?

    I’m obviously not saying that there should be no airport security, but the line must be drawn somewhere.

17. To riff off what Michael said, Jeffery Goldberg of The Atlantic pointed out that a hypothetical terrorist would just as likely get the same body count attacking (via bomb or weapon) the huge, snaking line in front of the security devices as they would blowing up a plane, and one of these things is much easier than the other.

    Not that I’m terribly afraid of that either. There are plenty of places to strike us if we’re relying on catching terrorists while they attempt to execute their plans.

18. @Ben C: That’s not true. I’m consistently surprised how few people are killed even in dense areas by suicide bombers. However, any time you have a bomb on an airliner, it brings it down killing everyone. The number of passengers even on a very empty airliner is more than those killed in your average crowded shopping mall suicide bombing.

    And that’s not even mentioning the obvious of what can happen when if they actually hijack a plane (if they could managed to do that again) and basically get their hands on a tomahawk missile.

19. That’s the conventional thinking held by some people, sure. On the other hand, in the real world where conventional wisdom gets tested, airline bombing attempts over the past 10 years haven’t exactly yielded body counts, either. And those terrorist attacks which have been most successful strategically during the same window of time haven’t been constrained by conventional thinking.

    With the exception of almost everything the TSA does, I think our counter-terrorist strategy’s been tremendously successful thus far. A couple of schemes have made it all the way to an attempt, but that’s largely because there was so little planning, training or logistics involved in making the attempt that there was basically no chance to identify or interdict the attempt in advance. On the bright side, the lack of planning, training or logistical support means there was also no chance the attempt was ever going to be successful. Any idiot who watches Mythbusters can tell you that a handful of propane canisters and fifty bucks of side-of-the-road firecrackers packed into an SUV does not a car bomb make.

    That’s why enhanced pat-downs seem so pointless to me. Compared to the human indignity and personal invasion, we’re not getting very much back. American security today isn’t a matter of what’s being done or not done in airports, it’s a matter of continuing to prevent anyone malevolent and motivated enough to try to commit a terrorist attack from gaining access to the technical and logistical support needed to plan and carry out a successful attack. And we can continue to pursue that mission without letting an underpaid government stooge dressed like a glorified mail man roll my testicles in his hands like a couple of stress balls.

20. Waldo:

    I don’t know much about the technology behind this, but check out this animation. You know the creator. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXDLQPfqc04

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