TSA Chief: Chechen Women With Explosive Bras Inspired U.S. Airport Pat Downs

The explosive in the photo is slightly larger than a cassette tape. Consistent with my estimate of a volume of 6.7 ounces. Such explosive can easily be reshaped to less than 1/4” thickness and fit in someone’s underwear. Or it can EASILY be concealed in a body cavity for which the TSA has no scanner now.

There is no easy solution with the technology/knowledge available to common people today. We are either doomed to constant terror from psychotic individuals/groups or tyranny from a full digital-surveillance police state.

Without of a complete worldwide revolution in people's thinking/attitudes very soon, humanity is doomed by our own technology either way. That is the sad reality of it all...

Whoa, dude, your last post is the one thing you’ve written with which I disagree the most. Yes, bad outcomes are possible ... but they require difficult work, such as is being performed by Islamic (don’t forget, “Islam” means “submission”) terrorists on the one hand and those who would pressure us to submit to governments on the other hand.

Good outcomes are possible too, and the happy news is that, other than resisting those who would make us submit, the work required is easy and can be pleasant.

Empowering individuals to participate in the safety process is the only way I know to avoid both outcomes you describe in your last post, and which would increase safety at the same time.

Exempting people wearing tight clothing from pat downs or radiation would empower individuals to save screening resources, and would eliminate a lot of the psychological control currently exerted by the TSA.

Enabling pilots, or even the general public, to defend the aircraft against terrorists once aloft would also be helpful. Note that the TSA slowed, for years, armoring cockpit doors, still makes it difficult for pilots to arm themselves, and makes it almost impossible for the passengers to arm themselves.

Allowing (not requiring) passengers to allow other randomly-selected passengers, perhaps on the same flight, to screen their luggage, or perhaps even their persons, rather than have the TSA do it all would, again, save screening resources, and greatly reduce the psychological submission the TSA currently imposes. That would certainly be more of a deterrent than having all luggage screened by the same unmotivated, bored, not-very-perceptive, theft-prone TSA agents who routinely steal from luggage on the one hand and who routinely let contraband items aboard aircraft on the other hand. Handled properly, such screening could become a social experience.

Allowing the general public to watch all of the luggage screening process would be a small step toward the last suggestion, and would go a very long way towards reducing the opportunities for theft. Having webcams at all points along the baggage handling line would be cheap and easy, would empower individuals, increase trust in the system, and reduce theft.

Those are a few ways individuals could be empowered, and they seem easy and potentially pleasant to me.

That ease and apparent pleasantness are, in themselves, arguments for effectiveness, in my opinion. Things that are easy and pleasant are more likely to be done over the long term. Also, our perception of things being easy and pleasant is probably shaped by the 6 million years of evolution in which our ancestors, facing dangers of which we can only guess, did what they thought was easy and pleasant, and thus outlived and outreproduced others for whom different, ineffective, survival instincts predominated. You and I are the latest in a very, very long line of survivors, so, if our instincts warn us that something doesn’t quite make sense or isn’t quite right, or if we have to be pressured into doing something that we wouldn’t otherwise willingly do ... then there might be some value in finding a different solution.

Better solutions exist. Implementation of those better solutions can be easy. The hard part is resisting the purveyors of the current solutions, who may not have the same interests in our survival as we do.

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