This is ridiculous. These types of security measures are both ineffective and don’t target the terrorists. They merely inconvenience innocent travelers while the “bad guys” simply go around ineffective security procedures. It happens all the time.
Without notifying the public, federal agents have assigned millions of international travelers, including Americans, computer-generated scores rating the risk they pose of being terrorists or criminals.
The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments. The government intends to keep the scores on file for 40 years.
The scores are assigned to people entering and leaving the United States after computers assess their travel records, including where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.
Does this mean if I order a ‘hindu’ or ‘non-pork’ meal that I’ll be more suspicious?
The reason I ask this is simple..has there ever been any kind of coorilation between what someone ate and hijacking, crime, or terrorism? Find me a scientific study and I might think otherwise.
Even if such a corilation does exist, the ‘bad’ guys would know it too – I doubt they’d come dressed/acting like the stereotype TSA officials expect a terrorist to be like.
Criminals in general (good ones) don’t try to stand out, they blend in..
That being said, Mohammed Ata and some of his cohorts were getting shit-faced in a bar just a few days before 9/11. Now if you were profiling Muslim fundamentalists you wouldn’t expect them to be there would you?
Everyone knows how 9/11 took place and the security flaws that made it possible. The sloppy ones will just try to do the exact same thing and get caught by these ‘dummy’ catching security measures.
By the next guy who doesn’t fit this profile based on an old model… hope i’m not on that flight.
From today’s Washington Post (Dec. 1, 06):
The government notice says some or all of the ATS data about an individual may be shared with state, local and foreign governments for use in hiring decisions and in granting licenses, security clearances, contracts or other benefits. In some cases, the data may be shared with courts, Congress and even private contractors.
“Everybody else can see it, but you can’t,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration lawyer who teaches at Cornell Law school, said in an interview.