I can beat that: you not only have to show a photo ID, but have to state your name into a video camera to get into my dentist’s building!
On the other hand, you can breeze right into the Lincoln Tunnel or the PATH station with nary a glance from “security.”
After 9/11, my sister’s school started cracking down on IDs. Because, you know, a junior high school in the middle of nowhere is going to be a prime terrorist target :rolleyes:.
Now, the bus that my school was going to be sending down to the NCAA girls tournament’s been cancelled, because the NCAA doesn’t want large gatherings anywhere near the games.
We’re required to have photo IDs where I work. There are 15 of us. There is practically no turnover, so if I see somebody on the premises who I haven’t seen every day for the last five years, chances are he doesn’t work there.
HAH! Try this: (fed division)
magnetic strips on ID. Need one to get into the building thru a turnstile (think old subway hi-boys) without having to call a security guard from the desk. Then, the plan calls for everyone to go thru a metal detector and their bags to go thru an airport-style xray. The equipment all came in around a year or year and a half ago.
The Xrays were never put on line.
I walk to the detector, put my bag on the table, walk thru, reach back, grab bag. The bag I bring to work could easily hold a Tec-9. Been checked once in all that time, and they never looked in the bottom. Cell phone in pocket? You beep. Automatic weapon in bag? No clue.
I get a laugh out of “security measures” at sporting events. For instance, at Gund Arena in Cleveland spectators are required to open their coats and show their car keys and cell phones to a security guard before going through the turnstiles. For the life of me I have no idea how this protects anyone. There is no metal detector so if some evil doer wanted to come to a game while carrying a concealed knife or gun security would never catch him. It’s cursory security at its worst. That, and I don’t think Cleveland Cavaliers’ games, or Cleveland Barons’ (AHL) games, or MAC tournament games are too high a target on the terrorists’ list.
My school sent home a letter stating that we have metal dectectors, among other security devices. I have never, ever, ever seen them; I didn’t even know we had them. So basically, we have expensive equipment sitting in some back room somewhere, useless.
I saw on the news that the police are stopping and searching every truck that goes through a certain tunnel. But as far as I could tell, the search consists of opening the back of the trailer and confirming that it is indeed full of cardboard boxes. There was no explosive-sniffing dog in sight. Like a terrorist wouldn’t think to put their bomb in the front of the truck and put some boxes behind it.
Although I suppose its possible that they have a dog but didn’t show it in order to make the terrorists overconfident.
I’m a little sick of being frisked. Every time you go to a concert or something, they frisk you. Maybe they’ve always done this at big public events, I don’t know. I’ve just recently started going to concerts and stuff, but being frisked is getting old. Who’s going to open fire on a mosh pit?
My 70 year old grandmother had her plastic crochet hook taken away from her at the airport. (I mean, come on! A person could cause more mayhem with the plastic silverware given out with the in-flight meal.)
Nevertheless, the nation’s airlines are now safe from the threat of my tiny grandmother and her Crochet Hook of Death.
A few months after 9/11, I was on my way back from a business trip in South Korea. While being pre-screened before I got to the ticket counter, the security agents opened my luggage. There, right in the middle of my suitcase, was a large box. Then never even batted an eye, or wanted to know what was in it. This was a good size box (holding a vase), that could easily have been some time of bomb. Now I suppose they could pass the bags through a bomb sniffer after I check them, but then what’s the point in making me open it before I check it? yep, there’s a large brown box, we’ll let this one go on through :rolleyes:
Posted by Knckers:*
At the first sign of a biological attack (crop duster in the middle of the city, suspicious poxy person purposefully coughing in your direction, dead cow trebucheted over your castle walls, etc.), go wash your hands right away!
Have you played the PC game “Stronghold”? There’s a perverse fun in seeing that poor dead cow go hurtling through the air.
I haven’t flown since 2000, at which time I carried my Swiss Army knife in my pocket; I’m dreading the next time.
Probably the single stupidest thing I’ve heard about airport security is that they’re not allowing the pilots to carry pocket tools. So the people who fly the plane can’t be trusted not to… what? Hijack themselves? With a Leatherman?
At the same time, some of the airlines are apparently going to have pilots with guns. Go figure.
thanks masonite for the link to this thread. I will add my thread about airport security and photographed monuments
Bwahahahahaha! The Mystery Spot! I forgot all about that. Lived in Merced for about five years and always wondered what the heck “The Mystery Spot” was.
So, Troy m’dear. What’s The Mystery Spot?
I had to look up this thread from last year:
Banks should be on the look-out for “people who normally don’t come into banks”
In Nashville, if your car breaks down/runs out of gas, you’re supposed to stay with your car and not go for help, gas or whatever. If the police find your car parked along side the road with no one in it, they’ll tow it because it might be part of a terrorist plot. :rolleyes: Meanwhile, I bet there’s no extra precautions being taken at what’s the best target in this state: The Jack Daniels Distillery!
I know an elderly man, age 83, who flew to Germany for a vacation in a rest-home/convelescent center. He carefully arranged in advance with the airline to have a wheel chair at the gate, because he cannot walk without help. He also wears an orthopedic shoe with metal brace support. For this guy, just putting his shoes on is a 20 minute job.
So what happens at the Munich airport?-- everybody has to take of their shoes. And even then, the shoe beeps because of the metal support.
He suggested politely that maybe, just maybe, they could check him by having the guard bend down and prod the shoe a bit. But no–“rules is rules, by God”–he had to bend down himself and remove the shoes. So 20 minutes later, he manages to hand them to the guard, who then prodded them a bit and handed 'em back.
I don’t remember the details—it was a while back—but the Coast Guard descended on the Washington State Ferry System with “recommendations” that they establish an airport-style security system. Guess they were concerned that someone would commandeer the Rhododendron (a 55-year-old ferry that’s on a 1.5 mile run between Point Defiance and Vashon Island) and turn her into a floating bomb à la Speed 2—at her top speed of 11 knots.
Admittedly, the prospect of a seaborne hijacking cannot be ignored; but the inanity of metal detectors, x-ray machines and shoe removal to walk on a ferry that probably has a 10-15 minute turnaround time eventually penetrated the bureaucratic mind, and the “recommendations” seem to have been dropped. For now.
(BTW, there was no money attached to the proposal. The expenses would have to be borne by a system that’s already hiking fares and cutting runs to compensate for budget holes blown by a certain quasi-politician. Which is a whole 'nother subject, and causes me to use language that would get me banned from the Pit.)
I’ve had my own recent run-in with overzealous, overaggressive security, and that was in my own workplace. It almost leaves me afraid to go to other secured buildings for fear of being considered out of line in a place where I have no standing.
Last year at my school, a graduate student delivering pizza was shot to death when he made a delivery to a place where apparently a drug deal went bad. After the shooter was apprehended, it turned out that for a few days after the shooting, he hid out with a friend in his apartment. The apartments are away from main campus but are part of a single residential grouping that is school property.
So, the school freaks out. First, they announce that everyone living must register all guests. Yeah, because if you are so morally bankrupt that you would harbor a fugitive killer in your room for a couple of nights, you’ll at least have the decency to let the campus police know he’s there. There’s also no way to enforce this unless someone knocked on doors every night and took a head count of who is in what apartment. It pretty much would only be useful as a way of punishing people after the fact.
Second, there are two access roads to this area. They announced that from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., one road will be closed and all traffic must pass through a security gate by swiping their IDs. But only one person in the car needs an ID, this one person can then bring in whoever they want. And the campus shuttle busses, which don’t check IDs, come and go all the time. And it’s not like this is a gated community or something. People could WALK there anytime they want. Pretty much all it does is keep cars out and annoy people.