Random Articles

• A Cry for Help If a month-old baby going through an x-ray machine can’t bring a heavy dose of common sense to the TSA, what will? “Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, which manages LAX screeners, said the agency doesn’t have enough workers to constantly stand at tables in front of the screeners to coach passengers on
• Feeling Temporarily Secure I’ve been to handful of airports - the underlying architecture of them all is: open, flowing, permanent. The ironic exception is the airport checkpoints - like pop-up stores in malls. Foldable tables, movable queue markers, equipment on wheels - makes it feel so temporary. Like it just might packed up and gone tomorrow. “The tables aren’t quite
• Security is Really Customer Service in Disguise A confused, elderly woman with a full, knotted, plastic shopping bag was in front of the scanner. The security checkpoint line out of Minneapolis stalled as I put all my stuff in multiple bins. When a uniformed TSA person asked her if she had a boarding pass, she mumbled the need for help getting a ticket
• PopSci Delivers Geek Triumverate PopSci Podcast #14: Jonathan Coulton asks Bruce Schneier about the risks of snakes on a plane.
• What’s Your Traveller Risk Score? “It’s probably the most invasive system the government has yet deployed in terms of the number of people affected” - David Sobel, EFF lawyer. Like all these systems, we are all judged in secret, by a computer algorithm, with no way to see or even challenge our score. Kafka would be proud. - Bruce Schneier