April 6, 2007
Human ingenuity is a wonderful thing,
especially when combined with the instincts of a pickpocket. The
following is from the Daily Mail.
“Tiny cameras the size of a fingernail
linked to specialist computers are to be used to monitor the behaviour
of airline passengers as part of the war on terrorism.” To find out
whether they look nervous, see.
Yay-yesss! Rejoice! Brethren, we are
now stark bonkers. In the hills, not of Galilee but maybe of Yorkshire
a new industry is come unto us. Not a sparrow shall fall without some
damnfool otherwise-unemployable at Homeland Security watching.
Henceforth God will be seen as comparatively inalert, perhaps reading
computer magazines and dozing off on his watch. Yes, the Divine will be
replaced by tiny little cameras. For a price.
Listen to this. It’s wonderful. BAE
Systems, just incidentally a defense contractor, is busily designing a
seat with not only a little camera, but also a microphone.
“Cameras fitted to seat-backs will
record every twitch, blink, facial expression or suspicious movement
before sending the data to onboard software which will check it against
individual passenger profiles.”
Why the microphone? At first I thought
the Daily Mail was testing a parody generator, but it seems to be
serious.
"A separate microphone will hear and
record even whispered remarks. Islamic suicide bombers are known to
whisper texts from the Koran in the moments before they explode bombs.”
What in the name of…well, the
Comparatively Inalert, I guess…is this foolishness supposed to
accomplish? Think about it. To begin with, will the airplane have
special mumbled-Koran-detection software, fluent in Arabic? What good
would it do?
The guy mumbles “moments” before he
explodes the bomb. Sirens sound, lights flash. A screen in the cockpit
flashes “Mumbled Koran, seat 34-F.” The terrorist won’t notice this, of
course, and just push the button. I suppose that the air marshal would
rush up and shoot him in the head, whereupon it would turn out that he
was a bulk-lot soap jobber from Lebanon, muttering about what a
sumbitch his boss was.
Note that the microphone is going to
“record even whispered remarks.” To be listened to by whom? When? Since
the terrorist has a bomb, the plane isn’t going to land. And if he
isn’t a terrorist, who cares what he says? (“Hey, Sally, how ‘bout a
nooner in London?”) Or maybe there will be a bank of Arabic-speakers in
a secret compartment, wearing headphones and listening earnestly to
even whispered remarks.
I can see that a lot of thought has
gone into this.
What about false positives, which in
practice will probably be all positives? You have three hundred people
on the aircraft. Some, afraid of flying, mumble prayers, sweat, twitch.
People with minor obsessive-compulsive disorder clear their throats,
blink in sets of seven, blow on their fingers, and pull their earlobes.
Some anarchist, tired of being watched, puts his chewing gum over the
camera.
Every fifteen minutes the Terror Alarm
goes off. The stews rush to the seat and strip search the suspected
terr while the air marshal, dressed like a cheap divorce-attorney,
waves his hog leg threateningly.
In practice of course everyone would
simply ignore the alarms. Real terrorists would carefully avoid
twitching or mumbling the Koran. In any event, once the plane is
airborne the potential mumbler could just pull the pin. Take-off speed
and an altitude of two hundred feet are perfectly adequate to make a
gaudy mess of an airliner.
But more from the Daily Mail. "We're
trying to develop technologies that indicate the differences between
normal passengers and those who may be a threat to others, or
themselves," said Catherine Neary of BAE Systems."
She is the leader of the team
developing the watchful seat. Note the usual female preoccupation with
safety at all costs, even when there is noting to be afraid of. She has
moved from terror of terrorists to the realm of the remote but
imaginable threat from the passenger in the next seat. Dodge ball also
is dangerous, and second-hand smoke, and everything else. Angst, worry,
and the man under the bed.
What is this logical contortionism
really about? Money. Let me explain. I do so as one who spent many
years reporting on the defense industry.
Commerce watches government as a tick
watches a cow. Getting money from the government is immensely
profitable and in general easy, since the people who dispense it do not
own it and so do not care what is done with it. Industry, understanding
this perfectly, is always looking for something to sell to the
government.
After New York, a huge market sprang
up for the paraphernalia of security: metal detectors, x-ray gadgets
for baggage, and such like. These things cost whole bunches. Airports
after all have lots of gates. Here was a Comstock Lode for tech
industry. Further, a new federal bureaucracy came into being, hiring
large numbers of people, screeners and marshals and supervisory ‘crats,
who suddenly had a monetary interest in terrorism. When you get paid
for solving a problem, the last thing you want to do is to solve it.
Where would exterminators be without cockroaches?
Having sold Uncle Patsy all of these
pricey contrivances, what does industry then do? The things last for
years. Sure, there are maintenance contracts, but the real gravy is in
selling things to the feds. The trick is to build upgraded and improved
security gadgets. Thus we get pricey explosives-sniffers that any
sophomore chemistry-major could circumvent, but that are certainly
pricey, which is the point. Then we get semi-pornographic x-ray
machines, which also cost a lot, which is again the point.
But these markets get saturated. To
open the money drains yet wider, one needs completely new products. So
engineers sit around and think, “How about…ejection seats for all
passengers? Nah, not even the feds are that stupid. Uh, maybe
shock-trauma modules to fit in the cargo bay? Hey, I got it! How about
seats with little cameras, see, and we could record mumbled stuff
from—what’s that book? Just the thing!”
Just the thing indeed. Think how many
airliners there are, and multiply by the numbers of seats. BAE Systems
or somebody would get to install a camera and microphone in each seat,
along with the monumental amount of wiring needed (a wireless version
would be an early and expensive upgrade) as well as the computers to
monitor them. The MKD software would be a juicy contract by itself,
with of course mumbled-Farsi and mumbled-Pashtu as expensive upgrades.
Cut-purses, footpads, blackguards,
doxies, defense contractors, and siphoners of gas tanks. Same people.
Don’t blink on your next flight, or its off to the calaboose.
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Best Joke of the
year......
A Somali arrives in
Minneapolis as a new immigrant to the United States.
He stops the first person
he sees walking down the street and says, "Thank you Mr. American
for letting me in this country, giving me housing, food
stamps, free medical care, and free education!"
The passerby says, "You
are mistaken, I am Mexican."
The man goes on and
encounters another passerby. "Thank you for having such a
beautiful country here in America!"
The person says, "I not
American, I Vietnamese."
The new arrival walks
further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his
hand and says, "Thank you for the wonderful America!”
That person puts up his
hand and says, "I am from Middle East, I am not American!"
He finally sees a nice
lady and asks, "Are you an American?" She says, "No, I am
from Africa!"
Puzzled, he asks her,
"Where are all the Americans?"
The African lady
checks her watch and says..."Probably at work."
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Wanda's
dishwasher quit working so she called a repairman.
Since she had to go to work the next
day, she told the repairman, "I'll leave the key under the mat. Fix the
dishwasher, leave the bill on the counter, and I'll mail you a check.
"Oh, by the way, don't worry about my
bulldog. He won't bother you. But, whatever you do, do NOT, under ANY
circumstances, talk to my parrot! I REPEAT, DO NOT TALK TO MY PARROT!!!"
When the repairman arrived at Wanda's
apartment the following day, he discovered the biggest, meanest-looking
bulldog he had ever seen. But, just as she had said, the dog just lay
there on the carpet, watching the repairman go about his work.
The parrot, however, drove him nuts
the whole time with his incessant yelling and name calling. Finally,
the repairman couldn't contain himself any longer and yelled, "Shut up,
you stupid, ugly bird!"
To which the parrot replied, "Get him,
Spike!"
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OK, move along, that's all there is,
move along please ....