Let a dog sniff your groin or have a human look at your image in one of those new X-ray scanners?
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
what if the dog bites?? Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
I would rather strip naked in front of everybody to be searched than have any member of any species not my own nosing around my recreational facility. An X-ray scanner is nothing compared to that horror.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
At the end of the video they showed the dog just scanning for people as they casually walked by. No noses in crotches, just a sniff of the air near a person.
I don't see much objectionable to that - the dog never touched anyone. If dogs are indeed cheap, reliable, and they can be trained so that they don't have to physically touch anyone then I say let's train some dogs and put them to work sniffing folks.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Would you rather let a dog sniff your groin or have a human look at your image in one of those new X-ray scanners?
Not really.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
Well, the body scans don't look that bad from the pictures I've searched. I'm sure the people who do them see so many go by, no one's parts would stand out. My only wish is that I could see what I looked like in the body scan, but I bet that's not happening. I once asked if I could look at the screen at my own luggage going through (for coolness reasons) when security wasn't crowed, and I was told no.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
I would rather they profile Arabs and Muslims. I watched TSA carry an 80 year old woman through a metal detector. Strip search anyone from the middle east and anyone with a name that rhymes with muhammed....John Smith and 80 year old white women have never committed an act of terror on an air plane.
I've said this before but I'll repeat it anyway. My squadron of uniformed military members held up the airport because military boots are difficult to take off. Over a 100 military members headed to war, in uniform, delayed a lot flights because the shoe removal rule. Several flights were delayed because we were headed to war and had to take off our footwear.
Only middle easterners with middle eastern sounding names have threatened us....even this week. Of course our current administration will continue to stick it's head in the sand. Pre-911 mentality has taken over. Even Obama referred the most recent attacker as an "alleged suspect" despite the fact he claimed Al Quaida ties and had four foot flames shooting out of his underwear.
Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Terrorists are now granted the rights of American citizens.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Even Obama referred the most recent attacker as an "alleged suspect" despite the fact he claimed Al Quaida ties and had four foot flames shooting out of his underwear.
Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Terrorists are now granted the rights of American citizens.
You say that as though there's something wrong with due process or presumption of innocence.
Caught in a public place in front of a lot of other people? Well that should certainly make for a quick and easy trial, but it is certainly no reason to throw important freedoms out the window.
Posted by DSH (Member # 741) on :
Having a dog sniff your groin is considered a "horror"?
Have you never encountered a dog before? That's what dogs do, even when they're not looking for explosives.
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
Body scanners don't seem as good as people say they are. If someone smeared a thin layer of explosives over a plastic film over their skin, it sounds like the scanner wouldn't pick it up.
There will always be possibilities to thwart security technology. As Nate Silver pointed out, it's really such a small risk by past numbers.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Body scan, definitely. Intrusive dogs are a horror, and it's even worse when their owners are more concerned about the dog's feelings that the revulsion and violation of their guests.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
My thoughts on this are similar to DSH's. I'm not a massive fan of dogs, but I've encountered them, and they do seem to generally be quite overfriendly. It's not a horror. It's not like it's a human sniffing my groin.
I guess that the body scan is very easy, almost as if it isn't happening.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Dog people never seem to get how not OK non-dog people are with dogs. It isn't funny, and it isn't cute. I don't like dogs and I don't like them on or around me thank-you. I don't trust dogs or animals in general, and no one not married to me should be that close to me. I can't watch video right now so I have no idea what is actually happening, but I am curious, besides the large number of people who don't like dogs, how do they get around those with allergies?
Hobbes Posted by DSH (Member # 741) on :
For the record, I hate dogs.
But I've also spent enough time around them to understand how they behave. New dogs always want to sniff you (especially in the groin). Once they have 'had their fill', they move on. It isn't really that big of a deal... even for dog haters.
Now, dogs who decide to climb on me deserve to die. Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: I would rather they profile Arabs and Muslims. I watched TSA carry an 80 year old woman through a metal detector. Strip search anyone from the middle east and anyone with a name that rhymes with muhammed....John Smith and 80 year old white women have never committed an act of terror on an air plane.
Well, now I'm SURE you're racist, and I'm likewise sure that you ironically hate the constitution without knowing it.
Poor little darling. I hope someday they make an artificial island just for you and all the people who think you need an authoritarian police state to confirm with your values and keep you safe from the brown-skinned bogeymen.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
Hobbes, they discuss how our current system only trains dogs to sniff out vehicles or luggage...not people.
But, they showed toward the end a dog that Auburn university was training that simply stood in one spot scanning the air with his nose while people walked past him. He was on leash, and he never touched anyone with his nose or even got that close to them. When someone planted with explosives walked by, he pursued and alerte his handler.
I don't think even non-dog people can find that objectionable, or even allergies really. It was no more intrusive than if you were walking down the street and someone passed you on the sidewalk walking their dog on a leash. Most people I know with allergis have to be in closer contact with the dog's dander for it to be a problem.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Thanks Belle, that's not what I was picturing at all! I completely agree with you then: not a problem. Full disclosure, on my mission I learned how to deal with dogs and did so (I like to think) quite well but I never liked it. Now that I don't have to be around them based on occupation, I do what I can to avoid dogs. I've never been comfortable around even the most unobtrusive well behaved pet (of any species) and really just don't enjoy having any in the vicinty. :shrug:
quote:Once they have 'had their fill', they move on. It isn't really that big of a deal... even for dog haters.
I disagree.
Hobbes Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
The funny thing is, the trainer said we don't train dogs to sniff people, but I know that some drug dogs are trained to detect drugs people are carrying.
I have seen one in action at my school. The dog is brought into my classroom (I'm outside with my students lined up in the hallway) and he checks the entire room (yes, my desk too!). Then he is brought out and he walks down the hallway, never touching anyone, just looking.
I've never seen him find anything, but the officer told me he alerted by sitting down. Not by pawing the person or anything like that. As far as I could tell, the dog never touches any person at all.
So it seems to me we DO have dogs trained to do this type of thing...maybe just not in explosive detection.
Now, I'm not downplaying the fact that some people have phobias about animals and might be distressed even by seeing a dog near them, despite the fact that it is on leash and doesn't touch them. Sure there are folks like that. Moast of my students acted like fools "Oooohh the dog is gonna bite me! I'm scared!" but in reality when told to stand still against the wall while the dog passed by they stood still and were fine.
Edit: Argh! I hit the wrong button and didn't finish my post.
I was going to add, if somebody is terribly upset by dogs or has severe allergies they should be able to opt for a different type of search.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
I want a dog to look at my image on the X-ray scanner.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote:I want a dog to look at my image on the X-ray scanner.
Boy, then we could have dogs trained to perform strip searches as well!
I assumed that some people would prefer one and some the other, but I actually didn't expect the degree of negativity regarding dogs.
I've seen some of the body scan images that looked something like a nude manikin, and felt squicked out by it. I personally would prefer the dog. And I didn't choose to ask the question based on dogs' habit of sniffing crotches, but rather based on the location of the explosives in question in the most recent event.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote:John Smith and 80 year old white women have never committed an act of terror on an air plane.
You're right, I guess "Dan Cooper" doesn't sound sufficiently like "John Smith." Neither does "Tim McVeigh," "Ted Kaczynski," or "Eric Rudolph"
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
An hour to take off your boots? Should be 3 minutes tops, its not like your taking turns.
Unless you are in which case I blame your logistics operator for not calling in ahead of time.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
It takes an hour because you have to work around the bootlace-and-tongue-based detonation system. Tricky stuff.
Posted by Tarrsk (Member # 332) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: I would rather they profile Arabs and Muslims. I watched TSA carry an 80 year old woman through a metal detector. Strip search anyone from the middle east and anyone with a name that rhymes with muhammed....John Smith and 80 year old white women have never committed an act of terror on an air plane.
Well, now I'm SURE you're racist, and I'm likewise sure that you ironically hate the constitution without knowing it.
Poor little darling. I hope someday they make an artificial island just for you and all the people who think you need an authoritarian police state to confirm with your values and keep you safe from the brown-skinned bogeymen.
Hey, now. malathrop and his fellow soldiers didn't get mildly inconvenienced at the airport for non-real Americans the likes of you.
It's sort of hilarious to me that the true idiocies involved in today's airport screens (4 oz of liquid, shoe scans, etc) are holdovers of Bush era policies. Indeed, this most recent hysteria over the crotch bomber is directly descendant of conservatives going nuts over the shoe bomber (whose name, btw, was Richard Colvin Reid). They're both reactions completely out of proportion to the actual danger, both in the sense that the actual incidents were fairly minor and in the sense that the resultant security measures don't actually do anything to prevent such incidents from happening in the future.
Blaming the Obama administration for the TSA is like blaming Ford for Watergate.
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
quote:Originally posted by DSH: New dogs always want to sniff you (especially in the groin). Once they have 'had their fill', they move on. It isn't really that big of a deal... even for dog haters.
Don't act as though you speak for all of us, thanks. I don't want a dog anywhere near me, and I am not okay with them sticking their noses in my crotch, even for a moment. I would rather be searched by a machine or a member of my own species.
Now, as Belle described it, I wouldn't have a problem with it, either. I don't object to dogs in some grand conceptual way, and I understand that their sense of smell is unimaginably powerful, so they are supremely well-suited to this kind of task. I don't mind if they use dogs to determine that I don't have a bomb in my underwear. I very much mind if the dog is putting its face in my crotch in order to find out.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
I dislike dogs. Its 'gods' spelt reversed with some letters switched around.
But cats now, they're awesome.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
But cats think they're God.
Posted by kanelock1 (Member # 12230) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: I would rather they profile Arabs and Muslims. I watched TSA carry an 80 year old woman through a metal detector. Strip search anyone from the middle east and anyone with a name that rhymes with muhammed....John Smith and 80 year old white women have never committed an act of terror on an air plane.
Well, now I'm SURE you're racist, and I'm likewise sure that you ironically hate the constitution without knowing it.
Poor little darling. I hope someday they make an artificial island just for you and all the people who think you need an authoritarian police state to confirm with your values and keep you safe from the brown-skinned bogeymen.
Can't we all at least agree that this guy should have never been allowed on the plane to begin with? When you have someone with known, or even suspected ties to a terrorist group, whose own father said that he was a potential threat, traveling under suspicious circumstances, would not a little thing called "extreme caution" be appropriate? To blame the administration for this happening is silly. I tend to place the blame on one of two things. 1, stupidity. Or 2, political correctness. That being said, for Obama to say that "the system worked" was just plain stupid. If the system had worked, this would never have happened in the first place. I'm just saying.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
Here's a stupid point:
With the body scans, someone always has to look at the image. Since the person is going to be somewhere else, and have no chance to see the people, who's to say he can't snooze on the job or didn't look carefully. Does he have to hit an okay button for every person?
With the metal detector, someone guides you through and it beeps an okay. Presumably no one would let you through if it beeped "bad"
I guess it's like the luggage, which someone looks at as well.
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
Would there be a special process area for people who are vehemently allergic to dogs? not that I am, just pointing something out.
Posted by romanylass (Member # 6306) on :
Much rather the X ray screening.
Posted by dabbler (Member # 6443) on :
(Edit: XRay for carry ons, I mean)
My understanding is that the XRay randomly places "bad" objects on the monitor that the agent has to flag to prove they're paying attention.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I'm OK with dogs, rather than X-ray body scanners. I hate the fact every time a terrorist succeeds in anyway, my transit time at the airport increases substantially.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Kane, President Obama never said the system worked.
The head of Homeland Security said that. She has since admitted that she was wrong.
From the start President Obama waited to hear all the details, then proclaimed that mistakes were made and he set about finding them and correcting them.
Posted by kanelock1 (Member # 12230) on :
Thanks Darth, got the quoter wrong (found out earlier today, didn't have a chance to post), but will stand by the idea that it was a stupid thing to say. It is almost up there with "mission accomplished".
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