Full body scans won't work; explosive powder can be put into a container of any shape.

[Eric J in MN]

We've had the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber.

Next time it could be the belt bomber or the hat bomber.

Or the explosive can be put into carry-on for the radio-bomber.

Security officials looking at images can't react to a shape they aren't even looking for.

[daleo]

1. You could be right

This may just become another factor in most people's risk calculation regarding flying.

[azurnoir]

2. Simple fact there is nothing that is or can be a 100%

guarantee of safety short of strip searching everyone boarding a plane and searching every piec of baggage and cargo physically and maybe not even then

[rpannier]

10. That's not entirely true

Putting everyone in their own little black box would work
It seems to be the only thing that ever survives in any plane disaster
I used to tell the Travel Agent that's where I wanted to sit -- in the Little Black Box

[azurnoir]

13. LOL

:thumbsup:

[JCMach1]

3. Sniffer scanners are the only thing that would help significantly

AND dogs

[HelenWheels]

4. which are cheaper and more effective

but that's not what this is all about. It's scare the wimpy American's and spend their tax dollars on silly overpriced gadgets.

[Confusious]

5. How much is one life worth?

Planes are easy to bring down. We either have better security with sniffers, or stop flying, or see people die on a regular basis.

which do you suggest?

[JCMach1]

8. Demand TSA bomb and chemical sniffing dogs at every airport

I am pretty damn sure the dog would have found out the crotch bomber in a heartbeat

[japple]

18. Right! We need more dogs in every airport! Lord knows there

are thousands (maybe millions) of unemployed dogs, and everyone knows that every dog needs a job.

[JCMach1]

31. Usually there is a good K9 officer attached to every dog

[Confusious]

26. Dogs can't smell everything

If a persons careful, they could fool the dogs. The sniffer is a lot more sensitive.

Besides that, people put out their own smells, which could cover the explosive smell. You can run through water and get a dog off your trail.

But by all means, more dogs.

[JCMach1]

32. Depends on what chemicals the dog has been trained on

Here are some interesting facts: dog vs. technology


...Four years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) boosted smell-recognition research with its $25 million Dog's Nose Program. "The idea was to bring the sensing ability of a dog's nose to humans," says Regina Dugan, the program's former manager. Two distinct solutions emerged. Kauer and his team at Tufts sought to create a true electronic nose, capable of distinguishing a wide variety of smells. Chemist Timothy Swager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his partners at Nomadics Inc. of Stillwater, Oklahoma, single-mindedly focused on sensitivity to TNT and DNT— a less generic, more practical approach. As a result, the Nomadics device, called Fido, was the first artificial nose capable of sniffing out a land mine in the real world.

Fido draws air through tiny glass tubes coated with a fluorescent polymer, developed by Swager, that binds to DNT, TNT, and related molecules. Normally the polymer glows under ultraviolet illumination, but the fluorescence diminishes where a particle of the explosive adheres. Photomultiplier tubes detect the light and convert it into an electric signal, which is amplified and sent to a computer. This technique is touchy enough to detect a land mine from just 30 million molecules of airborne explosive and practical enough to use outside the lab. "At the end of the year, we hope to have something ready to ship," says Colin Cumming, president of Nomadics, who expects the device will cost less than $5,000. But the company's electronic nose has an Achilles' heel. Although Fido is exquisitely sensitive to the DNT family of compounds, it also responds to innocuous molecules whose chemical components resemble those of DNT. That leads to false alarms.

Kauer, whose work grows out of his theories about how the brain encodes smell, looks to biology to solve the problem of look-alike molecules. In place of Fido's fine-tuned detector, his artificial nose relies on an array of 32 broadly reactive fluorescent sensors to mimic the human olfactory system. We don't have specific receptors for oranges or for coffee. Rather, we use a wide variety of chemically promiscuous cells, each of which responds to many different cues. The vapors emanating from a cup of coffee or a peeled orange trigger a unique pattern of electrical activity in those cells, which the brain then interprets as a particular odor. Rather than zeroing in on DNT, Kauer built a system that similarly senses the overall smell of its environment: "We wanted it to be as sloppy as possible."

That sloppiness comes at a price. Last fall, when the Dog's Nose Program arranged a contest, Fido proved 100 times more sensitive to DNT than the Tufts sensor. Since then, Kauer's team has upgraded the optics, improved the airflow, and rebuilt the electronics. Recently, the Tufts nose went snout to snout with land-mine-detecting dogs in trials at Auburn University in Alabama. Researchers pumped an aromatic compound into a set of cages. Dogs trained to press a lever if they could detect the odor competed against their electronic doppelgänger. "We were probably about a factor of 10 times less sensitive than the best dogs but about par with the worst dogs," says Joel White, one of Kauer's collaborators... http://discovermagazine.com/2001/sep/feattech

[dysfunctional press]

6. and how many have been effective?

putting it into a container of any shape appears to be only half the equation.
the half that they've kinda figured out.
the important part of the equation- making it go 'BOOM!'...not so much.

[comtec]

9. they don't even have that right

they have a transport container, not a compression device.
grenades are build that way for a specific purpose, so are firecrackers, et al.

but let pretend this "Super explosive" worked exactly like it was planned.
and this is a serious stretch, but lets do this thought experiment.
what is realistically the largest hole he could have blown into the side of the airplane?
seriously?
assuming that many grams of perfect C-4, how big?
certainly not big enough to bring the plane down.
maybe kill a few people, and that's it!
Planes are big, durable devices!
The bomb(s?) that brought down than PanAm flight were BIG, Suitcase(s?) big!

This guy had a condom's amount of inert material that had to be mixed!

so seriously.. really?

This all smells to me. I'm too tired of hearing about all this bullshit they're selling us as potpourri!

This is really setting off my conspiracy alarm!
BTW before 9/11 (and for a loooong time after) it was a very small peep... but it's a big fucking klaxon!

There are too many coincidences to be honest. too many things that are not that dangerous that happen but are just enough to justify martial law bullshit!

It really makes me wonder who is really behind all this.

[trumad]

15. The FBI ran tests on what the Shoe Bombers material could have done to the plane...

It blew a big ass hole in the side of the plane. This last guy had more material.

[dysfunctional press]

16. having the 'material' is only half the battle.

the easy half.

[comtec]

30. While that is good to know...

why didnt all the fucking abuse I have to go through work?
I smell something and it isn't semtex!

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. Anal Probes for all Passengers is the only rational solution

Space aliens do to earthlings when brought aboard their ships.

Its the only rational solution otherwise they don't know what kind of shit
you're bringing onboard.

Expect a three hour to four hour wait at the airport and be sure
to bring your own butt plug......

[rpannier]

11. And when was the last time someone successfully blew up a space ship?

See...It works

[DailyGrind51]

12. Plastique can be shaped into the handle of a toothbrush, coat button, etc.

[KharmaTrain]

14. Anyone Determined To Create Havoc Will Find A Way...

This country is loaded with Chickenshits. Every day when one steps out the door one takes risks...it's part of the human experience. The reason this country became a "beacon upon the world" was we were able to balance the fears against the power of free speech and self determination. Not any longer. Fear has become a major political industry and tool...create a boogie man...be it a Nazi, Soviet or A-rab...then put them under every bed. Then wait for the corporate media to amp it up.

Unless we completely shutter the borders, someone determined to do damage will find a way. All the draconian measures won't do squat as long as we have such a byzantine intelligence system where one hand not only doesn't talk to the other but deliberately withholds information to "protect turf". Any "terrorist" will find the holes...and in many cases, they can do so in the open as we always prepare for the last attack.

While we shouldn't laugh at these attempts, we shouldn't go running into a hole either. My concern these days is that the most dangerous terrorists are already within our borders and like to wear teabags.

[madokie]

17. The only thing that will work and it's fool proof

Get out of those people's faces with our lies, deceit and especially our killing machine. Wanna stop terrorism? Work on the reasons for that terrorism, trust me there is common ground to be found with everyone. We're just whistling past the graveyard when we continue the same policies that created the problem to begin with. IMHO

[trotsky]

22. You are absolutely right.

[liam_laddie]

28. Absolutely spot on!

But w/o an enemy afoot, how will the M-I complex continue picking our pockets? As Marine General Smedley Butler wrote some 75 years ago, "War IS a racket."
Where are the statesmen? Anyone spotted one? We need a Senate full of Feingolds, Whitehouses, Browns...and some others I've overlooked.
And we must get private money OUT OF ELECTIONS, and lobbying declared bribery. Else, the USA is done for. If the SCOTUS okays money as free speech in January, there is little recourse but to emulate the greens in the former Persia.

[spanone]

19. when that doesn't work explosives will be surgically implanted

[Shagbark Hickory]

20. Let me ask you this, what difference does it make if they actually make it on the airplane?!?! ?!?!

They can kill just as many, if not MORE people waiting in the security line at the airport and cause equal amounts of terror. In other words, they wouldn't need to even get through the scanner. This is the kind of shit they do in Israel, blowing up bus stops and cafes because they can't get on airplanes.

[Bitwit1234]

21. Think those kind of guys would get

a kick out of strapping on bigger cojones. Would that be detectable.

[hayu_lol]

23. How about stuffing the mix into...

artificial hands and feet, arms and legs?

[FarCenter]

24. All passengers should be stripped naked and then anesthetized before takeoff

[WT Fuheck]

25. None of this is about security.

This is about control.

[liam_laddie]

27. Control...BINGO!!! n/t

[undeterred]

29. Dogs.

[backscatter712]

33. Next time, it'll be the suppository bomber...

And after that happens, we'll be subjected to random cavity searches, and people will be telling us that we're being prudes because we don't want some TSA thug's latex-clad finger up our orifices...

[Eric J in MN]

34. Bingo. NT

NT