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Viral Video About Body Scanners

blog.tsa.gov

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Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#181

Post by beagle3 »

grepherder wrote: post #172
beagle3 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you wrote is true. So is e.g. the statement that there is an infinite number of numbers. And they are almost equally relevant to the discussion here. > You can argue the body scanner is an economical disaster, dispute it on the basis of privacy or bring up health concerns, but I like to stay objective. There is nothing wrong with this post, as a response to the demonstration in the video, beyond the silly langua…

> The post does not address the main criticism in the video, which is that the body scanner does not actually help with security. I think it is the majority here that fell for the causation-correlation fallacy. Just because you can cheat a security system with high confidence does not make it obsolete on that grounds alone. Imagine a hypothetical security system that keeps you from taking any kind of firearm, but let…

> Just because you can cheat a security system with high confidence does not make it obsolete on that grounds alone.

Actually, it does. Because the threat is not randomly selected from a pool -- it is selected specifically to bypass the security system.

It's like saying that a guard that only works 9-5 in a store that has no locked door is a reasonable security system against thieves because it will catch those that arrive 9-5. No, that's not how it works -- it means no thief will come 9-5, and all thieves will arrive when the guard is not there.

Any easy-to-bypass security system is obsolete as a security system (although it may have other uses, such as extracting money from taxpayers).

> All I'm saying is if you base your argument against TSA on the premise presented in the video, you aren't likely to be taken seriously by the same fraction who approved of this system in the first place and continue to support it.

You conveniently ignore the fact that these people (Chertoff et al, who are directly profiting from it) do not care about security (as has been demonstrated time and again before this video), and are therefore unlikely to care about any rational argument.

Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#182

Post by corin_ »

cbr wrote: post #180
corin_ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest answer I can give is that spelling and grammar are basically learned facts, sometimes they are single facts (how to spell a single word), sometimes they are rules ("i" before "e"... which ironically is a mostly incorrect rule, but hey it's just an example). As such, why is Person A considered less intelligent for not knowing how to spell "there" vs. "their" than Person B who doesn't know the date on whic…

> "i" before "e"... which ironically is a mostly incorrect rule Really? $ cat /usr/share/dict/words | grep -c ie 3953 $ cat /usr/share/dict/words | grep -c ei 2650

Sorry, it's the "except after 'c'" bit (which I left out) that's mostly incorrect:

  # cat /usr/share/dict/british-english-insane | grep -c cie
  1375
  # cat /usr/share/dict/british-english-insane | grep -c cei
  352
So that works only ~20% of the time.

With the general "i before e"... Is being more often true than false enough to make it a valid "rule"? Using your numbers it's correct ~60% of the time, with my dictionary it's correct ~76% of the time:

  # cat /usr/share/dict/british-english-insane | grep -c ie
  25961
  # cat /usr/share/dict/british-english-insane | grep -c ei
  8255
But even at 3/4, not sure you can call that a good "rule", if it's wrong that often. But of course, that could be swung subjectively if the most used words follow the rule and the least used words break it... which I imagine is the case, since people do still use this rule, but I'm not sure of an easy way to argue the point.

Edit:

I suppose one way would be to assume that british-english-small (with 50083 words compared to insane's 638286) is comprised of the five thousand most used words (which I assume is roughly the logic?)...

Small shows that "i before e" is correct 88% of the time, and "cei not cie" is correct ~27%.

So in fact, limiting to most common words does make both percentages go up, the "except after c" is still much more often wrong than right, and the general "i before e" is... perhaps now high enough to call a good rule? Not sure.

Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#183

Post by quink »

rpstrong wrote: post #163
quink wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, this is the most shocking thing I've seen in a while... I've never seen anything so awesomely refuted. Even if you don't speak German, watch it. Basically, they do a scan of the man, who claims to be carrying a swiss army knife, and only find a mobile and the microphone transmitter on the back that's inevitable since they're on TV. However, the man is carrying thermite (three vials), an igniter for the thermite,…

If anything, the video supports the use of the TSA's active screening technologies (backscatter and millimeter wave devices). The scanner being used is neither of these, it is an entirely passive device - see: http://www.thruvision.com/Products/TS4_Sub_Pages/TS4_Product... for a brief explanation of their technology. While ThruVision's scanner is arguably safer, it is clearly deficient in detecting threats. And it is…

No scanner on that market can detect things that are within a person other than a metal detector, a swab followed by spectographic analysis or an X-ray machine.

The igniter in his mouth wasn't found, and it's not outside the realm of imagination that a more committed person, like a terrorist, would carry the other stuff not in the lower back area but somewhere somewhat different and harder to find.

How about we take it for granted that 99.999999% of people aren't terrorists and to consider a short interview with a passenger or a metal detector sweep or random swabs for spectographic analysis good enough?

Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#184

Post by wtvanhest »

pg wrote: post #8

There is something chillingly unconvincing about their attempts at informality. Big Brother jokey is a lot more frightening than Big Brother bureaucratic or Big Brother bombastic. Too bad this insight wasn't available to Orwell or he could have made 1984 even scarier.

This person's quote from the comments about sums it up.

"This was such a carefully worded blog post that one can safely conclude that the vulnerability described in the video is true.

I especially like your use of phrases like "some guy" and "crude attempt" in an attempt to discredit the allegations without actually addressing the allegations themselves."

Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#185

Post by alanh »

nollidge wrote: post #176
temphn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spelling and grammatical errors tell you within 5 seconds that this person is not very intelligent. For obvious security reasons, we can’t discuss our technology's detection capability in detail, however TSA conducts extensive testing of all screening technologies in the laboratory and at airports prior to rolling them out to the entire field. This is a run-on sentence. Imaging technology has been extremely effec…

> This is a run-on sentence. No, it's not. A run-on is when two or more independent clauses are joined without a conjunction or the like. So "I went the store I bought bread" is run-on. In your example, "however" functions as the conjunction. It may be overly long and unwieldy and could perhaps do with a few more commas, but those are style issues. > "on down" is faulty parallelism. "As large as...on down to..." Not…

nollidge,

I’m not sure your parent was actually incorrect. Even you agree that his point stands, so your post is not constructive.

Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#186

Post by derleth »

temphn wrote: post #103
corin_ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking that you can judge someone's intelligence by their spelling and grammar is so incredibly wrong. And I don't mean wrong in a moral "don't be that guy" way (though that too), I mean wrong as in technically inaccurate.

No. Speaking intuitively, if you can't judge someone's intelligence by their writing ability, what possible measure could you use? Grammatical deficiencies are symptoms of conceptual deficiencies. Speaking technically, vocabulary tests are some of the most highly g-loaded batteries around: Different tests in a test battery may correlate with (or "load onto") the g factor of the battery to different degrees. These cor…

Grammatical deficiencies are symptoms of conceptual deficiencies.

Assuming you actually know what grammar is as distinct from usage, and don't try to claim someone is less intelligent just because they have a different style of usage from you.

For example, using a split infinitive is not indicative of anything other than the style that person prefers. Same with the passive voice more often than not (assuming the person doing the marking actually knows what the passive voice is, as most of the people who get aggrieved over it do not).

And, of course, if you think someone who speaks a dialect distinct from the prestige dialect must be less intelligent, that says terrible things about your own intellect.

Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#187

Post by stock_toaster »

jfoutz wrote: post #22
pg wrote: post #8

There is something chillingly unconvincing about their attempts at informality. Big Brother jokey is a lot more frightening than Big Brother bureaucratic or Big Brother bombastic. Too bad this insight wasn't available to Orwell or he could have made 1984 even scarier.

That's because Huxley was right. ( http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourse... )

I think it depends on the culture, and geopolitical region.

Huxley might have been more right for many places (certainly seems so for 'the west'), but Orwell seems to have been pretty dead on about some of the more oppressive regimes of the world - North Korea for instance?

Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#188

Post by teyc »

famousactress wrote: post #4

Wow. This blog post makes me WAY more afraid of the TSA than the original video did. I can't wrap my head around the language used. "Things that go BOOM" ???!?!?! Are you fucking kidding me? These are the people that are supposedly acting in the interests of our safety? Disgusted. Whoever wrote or approved this post ought to be fired. Fast.

They are impossible to fire.

If no one slips a bomb past them, they've done their job; If someone slips a bomb past them, they'll only grow bigger and more menacing.

Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#189

Post by sophacles »

teyc wrote: post #188
famousactress wrote: post #4

Wow. This blog post makes me WAY more afraid of the TSA than the original video did. I can't wrap my head around the language used. "Things that go BOOM" ???!?!?! Are you fucking kidding me? These are the people that are supposedly acting in the interests of our safety? Disgusted. Whoever wrote or approved this post ought to be fired. Fast.

They are impossible to fire. If no one slips a bomb past them, they've done their job; If someone slips a bomb past them, they'll only grow bigger and more menacing.

Worse still: If no one tries to slip a bomb past them, they must ignore the obvious and declare they need more power to catch the evil-doers. If someone is successfully caught by them, we obviously need to up security, because this display of effectiveness may not be enough.

Re: Viral Video About Body Scanners

#190

Post by hgasdasdgdj »

All the comments here sucks ass

"It’s one of the best tools available to detect metallic and non-metallic items, such as… you know… things that go BOOM. "

If you shat out an emotion frmo that sentence, you too much of a baby to use the internet, LEAVE.

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