GovernmentExecutive.com

If you've ever gone through airport security with a laptop (and one-quarter of the flying public does), you'll know just how stressful it is trying to juggle your overcoat, briefcase and shoes while trying to pull your laptop out of its carrying case to place it in one of those gray plastic bins. It seems the Transportation Security Administration feels our pain. The agency has issued a request for information asking industry to come up with its best ideas for laptop cases that would allow TSA to scan the guts of the laptop while still in its carrying bag, according to an article posted by Government Security News. TSA's reasoning for the new bag:

If TSA was able to eliminate this requirement, it could lower passenger stress levels, increase checkpoint throughput, and reduce the number of claims TSA receives for laptops that have been damaged during screening.

It's not as easy as it sounds. TSA will not allow any zippers, pockets, clips, pens, cell phones or other paraphernalia we all stuff into laptop bag pockets to block the X-rays from viewing the inside of the laptop.

Industry has until April 17 to respond.

A group called Techno Patriots in Southern Arizona has set up its own version of the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Border Initiative Network, called SBInet, replete with wireless cameras. The group says its do-it-yourself version has a better response time than the problem plagued Boeing-built DHS system, according to an article in the Sierra-Vista, Ariz., Herald.

Techno Patriots, which describes itself on its Web site as “basically a high tech Neighborhood Watch group on the border,” said it has installed a commercial grade wireless Internet infrastructure in Cochise County, Ariz., the most highly trafficked smuggling area in the United States.

The group said it has installed video cameras on this infrastructure, which are then monitored by its members, who keep an eye out for illegal immigrants. Techno Patriots said it can easily shift the cameras from one location to another and intends to eventually operate the system 365 days a year.

John Healy, the group’s director, told the Herald that the cameras used by Techno Patriots can be controlled remotely with a joystick, with only a two- to five-second delay from joystick touch to camera movement, compared to a 30- to 40-second delay for the SBInet cameras.

Techno Patriots may have some pretty nifty camera technology, but its Web site needs some work. I tried to use the “Contact Us” page to send an email to the group, only to receive a dreaded HTTP 404 “page not found” message.

The online spoof news mag The Onion likes to routinely poke fun at NASA, and today brings another installment. The Onion staff makes fun of NASA's technological aptitude, writing that NASA has "an ambitious plan" to make the Johnson Space Center in Houston wireless. Within a decade. For only $655 million. "While the building that houses the public affairs office can currently pick up a weak Wi-Fi signal from a Starbucks across the street," The Onion cracks, "the Johnson Space Center as a whole is far from being the 'giant Wi-Fi hotspot' [NASA Administrator Michael] Griffin envisions." More yucks from the article:

Griffin said that the agency has also recruited seven information technology specialists from some of the nation's top white-collar regional workplaces. The seven mission specialists in the newly dubbed "Internet Explorer" program are being rigorously trained to install the theoretical wireless devices in an Earth-gravity environment in which they could encounter potentially arduous conditions such as poor air ventilation and lifeless workscapes.

My colleague Tom Shoop has chronicled other Onion parodies, one on the Department of Evil and another on NASA's plan to launch $700 million into space.

The U.S. Postal Service reports that it is one of five finalists competing for an award for "Deploying Wireless Mobility in the Enterprise." The award is part of the larger "Best Practices in Mobile & Wireless" Awards Program sponsored by ComputerWorld.

USPS was nominated for its IT Self Service Administration, which links legacy systems to mobile devices to distribute workload, capture statistics, and automate administrative and reporting functions.