[geeks] Google Images Facial Recognition!

[Phil Stracchino]

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 07:39:10AM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
>>  Meanwhile, Congress is deathly afraid, hasn't even
>> figured out there IS a difference between "strange" and "dangerous", and
>> wastes its "security" dollar harassing women armed with hand cream (OH
>> NOES!!!1!), 
> 
> The problem with that is a Pakastani affiliated with AL-Queida put
> together a plot to bring down U.S. airliners in the late 1990's with
> bombs made on the airplanes consisting of chemicals mixed with shampoo,
> contact lens fluid, etc. The detonators were made from travel alarm clocks.
> 
> The bombs were the type made from two relatively inert igredients that
> became an explosive when mixed.

Yes, there was a bombing plot in England that they only got part of the
network on because someone jumped the gun ... most of the experts who
reviewed it and the planned ingredients said it wouldn't have worked.

The thing is, El Al would stop and search someone who was "acting
hinky".  Here, we're only about two steps short of strip-searching all
passengers and making them board the plane wearing disposable paper
coveralls because there's so many things we've become afraid to let
people carry onto an airplane.

This is in spite of the fact that virtually all the items that HAVE been
used in actual or attempted attacks weren't carried onto the plane by
hijackers ... they were pre-placed by subverted ground crew.  It's been
shown several times that it's trivially easy to do so, but nothing
significant has been done about it.  It's security theater.  The
screening is done by poorly trained minimum-wage workers who wouldn't
know "hinky" if it bit them in the ass (and many of whom are dishonest
in the first place).  During the first few years of the Federal Flight
Deck Officer (armed aircrew) program, flight crew weren't allowed to
actually carry their own sidearms onto the plane, they had to be handled
by TSA ... and out of about 1000 FFDO graduates, 300 FFDO sidearms were
stolen en route to the cockpit -- by TSA personnel.  And FFDO sidearms
are far from the only thing that's mysteriously disappeared while
luggage passed through TSA hands.  It's not just the TSA screeners,
either -- if you fly on a US airline with firearms in your checked
luggage, you're required to declare them at the check-in desk, but the
airline is forbidden by Federal law to mark the luggage as containing
firearms, because the risk of baggage handlers stealing them is
considered to be too high.

One could justifiably argue that our current airline security program
and baggage handling system isn't part of the solution so much as part
of the problem.


-- 
 It's not the years, it's the mileage.
 Phil Stracchino              phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net
 Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker, Free Stater
 Landline: 603-429-0220                Mobile: 603-320-5438