BBC: “A woman passenger has been arrested after a flight from London to Washington was diverted to Boston because of an on-board disturbance….She was carrying hand cream – a banned item – and matches on board the United Airlines flight. The aircraft was escorted into Logan airport by two jet fighters.”
Category / Security
Virgin Atlantic: Turning Sane Humans Into Basket Cases With a TV Dinner Aesthetic
One Person’s “Tiny Facial Movement” is Another’s Parched Throat
Wall Street Journal: “The people-based program — called Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, or SPOT — began undergoing tests at Boston’s Logan Airport after 9/11 and has expanded to about a dozen airports. Trained teams watch travelers in security lines and elsewhere. They look for obvious things like someone wearing a heavy coat on a hot day, but also for subtle signs like vocal timbre, gestures and tiny facial movements that indicate someone is trying to disguise an emotion. TSA officers observe passengers while consulting a list of more than 30 questionable behaviors, each of which has a numerical score. If someone scores high enough, an officer approaches the person and asks a few questions.”
Like I Said: Mobile Solitary Confinement
Rory Ewins offers a spirited take on what the UK airline security means: “Sure, many passengers will adapt, now that they know the score—in the short term. But for UK domestic carriers, this is a nightmare. If passengers have items they don’t want to entrust to the hold, their inclination will now be to travel by train. For the short-haul tourist carriers, this is where we find out whether a few days away is worth that much hassle, and how many untaken trips that translates into. Even a drop in passenger numbers of ten or twenty percent could send some airlines to the wall. How easy is EasyJet now?”
Clinks That Go Bump in the Night
Think you’re safe? A bump key will get you into almost any lock in ten seconds. (via William Gibson)