Plastics!

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 11 May 2004 12:00:00 GMT
From smith2004:
Rocky said:

> is this all a war about oil? What a wonderful rude awakening if
> right in the middle of it somebody works out cold fusion or some
> other alternative energy source.

Pretend you're Dustin Hoffman while I whisper in your ear, "Thermal depolymerization"!

L. Neil Smith

# Marie Woolf at The Independent - Scanner set to lay bare the secrets of air travellers - millimetre wave scanners, which see through clothing, are coming soon to airports in no-longer-merry olde England. These are safer than the X-Ray devices that were in the news a while back, but they still leave very little to the imagination. Qinetiq has a page on Millimetre Wave Systems. You can bet they'll be scanning our cars at checkpoints pretty soon. Fascist bastards! [grabbe]

A hi-tech security screening system, designed to detect guns and other offensive weapons concealed on the body, will be unveiled this month by the defence technology firm Qinetiq, which is part-owned by the Government.

The scanners, expected to be deployed within a year as part of Britain's armoury against terror, capture the naked image of a traveller even if he or she is wearing several layers of clothing. But, to protect people's modesty, they come replete with "fig-leaf technology" that detects which parts of the body need screening out.

The system, which uses a special light frequency to see through clothing, was tried out successfully at Gatwick airport and will go on display at this year's Farnborough air show.

# Karen De Coster at LewRockwell.com - My Airport Fugitive Moment - Ms. De Coster leaves her bag "unattended" while she looks for something to eat twenty feet away and is ratted out to the gestapo by a fellow passenger. She escaped by walking away. [lew]

I have come to detest air travel post-9/11. Considering I am a person who has 100,000 frequent flyer miles currently logged, mainly in the half-dozen or so years preceding 9/11, the Gestapo-like airline industry has mostly lost a darn good customer.

First off, a typical security check-in for me at the airport includes the usual bit: juggle my carry on while I take the laptop out of its bag and put it on the belt, take my jacket off and put that through x-ray, put my purse through, and then, as my two hands are juggling a job for six, there's the shoe strip as well. Unbuckle my shoes and, in bare feet, walk over a floor that is trampled with revolting, dirty feet all day long. By the way, where are the government health inspectors on that one?

Then at the end of the x-ray belt, I struggle to put everything back on and regain my composure as TSA agents bark out orders and tell me, "Hey, you can't do that here." Well, where exactly should I do this Ms. Hardnose TSA, who looks and acts more like a man than most men? Shoes, laptop, laptop bag, carry-on bag, purse, jacket -- some of it has to go on me before I can carry the rest of it. God only gave me two small arms, and no built-in trailer to hitch up to my backside.

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