At least these don’t give cancer, right?
I don’t really it is legitimate to claim that the majority of the failure rate is not attributable to the technology but to “low-paid, under-motivated, not incredibly well-trained personnel." If you are designing something that is going to be deployed at every airport security checkpoint in the nation, it has to be something that can be operated by someone with minimal training. If it is substantially harder to operate than metal detectors and baggage X-ray machines, the technology is a failure even if it could theoretically be better.
So is the TSA protecting us from terrorists or financial responsibility?
Well who can afford to pay workers more than subsistence wages and to train them when these things cost so much (at least that’s probably the justification)? In theory, you don’t need skilled or trained labor, when the technology is supposed to do the hard work. Of course, in reality, that doesn’t work out to well.
I imagine they say this…
With enough funding, these machines will one day be as excellent as our Star Wars project was! I believe!!!
At this rate I may have to go through one just to get my money’s worth.
Shit, we should’ve just stuck with dowsers.
Ah, you mean the ADE 651
Dowsing for bombs: Maker of useless bomb detectors convicted of fraud.
Edit to add link to ade wiki
I feel the same way. I’ve still never been through one.
Isn’t cheese fairly similar to plastic explosive, density-wise?
(Not THAT much, density of Swiss cheese is about 1.1 g/cm3, C-4 explosive has 1.73 g/cm3. Still, it is a homogeneous block of organic material.)
That is probably all they give you.
It’s an odd thing to know I feel more comfortable having a stranger run their gloved hands all over me than stepping into one of those things.
When a security patdown feels good, you know you are too lonely…
But if these devices actually worked according to the laws of physics, they wouldn’t be able to pick and choose who to detain and/or search. Security peeps need magical detectors. There’s a real market for them.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
