5 minutes per passenger is a lot longer than screeening today.

If they start using MRIs to stop terrorists at the airport, will they also inform a passenger if s/he appears to have a brain tumor?

I can see the Cheney version of these questions now. "How do you feel about Social Security privatization?"

gee...that means the goal is only 8 false positives on every 757 load, or thousands of people a day in a major airport.

Imagine this in the hands of a Bush-like administratition that decides it's neccessary to check everybody for hidden thoughts of opposition. 1984 is here at last, just a few years late.

The Ministry of Love is doing an excellent job this year, isn't it!

I have a "sure fire" way to solve this security problem. Just let me permanently imprison or kill all those whom I feel are a threat. 100% effective. But you treasonous liberals won't let me use my God-given ability to detect terrorists. You make me sick.

Al

This could be self-funding, if they allow people to buy extra questions that are applied to other passengers. I bet "Is my husband having an affair?" would be a brisk seller.

Al's remark reminds me that, now that toothpaste is banned from the cabin, it's only a matter of time before they give us real, total security by banning the last remaining danger to the aircraft - the passengers.

I am writing Kevin about this, and I am putting pedal to the metal.

If Kevin can't figure out a way to raise revenue from the regular posters here to update his software and hire someone to do the update so this blog can be registered, I am fucking out of here.

I am *so* not playing around.

Bob

...responds in his choice of language to 15 to 20 questions...

Well, not having to program all those extra languages into the US version of Cogito should increase accuracy...Because everyone living in or visiting the US speaks English or should be speaking English, right? 'Official language' and all that...

The unrealistically accurate system you're describing would still be catastrophically unhelpful -- the false positive rate may be one in a thousand, but there are hundreds of millions more legitimate passengers than terrorists. Bruce Schneier describes the "base rate fallacy" here:

http://www.schneier.com/essay-115.html

Conveniently, his example also uses your 99% false negative/.1% false positive rates.

What a nice idea, I doubt it will be possible to combine the systems to achieve such probabilities, since the probabilities of passing the two systems are not independent. That is, someone who can fool one system will likely have a higher chance of fooling the other system.

Anyone can learn to beat a casual polygraph in a few minutes.

Any polygraher can make someone fail by the tone they ask the questions with.

Polygraphs are bullshit. Never agree to take one.

craigie on August 14, 2006 at 12:36 PM:

I bet "Is my husband having an affair?" would be a brisk seller.

Lol - or maybe "Who's my real father?"

Yeah, we could hook it up to the heads of the candidates during the Presidential debates. Anyone think that is going to happen? No, eh? Now why is that I wonder...

Cranky

If the govt thought they had reached 99% accuracy with some type of lie detection, I think it would be disturbing to consider the extra questions the government could ask as part of the screening:

- Have you always been entirely honest in reporting 100% of your taxable income?

- Have you ingested an illegal drug in the past two years?

- Have you ever wished harm on an incumbent official?

Et cetera.

Some perspective: Since the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, terrorism has, on average, killed about 240 American civilians per year (3,000 dead/12.5 years). Four times that number of Americans choke to death on small toys or pieces of prime rib each year.

Is terrorism really all that scary that we have to give up all our privacy?

Contraindications for MR imaging and spectroscopy
Never forget that the magnetic memory of credit and similar cards, as well as magnetic devices such as tapes, will be erased by MR magnets. Leave home without them or leave them outside the magnet room.

Absolute Contraindications
electronically, magnetically, and mechanically activated implants:
cardiac pacemakers
ferromagnetic or electronically operated stapedial implants
hemostatic clips (CNS)
metallic splinters in the orbit

Relative Contraindications
electronically, magnetically, and mechanically activated implants:
other pacemakers, e.g.,for the carotid sinus;
insulin pumps and nerve stimulators;
lead wires or similar wires
non-ferromagnetic stapedial implants
cochlear implants
prosthetic heart valves (in high fields, if dehiscence is suspected)
hemostatic clips (body)
makeup and tattoos
congestive heart failure
pregnancy (claustrophobia)

Yglesias had a post a while ago about the math behind this- the problem is that your haystack is so large that any false positive rate ruins things. Let's say there's a million travelers on airline X in one year, and a team of five terrorists somewhere in there that plans to blow up one of the planes. So, you'll catch four out of the five terrorists- hooray! But from the other 999,995 innocent travelers, you will flag 80,000! Supposedly the follow-up interviews improve things, but basically you end up with now trying to figure which 4 out of the 80,004 you've flagged are terrorists. Even if you accept the 99/0.1, you now have a flagged pool of 1005, of which 5 are real terrorists. What do you do, arrest them all? Bar them all from flying? Maybe the latter is reasonable, since you know that it's very likely all terrorists out there are somewhere in that 1005, but you're going to end up with 1000 pissed off people.

Soon it'll be like a microwave oven or portable phone, available to the general public at an affordable price and size. All over America guys will get strapped in on returning home from that night of "poker" to find out if it was really "poke-her" they were up to.............

Constitution???

Self-Incrimination???

Rights???

What are you talking about, man?? These are Terrorists!!!

99% chance of catching terrorists and only a .1% rate of false positives. That would be genuinely useful.

Except it wouldn't really be. Imagine in a typical year you get 10 terrorists, and 50 million non-terrorists air travelers. So on average you get 50,000 false positives and a bit less than 10 true positives. So, even with this superduper non-existent terrorist detector you are winding up with a false to true ratio of 5000 to 1!

Kevin: The problem you fail to recognize is that you can't just multiply the probabilities with something like this. The qualities that allow people to evade one system are very likely to also allow them to evade the other too. Using both would improve your success rate over using just one, but nowhere near as much as you might think.

Further, given the relative proportion of terrorists to nonterrorists, even a very very small false positve rate would result in more nonterrorists than terrorists being caught. A false positive rate of .1% seems small, but over a million flyers, that's 1000 people. And in that million flyers, there probably aren't that many terrorists. Even if one out of a thousand flyers is a terrorist (ridiculously high!), any person flagged by the system would be just as likely to be a nonterrorist as a terrorist. And if we assume the terrorist rate is something more realistic, like one out of ten thousand, nearly 90% of the people flagged by the system would be nonterrorists.

How about learning to live with risk? How about learning what those risks are?

The whole idea of flying is to get some placee quickly. When you cancel dozens of flights and add hours at the airport you begin losing a lot of that.

Hopefully this is becoming a cliche at this point.

No, I didn't post post that.

But every time that a-troll (heh) re-posts it under my name, my reasons for writing it and posting it originally become a little more manifest ...

Too bad Kevin feels registration's not feasable on this blog.

Bob

Kid, have you ever been arrested?

Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?

Catching 85% of "terrorists" sounds like a pretty good success rate to me.

The idea that a system like this could in any event achieve anything like "99% chance of catching terrorists and only a .1% rate of false positives" is so absurd that I refuse to waste a single moment entertaining the possibility.

What SP said.

And figure in that as of 2002 (PDF), there were 600 million passengers per year in the U.S. alone.

So if there are 100 terrorists amongst 600 million passengers, with a 99% success rate in IDing terrorists, and an 0.1% false positive rate, you're stopping 600,000 people, including 99 terrorists. So one of every 6,000 persons ID'd by the screening as a terrorist really is one. That doesn't really help you much.

Like SP said, the haystack overwhelms the needles.

I'd reinforce several comments:

fMRI is not realistic for ths type of screening. It would add 30+ minutes (at best) to the screening. Also, the machines are very large, high maintenance and require sophisticated operators to interpret results.

It's highly likely that fMRI and Cogito-type screening will not be independent predictors of behavior. Hence, multiplying the two probabilities together to estimate false positive rates for combined screening will give you an unrealistically low estimate of false positive rates.

In a system where millions of passengers may have to be screened in order to identify a single terrorist, a 1/1000 false positive rate will yield thousands of innocent individuals who have been flagged as dangerous. What will you with them?

Agreed with all the excellent comments problematizing this from a probability standpoint.

"Thomas1":

You aren't Thomas1. Thomas1 is the "good Thomas" and would never ask such a blatantly stupid and self-evident question.

:)

Bob

m & matt, I pwn3d all of you. Anyway, what you need is some way of implementing a genetic algorithm in which you can iterate the terrorist selection method- that will eventually lead you to reasonable detection rates. To take the above example, you start with 5/1000000 (.0005% terrorists) and after one round you're at 4/80000- still bad, but 10x better (.005%). Now, maybe you can run them through the machine again, or some system with a similar selection rate- after two rounds you'll be at ~.05%. (Your enrichment number per round is your positive detecetion rate (85%) divided by your false detection rate (8%), or ~10x per round. So, the 15% "miss" rate with an 8% false positive rate is too weak- you'd need many many rounds to get to mostly terrorists in your suspect pool. With the desired 10/4, you're at 90/4 or 22x enrichment per round; with 99/0.1, you're at 1000x per round and can catch people after a couple of rounds of interrogation.
What's this mean in real life? Well, what Kevin said about combining two different systems; or maybe doing a more intensive background check after those, face to face interviews, baggage screens, etc. The key is to put your quick, least intrusive screens at the front to inconvenience the fewest people, because you don't want to have to get bank and phone records on 80,000 people for no reason.

Catching 85% of "terrorists" sounds like a pretty good success rate to me.

Really?

I've got an even better system for you.

You walk through the detector. In every case, the detector goes off, with an automated voice shrieking "Danger! Terrorist! Terrorist!"

The beauty of the system? It gets 100% of the terrorists!

We need to work something out. I am no longer able to mule Pale Ales from Oregon with these limits, and football season is nearly here.

Oh, and BTW mik, I can sell you my 100% system today!

It's cheap, really!

How do we know that *any* electronic means would be able to spot the 5 terrorists out of 5,000 after they've been narrowed down?

And how do we know that any electronic means wouldn't be easily defeated once passengers learn their protocols?

Bob

There are very good reasons, too many to list, that lie detector evidence (and that is all this is) is NOT ADMISSIBLE IN COURT.

Besides, everyone knows that reading tea leaves, casting bones, Gypsy fortune-tellers, voodoo practitioners, and Tarot card readers are MUCH more accurate.

Thomas1- if you really want to compare numbers, let's plug in the real values. The 1000 pissed off people came from Kevin's dream world machine that will never have that sort of efficiency- let's use the stated goals of 10% miss rate / 4% false positive rate. Then let's use RT's number of 600,000,000 air travelers. I don't know how many terrorists are out there- let's say 20 for the Sept. 11 atttacks. So using the above values, you catch 18 terrorists but can't tell them apart from the 24 million innocent people you've flagged. Now what do you do? Strip search all 24 million? Ban them from flying? Do you think people are going to put up with that, even if you claim you've saved 3000 lives, when it's unclear that you really have because terrorists aren't necessarily running operations on a routine yearly basis? Maybe no one tried anything that year and you just banned 24 million people from flying for no reason- sound like a good plan?

Here's some over-the-top profiling: How about implanting an RFID chip in every mid-eastern muslim airline passenger? Not only could we track terrorists, but we could gather some prime commercial demographic data too. Think of the mailing lists Levi's could generate.

(I'm off to go howl at the moon)

(Yeah, it's not really 24 million because that 600 million includes repeat flyers, but good enough for illustrative purposes.)

rmck1-- But every time that a-troll (heh) re-posts it under my name, my reasons for writing it and posting it originally become a little more manifest ...

They were less manifest when you wrote it and threatened to leave, but now that they are more manifest you are determined to stay. Interesting logic.

My *new* threat is that if assholery people keep posting my words under my name I am going to stay here forever. I *so* mean that.

Bob

Bob, I was hoping that you'd come to the rational conclusion that letting some idiot chase you away would only be self-defeating. Welcome back!!!

Thanks nepata. You are one of the few non-idiots here and I consider you a friend.

Bob

Needless to say, I did not post the above comment at 1:33. My buddies here know that I don't know *what* I mean. My friends will tell you that I won't let that stop me. But if my best friend Kevin ever implements registration, I will take credit for it.

Bob

Bob--
If the registration process you propose would be even 90% effective in filtering out the blog terrorists like Charlie, I'd be all for it.

Thanks Thomas1. You are a good friend. I have a lot of friends here and everywhere. People of all ages all over the world.

Bob

One thing that helps my own introversion is being possessed with a good deal of empathy. I'm genuinely interested in how other people think. I want to understand how Osama bin Laden sees the world.

Straight tequila? I've never tried the gourmet stuff, but my buddies and I tried it with a bottle of Cuervo the other weekend, and it lasted about half a glass before one of us ran out for some OJ.

And my two buddies are single-malt Scotch aficionados.

Although some of my buddies here have disagreed with me on this in email, I've seen enough posts from Tom at this point to realize that the guy isn't a nutcase or a troll.

My friends, of course, think I'm a fanatic Luddite and give me tons of grief.

Speaking of friends, I met a crew of AP highschool kids a few towns over in my next incarnation as a poster, after a friend chucked me another extra modem

We all wound up meeting at BBS gatherings and despite the age difference, eventually became
tight friends; several of them are in grad school locally.

My bud has to this day an aversion to putting his laundry in a hamper, a cross borne more by his live-in girlfriend than his frequent guests.

By the time my friend moved out the thing would have to have been smelled to have been believed

Another all-timer, introduced me to progrock through the friend who turned me on to ELP.

I've *tried so hard* to get into them because I have progrocker friends who adore them.

I have a very good Italian friend I speak to daily

Oh my gods, my friend is going to be delirious

I took three verses of a 16-bar Irish folk tune (actually by Carolan) and harmonized it for a friend, who wanted to know the right guitar chords for it.

I still have my late friend Paul's transcription of it buried somewhere in my manuscripts

It's so funny, but today I spent multiple hours with a neighbor and casual friend I hadn't seen in a while.

But it's also like an old Marxist friend I used to know who never tipped waitresses because he thought it would help hasten the Revolution

A good friend, much much younger, came of age during the hegemony of Michael Jackson and Green Day.

Well, I tried to give my own reasoning on the Troll Question in my original post, but I'll take another whack at it while I wait for my friend to get over with the beer.

I have a very, very good friend overseas I speak to about three times a week.

I have friends who came of age during the 80s horror resurgence and I watch movies with them.

A friend knows a professor of 18th century literature who considers M&D the absolute funniest book he's ever read.

My friends were over for a homemade spaghetti dinner and we were well into a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi chianti by the time we flipped on the TV.

My buddy doesn't have a TV at his apartment and so when he comes over, we make his "Fox fix" into an amusing ritual.

I have European friends I correspond with regularly.

Look, I don't mean to appear like a showoff, but my best friend's a philosophy PhD candidate and we jawbone about this stuff all the time.

One of my best friends is a grad student, and every day he encounters winos, whores and street people who shake him down for change.

I was having a good time with my friends on Friday night.

Bill Arnett,

There are very good reasons, too many to list, that lie detector evidence (and that is all this is) is NOT ADMISSIBLE IN COURT.

Polygraph results are sometimes admissible in court. The law varies by jurisdiction.

That's a lot of friends for an introvert.

The terrorists have won.

What a waste of time and money.We could just put passengers to sleep before planes take off wake them up when they arrive at the airport of there choice.I can solve some other problems in the world if any Leader would like to contract me.

All the posts written under 1:18 under my name are not by me, though some of them are crossposts from old threads.

My guess here is that "Thomas" (including the liberal Thomas, which I'm becoming convinced is a front) is truly Cheney -- since Cheney has a longstanding reputation for strenuously attempting to wreck threads.

I'm sorry about this. I think the best response at this point is to simply point it out when it happens, but otherwise not stress about it.

Bob

Actually, going back and looking at those posts under my name, they're a perverse combination of things I've written with inane comments I haven't. Who knew I had suck fans that they keep an archive of my old posts?

This is the logic of bullies and terrorists everywhere. A complete lack of civility in lieu of being able to win on the merits of the conflict.

Bob

I wish I had as many imaginary friends as Bob.

Thomas1:

I'm sorry sir, but though at one point I was inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt -- I am no longer able to do so.

Bob

The terrorists are controlling us without firing a shot. All they have to do is give the illusion there is something to fear, and the US runs for cover. They have basically taken over air travel, and they didnt have to really do anything. They have us giving up rights daily, and dont have to offer any reason. All they seem to do is yell "JUMP" and we all ask "HOW HIGH"?

That they hate us for our freedoms.
Whos really winning here?

Okay, it's obvious what this did. They googled "friends," "buddies" and "rmck1" and then cut and pasted every comment I had made about my friends in about six months' worth of posting here.

What an *incredible load of effort*, eh?

Just a further argument for blog registration.

Bob

Bob:

You're staying then? Yipee! Let's have a beer party at your house tonight to celebrate. I know you never go out and I'm too young for bars anyway.

Your friend

Thomas1:

Well, at least you've demonstrated to my full satisfaction that you're Cheney.

I'll never doubt the person who insisted on this to me in email again.

Bob

.1% false positives means 487,000 false positives a year in the USA (487 million passengers/year -- that's a 1993 figure; it's apparently more than 600 million/year now). How is an airport like, say, Orlando, going to deal with 30,000 false positives a year?

"Just a further argument for blog registration."
Bob

I am with you on this registration rmck1.

Hmm, let's check if this idea is any good. Atlanta's airport ATL has 162 passengers/minute.
http://www.airports.org/cda/aci/display/main/aci_content.jsp?zn=aci&cp=1-5_9_2__

Too screen them, obviously at least 162 * 5 (minutes) = 810 boxes would be needed. But in reality, the passenger numbers are not evenly distributes, I guess the morning and afternoon will be rush hours. And the boxes would have to be near the gates, too. So imho easily the tenfold capacity would have to be installed, if not more. 8100 booths, at what cost? 100000$ each? This would be a cool 810 millions, and this is only one airport.

Also, let's look at the numbers of people to be questioned after a false alarm. Even at a 4% rate, which hasn't been accomplished yet, 6.5 people would have to be questioned every minute. Lets say an interview takes only 20 minutes, that's equivalent to 130 investigation teams needed, 24/7. In reality, to reduce waiting times to a realistical level, maybe 5 times as much, 650, would have to be present.

This shows us, the costs are too high. And we haven'r even calculated the loss of priductive labor for the economy. 81 million poassengers, each losing 5 minutes. Ridiculous.

So, no, I don't see this happening in the near future. Imho it's totally the wrong way. It would be much more realistic to introduce an electronically readable 'flyers pass', valid for one year or so, with biometrical data. If some problematic informations turn up, the security services can relay an alarm to airport security gates and the bearer would be held before being able to enter the plane.

There's still a lot of 1984 in this concept, but at least it's better than generally suspecting that every traveller is a terrorist and subjecting all passengers to lie detector tests.

All the posts written under this thread under my name are not by me, though some of them are crossposts from old threads.

I have better things to do with my time than respond to impersonators. This is my *last* word about this.

Bob

Its not 1984 .... its Bladerunner ... "Void Komp" test.

The above post wasn't by me.

I guess some people are just easily amused ...

Bob

You know, these sorts of attacks are actually a good thing. The more people here see how they derail threads, the more people get Doppelgangbanged as it were (and in the past week or so it's hardly been me alone) -- the more likely they will be to write Kevin and request registration.

So .. bring it on, boys :)

I'll be here to set the wheat from the chaff.

Bob

Thomas:

Cheney *is* known for trying to destroy threads with inappropriate crossposts.

Have a nice day, yourself.

Bob

Bush Tried To Cut Bomb Detection Funds: Congress Rejected $6 Million Cut For DHS Explosives Technology

Last year? Last month? Um, no, try this summer.

Bush has officially killed satire.

*Sigh* Neither the 2:39 nor 2:41 posts were by me. I am starting to become confused myself (heh).

Bob

That wasn't me.

Bob

"Volume discounts and combining screening methods will help."

Volume discounts? For federal security equipment? Where do you live? How did you manage to ignore all those stories about 'no bid' contracts?

Kevin, for god's sake, ban those impersonators!

rmck1, can you suggest another good blogsite where reasoned people of different opinions can engage in good, spam free debate?

Let me know
Thanks

Try Joe Gandelman's moderate voice, for instance, Jay.
http://www.themoderatevoice.com/
Irt's more to the right than Kevin's site, though.

Jay:

I don't know really. This is the only blog I'm on. What I do know is that this is amounting to a deliberate harrassment campaign designed to drive me out of here. The person figures that if they spoof me and crosspost me enough, nobody will be able to tell which posts are mine and which aren't.

It's quite malicious -- and it could happen to anyone here.

If it keeps up, I'll simply mail the evidence to Kevin and show him that this is the kind of thing that could destroy his blog. If they get away doing it to me, they could do it to anybody -- and no doubt will try if they see me succumbing to this onslaught.

In a lot of ways, it's precisely like dealing with terrorism.

I'm becoming more and more exasperated, but at the moment I'm not quite yet at the point of cutting and running.

Bob

Don't cut and run, you're actually one of the few liberals I enjoy debating.

We must remain resolved and steadfast, hehe, sound familiar?

Thomas1:

To be perfectly honest, I don't trust you at all. Your words alternate between "good guy" remarks and sardonic snark -- sometimes within the same sentence. Your style is also awfully close to the parody rmck1 posts, and your slightly eccentric emoticon style is identical to the one that Cheney used upthread.

Not proof -- just a strong intuition that you indeed are my antagonist.

Bob

"I'm sure we can get GE to give us a discount on $800 million worth"

Hehe! Nice joke.

But lets take a deeper into the costs of the technology needed. Check the fMRI link: "Using the same functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan that picks up brain tumors"

If you never heard that MRI machines for brain scanning cost millions, google and you'll find this info, for instance:
"A disadvantage of MRI is its price tag. MRI machines cost several million dollars and the unit cost of scans is higher than for X-rays and ultrasound."
http://www.science.org.au/nova/062/062key.htm

So, my guesstimate of 100000 is already very strongly on the cheap side, the actual price tag might be several times as high.

"Trust me or not, but I am actually the protagonist."

Troll.

Gray:

Well, whoever it is who's attempting to make my day so interesting, I at least can take comfort in the fact that I Just. Don't. Speak. Jackass :)

Bob

Thomas1:

That is *so* Cheney to crosspost an irrelevancy like that.

I'm frankly surprised you even bothered to credit it.

Bob

Bob:

Might have been a little jackassery to overreact to a harmless spoof that would probably have gone away if you had simply disavowed it or ignored it altogether.

Yeah, I'd just love to see the idiotic accidents that would occur when the TSA is tasked with managing thousands of very high gauss magnets across the nation.

Are these questions testing whether I'm a terraist or a lesbian, Mr. Drum?

bobbyp:

It might, yes -- if that was all it was.

A continual attack spanning multiple threads and consisting of several dozen fake posts under my name -- not so much.

I'd reserve judgment until it happens to you.

Bob

Well, I understand 'proagonist' as being the central figure of a story. So I see your statement as a condession. I didn't rule out that it was the impersonator acting as 'Thomas1', though. However, in either case imho it is justified to label an impersonator on a discussion thread as a 'Troll'.

If you deny being that Troll, you can simply avoid being labelled as such by refraining from making such misleading statements.

Vtw, YMMV? The Young Men's Muslim Venture???

"A continual attack spanning multiple threads and consisting of several dozen fake posts under my name -- not so much."

Yup, that's really not funny anmore.

Gray:

Your Mileage May Vary. From EPA fuel efficiency standards, a line inserted into car ads in the late 70s as a disclamer when an MPG (miles per gallon) rating for a particular model was cited.

It's become cyber-shorthand for "this is my opinion; you might think otherwise."

Bob

Bob, this new view of margarine, which North Americans now consume four times as much of as butter, developed along with an awareness of the role of saturated fat and cholesterol in producing atherosclerosis, the degenerative condition of arteries that predisposes us to heart attacks, strokes, and other circulatory diseases.

It's become cyber-shorthand for "Everyone makes his own choices"

Hmm, maybe my translation isn't correct. It might be this simply says 'stay cool'...
:D

If you think this sounds like it wouldn't work very well, you'd be right. Even in a test environment, the machine missed 15% of "terrorists" and incorrectly flagged 8% of innocent travelers.

Haven't read all of the comments, but I have to say, "Compared to what?"

Of course, as is suggested by some comments above, the issue isn't solely probabilities, but (expected) cost.

Oops, I thought you wanted to pull my leg, Bob. That's the explanation of 'YMMV'? Damn...
Is there a handbook of cyber shorthands anyhere where I can add my creation 'TNVOM'? Maybe it will become popular if I find a rational meaning behind it...
Maybe 'I never heard this before, but its a valid point'
:)

I'm the king of typos, Tom. Of course I wanted to type 'confession'. I can't find any other meaning behind your 'me, protagonist' statement. What did YOU want to say?

Is this beginning to sound like a Twilight Zone episode?

Would people be afraid to take their adolescents on plane rides? Would women with pms be concerned? Would people who are simply too smart for their own good be in trouble? It sounds like Big Brother. Before you know it, they'd decide your .1% must be guilty, too --- certainly they'd spend their time at Guantanamo, held on no charges. Having a so-called 'terrorist personality' would be sufficient.

How many people are killed by terrorists each year? How many people are killed by other means? I mean, if the reason we don't like terrorists is because they kill people --- and stopping deaths is our primary goal --- well, then George W. Bush with his 100,000 Iraqis dead is surely the biggest threat. We could take him down and save a lot of lives, no doubt. (I'm just being sarcastic, don't put me on any terrorist lists please.) Then there's the deaths from disease in places like Africa --- I'm sure the research money going into this terrorist tracking system could save a lot more lives if applied in Africa. Then there's stuff like car safety --- we could install solar panels on the roof of cars to create motion-detecting air conditioning and save all those babies...

Or we could create Big Brother.

Surely a rational, caring public....

Oh.

Guess we're doomed.

What proportion of people could you possibly afford to screen if the process takes up to five minutes, or even 30 seconds?

The other problem with this kind of system is the same as missile defence. Real terrorists are exceedingly rare, and don't make themselves available to test your machine on until it matters. How can you demonstrate that it actually works?

All the successful operations against terrorists seem to have resulted from intelligence obtained well before attacks occur. Maybe we should play to what works, rather than what doesn't.

Others have pointed out the false positive problems, I fully concur.

"How many people are killed by other means?"

Good question. I once posted at an Israely blog that there are more people killed in traffic accidents in Israel every year than by Hizbullah rockets. The blogger wasn't amused...

Imagine the problem of US traffic accidents receiving so much atrtention by the public, the media and the politicians. By now, every single yard of major highways would be under constant video surveillance. Speed merchants would be sentenced to indefinite prison without a trial. Anyone disregarding a stop sign would be subject to a FBI investigation of his background including phone tapping, for revealing connections to other traffic violators. :-/

Now if anyone ever asks if I have ever advocated taking down a president, I will hesitate for a moment as I try to figure out how to classify my sarcasm, and that hesitation will flag me as a terrorist...

Personally, I prefer Wesley Clark's idea of figuring out how to stop people from turning terrorist to begin with...

Considering international terrorists are about as common as unicorns, this is another grotesque waste of money. There is no al-Qaeda. It is a neocon fantasy, designed to enslave millions and consolidate power in the hands of the few. Fight the right!

"So, who planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks then?"

It's not entirely impossible that they were CIA agents who didn't knew they were on a trip with remote controlled planes. This would explain a lot. Of course, there's not a single evidence for this.

Why would you call yourself 'protagonist' if you didn't have anything to do with Bob's story? Worst case of a misguided pun I ever heard...

Presumably this system could be combined with the frequent traveler program bandied about after 9/11. Rather than screening at the airport you could simply do the terror screening at the time of ticketing. Anyone who would not or could not comply for any reason would then be screened at the airport. The dual track would have the same effectiveness and cut down the lines at the airport. Might work.

"Thomas1:
To be perfectly honest, I don't trust you at all. Your words alternate between "good guy" remarks and sardonic snark -- sometimes within the same sentence. Your style is also awfully close to the parody rmck1 posts, and your slightly eccentric emoticon style is identical to the one that Cheney used upthread.
Not proof -- just a strong intuition that you indeed are my antagonist."
This was clearly about Bob's story.

Bob:

It might, yes -- if that was all it was.

A continual attack spanning multiple threads and consisting of several dozen fake posts under my name -- not so much.

Not so much is correct, because you wrote your angry threat to leave in the very first thread in which a fake post appeared under your name. My point was that if you had been more cool-headed then it probably wouldn't have escalated to several dozen in multiple threads, with most of them being just a reposting of your original outburst.

"Presumably this system could be combined with the frequent traveler program bandied about after 9/11."

Yes. By combining it with a 'safe flyer pass' valid for a year or so. Makes no sense checking he same people every month or even every few days.

Not that I think this would be constitutional. Imho it's not.

What's the success rate for terrorists that have a rudimentary knowledge of the system?

What an artistically shaped bunch of sh**. However, somehow you managed to ignore Bob's main topic: The f***íng impersonator. You're totally crazy, Thomas. And so I wouldn't be surprised at all if you're that Troll.

My advice: Take ten drops of Ubik on a sugar cube, three times a day after the meals, and STFU!

"How about a nice game of chess?"

You're alone in your boring hotel room?
Your wife has an IQ of 42?
Your longtime chess partner died and his half-life time is running out?

No Problem!
Try the all-new Ubik Chess Compaion!
It's a great antagonist at all levels of gameplay, it's mobile and it's a bargain at only 39.99 bucks!

Get back into play NOW!

Legal disclaimer: Ubik CC shouldn't be used by mentally unstable persons. If in doubt, please check your freudsterTM first!

Gray:

Exactly. And one of the right-wing nutjobs who's plagued this place, and who others here who I respect are certain is now Thomas, is a creature who called himself "Cheney" and also identified by long-timers as "Charley."

Now it seems Thomas has gone out of his way to present a reasonable persona on some issues (save abortion, where he remains an extremist), and for awhile I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I even criticised some of my allies here for accusing Thomas of being Cheney.

But there's a peculiar style to Thomas' reasonableness that I just do not trust. Like it's ... studied. The sort of false front that you have to work to maintain. There are many things he could've said in his "reasonable" guise that would've reassured me -- but time and time again he ends his posts in passive-aggressive snarks. It's nothing I can put my finger on -- just a set of impressions. For example, if the roles were reversed and someone was accusing me of being a malefactor -- somehow I don't imagine myself remaining calm and "reasonable" about it if I were innocent, the way Thomas is doing.

I honestly don't know who's spoofing me, of course. It might be a number of people who've seen the blood in the water and can't resist jumping in under the cloak of anonyminity. In any case, it has seemed to have died down for the moment.

What I do know is that if this kind of spoofing becomes commonplace, it will corrode the ability to have discussions about anything.

And that's why I really think it's time to help Kevin acquire registration.

Bob

What I'm wondering is when we hit the point at which airplane travel becomes such a hassle that people stop flying unless they absolutely have to?

Banning liquids...not very tolerable to me, since my wife and I both get dehydrated easily and drink a lot of juice when we fly. Banning all carry-on luggage....that would be a deal breaker.

How close are we to the tipping point, to use Malcolm Gladwell's term, at which large numbers of people decide that flying is no longer worth the trouble and we start to see seriously negative economic consequences in the travel and hospitality biz?

Sounds like the most useless piece of false-sense-of-security tech out there!

1. Were I a terrorist, I would go on a few international flights and take careful notes of the types of responses which end up triggering a follow-up interview versus those which don't. When doing the "real thing" I'd then provide answers that, statistically, don't lead to a follow-up interview, and sail on through on a much higher than 15% success rate.

2. The system has no natural way of improving itself except when there is a large body of terrorist attacks coming through, and a good number of those succeeding (which it can then learn from). It has no natural way of improving its "false positive" rate than letting a few deemed-terrorists through OR relying on the ability for the second-level screeners to accurately gauge that the guy they just turned away really was intending to do something nefarious.

Given that it's a whole lot easier for a terrorist to experiment and adapt to the system than for the system to experiment and adapt to terrorist threats, this is a fully useless project. Costs?

1. False sense of security.
2. Public is less willing to add more security measures, knowing what a hassle (not in five minute cost, but moreso in false positives) this measure is.

IMHO, this is strangely analogous to RIAA efforts at stopping piracy by throwing huge obstacles in the way of honest customers which true pirates can easily circumvent.

RIAA and Israel. A match made in heaven?

bobbyp:

>> It might, yes -- if that was all it was.

> A continual attack spanning multiple threads and consisting
> of several dozen fake posts under my name -- not so much.

> Not so much is correct, because you wrote your angry threat
> to leave in the very first thread in which a fake post appeared
> under your name. My point was that if you had been more cool-
> headed then it probably wouldn't have escalated to several
> dozen in multiple threads, with most of them being just a
> reposting of your original outburst.

Sure. I got pissed off and issued an ultimatum, and in hindsight
that was decidedly an overreaction. To the extent that a person gets
genuinely angry on a forum, it reveals a vulnerability, and certain
trollish types are going to have a field day pushing that button.

So to that extent I brought this on myself.

But it doesn't change the fact that I had every right to get pissed
off. Spoofing hardly just happens to me -- or to obvious trolls
we all enjoy making fun of. It's been getting worse lately for
regulars, and virtually anyone who posts here is a potential victim.

If you don't make a stink about stuff like this -- especially at the
point where it's starting to get worse -- nothing will ever change.

Acting like a "good German" about is just doesn't appeal to me.

Bob

Jet Tredmont:

Very good points. The only way to substantially improve the system is to process through a lot of terrorists -- and the point is to stop each and every one of them.

False sense of security is probably an even worse outcome than the outrageous cost in both passenger time and money.

Bob

How safe will you feel when people like Bush have absolute power? Because you can bet your sweet bippy that the Bush of the future will be no more interested in stopping terrorists than the Bush of today.

Of course, the American people themselves have applauded every addition to heavily armed police forces, so we can all rest easy- no violent change will be allowed, except, of course, for the violent changes people like Bush want to make.

Probably better not to think about it. On television the good guys alwys win (unless you're watching the news) and you can be sure that in the America of the future you'll never be far from a tv set. Not the greatest substitute for actually living but it will have to do.

simply point it out when it happens,... Bob
Sounds like a plan, especially when Charlie, Cheney, Thomas and his other sock puppet deuteragonists fall off their lithium. Most brains come in A normal; others, like Chuckles, are what we call AB normal because of the blatant lack of maturity.

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Perhaps if we drive the terrorists off the planes, they'll be forced to consider less obvious but more deadly terrorist activities like poisoning water supplies.

Perhaps we should just lock up everybody who looks at us funny.

IS THIS THE SO-CALLED VOIGHT-KAMPF TEST?

False sense of security is probably an even worse outcome than the outrageous cost in both passenger time and money.

Bob, I think this is silly.

I traveled to Israel numerous times between 1981 and 1992. I don't know what current procedures are, but at the time, every single passenger at customs was asked a few questions. Those deemed to warrant further questioning were sent through to talk to an intelligence officer. I was sent through to level 2 once. My father was sent once or twice. The intelligence officer would talk to you for 5 minutes or so, make a judgment and send you on your way.

Sure it was a hassle. And you never knew why you'd been picked for further questioning - something about your itinerary, your friends or relatives named, the way you dressed - who knew? But you participated in it with pride and a sense of community service. For that matter, the first time I flew to Israel, every single piece of baggage, carry-on and checked, was opened and inspected by hand in the presence of the passenger.

What a hassle! Think of the lines! I generally tend to think of myself plummeting from 35,000 feet, and it makes the hassle seem more bearable.

As for the success/failure rate: a machine that can pick out 85% of the terrorists is a fantastic machine. What percentage would be picked out by a human interviewer? What percentage are being picked out today? By what process? What are we comparing this to?

wow.. great article
----------------------
nice web

brooksfoe:

If the idea was to reduce global warming, air pollution or cigarette smoking -- then an 85% reduction would be a fantastic amount. But the idea in catching terrorists is being 100% right all the time.

What a machine like that can do is cull down to a much smaller number of people it is valid to suspect. What it *can't* do is determine who is and who isn't a terrorist. At the end of the day, it's going to be a matter of human judgment, with an intelligence officer/airport security screener signing off on the decisions for detaining higher risks -- and taking the heat for the inevitable false positives.

It's not really a question of inconvenience. If a delay of two hours could absolutely guarantee that we'd catch all terrorists before boarding -- people I think would gladly submit to that as the price to be paid for air travel in this new era. Long trips, anyway. The BoWash corridor some might start considering Amtrak instead of the shuttle.

The idea of community service and sacrifice as an ideal worth submitting to works for a country like Israel, with a well-known terrorist problem and a gnawing sense of guilt (conscious or otherwise) among Israelis about it. But that's going to be hard to extrapolate to the flying public at large who feel no great implication in the reasons for Islamist terrorism to begin with ...

Bob

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