daleymoe: Among other things? Frickin' lasers, cyborgs, and ... computers.

daleymoe: Anyone know what goes on at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? I do not.



Shhhhh ancient chinese secret

jehovahs witness protection: daleymoe: Anyone know what goes on at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? I do not.

They handle luggage.

Well played.

jehovahs witness protection: daleymoe: Anyone know what goes on at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? I do not.

They handle luggage.

+1

He fixes the cable?

daleymoe: Anyone know what goes on at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? I do not.

They are most noted for nuclear weapons design, fusion research and high performance computing in support of those. Plus a bunch of other research.

A great deal of it highly classified, no doubt.

Sounds like a couple of PMC guys hired for security, but I would have been a little more concerned than that. Can we get some ID at least? Could we maybe get a little bit of a heads up before hand?

A couple years ago, I was traveling with some guys in my Army Reserve unit. We were at Chicago O'Hare, and we noticed a shady looking guy taking pictures through the windows of the runway. He was really nervous acting, and kept looking around like he was doing something wrong. We sent a couple guys to follow him, and the rest of us reported him to the nearest airport security.

"We'll check into it." He said, and walked away quickly, as if we'd inconvenienced him. We had barely gotten our story out before he said that and walked off. He didn't get where the guy was or even what he looked like.

Somacandra: FTFA: Just before 3 p.m. Saturday, a white Chevy Blazer pulled up to the arrival curb outside Terminal A at Mineta San Jose International Airport. Two men dressed in black parked the SUV, switched on its hazard lights and approached the information desk to inquire about American Airlines Flight 1205 from Dallas. Both carried assault rifles strapped across their chests, with handguns in their holsters.

Doesn't the airport have its own security guards or TSA who are supposed to look for things like this? I know that if I see people in battle dress with semi/automatic weapons and no identifying logos/patches at the airport I'm going to calmly notify the nearest official-looking person I see. If I pull up in Arrivals with my hazards on for 30 seconds in a sport shirt with a minivan I always have some asshole cop breathing down my neck like I'm Al-Qaeda or some shiat.

The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in a red zone.

trixter_nl: Most non-employees probably just thought "oh its police" and ignored the whole thing, showing anyone who cares that all you have to do is dress in black and you can mill about until you just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers.

/obscure?

Maybe you shouldn't post every little piece of trash you happen to hear in a movie.


/ looked at my Armalite AR-10 carbine a little differently after that
// relax, not too differently

anfrind: Prank Call of Cthulhu: Remember a few years ago when some dorky twit with LEDs on her shirt got arrested at an airport because LEDs are sometimes found in bombs? I guess things have changed.

The LED shirt incident was in Boston, if I remember correctly (wasn't it an MIT student?). People in the bay area don't tend to get worked up when people are oddly dressed, unless the outfit involves big guns.

She wired up her shirt for a job fair.

/Socket To Me

In other news, French Security officials have raised the terror alert from "Hide to "Run". According to officials, they are unsure whether or not to elevate further to "Surrender". It has not been since 2001 that the alert reached it's top level of "Collaborate". Officials point out that this is merely a precautionary measure, but will continually evaluate intelligence as it is available.

/got nothin

Mithiwithi: That's odd... I don't remember any heavily armed men in black...

Swamp gas released from a weather balloon caught in a thermal pocket refracted the light from Venus.

TFA: apparently it isn't illegal to carry weapons into the nonsecure areas of Mineta San Jose Airport -- or most other U.S. airports.

Nor should it be.

That said, I think even one unidentified individual in urban combat gear, brandishing multiple weapons, probably warrants a call to the police. The police situation in this country being what it is, though, the whole thing probably would have been blown out of proportion with one or both of the security guards ending up dead, so maybe it's best nobody interfered.

nburghmatt: bmr68: I saw men with assault rifles in many airports after 9/11.

they probably had badges

Not the national guard and some cities like NYPD's ESU wear dark uniforms without regular police insignias.

JohnAnnArbor: Why are their "volunteers" at the airport?

Where else would they put their volunteers?

trixter_nl: I would question a vehicle that said "federal police" on it much more than an unmarked vehicle. There is no such thing as "federal police" in the US, there is the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, BATF, ICE, but no "federal police".

Except for the secret service, none of the ones you listed provide "protection" services. FPS and GSA employees generally provide security/policing to low and mid-profile federal facilities. High profile ones get their own people to handle security, like NSA with the NSA Police, FBI with the FBI Police, CIA with the CIA Security Protective Service, Pentagon has their own Police as well. These own self-serving police departments' duties are to protect and serve the employees of their own agency (which at some, are themselves LEOs).

And as someone pointed out, I believe FPS has the words "federal" and "police" boldly placed on their vehicles.

Hokay. Mebbe they should invest in private charter flights?

god farking forbid someone bring a gun into a place they are legally allowed to bring a gun.

/I want to poop
//on the chests of everyone in this thread

wmoonfox: TFA: apparently it isn't illegal to carry weapons into the nonsecure areas of Mineta San Jose Airport -- or most other U.S. airports.

Nor should it be.

That said, I think even one unidentified individual in urban combat gear, brandishing multiple weapons, probably warrants a call to the police. The police situation in this country being what it is, though, the whole thing probably would have been blown out of proportion with one or both of the security guards ending up dead, so maybe it's best nobody interfered.


When the local PD shows up all flashing lights and yelling orders, it isn't the "security guards" I would expect to get shot repeatedly. ;)

What two heavily armed people wearing black may look like.


//can't believe it took this long for a Matrix reference

You know, I find this extremely irritating.
I spent the weekend in San Jose, participating in a music festival and was micromanaged and bossed around every minute I was there.
'Leave your violin case here.' 'Wear this white t-shirt to rehearsal.' 'Check in and out of class for lunch', etc....

When I was leaving SJ, I stopped to buy some sweetcorn, and got bossed around by the lady working at the produce stand and told I was picking out my corn wrong.

I know, cool story, sis, BUT my point IS ... I'm 42 and had to listen to all these g*dd*mn people micromanaging the smallest things, and you can walk around the freaking SJ airport with big guns and no one knows what they are doing, nor asks them?????

For farks sake....San Jose, you are messed up.

/p.s. I have been inside Laurence Livermore Lab to do tech work, and they are VERY strict on security. You can't even take your cell phone in, you have to leave it in your vehicle or with the 1st layer security guard.

bmr68: I saw men with assault rifles in many airports after 9/11.

I flew out of Logan in October of 2001. Every other male there was in uniform, carrying serious heat. Once on the plane to London, nothing. I wanted to ask one of the staties if I could borrow his rifle so I would have it, you know, on the plane, where it might actually do me some good.

Call 911 over an ATM card but not over two guys with assault rifles/

Am I actually awake? Seriously, WTF.

P.S. You don't call 911 over a lost ATM card!!

MorphOSX: Hot chick

I'm sorry, did you say something?

NutWrench: "I couldn't believe," she said, "that man was so valuable it took two men with assault rifles to escort him to Livermore."

You know what? Neither do I.
What kind of bullshiat was really going on?

It wasn't the man they were escorting.

The article and the author both stink. The only people directly "interviewed" for this article are two volunteers who sit behind a general information desk. Yes, they were concerned, but didn't do anything. Airport officials seems to be aware this kind of thing happens, but are not always informed (yes, a problem). LLNL people says that they do this often.

If the "journalist" poked around a little more, perhaps she would have found the local deputy or TSA agent who was working the curb outside the terminal that afternoon who said, "Oh yeah, that was just Steve and Bill from the labs, they pick up VIP's here all the time. We knew that everything was OK."

Instead, they just interviewed the two retirees sitting at a table by the soda machines who are not up on airport operations.

bmr68: I saw men with assault rifles in many airports after 9/11.

And you assumed they were supposed to be there.
I would have assumed if 2 men with automatic weapons were standing around the airport all casual-like, they were supposed to be there... I mean, wouldn't airport personnel have done something if they weren't supposed to be there?

I guess the answer is "obviously not."