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DHS Official Considered Shock Collars For Air Travelers

Comments: 672

Journal written by MacDork (560499) and posted by timothy on Tuesday July 08, @11:50AM
from the kip-hawley-please-to-the-red-discourtesy-phone dept.
"The Washington Times is reporting that the DHS wants to replace your boarding pass with a GPS-enabled shock bracelet. Plans for the device include subduing passengers remotely as well as onboard interrogation. There's even a promotional video." Perhaps Paul Ruwaldt (the official named in this story) has been watching "The Coneheads" a bit too much, or not actually flying enough. Expressing interest is not quite the same as ordering mass quantities, but it's scary enough.

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Firehose:DHS wants airline passengers to wear shock collar by MacDork (560499)

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  • Dangerous slide (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BWJones (18351) * on Tuesday July 08, @11:51AM (#24101159) Homepage Journal

    Flying into this country is becoming more and more of a hassle [utah.edu] and every time that I fly outside the US, it is apparent that the DHS is completely corrupting business and pleasure travel at the expense of our freedoms and economy.

    If our government seriously thinks this is a viable option, then we have truly lost and the slide towards a fascist government will be complete. Yeah, go waaaay beyond "papers please" and treat *all* of your citizens as criminals when they travel.

    What I suspect will happen is that this is a trial idea floated to the media and will be explained away as saying "Oh, well.... we intended this to be used for transporting criminals" or some such nonsense like that. This idea is one of the most absurd and dangerous ideas I've heard from my government in a long time and it moves us dangerously close to a threshold that will destabilize this country.

    • Re:Dangerous slide (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shadow Wrought (586631) * on Tuesday July 08, @11:58AM (#24101273) Homepage Journal
      The truth is that another hijacking is unlikely to happen. With the memory of 9/11 anyone trying to take over the airplane is going to be subdued, if not out and out killed, by the passengers. The philosophy before 9/11 was to sit back, let the terrorists make their statement, and then everyone will be safe. Not any more.

      So TSA's main job now is justifying their job.

      • Re:Dangerous slide (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bombula (670389) on Tuesday July 08, @12:12PM (#24101489)
        This is just the latest insanity. The fear level in American culture is, as Noam Chomsky puts it, "off the scale." There is nothing comparable to it in any other culture in the world, developed or developing. Being fearful of flying, while irrational, is fairly understandable - like being fearful of riding in a submarine - even though riding in cars and on bicycles is vastly more dangerous. But being afraid of terrorists blowing up malls and municpal airports in Iowa and Kansas is sheer madness.

        I'm not completely sure why the fear level is so high in American culture, but I'd hazard to guess that it's the result of a combination of being too used to being too comfortable and too safe too much of the time - similar to tyrant's paranoia - and the fact that the media and the current administration both cultivate fear (for different reasons).

        • Re:Dangerous slide (Score:5, Interesting)

          by mbone (558574) on Tuesday July 08, @12:29PM (#24101779)

          The fear level in American culture is, as Noam Chomsky puts it, "off the scale."

          The weird thing is that I don't feel afraid (and I travel frequently) and I don't know anyone who is really afraid. Where are all of these scared people ? Who are they ? More importantly, do we know that the above statement is really true, or is it just what we are told ?

        • Re:Dangerous slide (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tgd (2822) on Tuesday July 08, @12:29PM (#24101783)

          Just remember, the only thing we have to fear is...

          Um...

          Well, is our government it seems.

        • Re:Dangerous slide (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Tipa (881911) on Tuesday July 08, @12:31PM (#24101823) Homepage

          American culture doesn't have this level of fear. Nobody I know of has cut short travel plans because of the terrorism threat, though I imagine some people have. Nobody I know of thinks TSA is making air travel safer.

          This whole fear thing has been manufactured by the government as an excuse to remove our civil liberties.

          Don't ever EVER think that the American people are demanding it. We're not. This is being done TO us, not FOR us.

      • The truth is that another hijacking is unlikely to happen. With the memory of 9/11 anyone trying to take over the airplane is going to be subdued, if not out and out killed, by the passengers.

        Unless the passengers are taken out by shock bracelets. Good job, TSA!

      • Re:Dangerous slide (Score:5, Funny)

        by erudified (958273) on Tuesday July 08, @12:29PM (#24101773) Homepage

        The truth is that another hijacking is unlikely to happen.

        Wrong!

        If they put a shock collar on me, I'd blow the damn plane up on general principle.

        • Re:Dangerous slide (Score:5, Insightful)

          by smooth wombat (796938) on Tuesday July 08, @12:29PM (#24101791) Homepage Journal
          I also think that Flight 93 was shot down,

          That's right, keep the conspiracy flying.

          I don't think the passengers had time to watch the news, call their families, and say goodbye.

          Right. Because the recorded phone messages of flight attendants and some of the passengers are completely fabricated. The families made them up after the plane went down to gain sympathy.

    • Re:Dangerous slide (Score:5, Funny)

      by EdIII (1114411) * on Tuesday July 08, @12:17PM (#24101581)

      Yeah, go waaaay beyond "papers please" and treat *all* of your citizens as criminals when they travel.

      Yeah, go waaaay beyond "papers please" and treat *all* of your citizens as animals when they travel.

      There. Fixed that for you.

    • I don't understand why (Score:5, Insightful)

      by speedtux (1307149) on Tuesday July 08, @12:39PM (#24101949)

      What I suspect will happen is that this is a trial idea floated to the media and will be explained away as saying

      These kinds of proposals aren't random; by making ridiculous suggestions like this, they move the boundaries of what is acceptable. Compared to shock collars, some of the other things they come up with will seem tame now.

      What I don't understand is why people go for this bullshit. Why is it the government's responsibility to make air travel safe? Who cares? I've been flying for nearly 40 years, and the same risks we have today existed all that time and were just as obvious. And except for the fact that in 2001, the air planes plowed in a big building in Manhattan, 9/11 seems not much different from any of the numerous other plane hijackings.

      People should just not vote for any president or representative supporting such measures.

  • Shocking ! (Score:5, Funny)

    by trolltalk.com (1108067) on Tuesday July 08, @11:52AM (#24101163) Homepage Journal
    I thought that air travel was punishment enough already!

  • Nothing to see here, move along (Score:5, Insightful)

    by clang_jangle (975789) * on Tuesday July 08, @11:52AM (#24101175)
    TFS liks to a blog post which itself links to part of a letter (page two, so we don't even get to see the whole letter). The video link tells us simply that a company called Lamperd Less Lethal would love to sell these devices to a government agency. There is absolutely no evidence presented that would justify the claim that "the DHS wants to replace your boarding pass with a GPS-enabled shock bracelet". Why did this fake story even get posted?

  • The Onion (Score:5, Funny)

    by LexMortis (1183871) on Tuesday July 08, @11:58AM (#24101295)

    Hahaha, man.. The Onion has the best articles!

    Hahaha... wait, wtf?!

    %#$$%#@!!!

  • This system would help terrorists control all of the passengers on the aircraft. All the terrorist would have to do is take over the system and activate all of the wrist bands of the passengers to incapacitate them. After that resistance is futile.

  • Oh no (Score:5, Funny)

    by Peter_The_Linux_Nerd (1292510) on Tuesday July 08, @11:59AM (#24101303)
    I don't care about the shock collars, but for the love of god don't run the system on windows.

  • ...why not just show them Slashdot's new interface?

  • On a practical note. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saterdaies (842986) on Tuesday July 08, @12:00PM (#24101327)

    you're an airline pilot. A terrorist organization just used Semtex to destroy your reinforced door. I know my gut reaction is to look at a list of passengers and type in an id number to shock a specific individual.

    As much as I don't like Tasers, it makes more sense to have a Taser gun than Taser wristbands. Those wristbands have to either be activated individually by number - not happening in an attack - or all at once - pissing everyone off.

    For those that want to get outraged, this is an area where big business (airlines) can be your friends. The airlines won't allow this. Anything that makes flying more of a pain reduces their profits - even things like the new security fees on airline tickets reduce their profits. They aren't going to pay more money (I'm guessing at least $15-a-bracelet for the materials, location tag, and shock element considering that a Taser costs hundreds of dollars) to piss off customers.

    So, this won't happen.

  • Freedom is really troublesome (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mlwmohawk (801821) on Tuesday July 08, @12:30PM (#24101813)

    To authoritarian people, the very idea that the masses have freedom is a scary.

    Whether true or not, this story shows a very real reaction some people have to idea that they can't control other people. Freedom is, amongst other things, is also based on a "trust." At some point, a free people will rebel against an increasingly oppressive government. I think we are seeing the U.S. government racing to reach a state of control and surveillance BEFORE people start to rebel en mass.

    The race is to get to a point where there is no way the people can rebel without losing their jobs, savings, houses, lives, etc. This is why students and kids protest, because they don't have a life's work of savings to lose.

    The irony is that the corrupt powers that be had better fix the economy pretty damn quickly, as people with a lot to lose are easier to control that people who have lost everything. Once we have a major depression, the ideologies of abortion, gun control, "family values," become second to jobs.

    If a mob of 1,000,000 people march on the white house with pitchforks and tourches demanding justice, there will be justice.

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