Suck it up and stop crying over scanners..Now you can't take a book to the U.S.?
Gee, it's a good thing they made big announcements yesterday to clear things up.
Transport Minister John Baird said yesterday we're getting new scanners at Canadian airports, ones that were brought in after security devices in Europe failed to notice that a guy had explosive material on his body. So what do the reports in the papers today say? That the so-called naked scanners WHICH I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH (see my rant below) will be used only if someone buzzes as they go through the metal detector!
I've read that in two stories this morning. But it makes no sense. The whole point is to detect plastic explosives and such that metal detectors can't see. On the other hand, I've read some comments that say everyone will get the secondary, naked-screen or a pat-down and not just folks who make the metal detector go "beep." It seems that either the powers that be can't explain things properly or they don't understand themselves what it is they're proposing. Let's hope it's the former.
As I was saying yesterday about the new scanners, if you don't like it TOUGH LUCK.
If you wanna fly you gotta be safe. And you have to make people around you feel safe. I'm no fan of Transport Minister John Baird's Tories, but if they can invest a few million bucks and make people safer in the skies and, also an important factor, make us FEEL safer in the skies and keep travelling and help the hotel and restaurant and airline industries survive, then this is the cost of doing business.
Yes, these machines produce a three-dimensional body image. It seems you might be able to make out the vague outline of someone's genitals. Do we think airport workers will get their jollies by looking at the faint outline of an insurance salesman from Belleville?
Even checking out a female's image seems pretty silly for a male airport worker who could walk into any milk store in Toronto and buy hard-core pornography. Do you really think airport workers are gonna sit back and examine a fuzzy outline on an airport scanning machine in the middle of their work day? I don't think so. And if somebody "cheats the system" and does so, well, that's unfortunate. But it doesn't make the end goal of keeping us safe any less valuable or lessen the use of the machines.
Maybe the real smart terrorists already are hatching up other plots. But if these machines catch one person or make several people think twice, they're worth the piddly amount of money they're gonna cost; about $250,000 per unit.
Of course, there's still lots of things we don't know. It was disturbing to read a small item in the Globe today that says book publishers have been told people can't take books on board a plane from Canada to the U.S.
Canadian authorities in late December told us we could take laptops and medical devices, even musical instruments and cameras, on board. But they didn't mention books. It never occurred to me that they'd be banned. But the Globe quotes book industry types as saying they've been told the only books or magazines people can take on board a plane to the U.S. are ones they purchase after going through security.
What, are they made of flammable material or something? But the books they sell after customs are fine? Don't they put books through the x-ray machine? And aren't books a lot less likely to go boom than a laptop or camera, which has mini-computers and all sorts of electrical components?
I don't get it.
More than anything, what I want is for someone, ANYONE, in Ottawa to lay out a press release that explains EXACTLY what is being done. When, where, how, why, etc...
Is that too much to ask?
I wrote yesterday that I don't care if they take scans of my body; I just want to be safe. Interesting that the Star interviewed six people at Pearson on Tuesday and they all agreed. Every one of them.
JIM'S DEALS OF THE DAY
$189 pp - Stay at
http://www.travelalerts.ca/ccount12/click.php?id=2083
From US$36 O/W -
http://www.travelalerts.ca/ccount12/click.php?id=2084
$129 -
http://www.travelalerts.ca/ccount12/click.php?id=2085
Comments