Sometimes, VoIP tech chat is more about tech, and less about VoIP.
As a follow up to our podcast last week, Fred left the teaser of a discussion of airport security this week. In (unexpected) preparation for this discussion, I took a “short” trip from my home in Chattanooga, TN to Salt Lake city, UT. The flight out was uneventful, Chattanooga is a small, 5-gate airport with a fairly simple metal detector security checkpoint.
On the trip back, things got interesting. At the Salt Lake City airport, one of their security lines has been converted to the full body scan. Had I been a terrorist, I likely would have paid more attention and just not gone through this line. Since I am not, I got my first full body scan. Research scientists have suggested that even one of these scans can cause long-term mutations in DNA and lead to the development of cancer, but I am using the George Carlin theory of more carcinogens generate more cancer, and the cancers will just eat each other.
As a matter of habit, flying five – ten times per year, when I go through security I place my driver’s license and boarding pass(es) in my back pocket. With a metal detector this is never an issue, and surprisingly my new belt that is a fabric weave with two small square hoops for the buckle does not trigger the metal detector. NOW we have full body scan technology, where it was necessary for the fairly well-humored TSA agent to grope my right butt cheek in order to ensure that I did not have explosives or weapons.
For perspective, a walk-through metal detector and wand cost well under $10,000 per unit and requires one TSA agent to oversee use. A full-body scanner costs over $100,000 per unit and requires at least three TSA agents to oversee use. One or two agents work in an unseen location viewing the passenger’s genitals and giggling, then a male and female security officer are present to do the intimate pat down of the genitals. On the upside, the female TSA agent was cute, on the down side they do not accept requests for a pat down. Lest you believe I am being sarcastic about the genital pat-down, the gentleman ahead of me in line was told, “there is an area of concern on the scan. I am going to feel across your waist, down the zipper of your pants, and across.”
So for ten times the cost, you need at least three times as many workers, and this advanced security technology can’t tell the difference between a thin plastic ID card with a magnetic strip and explosives. Additionally, no screening was done of the ID. Terrorists, take note: Driver’s License bomb.
On a side note, I must express appreciation to the Salt Lake City airport for compromising federal regulations and allowing me to take my four ounces of contraband caramel through security, and the Memphis airport (where the hiring process clearly involves rudeness training) for being oblivious to the four ounces of mystery goo in an unmarked container and wrapped in a shopping bag but stopping the belt to dispose of my twenty ounce Coke Zero (purchased at the airport twelve hours earlier.)
The more I look at the post-nine-eleven world, the more I see money and technology being dumped into solutions that are all about smoke and mirrors. They don’t increase the detection of explosives, they don’t deter terrorism, they just route more government money into a private industry and increase the power of government agencies to disregard the constitution and bill of rights. We see it in airports, we see it in the “war on drugs”, we see it in the telecom industry with increased latitude on wiretapping and records subpoenas.