“Metro officials couldn’t say yet whether the device found any hidden explosives or firearms. Wednesday’s tests were optional, Metro security executive Alex Wiggins said, and ‘folks that wanted to participate probably weren’t carrying any weapons.'” Metro tests airport-style body scanners aimed at detecting guns and explosives [via latimes.com]
So does this sniff for explosives, or use metal detectors?
A better question. If people only use it because they want to, doesnt that defeat the purpose?
Could be Terahertz imaging, back scatter X-ray, magnetometer… who knows, all of those are used in various combinations as airport-style security theater.
It’s all security theater anyway. The point is to convince terrorists and other malefactors that they can’t sneak past security so they won’t even try. The fact is that anyone with a modicum of logic and planning can find a way into the secure areas of any airport and from their do their dirty work. It may be more spectacular to drop a plane from the sky or aim it at a building but an incendiary that sets off the fuel in a loaded 757 on the tarmac is going to shut down that airport for a long time, cause a lot of panic and kill a lot of people. I am also reminded of an attack some time ago on Heathrow, I believe, from a mortar hidden inside a white van parked outside the secure zone of the airport.
Where there is a will, there is a way. And unfortunately, the Islamo-terrorists have the will to kill and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to have the will to fight back. Yet. Is it just me but does all this catering to the middle-east refugees pouring into Europe not look an awful lot like the Allied appeasement of Hitler turning a blind eye to the potential danger and not addressing the problem before it explodes in your face?
Maybe this time we should let Europe take the hit and just assist Russia in driving the jihadists back out. And this time, let Russia HAVE Europe. They couldn’t screw it up any worse than the Europeans manage to do for themselves every 50 years or so.
You’re forgetting the easiest terrorist attack:
Take a couple guys with bomb vests to the long TSA lines. There are hundreds of people there, packed in tight, and you don’t have to go through any security to get there.
Exactly. Hit the security line and shut down every airport in the country while TSA flips shit and people just stop going.
Once people realize that the security line is the new target and that TSA has no idea WTF they’re doing everything will come to a grinding halt.
Yeah.
This is going to happen sooner or later. I’m surprised it hasn’t yet.
It probably hasn’t happened because IS likes the image of us being herded around like cattle and treated in humiliating ways.
I remember when Tom Clancy wrote a book about a passenger plane being intentionally flown into the Capitol Building. Life imitated art a few short years later.
I think it’s doubtful that the Jihadi’s frequent TTAG, but it’s probably best not to give them any new ideas.
Or just walk in a gunstore, purchase a firearm legally, carry it to your destination legally and start killing. Reaction time = 0. God bless the US and the 2A.
Wanna know why the US has less terror attacks than Europe, because we aren’t separated by a 1000 km ocean. So it’s much easier to come to Europe than to the US. You can’t compare this situation, they are completely different.
By the way, have you looked on your (the US) streets.You are near a civil war. Demonstrations and rallies look like warzones.
There are many problems in Europe at the moment, but we try to solve them without only thinking about ourselves (like the US does always).
It’s quite astounding how US americans can judge about Europe, without even understanding the way of living here. Our society is build on way different ideals and ideas, but you are still sure that they are wrong, without even understanding them!
Yes we are socialists, but we’re are NOT communists. Those are completely different thing. By socialims we mean that everybody has the right to achieve whatever they want (free education, healthcare…), but everybody who isn’t capable of, gets help (free education, healthcare,….). You can still live a luxurios life, but people don’t have to live on the street or starve.
You think that we are oppressed by our governments. A lot of Europeans think differently. Want to know one more fact. Many Europeans get more and more worried about the US, because of Trump and their national/international political decisions. So I can say, in the name of many many Europeans, we don’t want what US americans are thinking about Europe, and we don’t care what US americans are thinking.
You can think whatever you want. The truth is, we don’t need you anymore. You helped us in the 40s and 50s (thank for that, honestly), but since then you didn’t do nothing. And the Reds aren’t a threat, as they were anymore. Keep it real!
Paul, there are so many things wrong with your post I don’t know where to begin.
First off, it sounds like you are happy where you are, so please stay there. We have no need of more pearl clutchers.
Secondly, healthcare and education are not rights. They are products, and you are free to buy them anywhere. It is mental illness (and that is coming from a doctor) to presume you are OWED anything. Socialism is a disease, and discourages innovation- if there is no incentive, because everything is provided (at the cost of self-determination), then there is no innovation.
Huxley warned about this many, many years ago in Brave New World. Communism requires socialism in order to occur. They are mere degrees apart.
Europe (with a few execeptions, I’m looking at you Poland and Czech Republic) is a hopeless, hapless joke. You will be speaking Arabic and enjoying Sharia law within a generation.
And likely descending into the standard barbarous bloodshed that many of our ancestors fled when we came here. The smug, self-satisfied, self-congratulatory arrogance engendered by many of you Euro denizens is both hilarious and ironic, given your propensity to genocide, barbarism, and wholesale slaughter.
Clean the mess out of your own beds before commenting on our dirty floor.
If you don’t think that the Reds are a threat, then you haven’t been paying attention. Russia may nominally be a democracy, it is a dictatorship in fact, and Putin is an old line Communist who dreams of Russian domination of Europe, and is taking concrete steps to achieve that goal..
If you don’t want to use it, you opt for the cavity search special.
And make very loud sexual moans while you’re getting the pat down and call the agent “daddy” at every available opportunity
Couldn’t I just get you some cigarettes instead?
Or Mommy, depending on your upbringing…
The point is just to make the person doing it as uncomfortable as humanly possible. So if you’ve got Rosie O’Donnel giving you a search, go ahead and call “her” daddy as well.
yes. sign me up. I want the pretty redhead lady
You’ll get who they give you and like it, mister. And he’ll probably be very hairy and sweaty.
Criminals aren’t going to bother walking through this… metro car or metro entrance, Haji Haji doesn’t care.
Another invasion.
“Alex Wiggins said, and ‘folks that wanted to participate probably weren’t carrying any weapons.’” Metro tests airport-style body scanners aimed at detecting guns and explosives”
Alex is pretty observant and should be immediately promoted to to senior management position in LA Metro.
What’s still unclear is how much this faux security will impede rush hour commuters.😄
Do they detect saxophones as well? I know from personal experience that you don’t want those getting into the subway system.
Which is a higher threat: saxophone or bongos?
The biggest threat to the sanity of those in the immediate area? Saxophones. Definitely. But bongo players are a long-term menace to civilization, so it’s kind of a pick-your-poison situation.
Yeah, that ridiculously syncopated noise that passes as modern “jazz” might make me jump in front of a high speed train.
Sax leads to violins.
“Alex is pretty observant and should be immediately promoted to to senior management position in LA Metro.”
You obviously have never worked in a large bureaucracy. Alex will be fired within a month for daring to point out a potential flaw in the perfect system the higher-ups have devised.
“Common sense gun control…” is the same as “I support the 2nd Amendment, but…”. You know, a special kind of stupid.
This really *is* common sense! Why should a mass killer get to just saunter onto the Metro, without shooting dead everyone on the platform, first? A better question, seems to me, would be how much is this charade going to cost the taxpayer, and will it be the federal taxpayer, since CA is broke from similar idiocy.
The function of this device is patently obvious, even if it’s nothing but a fancy box with a bunch of flashing lights with a buzzer and alarm that goes off randomly and nothing else inside. Anyone who does not “volunteer” to go through the thing has immediately given security probable cause for additional scrutiny.
If you are willing to volunteer to walk through “The world’s most efficient terrorist detector device” you are either a supremely confident terrorist or entirely innocent. Simple.
You are more likely to get hepatitis on the Metro than amything else. They should screen for that instead.
Is the entire U.S. paying for that? More “We’re F’d up, and you’re going to pay for it” crap from CA.
Ironically, I don’t think there are any restrictions for licensed CCW on metro trains.
No need for restrictions when it is nearly impossible to get a CCW to start with. And I suspect people from counties that do issue CCWs avoid LA Metro like the plague.
While LA generally does not, the surrounding Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange Counties issue CCWs upon minimal showing of good cause. Many from those counties travel to or through LA via Metro train and bus.
If they do install these screeners and require people to pass through them, I wonder how they will handle CCW holders. Likewise, those who are legally carrying unloaded firearms in locked containers.
That’s my worry. I commute from Ventura to a redline station everyday and then take the redline to downtown LA. I also have my ccw so i carry on the redline. If they were to actually implement this system-wide (which i doubt), how would it work for us with permits. If i show my permit and they waive me through, I’ve just outed myself to everyone nearby who will think I’m LE or something. If I show my permit and am searched then I’m outed again.
If you flash a ccw permit and get the TSA gnut cheque before they waive you through and you have a stick of C-4 in your armpit, then . . . you were at least made more safe in your attempt to board-n-bomb the Metro.
If any Metro station shares track space with Amtrak, you need to be very, very careful.
With the volume of people using the subway/train, there’s no way to screen them all.
Metro can’t keep the homeless off the damn trains now, how are they going to accomplish this?
Hajis will just aim their rented truck or car at the exit and mow everybody coming out. Or get everybody waiting in line at the Best Buy on Black Friday.
Well, we gotta keep people with guns and explosives off of trains because a bunch of jihadis hijacked some planes using box cutters.
If they get to the controls, bog knows they could drive the things right into sky-scrapers.
It’s common sense.
So … the overlords gotta “screen” (and disarm) everybody because they cant’ tell who the bad guys are, can’t stop them from doing bad things, or both. But spending a bunch of money to inconvenience (and disarm) the rest of us is OK.
I don’t know. Maybe, if the point is free people doing as they like, get more competent at finding and restraining the whack jobs.
Just sayin.
Ya, they sure as shit found enough of them to import them. Suddenly they are camouflaged here or something?
Since I’m on a tear…
So, if they’re gonna detain, search, seize, inspect (… detect, infect, neglect and select) at will, the difference between these guys and the thugs they’re protecting us from is… what?
Anybody?
The complementary 20-minute body cavity probe is different from criminal sexual assault … how?
Anybody?
Bueller?
constitutional carry is lesser expensive, brings realy safety too the street and is constitutional (don t criminalzie the pessanger as an scanner)
I ride the Redline every day. It would be nice if they would just police the obvious, like the open containers, guys smoking weed on the train and the platforms, and the 5150s. But no, we get security theater instead.
This is called “desensitization training.” It is to get people used to the loss of privacy by being searched and watched wherever they go. Big Brother is indeed watching. and he cares about you very much.
Yup, they call it ‘voluntary’ but make it painful to avoid and then eventually decide it’s not voluntary anymore because, hey, most people do it anyway.
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