Further confirmation of "security theater" at airports

The Airline then encodes that information in a barcode that is on the boarding pass it issues. The problem is, the passenger and flight information encoded in barcode is not encrypted in any way. Using a web site I decoded my boarding pass for my upcoming trip...

What  terrorists or really anyone can do is use a website to decode the barcode and get the flight information, put it into a text file, change the 1 to a 3, then use another website to re-encode it into a barcode. Finally, using a commercial photo-editing program or any program that can edit graphics replace the barcode in their boarding pass with the new one they created. Even more scary is that people can do this to change names. So if they have a fake ID they can use this method to make a valid boarding pass that matches their fake ID. The really scary part is this will get past both the TSA document checker, because the scanners the TSA use are just barcode decoders, they don’t check against the real time information. So the TSA document checker will not pick up on the alterations. This means, as long as they sub in 3 they can always use the Pre-Check line.

Additional details at the Puckinflight aviation blog

Pages of federal tax rules

The x-axis is nonlinear, probably because the bars represent times of changes in tax law.

Via The Dish.

Addendum:  After a reader described the graph as "useless without a linear x-axis," another (anonymous) reader kindly regraphed the data with a linear x-axis:

How is a fork like a lightsaber ?

Both are considered risks to aircraft security, as explained in an Ask The Pilot column at Salon:

Safely assured of a top spot in the Hall [of Shame], or so I thought, was the time I had a butter knife confiscated by overzealous TSA guards. I mean, what could be more ridiculous than taking a butter knife from a uniformed, on-duty pilot?

Answer: confiscating a fork from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot.

It happened the other day in Mexico City, at the special crew inspection checkpoint at Benito Juarez International Airport. Yes, I’m dropping the “American” part and changing the name to the “Security Hysteria Hall of Shame,” since, as you’ll see, we are not the only ones who have lost our minds...

Every day, hundreds of thousands of stainless steel forks, not to mention knives, are handed out to passengers in the forward cabins of airplanes. (And why not? The hijacking paradigm exploited on Sept. 11 no longer exists.) Yet on-duty pilots are not allowed to carry them through the checkpoint?...

This is the lunatic world of security we now live in: one of blind adherence, stripped of reason and logic, in which even the stupidest policies are enforced to the letter of the law...

One day, flying from Dallas to Jacksonville, Fla., Goldring and her toddler son were refused passage through the TSA checkpoint because they boy was carrying … get ready now … his Star Wars lightsaber. A lightsaber, if you’re not familiar, is a flashlight with a plastic cone attached — or, perhaps more to the point, a toy in the shape of a make-believe weapon from a galaxy, and a line of reasoning, far, far away.

“I believe it was green,” says Goldring, “indicating my son’s future Jedi path. We were told by the TSA professionals that the saber, which technically is something that does not exist, was a weapon. We were escorted out of security and sent to the ticket counter, where I had to fill out paperwork in order to check the lightsaber in as baggage.”..

Like I said, you can’t make this up.

The saddest part is that few people seem to care. We grumble, we gripe, and sometimes we laugh, but there is little if any organized push to change this madness, neither by citizens nor their elected leaders. In the end, we get what we deserve.

Still yet more endless TSA nonsense

Is there any point in continuing to catalogue these egregiously nonsensical events?

As a federal agent, I'm authorized to fly armed, so on one trip, I was clearing through security, the airport cop had checked my ID and paperwork and approved me to pass through the checkpoint, but the TSA guy stopped me and said he needed to inspect my carry-on...

Well, he came up with my Leatherman knife (basically a fancy Swiss Army knife) and said that I couldn't bring it on the plane because knives are prohibited items...

I looked at him like he was insane and said, "Let me get this straight, you're letting me carry a loaded handgun onto the plane, but not a pocket knife? In what conceivable world does that make sense?"

He responded that per FAA rules, I was authorized as a federal agent to carry the gun on board but the rules don't mention knives except as a general prohibition for everyone.

Not wanting to lose a $30 knife, I asked to see his supervisor, figuring this was some low-level zombie unable to exercise basic common sense. But no, the supervisor said the same thing!

Yes, I know, the staff "have to follow strict rules" and can't make exceptions, but...

Via J-Walk.

Do you read the fine print in your license agreements?

From the EULA for iTunes.  Found at Reddit.

"Security theater" at airport documented by pilot

Attorney Don Werno, who represents the pilot, says he believes the TSA was sending a message that "you've angered us by telling the truth and by showing America that there are major security problems despite the fact that we've spent billions of dollars allegedly to improve airline safety."

Via BoingBoing.

Body scanners coming to trains... subways... boats... ??

Brace yourselves, commuters — body scanners may be coming to trains, subways and boats, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

“[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through,” Napolitano said in an interview that aired Monday night on “Charlie Rose.” She said as aviation security tightens, “we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime.”

To be fair, she didn't specify that scanners would be the method of security for those modes of transportation.  But it's all security theater, and it's ridiculously impractical, frankly ineffective, and ludicrously expensive.

When will someone in charge have the balls to stand up and say "stop this nonsense?"

Independent agencies of the United States government

Independent agencies of the United States federal government are those agencies that exist outside of the federal executive departments (those headed by a Cabinet secretary). However, most independent agencies are part of the executive branch, with only a few being part of the legislative or judicial branches.

Established through separate statutes passed by the Congress, each respective statutory grant of authority defines the goals the agency must work towards, as well as what substantive areas, if any, over which it may have the power of rulemaking. These agency rules (or regulations), while in force, have the power of federal law.

Examples:
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The Federal Election Commission (FEC)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

The Federal Maritime Commission (FMC)

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

The General Services Administration (GSA)

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

The National Science Foundation (NSF)

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM)

The Peace Corps

The Small Business Administration (SBA)

The Selective Service System (SSS)

The Social Security Administration (SSA)

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

The United States International Trade Commission (USITC)

The United States Postal Service

An independent Postal Regulatory Commission

The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

Further information at Wikipedia.  (A hat tip to Z. Constantine for providing the link)

Yet another TSA horror story

At what point does an airport search step over the line?

How about when they start going through your checks, and the police call your husband, suspicious you were clearing out the bank account?

That's the complaint leveled by Kathy Parker, a 43-year-old Elkton, Md., woman, who was flying out of Philadelphia International Airport on Aug. 8...

That same screener started emptying her wallet. "He was taking out the receipts and looking at them," she said...

In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000...

She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. "That's my money," she remembers saying. The officer's reply? "It's not your money."

When she got home, her husband of 20 years, John Parker, a self-employed plastics broker, said the police had called and told him that they'd suspected "a divorce situation" and that Kathy Parker was trying to empty their bank account. He set them straight.

"I was so humiliated," she said...

Further details in Daniel Rubin's column at the Philadelphia Inquirer.  The TSA apparently does not deny any of the details; they claim they were justified in their actions because she looked nervous.

Tombs of the Unknown Soldiers

A sad, bureaucratic mess, poignantly summed up by editorial cartoonist John Sherffius for the Boulder Camera.

Via The Frustrated Teacher.  (context here)

Totally bogus products receive "Energy Star" certification

This story was reported by Popular Mechanics several months ago.  The EPA gave their seal of approval to 15 out of 20 bogus products.

To perform this investigation, the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) March 26, 2010, report states that it "used four bogus manufacturing firms and fictitious individuals to apply for Energy Star partnership." All four qualified.

The Feather-Duster Fly-Strip Air Freshener

Ostensibly an indoor air purifier, this item is actually a standard space heater spangled in strips of flypaper, with a feather duster perched up top.

The product was submitted without a standard safety file number from the Underwriters' Laboratories. Plus, the product's website did not include a disclaimer required for Energy Star certification. Last but not least, the garish photo submitted with the product's application portrays what is clearly a feather duster rigged to space heater. Nevertheless, these obstacles proved surmountable—the product was approved in 11 days and became listed on the Energy Star website.

More at the link, including the "gasoline-powered alarm clock"

The massive growth of U.S. intelligence operations

The Washington Post has just published an extensive investigation of American intelligence operations, and how they have changed in the last decade.  There is an introductory video, reports, maps, and interactive features at this link.  Here are some excerpts, via the StarTribune -

The top secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work...

• Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in some 10,000 locations across the United States...

• In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings -- about 17 million square feet of space...

"I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything" was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled, "Stop!" in frustration...

The result, he added, is that it's impossible to tell whether the country is safer because of all this spending and all these activities. "Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste," Vines said. "We consequently can't effectively assess whether it is making us more safe."

Every day across the United States, 854,000 civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances are scanned into offices protected by electromagnetic locks, retinal cameras and fortified walls that eavesdropping equipment cannot penetrate.

This is not exactly President Dwight Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," centered on building nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union. This is a national security enterprise with a more amorphous mission: defeating transnational violent extremists...

The U.S. intelligence budget is vast, publicly announced last year as $75 billion, which is 2 1/2 times the size it was on Sept. 10, 2001. But the figure doesn't include many military activities or domestic counterterrorism programs...

Nine days after the attacks, Congress committed $40 billion beyond what was in the federal budget to fortify domestic defenses and to launch a global offensive against Al-Qaida. It followed that up with an additional $36.5 billion in 2002 and $44 billion in 2003. That was only a beginning.

With the quick infusion of money, military and intelligence agencies multiplied. Twenty-four organizations were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. In 2002, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction, collect threat tips and coordinate the new focus on counterterrorism. That was followed the next year by 36 new organizations; and 26 after that; and 31 more; and 32 more; and 20 or more each in 2007, 2008 and 2009...

In all, at least 263 organizations have been created or reorganized as a response to 9/11. Each has required more people, and those people have required more administrative and logistic support: phone operators, librarians, carpenters, construction workers, mechanics and, because of where they work, even janitors with top-secret clearances...

Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 databases. The same problem bedevils every other intelligence agency, none of which has enough analysts and translators for all this work...

More at the StarTribune link, and much more at WaPo.

Defining "security theater"

Security theater consists of security countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually improve security. The term was coined by Bruce Schneier for his book Beyond Fear, but has gained currency in security circles, particularly for describing airport security measures. It is also used by some experts such as Edward Felten to describe the airport security repercussions due to the September 11 attacks. Security theater gains importance both by satisfying and exploiting the gap between perceived risk and actual risk...

In many cases, intrusive security theater measures also create secondary negative effects whose real cost is hard to quantify and likely to dwarf the direct expenses. Such ripple effects are often connected to fear; visible measures such as armed guards and highly intrusive security measures may lead people to believe that there must be a real risk associated with their activity...

Via The Seminal.

Maureen Dowd on the anti-terror response

"We seemed to still be behind the curve and reactive, patting down grannies and 5-year-olds, confiscating snow globes and lip glosses.

Instead of modernity, we have airports where security is so retro that taking away pillows and blankies and bathroom breaks counts as a great leap forward.

If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?

We are headed toward the moment when screeners will watch watch-listers sashay through while we have to come to the airport in hospital gowns, flapping open in the back..."

Source.

EULA

Credit, via Reddit.

Is rape is a pre-existing condition??

After experiencing date rape, a young woman sought medical care and was prescribed anti-AIDS medication...

But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free...

Turner, now a life and casualty insurance agent, said she went without health coverage for three years after the attack. She second-guesses her decision to take the HIV drugs. "I'm going to be penalized my whole life because of this," she said.

More details at Huffington Post, where there is also discussion of the impact re PTSD and mental health rx for rape victims.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/insurance-companies-rape-_n_328708.html

"Zero tolerance" requires zero brains

NEWARK, Del. — Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.

Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.

More details at the New York Times. Photo: Mustafah Abdulaziz.