Security Issues at NASA | NowPublic News Coverage

Security Issues at NASA

by Jordan Yerman | April 20, 2007 at 02:18 pm

552 views | 5 Recommendations | 4 comments

How are people bringing guns into the nerve center of the US space program? First came September Eleventh, when America "lost its innocence" yet again: ostensibly everyone was getting serious about security, and we saw it in our airports and on our street corners. Security cameras, bag searches, shoes off, please.

Then, only a few days ago, Virginia Tech. Turns out our security-mindedness has not translated into action quite as well as we would have hoped.

Today, one of the nation's most sensitive areas was compromised, this time by a contractor who brought a gun to work. While the Department of Homeland Security continues to trot out the Theatre of Safety and subsequently restructure itself, Americans have been suffering through a terrifying week.

Houston, we have a problem indeed. How could a US Government institution allow this? How can I help but feel cheated by the impositions made into my privacy and dignity, courtesy of the Patriot Act and overzealous airline security, when people are bringing guns into Johnson Space Center?

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Markus Schlegel

at 15:35 on April 20th, 2007

Oddly enough, this reminds me of a Norwegian friend whom his grandma told to take enough food when traveling to underdeveloped Germany. By definition, terrorists from the government's perspectives have to come from the outside, it seems. Everything else is just a regrettable incident, who has to rethink anything? If one positive thing could come out of this week it is that this inside outside thinking could become more moderate. But wait, the scapegoat is South Korean. Praise the Lord for that bigot loophole for an easy escape. I am curious to see what happens next week and how much more bloodshed it might take to modify the us and them way of thinking.

brock

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 20:04 on April 20th, 2007

This deserves a "Good stuff" just because you were able to work in "Houston, we have a problem" without it being trite.

Serious questions and issues here. The "easy" answer is that regardless of how safe we try and make things, unless we are going to live in a full, lock-down, police state, the "bad guys" are gonna find a way to get it done.

This evening, the head administrator at the Johnson Space Center said that security HAD been beefed up after 9/11. And then those procedures were reviewed in the wake of the VaTech massacre (bravo, NASA for a little proactive work there) and that they saw no need to change any policies, said the administrator. "We don't stop every car... we have random checks," he said.

chaz

at 07:37 on April 23rd, 2007

If we're in a full lock down, define "bad guys"?

insaniac (not verified)

at 07:11 on April 21st, 2007

My main concern (and perhaps this will be allayed with further research) is, how does one carry a gun onto a NASA base? My father did some work for the US federal government a few years ago, and, whenever I visited him, I had to go through a metal detector and have my bag searched, and all employees there did as well.