body scanners in European airports

On 02/09/11 09:57, Martin wrote:
On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:27:40 +0100, William Black
wrote:

On 02/09/11 09:14, Martin wrote:
On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:57:16 +0100, William Black
wrote:

On 02/09/11 08:53, Martin wrote:

or a success rate of 46%. If other countries adopt them Germany will
become the terrorists favourite.

Why?

Terrorists have stopped attacking aircraft for the past ten years
because, pretty obviously, after the attack on the twin towers,
passengers have nothing to lose by attacking the hijackers.

There's absolutely no evidence at all that the screening systems using
conventional metal detecting technology are ineffective, it's just that
there's some clever marketing going on.

Other than that when in a security test at Schiphol axes etc. were put
in luggage it reached Cayenne before the items were detected by
customs officers.

Why should an axe in the hold baggage be a problem?

For the same reason that guns& grenades in the hold became a problem
when they were used in the arrivals hall at Rome airport.


I've carried an assortment of tools through a variety of airports and
have never ever been questioned.

The only time the contents of my hold baggage were questioned was when I
was flying to a re-enactment in Italy and my baggage was full of swords,
daggers and other assorted weaponry, but a simple letter from the
organisers saying what I was invited to solved all that with no problem
at all.



--
William Black

Free men have open minds
If you want loyalty, buy a dog...

On 2011-09-02 03:14:15 -0500, Martin said:

On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:57:16 +0100, William Black
wrote:

On 02/09/11 08:53, Martin wrote:

or a success rate of 46%. If other countries adopt them Germany will
become the terrorists favourite.

Why?

Terrorists have stopped attacking aircraft for the past ten years
because, pretty obviously, after the attack on the twin towers,
passengers have nothing to lose by attacking the hijackers.

There's absolutely no evidence at all that the screening systems using
conventional metal detecting technology are ineffective, it's just that
there's some clever marketing going on.

Other than that when in a security test at Schiphol axes etc. were put
in luggage it reached Cayenne before the items were detected by
customs officers.

Some of the electrical stuff I have put in hand luggage should have
triggered further investigation. The equipment is as good as the
operator. If you have an operator in Turin or Rome airport, for
example, who sits chatting with his back to the display, you may as
well switch it off.

Seriously: have your seen that? That fits the stererotype of the
laid-back Italian but I'd like to think the airport security were a
different kind of Italian. In contrast, I can believe a Frankfurt
x-ray luggage scanner has his/her eyes glued to the screen.

--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

"Tim C." wrote in message
...
On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:02:47 +0200, Martin wrote in post :
:

if 54% were false positives, then 46% weren't false.

They could either have been true positives, or true negatives, or false
negatives.

I assumed that the 54% figure was as a percentage of whatever faction of the
total is a positive. Thus 46% of whatever is the total number of positives
are true positives.

IMHO that is a pretty good success rate and not a technology you should be
discarding on this basis.

OTOH, it says nothing at all about how may false negatives were let through
and this could be critical to the decision

tim

"Dan Stephenson" wrote in message
news:2011090207590373183-stephedanospam@maccom...
On 2011-09-02 03:14:15 -0500, Martin said:

On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:57:16 +0100, William Black
wrote:

On 02/09/11 08:53, Martin wrote:

or a success rate of 46%. If other countries adopt them Germany will
become the terrorists favourite.

Why?

Terrorists have stopped attacking aircraft for the past ten years
because, pretty obviously, after the attack on the twin towers,
passengers have nothing to lose by attacking the hijackers.

There's absolutely no evidence at all that the screening systems using
conventional metal detecting technology are ineffective, it's just that
there's some clever marketing going on.

Other than that when in a security test at Schiphol axes etc. were put
in luggage it reached Cayenne before the items were detected by
customs officers.

Some of the electrical stuff I have put in hand luggage should have
triggered further investigation. The equipment is as good as the
operator. If you have an operator in Turin or Rome airport, for
example, who sits chatting with his back to the display, you may as
well switch it off.

Seriously: have your seen that? That fits the stererotype of the
laid-back Italian but I'd like to think the airport security were a
different kind of Italian.

Certainly the last time I flew back from Spain, the security check wasn't
manned (though in this case womanned) by a different type of Spaniard. She
wasn't the slightest bit interest in checking my bag

tim

Stoopid stereotypes from a perfect american of course.


"Dan Stephenson" a écrit dans le message de groupe de discussion :
2011090207590373183-stephedanospam@maccom...

On 2011-09-02 03:14:15 -0500, Martin said:

On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:57:16 +0100, William Black
wrote:

On 02/09/11 08:53, Martin wrote:

or a success rate of 46%. If other countries adopt them Germany will
become the terrorists favourite.

Why?

Terrorists have stopped attacking aircraft for the past ten years
because, pretty obviously, after the attack on the twin towers,
passengers have nothing to lose by attacking the hijackers.

There's absolutely no evidence at all that the screening systems using
conventional metal detecting technology are ineffective, it's just that
there's some clever marketing going on.

Other than that when in a security test at Schiphol axes etc. were put
in luggage it reached Cayenne before the items were detected by
customs officers.

Some of the electrical stuff I have put in hand luggage should have
triggered further investigation. The equipment is as good as the
operator. If you have an operator in Turin or Rome airport, for
example, who sits chatting with his back to the display, you may as
well switch it off.

Seriously: have your seen that? That fits the stererotype of the
laid-back Italian but I'd like to think the airport security were a
different kind of Italian. In contrast, I can believe a Frankfurt
x-ray luggage scanner has his/her eyes glued to the screen.

--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)

****man martin at it again.

"Martin" a écrit dans le message de groupe de discussion :
...

On 2 Sep 2011 09:24:10 GMT, "Erick T. Barkhuis"
wrote:

Tim C.:

On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:02:47 +0200, Martin wrote in post :
:

if 54% were false positives, then 46% weren't false.

They could either have been true positives, or true negatives, or
false negatives.

You may add true zero and false zero, for "scanner out of order" and
"scanner appeared to be out of order" respectively.


Not to mention operated by a monkey in a uniform.
Don't these scanners generate a see through the clothes image?
If so, would a German operator have 54% false negatives if the
passengers were made to strip naked and eye balled?
--

Martin

Martin wrote on Sep 3, 2011:

On Fri, 2 Sep 2011 07:51:35 -0500, Dan Stephenson
wrote:

On 2011-09-02 02:47:21 -0500, Tom P said:


Now this would be good news, in that there is a direct flight from
Dallas/Fort Worth near where I live, to Frankfurt.

If I can confirm the situation in Athens, I might make a
DFW-Frankfurt-Athens travel. Hmm! Maybe I gave up hope too soon!


Plans to introduce scanners in the present form at German airports have
now been abandoned.
The announcement was made this week by the Ministry of Interior. The
tests showed a false alarm rate of 54%.
http://tinyurl.com/454csr3

Spectacular news. Give that, even if I cannot use the Athens airport,
it's just a really really long drive from Frankfurt to Brindisi,

You could drive to Venice and take the ferry to Patras. A very
pleasant way to relax and recover from jet lag. The ferry leaves in
the late afternoon and arrives in Patras at breakfast time 36 hours
later or did when we used it. You also get to see Venice, the coast of
Croatia, Alabania and Corfu.

Yes, a very pleasant trip - I've done it a few times now, although the last
time, a few months ago we got off at Corfu for a change.

I certainly beats grinding down the crappy Italian autostrade for a day or
more

--
Mike Lane
UK North Yorkshire
mike_lane at mac dot com

On 09/02/2011 02:51 PM, Dan Stephenson wrote:
On 2011-09-02 02:47:21 -0500, Tom P said:


Now this would be good news, in that there is a direct flight from
Dallas/Fort Worth near where I live, to Frankfurt.

If I can confirm the situation in Athens, I might make a
DFW-Frankfurt-Athens travel. Hmm! Maybe I gave up hope too soon!


Plans to introduce scanners in the present form at German airports
have now been abandoned.
The announcement was made this week by the Ministry of Interior. The
tests showed a false alarm rate of 54%.
http://tinyurl.com/454csr3

Spectacular news. Give that, even if I cannot use the Athens airport,
it's just a really really long drive from Frankfurt to Brindisi, for the
ferry the next morning.

You want to take a rentacar all the way from Frankfurt on a ferry to
Greece?

It's some time off my trip, but do-able. I'm
concerned about driving 11 hours with a hour jet-lag -- but my point is
valid. At worse I could stay in Mittenwald on the Austrian border again.
That's a nice little town, by the way.

I wouldn't recommend driving too far straight after a night flight from
America to Europe.

On 09/02/2011 09:53 AM, Martin wrote:
On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:47:21 +0200, Tom wrote:

On 08/11/2011 02:58 AM, Dan Stephenson wrote:
On 2011-08-09 02:17:40 -0500, Tom P said:

On 08/08/2011 11:56 PM, Dan Stephenson wrote:
My plans were to visit Europe again in October, but it has come to my
attention that the use of those body scanners has become common since
the attempted bombing of that flight to Detroit last Christmas 2009. My
last flight was prior to that.

So I called the Athens airport and spoke to their security people who
said that they had the scanners and their use was required, and
furthermore that this was to be found in the other airports in Europe.

This sounds incredible but it is plausible. Can anyone confirm this at
your local big airport? My googling only turned up EU regular that
"permitted" the scanners and a lot of talk of health issues. But that is
all.



There was something in the news here the other day about the scanners
on trial at Hamburg airport proving to be useless - much too slow, and
with a 35% to 70% false alarm rate, depending on which press story you
believe - ah, just found some references:
http://www.whec.com/news/stories/s2225742.shtml?cat=566

or google bodyscanner+false+alarms

It appears that the German authorities have decided to discontinue
their use, at least of the make of scanner they tested, so hopefully
the taxpayers will get their money back for these expensive piles of
useless junk.

Now this would be good news, in that there is a direct flight from
Dallas/Fort Worth near where I live, to Frankfurt.

If I can confirm the situation in Athens, I might make a
DFW-Frankfurt-Athens travel. Hmm! Maybe I gave up hope too soon!


Plans to introduce scanners in the present form at German airports have
now been abandoned.
The announcement was made this week by the Ministry of Interior. The
tests showed a false alarm rate of 54%.
http://tinyurl.com/454csr3

or a success rate of 46%. If other countries adopt them Germany will
become the terrorists favourite.

The main reason given for rejecting the scanners was that the false
alarms slowed down the security checks. The expectation was that the
machines would speed up security checks. Maybe that's what the salesman
had sold them.

On 03/09/11 09:28, Martin wrote:
On Fri, 2 Sep 2011 07:59:03 -0500, Dan Stephenson
wrote:

On 2011-09-02 03:14:15 -0500, Martin said:

On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:57:16 +0100, William Black
wrote:

On 02/09/11 08:53, Martin wrote:

or a success rate of 46%. If other countries adopt them Germany will
become the terrorists favourite.

Why?

Terrorists have stopped attacking aircraft for the past ten years
because, pretty obviously, after the attack on the twin towers,
passengers have nothing to lose by attacking the hijackers.

There's absolutely no evidence at all that the screening systems using
conventional metal detecting technology are ineffective, it's just that
there's some clever marketing going on.

Other than that when in a security test at Schiphol axes etc. were put
in luggage it reached Cayenne before the items were detected by
customs officers.

Some of the electrical stuff I have put in hand luggage should have
triggered further investigation. The equipment is as good as the
operator. If you have an operator in Turin or Rome airport, for
example, who sits chatting with his back to the display, you may as
well switch it off.

Seriously: have your seen that?

I have and frequently and also the passport control where the guy
didn't look at the relevant page in the passport.

Happens all the time in the 3rd World where immigration officers aren't
recruited for their skills in border control.

Most of them don't actually have an immigration department and it's just
cops doing a hitch checking passports.

In many places they don't speak or read any language but their own.


--
William Black

Free men have open minds
If you want loyalty, buy a dog...