Now, perusing the TSA site brought me to the employment opportunity section and I was curious who is qualified to “determine that an item on the permitted chart is dangerous.” A Transportation Security Screener position available in Boston, MA requires a high school education and U.S. citizenship. They qualify that by specifying that the applicant must “pass tests, interviews, and other evaluations demonstrating that they have the necessary skills and abilities for job performance.” They specify color vision and hearing, mental, interpersonal and physical skills of lifting 70 lbs. and operating in a stressful and distracting environment.

Why is it that these people are not required to be extraordinary individuals with amazing cognitive skills? Because we won’t pay for it. This screener job is probably the most important public contact job in the entire DHS organization and anyone with a pulse practically can qualify. Obviously the salary, (Minimum $23,600 – Maximum $35,400) doesn’t ask for extraordinary individuals. I could earn more money as an administrative assistant with the same qualifications in addition to typing skills. My point is that I don’t trust a high school graduate to determine that my titanium case for my pda is a safety threat and all of a sudden I’m left with no appeals process or recourse for counteraction. After all, I’m trying to catch a plane that I have a non-refundable ticket for and all that I’ll get for my trouble, if I do complain, is a missed flight and a supervisor who will back the employee up just to save themselves the paperwork.

On a side note: Where do all those items that are confiscated go? Are they sold? Melted down? Given away in a raffle at the end of the month to exemplary TSA screeners? See, I think that the TSA give an incentive to their screeners that they have the option of purchasing, at a reduced rate, any item confiscated. It would then benefit screeners to be overzealous in their otherwise excitement-lacking position. Don’t forget that the TSA, listed in the Civil Sanction Guidelines for Individuals, can fine you anywhere from $250 to $6000 for interference with screening through physical contact. The lack of explanation on the TSA site about the procedures involved with confiscating items and fining individuals makes me think that the individual screener supervisor has small amounts of discression or they are so complex that the TSA can’t even post them. Either way, the process doesn’t instill upon me any sense of fairness. What it does say to me is expediency. Take the offending object away and move them along. If they complain or resist, fine them and probably detain them as well. Hmmm…facist? Perhaps. Quick? Definitely. And that’s probably what we as a discerning public want most…the least amount of time spent on the screening process as possible. In some ways, I blame everyone else except Tom Ridge, as he probably only implemented the policy and had limited exposure to its creation. If only I had implemented that same idea of expediency in this blog…

Ben–I’m counting on you to figure out how we can defeat this!

km

***From USA Today***
An Internet service is about to test the frontiers of e-mail privacy.

DidTheyReadIt.com, which will launch Monday, allows anyone to secretly track e-mails they send. You’ll see whether someone opens your e-mail, how long the recipient keeps it open � even where geographically the recipient is reading it.

The reaction could be harsh. “It will freak people out,” says Internet expert Esther Dyson.

“It violates our electronic space in a way that’s as uncomfortable as someone violating our physical space,” says Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at technology investment firm Hummer Winblad. “Add this company to the long list of people who are making the Internet a less attractive place to live and work.”

The service comes from Rampell Software of Cambridge, Mass. DidTheyReadIt.com will cost $50 a year. You register on the Web site, and then every time you send an e-mail, you add .didtheyreadit.com to the end. An e-mail address would look like this: president@whitehouse.gov.didtheyreadit.com.

You can also download software that adds tracking code to all outgoing e-mail.

Next, you go to the Web site, log in, and see a list of all the e-mails you’ve sent through the service. A box shows what time each e-mail was read, how long it was kept open, whether it was read multiple times and the Internet service provider that was used by the recipient when opening it.

In most cases, the site will be able to tell you the city where the e-mail was read � though not the specific address. It can also tell you if the recipient forwarded the e-mail (though not to whom it was sent), and whether it was read by the people to whom it was forwarded.

DidTheyReadIt is invisible to the recipient. It works with any kind of e-mail, including Web-based e-mail such as Hotmail. DidTheyReadIt maintains that it collects no other information about either e-mail senders or the recipients.

An existing service called MessageTag can track whether an e-mail was opened. AOL can do the same for e-mail sent to other AOL users. But neither allows the extensive monitoring of DidTheyReadIt.

Rampell Software CEO Alex Rampell says he’s braced for controversy. “It can be used inappropriately, but our intentions are good,” he says.

***END***

Here we are again, girls and boys, for another exciting installment of “My Life.” Whee! I graduated yesterday from Whitworth College and had a boring time waiting for my name to be called. The exciting part was getting this spiffy watch as a present.

In reality, I had a good time seeing all my family come up and cheer for me. The new picts are up, so everyone who wasn’t there can see how it was.

We started on Friday with a trip to Monteillet fromagerie, a goat cheese place north of Walla Walla, WA. That night, we had a leisurely dinner at Luna on the South Hill and went to the Davenport for cigars afterwards. Saturday was a dinner for the family at my place, with guacamole and tacos. Sunday was the big day with the dinner at Thai Bamboo to follow. Fantastico!

I’m currently looking for a job now and tomorrow my search kicks into full time mode. After all, I have had enough of this silliness of school and am ready to earn some cash.

-Ben

So, speaking of wireless connections (see Ben’s entry below), I’m sitting here at San Francisco Int’l Airport, drinking a nice cold Bud Light, and surfing a random “T-Mobile” connection that required no authentication what so ever. This is actually the fist time I’ve used a “hotspot” to connect wirelessly to the internet, check e-mail, blah blah blah. All I have to say is…this is damn cool!

Ben, here’s to YOU (Kristian toasts Ben and takes another gulp of his Beer), and I wish I could join you and your fam/friends to partake in the exciting GRAD DAY ceremonies. Most importantly, I’m bummed that I can’t be the one to smuggle in the Air HORN to your graduation and let it SCREAM when your name is announced. I’m sure such Tom Foolery isn’t accepted at Whitworth. Maybe it’s better that I not come up and rock the boat….

Congrats again Bud! I’m off…

km

I’ve been kinda paranoid since wireless APs started cropping up around my apartment and I think I can rig this up to create a backloop of SSL or IPSec connections wirelessly with the help of this router. The cool thing about this router was the price. Yes, its used, but I’m ok with that. I’m thinking some time during summer to test my theories of wireless encryption. (insert evil laugh)

-Ben

Katie is currently rolling on the floor right now in a fetal position and I have proof! Tomorrow, rather today, Saturday, she RSVPed us for a wedding in St. Maries, ID of her friend Jamie. This is a rural area that we are going to, evidenced by phrases in the directions like, “When the road begins curving more and there are more houses near the road, you�re almost to the church” and “You will know you are almost to St. Maries when you have come down out of the mountains and are driving by a river on the edge of the floodplains.” As well, the actual address of the church is 3.5 miles north on Highway 3. Fantastic. I feel the need to have a GPS device before I leave the comfort of street numbers for the quaint Idaho countryside where cows routinely block the road and cousins are not safe. Katie epitomizes this trip with the quote, “what if there are no roads?” Needless to say, I will have given Idaho 7 hours of my life by tonight.

(I cut and pasted this from the comment on Kris’s last post. Below is the original text written by the lovely Nina.)
Hey! I can’t remember how to make original comments on the BLOG, so I’m stuck with the comments section. Hello, everyone. Here I am, at Fort Huachuca, learning about all sorts of stuff. I won’t be able to talk about some of it, but… I read Ben’s comment about me not calling or writing. My response has to be something to the effect of, “get over it.” Ben, I can’t even describe to you what emotional and psychological anguish BCT was. I was lucky to get five hours of sleep a night and I had NO days off. We trained on Saturdays and Sundays were used for cleaning the barracks. We weren’t even allowed to write letters until personal time on Sundays and they sometimes (quite often, really) took our personal time away, so that, in order to write letters to anyone, I had to do it after lights out with a flashlight, constantly in fear of the Drill Sergeant walking in and yelling at me and then making everyone wake up and get outside to do PT. Not only that, but it cut into my sleep time. Thank God all that is over. Anyway, I hope you and Katie are doing well. I browsed through the BLOG and both of you seem to be happy and healthy. My new email address, although my access is infrequent, is nina.javan@us.army.mil. Somehow, I don’t think you’ll be too thrilled about writing to a gov’t address. My only big news, aside from the fact that I am now M16 qualified (heh heh), is that I’m married! Woo hoo! Everyone may congratulate my new husband, should they wish to do so, at jtgross@sbcglobal.net. Hopefully, I won’t get sent to Iraq right after training (there is the possibility that they’ll temporarily skip my language training and send me straight there), and I’ll be able to visit with you all during the holiday season. Love to all of you, Nina

I have finally finished my Senior Project in English Lit. I presented it to the class tonight and it was a really great feeling once I was done. “The Question of Social Evil and Fractured Truth in the Works of Naguib Mahfouz” will be posted soon in the personal section. As I sat there and listened to 15 other projects, I realized that my topic was much more challenging than most. All the projects had their moments, but I feel unique in my choice of topic and glad that I didn’t just talk about three poems and the most obvious imagery inherent within them.

I will remind everyone that my ICQ info is available on the homepage, should the urge take you to pester me with questions. The only reason I put it up there is the nifty “online” web logo in the upper left.

-Ben