This is a bit O/T for this blog, except I hate the body scanners, since they are security theater and looting all rolled into one. The few times I’ve had to deal with them, I’ve made the gate agents pat me down.
Jonathan Corbett, who filed a suit against the TSA, has just released this video to annoy them further and with any luck, get the ineffective, intrusive scanners shut down.
Mille says: Bhahahaha!
SH says: I hate all of this. My dad flew Romanian airilines decades ago and he always told me how the beverage cart was placed in front of the emergency exit. He also took a flight in Brazil where they used a traffic map to navigate their journey following highways the entire time. Oh, the good ‘old days.
As for this video, I would like to see the rate of positives before I determine if the survelliance system is useless. It’s only worthless if it catches nothing.
vlade says: Err, no?
The bad guys (whoever they are) can play the game of numbers. If this has false-negatives in anything but sub-percent, it’s a failure.
Given the various biases, if I send 100 guys but only 5 get through and blow up planes, I still win even with 95 of them in prison.
If the biases don’t work, and people are fully rational, then I don’t need scanners in the first place, since they would know they are more likely to die in a car accident than a terrorism plane crash (even with pre 9/11 security measures).
the true victory for the bad guys is not a few hundred people killed (which is still a tragedy), but the collateral damage of the legislative/security/social impact.
PQuincy says: While the false negatives rate is a problem, I doubt that it has to be anywhere in the <1% range for these machines to have an effect. Terrorist organizations are not, on the whole, in a position to send 100 bomber-hijackers, in the hope that 5 might get through…they probably can't even send 5 in the hopes that 1 will get through. These are small organizations and suicide operatives who are also smart and skilled enough to have a reasonable chance of bringing a plane down are rare.
There are many better arguments against our current system of security theater masquerading as corporate rent.
ormond otvos says: Small? At the rate we’re drone-terrorizing, we can count on hundreds.
reslez says: They don’t send devices/weapons through security to be screened with normal passengers. They infiltrate via employees. Airports are sieves.
Birch says: I was sitting in a restaurant inside the security area of an international airport the other day, watching the kitchen help chop veggies with big, sharp kitchen knives. I have no such inclination, but any high-jacker with a knack for shoplifting… so easy!
Elizabeth says: That’s my biggest pet peeve about airport security. Why in the world am I using a plastic knife and fork, when somebody a few feet away is chopping veggies with a Ginsu? And they really do have to explain, again, for us too slow on the uptake, how a few guys with knives can take over a plane with 200 passengers in it. Seriously, they could have machetes and they’d still be pretty darned outnumbered. Me with a steak knife? Come on. The flight attendant — check them out lately, they have definitely relaxed their weight requirements and I’m only 130 — well, she would have me wrestled to the floor, but first she’d have to stop laughing. I guess I could take a kid hostage with it, but even then, we’re not talking about national security. We’re talking about one dead kid, and me hauled off to prison for life unless I did it in Texas airspace, where they definitely don’t mess around in dealing with PMS-ing chicks with steak knives. I’m just sayin’. Something about plastic knives . . .
RF says: “I Hate”…
Yeah; we know, and good luck with that…
:♥)
optimader says: rest well good sheep, rest well
Anon says: This jonathan Corbett engineer guy should relearn newtonian physics or read this Corbett report. Sad. Engineer.
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
Kiste says: I’m suspecting something less nefarious: it might just be politicians trying to give the appearance of improving airport safety.
Anon says: Nah, 9/11 proved that the feedback mechanism of US/Western World at large has failed – the laissez-faire capitalism has gone wild,its richest 0.01% own the “truth”, the remaining 0.99% ignore it. The politicians, with exceptions of a few retired one CAN’T even mention the obvious crime, although their public words and action proved that they were aware of the crime of this century. If they were “less nefarious”, to quote Andreas von Bülow the whole US government should end up behind bars by now.
I guess 50% of the operators of such machine know the 19 arabs were as fictitious as Osama bin Laden.
American Slave says: “I’m suspecting something less nefarious: it might just be politicians trying to give the appearance of improving airport safety.”
Thats true becuse pat down’s are 100% ineffective and we need million dollar machines to do that for us.
Conscience of a Conservative says: The current policy is not working. We need to learn from the Israelis and endorse profiling and other El Al techniques. Profiling may sound bad, but is it worse than the pat downs and strip searches? I don’t think so.
Kiste says: For those affected by profiling it might be worse, yes.
Also, profiling seems kind of useless when dealing with something like that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lod_Airport_massacre
No Know says: Yes profiling is such a scary idea that even pilots cannot be “profiled” as no threat. All pilots must go through airport screening. Hmmm. Let’s think about that. A pilot on the flight deck would need to bring something dangerous onto the aircraft to…what? Is this to keep the first officer from bringing something threatening into the cockpit to intimidate the captain? It reminds me of an old joke about an Italian fellow who comes home to find his wife in bed with another man. Enraged, he pulls out a pistol and holds it to his own head. The couple in bed break out in laughter whereupon the Italian says: “Don’t laugh, your’re next”. (BTW – I’m Italian). The TSA is looking for security threats? As the saying goes, they couldn’t find their ass with both hands.
Conscience of a conservative says: Heard an Israeli expert talk about the effectiveness of a few simple questions like where are you going, how long will you be staying there, etc. Also paying attention to things like single people traveling alone, no return flight, etc has been shown to be remarkably effective.
Jagger says: Is there anyone that can beat the Israelis at police state tactics? However, I doubt we have the disdain for human rights or discipline to effectively utilize Israeli security procedures.
proximity1 says: RE:
” Jagger says:
March 7, 2012 at 11:46 am
Is there anyone that can beat the Israelis at police state tactics? However, I doubt we have the disdain for human rights or discipline to effectively utilize Israeli security procedures.”
———–
Q. “Is there anyone that can beat…”
A. No. Not these days.
RE: “However, I doubt we have the disdain for human rights or discipline to effectively …”
Read the replies. Even here, people have missed the fact that Israeli airport interrogation of passengers is at least as bad as anything being done to airline travelers in the U.S. Here’s the point —and with few exceptions, Americans have demonstrated they do not give a damn:
all such warrantless searches (including the Israeli-style interrogations without cause, without warrant, without not only “probable cause” but, indeed, without ANY CAUSE AT ALL ) are illegal under the U.S. Constitution–and many if not all state Constitutions.
But about this and other essential civil rights and liberties, Americans apparently don’t give enough of a damn to even protest as those are reduced to nullities. The question is:
“Which happens more quickly? the official wholesale violation of rights or their ready surrender even before they’re violated?”
The U.S. public has too largely embraced the “national- ‘security’ state.”
Yves Smith says: Have you ever been on the receiving end of Israeli security? Think twice.
It’s pretty easy to fly in but hell to fly out of Tel Aviv. The only time I did it, in 1997, was on business and I was in Tel Aviv about a day and a half, doing some interviews with a local bank on behalf of American Express.
First, you have to drop off your bags IN PERSON at some weird check-in place or else you have to go to the airport 4 hours early. So I went to the weird check in place (in a cargo area, pricey extra cab ride) and did the security interview there. It was a young girl and she kept asking me maybe 5-6 questions over and over again: why was I there, what was my job, who did I see, etc. I showed her my interview list and she even called one of the people on it. It took a half hour, and this was supposed to be less hassle than doing it at the airport. And this is for a female Caucasian with an American passport.
Similarly, one of my friends who has a zillion cousins in Israel and an adopted Thai boy was given complete shit in airport security over her Thai son (who like her and her husband has an American passport). He clearly disapproved of their adoption decision and was taking it out on them. She told they guy if he kept that up she had family in the government (true) and she’d make sure he got fired.
You do NOT want Israeli security, trust me. I’ll take the stupid pat down alternative to the scanner any day over that.
Conscience of a Conservative says: A response to the constant terror threats. None of this done by choice. And the outcome is a very good record(knock on wood).
Yves Smith says: Conscience,
How is a Caucasian woman with an American passport a security threat sufficient to merit 30 minutes of harassment? This WAS harassment, and this was pre 9/11 and I guarantee I fit into no terrorist profile. Or harassment of an American Jewish couple that had a Thai child?
You really don’t get it, do you? It sounds like you’d approve of any police state action if it arguably enhanced safety, and I’d like to see you or Israeli security explain how a Thai 7 year old with an American passport is a threat to safety.
I see no evidence that they profile, the screeners are abusive jerks to everyone, and they call that security. And why such aggressive security when leaving the country? The clearance when coming into Israel was perfectly standard. If I was such a threat, I could do a ton IN ISRAEL. The asymmetry, no particular screening for people coming in, rough stuff for people leaving, says this is security theater too.
I shudder to think what they do to anyone Middle Eastern who has to go to Israel, say a Turk. Lordie.
F. Beard says: Don’t you get it, Yves? The terrorists are not going to fit the profile of terrorists. That’s too obvious. So let’s forget screening any Arabs or Muslim males. It would be a waste of time. Instead, we must screen everyone who DOES NOT fit the profile of a terrorist.
Glad to help. :)
But seriously:
What the wicked fears will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted. Proverbs 10:24 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
I now realize that what the US once was was a miracle. We peaked some time ago. I’d say 1964.
proximity1 says: RE:
“Conscience,…
… It sounds like you’d approve of any police state action if it arguably enhanced safety,” ….
Now you’re talkin’. Like I wuz sayin’.
This is (MUCH) of your country on Super0-’Security’-State-Mania”. And the picture is getting worse, not better.
There are a lot of others like “Conscience” where he/she came from. Now, I don’t know the person in question so let us leave him/her aside for a momemt and ask, rather, about many Americans more generally a question which has come to occupy my thoughts more and more lately:
How do you, how does one, reach, reason with, such people? –people who think superficially (recall the recent book by Kahneman) and who, unlike you, read next to nothing unless it is sheer fluff and makes virtually no intellectual demands upon them? This is not make-believe; this is now most of the people of the United States– non-thinkers, non-readers whose deep and wide ignorance gives them no pause. Look at the field of the Republican presidential nomination contenders or, simply, look at what’s on the majority of television–cable or broadcast–on which, still, today, so many millions of Americans spend enormous swaths of their time. I am appalled when (on the rare occasion) I turn on a television set and watch what most Americans take for granted as “normal” “discourse”. Appalled.
This is a country in mental, intellectual denial and abdication. The word “child-like” comes to mind, and not in a flattering way. In the hustle of NYC, of course, things may seem quite different. But most of the nation does not resenmble the best-thinking one can observe in NYC.
F. Beard says: OK, my previous comment was irrelevant. Sorry.
But having read a bit more carefully, why would the Israelis have tougher security to leave Israel?
Never mind. The world has gone mad as far as I’m concerned. I’ll never fly again if I can help it.
No Know says: The point of my comment above was that in the good old US, the authorities are too stupid to assume (“profile”) that pilots are either not going to destroy themselves by crashing their own planes, or if they were inclined to do so, the a bomb would be redundant! So I’m not sure how it can be a stretch that another country would assume (“profile”) that “a Caucasian woman with an American passport” is a threat. When you decry “profiling” you are in essence throwing the baby out with the bath water. It is a manifestation of “stupid is as stupid does”! My son (a pilot) says, “Why would they think I am a carrying a bomb when I am flying one?”
Conscience of a conservative says: I just don’t see what you are arguing for then. If TSA scanners don’t work, and profiling doesn’t work, then the argument is a return to pre 9-11 screening, which invites another air disaster.
So we should continue doing what doesn’t work why, exactly? Theatre? Money to the vendors?
Nathanael says: What works? Actual police work (had this been done, the 9/11 plotters would have been caught, but Bush ordered that the indications of a plot be ignored).
Air marshals (police in the air).
In the long run, *making fewer enemies* — US foreign policy is designed to make people hate the US, and nowadays so is US domestic policy.
Beyond that, after a while you just have to deal with terrorism; it happens, you move on. Not all risks can be prevented, and crazy people intent on killing can’t *all* be stopped before they do so.
Rex says: I clicked the icon on the player to go to Youtube for this video and it gave me this…
“This content may contain material flagged by YouTube’s user community that may be inappropriate for some users.
To view this video please verify you are 18 or older by signing in or signing up.”
So, another level of security inserted so kids can’t watch this!? Why should that be? Maybe they are afraid of breaking their young mental security myth — kinda like blowing Santa Claus’ cover.
Why must it all keep getting weirder and uglier?
Fíréan says: When one signs in to watch a video the user has acknowledged that it is they, the registered user, who has watched the video.
or attempted to do so.
The website has a bunch of tracking cookies yet there is no certainty who the user maybe from that computer id and the IP adress, signing in to a registered account resolves this matter . . . Well for the average millions of Joe publics, one might have a fake account and related email.
NB. the video linked here in this article is freely available to view without logging in to an account in some countries.
Rex says: Aha, thanks. So more nefarious and logical than protecting kids from information that seems to have no age sensitivity.
Why must it all keep getting weirder and uglier?
Woodrow Wilson says: Since the Sheep will continue to fly and put up with this shit, the TSA false sense of “security” shenanigans will continue.
As the posters above pointed out, TSA had connections to DHS and Chertoff’s one-man lobby, which also had connections to the people that first made the scanners, which had interesting investors at that time (Soros) before they came on line.
So, continue to fly Sheeple, just more proof that Americans no longer need the U.S. Constitution or Rule of Law as they subject themsleves daily, by the hundreds-of-thousands to subject themselves to be criminally and Constitutionally violated.
It really is all just security theater… keeping the peanut gallery scared, entertained… and at the same time self-satisfied about their unearned ‘exceptionalism’.
BTW, has it occurred to anyone that someone intending a terrorist act could just blow up a carry-on before ever getting to the ridiculous scanner?
It’ll shut down the airport for sure… and do it at a couple of airports simultaneously and you’ll shut down the whole network for a day or two.
Stop letting government treat us like childish idiots… yes… things could happen… reasonable precautions should be taken. But this isn’t a smart approach.
Accrued Disinterest says: Or just put it in their checked luggage which isn’t scanned (adding weight to the Kabuki theater theory).
Knut says: It’s for that reason that Russian airports screen people when they enter the air port, before they even get to the gate, where they are screened a second time.
PQuincy says: Whenever time allows, I request the ‘alternate screening’ rather than using these machines.
(1) I’m persuaded that Keynsian stimulus is a good thing right now, but I’d rather see the stimulus going to more TSA employees rather than to the manufacturers of machines.
(2) Although the manufacturers strenuously insist their machines are utterly harmless, I am disinclined to take their word in light of the long record of corporate lies about the safety of their products. I fly often enough that it is reasonable to limit my exposure to ionizing radiation.
(3) The entire process of using these machines is psychologically offensive to me (which may not be rational but then we are human and often irrational ;-). I don’t like being treated like a criminal (spread eagle position, etc.) but if it must be, then it is less offensive at the hands of a human being, rather than a machine.
Not much of a choice, is there? Great post. I hope it doesn’t prompt 2 side views plus the back and front!
tiger says: so sad what they are doing to us… i don’t understand how can anyone under 35 does not register as a republican for the sole purpose of voting for ron paul. just to protect our rights and stop this nonesense…
Anonymous Jones says: The obvious answer is…”because the side effects would be worse than the original disease.”
Brooklin Bridge says: Too bad that they didn’t nominate Ron Paul so we could have at least had real political discussions out in the open about civil rights, the military industrial complex, and market vs. monopoly driven capitalism to name a few.
There would have been zero risk of his side effects. Anyone who thinks the Republicans would put someone in the slot, Ron Paul Romney or whoever, who has an actual chance of winning, when Democrats are giving them sooo much more than they could ever dream of accomplishing on their own, should be getting in touch with me quick cause this is their lucky lucky day…
Instead, we will get fake discussions between two peas in a pod. And the phony discussions will be but dog whistles for real wars and real destruction of the safety net and real destruction of democracy and real harm to the planet we live on.
proximity1 says: Hilarious!
In Ron-Paul-World there is only one question that matters–whether the issue is rights, liberties, access, whatever:
“Can you afford (to pay for) your own (personal) (fill in the blank) ?”
if the answer is “Yes, I can.” then you get whatever it may be–rights, freedoms, liberties, health care (misnamed ‘ “health” insurance’–you insure _against_ sickness and injury, not “health”), freedom to travel without being presumed to be a class A felon, the right to buy political influence, to own everything your money can buy, even other people, and their most basic rights. All of these are available to any and all who happen to be fortunate enough to be able to pay for them.
For everyone else, the answer in Ron-Paul-World is “Too bad.”
Need rights? Buy them. All others lump it.
That’s Paul’s great ‘philosophy’.
F. Beard says: RP’s philosophy MIGHT be OK IF it was combined with a universal bailout to level the playing field. But no, we can’t have that; we need a Depression to “purge the malinvestments”.
proximity1 says: RE:
“RP’s philosophy MIGHT be OK IF it was combined with a universal bailout to level the playing field. But no, we can’t have that; we need a Depression to “purge the malinvestments”.
I think you miss the point. In Ron-Paul-World no one asks about or mentions a “level playing field’, whatever that might be. If, for the sake of argument, such a thing were deemed desirable, from Paul’s perspective, the “playing field” is to be assumed to be level.
From the moment one enters into the arcana of ‘leveling’, ‘tweaking’, etc., the so-called naturally-given world—it is in these simple terms that Paul and his disciples live and think—then one is automatically in the heart of the evil behemoth which (being, by defintition, “Big Government”) must be eliminated.
Repeat after Paul(‘s unspoken thoughts):
“There is to be no levelled playing field.” It is either assumed to be level or not to be desired in the first place. So, on the contrary, there are no conceivable and realistically practical circumstances in which “RP’s philosophy MIGHT be OK.”
F. Beard says: It is either assumed to be level or not to be desired in the first place. proximity1
Therein lies RP’s and the Austrians’ hypocrisy. They attack (correctly to some extent) the present money system as unjust but propose no restitution except for an equally unjust Depression (so the cheated savers can buy assets on the cheap)!
Brooklin Bridge says: A boogeyman who hasn’t a ghost’s chance in hell of ever becoming president is more frightening to some than a sitting president who terminate citizens with the easy smile of a pool shark.
proximity1 says: In 1923 you could have (and, later, many did) say the same thing about one fellow of intitials “A.H.” Ten years later, no one with working eyes and brains could have said it.
You’re thinking in a time-frame which is too short, that is, of the present. But, once upon a time, a know-nothing frat-boy like G.W. Bush would have been unthinkable as president of the United States. Today, it is nearly impossible to rule out anyone (who can meet the wealth test) as unthinkable in the office of the president. It isn’t only the candidates who’ve devolved, its the public and all the apparatus by which the now broken (unless you’re in the top .01% of wealth) system operates. We desperately need to think more effectively–and we cannot do that, not as a people.
Those who believed in the unlimited potential of technological advance seem not to have been able to imagine that technologically highly advanced societies could go hand in hand with a mass society of very deep and widespread ignorance and, especially, moral failure.
proximity1 says: BTW, whatever your opinion of Barack Obama, mine opinion of him is worse. He’s all you describe and much worse. If Bush was a war criminal, then Obama has subscribed to his crimes and failed in his oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
If he had met that charge, Bush and most of his circle should have already faced trial on war crimes charges. But who has also sanctioned that dereliction of duty? The American people themselves, in the main. We should look not only at where we are but where we’re headed. Obama is terrible; and worse could follow since, as a people, we still don’t grasp the nature of our predicament and are doing basically nothing effective to remedy its (and our) failings.
Brooklin Bridge says: It would be more accurate to say that I’m not in state of panic, at least not about Ron Paul, a relatively sincere and in some ways admirable crank that happens also to be one of the owner’s designated buffoons.
1) Be that as it may, your points about him are absurdly over the top. What ever untenable baggage he has, “Need rights? Buy them.” misses the continent, never mind the man. Would he charge you for stopping preemptive wars? For not spying on you? For eliminating extra-judicial killings?
2) Your comparison to Hitler (A H?) being a long shot in the 20′s that ultimately took place is just paranoia, plain and simple. You’re so frightened you have to use, A.H.? You can’t even say Hitler? Get a grip. Anyway as for Ron Paul, the idea that the owners, military or Wall Street would ever let him near the presidency is laughable. He has the unforgivable characteristic of not playing ball, of not following the script. His laisser faire ideas on Capitalism are far more frightening to the capitalists than they are even to you.
3) Even having him as an opponent to Obama, just the debates, would be unthinkable. He wouldn’t hesitate to point out that Obama is patently a war criminal, or that he is coolly tossing millions of innocent families literally out into the streets, or that our abject subservience to Israel’s whining paranoia is making our foreign policy look like something cooked up in North Korea. And on all of these subjects, Ron Paul’s arguments would be waaaay too compelling for comfort. It wouldn’t simply be Obama that was embarrassed and exposed.
As to your last point, disliking Obama the most, fine, you win. Bravo!
When Paul supports prosecuting bankster CEOs for accounting control fraud, I’ll take him seriously.
Brooklin Bridge says: The fact that I would love to see Obama have to deal with real debates about real issues does not mean that I consider Ron Paul viable as a potential president.
Although it’s hard to get any factual data above the jet engine roar of taboooooo, I suspect his actual position on racial issues alone, never mind his fantasies about capitalism, would settle any idle thoughts of actually voting for him I might have (inspired by looking at the lethally calculating and utterly cynical ruthlessness of Obama). But that is not the issue I’ve been discussing and as I’ve stated over and over, it is not something that would ever happen anyway.
Incidentally, the hyperventilation surrounding anything Ron Paul makes it almost impossible to know what his actual positions are.
proximity1 says: In your preverse view Obama rates being taken seriously as (I’d argue and I think even you’d agree) an important symptom of our deeper cultural and political faults and failings _BUT_, for some reason, you can’t bother about Ron Paul as another symptom.
Maybe, for you, the criterion is being in office or in very serious shot of getting in office. Whatever the case, to suppose that Obama is an important indicator as well as the incumbent malefactor in the executive branch of the fed. gov. is, in my view, neither necessary or helpful.
I don’t mind looking at and taking in ALL the symptomatic factors; it costs us nothing, really, to notice and reflect on how Paul, too, fits so well into our political mess.
His brand of Maverick style would lack only the semblance of current American notions of conventional decorum–in other words, he’s more evidently a crank than are Romney, or Santorum or even Gingrich. The larger public failings Paul’s example demonstrates are, however, the essentially the same.
In general I find your type’s attitude and analysis a hindrance to a better general understanding of what is wrong and how and why it came to be. Thus, people like you lend something, however slight, to the maintainance of the status quo whether you intend that or not.
Paul as a helpful counterpoint to _anything_ in current politics is just stupid. In his view, wealth still owns both the political class—as is certainly the case and has been—but also reduces the formal governmental apparatus itself for absurd ideological reasons which are today simply beside the point. All of Paul’s theory and practice presuppose that it is government which poses the greatest threat to political liberties. As a remedy, he’d loose literally every fetter–to the extent that there remain any–on private wealth and its influences in society and politics.
If you’re not panicked, I think you deserve this mess as your naivete contributes so much to it.
proximity1 says: CORRECTION :
my post should have read–
” Whatever the case, to suppose that Obama, because he is in office, is an important indicator as well as the incumbent malefactor in the executive branch of the fed. gov. ,b> to the exclusion of others, such as Ron Paul is, in my view, neither necessary or helpful”…
mk says: I wonder if TSA response will be to make people do two poses, to add a side scan…
Brooklin Bridge says: Given the general depraved atmosphere of what our elite are up to in the world of business and politics, one has to wonder whether all these private cancer clinics popping up, or their parent companies, aren’t lobbying for these contraptions.
Freakin’ brilliant!
The only thing he left out is that the entire GWOT is a fraud. The recent revelations by Senators Graham and Kerrey only highlight this fact.
BTW do not go through the scanners; by all means opt out. I am a scientist/engineer with decades of experience in radiation safety, from X-rays to radiofrequency, and I do not consider that the scanners are safe, for reasons to complex to give in this short post.
When a TSA agent queried me about my reasons for opt out (short answer — machines likely not safe)–, she then asked if thought cell phones were a danger. My answer was (is) no — I see no evidence, and no scientific reason why cell phone use should constitute a health hazard, other than for self-absorbed text-messengers walking into power poles.
JohnB says: Don’t Comply. Don’t Fly!
Elizabeth says: While I support his cause, this makes no sense. Of course someone has gotten through with explosives in the past 40 years. What about shoe-bomb guy and underwear-bomb guy? Or was those technically not “explosives”?
His claim that the metal detectors work just fine without the body scanners is kind of interesting . . . because he obviously got through the metal detector before they sent him to the body scanner at Fort Lauderdale and Cleveland. Or didn’t they? Don’t they always send you through the metal detector first? So if the metal detectors there didn’t pick up that big metal box on him, how can he claim that they work just fine?
reprobate says: The shoe bomber did not get through security. An independent test using the same materials showed the underwear bomber would not have brought down the plane, even if he had detonated them successfully (although passengers no doubt would have been hurt or killed).
http://news.discovery.com/tech/underwear-bomber-explosion-plane-test.html
Folks, you are at far more risk from drunk drivers, and I don’t see anyone here advocating breathalyzers installed in cars to prohibit drivers from driving if not sober. Those would actually be more on target than our current screening nonsense.
Brooklin Bridge says: Actually, you are more at risk of being struck by lightening than by a terrorist attack.
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prostratedragon 
Here is an easier way, not all airports even have these things. Make a connection by using an airport that doesn’t have one. Also the airports that do use them don’t even have them at all the checkpoints. You can pick a checkpoint that doesn’t have one.
Sure they are all about security. It is all about profiteering.