The Cheap Thrill-Airport Security Measures run Wild

[BigNick]

Although I'm skeptical about the harm that the radiation from one single scan represents, I suspect that there may be an angle here for some subversiveness.

You know when you get an X-ray at the hospital or the dentist how the tech goes behind the lead shielding? They get an even smaller micro-dose than you do, but at a hundred a day it adds up.

Suppose someone asked how much radiation leaks out of the scanner where TSA personnel are standing a few feet away? It it's 1% of what the passenger is getting, some multiplication by 500/day and 250 days/year is going to start setting off some alarms.

Remember, we notice the acute and the relative, but what gets you is the chronic and the absolute. (I might make that my sig line.)

 

[thefed]

i havent and dont plan on reading this entire thread. bottom line: if you want to fly, deal with it. if you don't, you dont have to. period.

rights? privacy? get over it. i prefer to live. 2 yr old patted down? you think the taliban cares about age?

 

[travelover]

i havent and dont plan on reading this entire thread. bottom line: if you want to fly, deal with it. if you don't, you dont have to. period.

rights? privacy? get over it. i prefer to live. 2 yr old patted down? you think the taliban cares about age?

Is it the Taliban that are doing this now? I was still blaming Saddam Hussein.

 

[BigNick]

rights? privacy? get over it. i prefer to live.

I'm from the FBI, and I heard that there might be anthrax in your home. Can I come in and check? No? Well, I'm coming in anyway. After all, there might be anthrax, and that kills people. So I'm coming into your home tonight. And tomorrow. Hey, your wife is pretty hot. I'll come back twice at the weekend.

2 yr old patted down? you think the taliban cares about age?

I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying that if the Taliban abuses kids, that it's OK for us to abuse kids? I presume that that's not what you mean, but I'm struggling for another interpretation of your words.

 

[RonBoyd]

I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying that if the Taliban abuses kids, that it's OK for us to abuse kids? I presume that that's not what you mean, but I'm struggling for another interpretation of your words.

That they would not be adverse to planting explosives on a child/infant.

 

[MichaelB]

So, if I am a TSA selectee, I'll be asking them to give the wiggly a jiggly. Maybe I'll toss in some sound effects...

Yes. Lower. A little to the left. No, my left. Oh yeah..that's it..ahhhh

 

[brewer12345]

The more I think about this, the more I think I am about done with air travel unless they change this.

Next up: letters to my Congressperson, Senator and the White House.

 

[DallasGuy]

Does anyone else think that this is just one more thing that the media has blown way out of proportion...and in the process has actually made it worse?

I think the media in the US many times ends up making the news rather than just reporting on it.

 

[RonBoyd]

Does anyone else think that this is just one more thing that the media has blown way out of proportion...and in the process has actually made it worse?

I think the media in the US many times ends up making the news rather than just reporting on it.

+1

 

[brewer12345]

Does anyone else think that this is just one more thing that the media has blown way out of proportion...and in the process has actually made it worse?

I think the media in the US many times ends up making the news rather than just reporting on it.

Ah, not so much. I think this is just the final straw for a chunk of the populace who frankly should have been screaming years ago, starting with the passage of the Patriot (sic) act.

 

[MichaelB]

Ah, not so much. I think this is just the final straw for a chunk of the populace who frankly should have been screaming years ago, starting with the passage of the Patriot (sic) act.

Exactly.

I have to admit one positive personal benefit from the USA Patriot Act. When the USAPA was implemented and lawful non-citizen residents no longer enjoyed constitutional protections from search, seizure and habeas corpus, it was the final motivation needed for DW to get her US citizenship.

 

[travelover]

As I mentioned earlier, I think that there are more effective ways to thwart terrorism and this is mostly theater. Surely no entity is more experienced with terrorists than Israel and we'd do well to follow their lead.

We need to knock off the granny shakedowns and get on with intelligent profiling and selective interrogation. Granted some will cry foul, but the TSA gets to be more absurd by the day.

 

[MichaelB]

This has been years in the making. We started with goofy questions:

- Did you pack your bags yourself? Have they been in your sight since you packed them? did a complete stranger give you something and you accepted it?

Then we had Homeland security

- Use duct tape in case of biological attack

Then the Homeland security Advisory System

- Five color codes threat levels. Quick, anyone – without searching, what level is blue and what does it mean?

Then TSA checking shoes, belts and underwire bras.

Now full body scans and crotch checks.

The questions I’d love to see polled: 1) Is this a smart way to spend $500 billion. 2) Are you willing to increase your taxes to pay for it? 3) Is the country safer?

I'm guessing we would be safer from terrorist attact if we could improve cross agency intelligence sharing, reduce the number of agencies and increase field and analyst resources.

More people might live longer and spend less on health care if we spent this money educating people on diet, nutrition and food preparation. But what do I know...

 

[calmloki]

This may be an apocryphal account, but if true i applaud it. Tickets are bought for a flight in December - I plan on a grope to burn up time and make the process unwieldy. http://noblasters.com/post/1650102322/my-tsa-encounter

We are Americans. Fear is not, should not, be part of our national character.

 

[RonBoyd]

Arthur Frommer, of course, has some thoughts on this issue:​

Ask a Critic of the T.S.A. to Suggest His Own Method for Thwarting Terrorism in the Skies, and You'll Usually Be Met with Utter Silence​

I use the words "almost total failure" to characterize those responses because occasionally someone suggests one of the following:

1. That we adopt the Israeli methods for keeping terrorists off El Al airplanes: lengthy interrogations of passengers and psychological screening. How this could be done for the 1,500,000 Americans who each day board a flight in the United States, is not explained. How many tens of thousands of additional T.S.A. staff would be needed, how many months of training, how long in advance would you need to appear at the airport to undergo your interrogations? Six hours? Eight hours?
2. That we require all airline passengers to file (a day or two in advance) an electronic statement of their reason for boarding a particular flight. Who would read those 1,500,000 statements per day is never explained, nor is an estimate ever made of the number of investigators who would need to go behind such 1,500,000 daily statements to determine their bona fides, and of the time and efforts that would be needed.
3. Dogs to sniff your crotch, in place of "pat-downs", resulting in the need to maintain giant kennels and dog-handlers near every airline gate throughout the country. How this would be less intrusive or practical is not explained.
4. Acceptance of the risk that some terrorists would get through the former magnetometers. Some of the critics have actually told me that we should accept the small risk of being blown up in order to avoid a more important invasion of our privacy. We should play the odds. Maybe someone else will be blown up, but our privacy will be maintained.

​

 

[calmloki]

#4 please. actually. Someone else WILL be blown up or gassed or exposed to a deadly disease or something, because there is no such thing as perfect safety.

 

[brewer12345]

#4 please. actually. Someone else WILL be blown up or gassed or exposed to a deadly disease or something, because there is no such thing as perfect safety.

+1

Its going to happen anyway, so I would rather not surrender every last shred of my 4th amendment rights along the way.

 

[Keim]

rights? privacy? get over it. i prefer to live. 2 yr old patted down? you think the taliban cares about age?

I strongly disagree. And have disagreed with many of our nations acts since 9/11. The Patriot Act was a travesty. Keeping detainees in Gitmo so we wouldn't have to treat them according to the Geneva convention was WRONG. The USA likes to think of itself as the good guys. That doesn't leave room for moral relativism.

Which of our other constitutional rights shall we sunder so you can have a false sense of security, thefed?

I think Benjamin Franklin said it well: They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

 

[travelover]

As I see it, the TSA will eventually be forced to use other, targeted techniques as terrorists move to strategies like internal suicide bombs and air freight bombs. If I recall correctly, one third of all the air cargo that travels on passenger airliners is unscreened.

 

[haha]

As I mentioned earlier, I think that there are more effective ways to thwart terrorism and this is mostly theater. Surely no entity is more experienced with terrorists than Israel and we'd do well to follow their lead.

We need to knock off the granny shakedowns and get on with intelligent profiling and selective interrogation. Granted some will cry foul, but the TSA gets to be more absurd by the day.

Absurdity has become our national stamp. If something can become absurd, the USA will find a way to bring that about. I can't think of anything that involves our "political process" that doesn't quickly devolve into theater of the absurd. Perhaps that is why entertainment is one of our last remaining internationally competitive industries.

Ha

 

[harley]

i havent and dont plan on reading this entire thread. bottom line: if you want to fly, deal with it. if you don't, you dont have to. period.

rights? privacy? get over it. i prefer to live. 2 yr old patted down? you think the taliban cares about age?

Then stay home and hide under the bed. It will work just as well.

That they would not be adverse to planting explosives on a child/infant.

Does anyone else think that this is just one more thing that the media has blown way out of proportion...and in the process has actually made it worse?

I think the media in the US many times ends up making the news rather than just reporting on it.

Everyone (including the media) keeps missing the point. All this crap the TSA is doing isn't supposed to be about stopping planes from being blown up, it's supposed to be about stopping them form being taken over and used as weapons. As Haha(?) said, more people die in car crashes every year than died in 9/11. There's no possible way to make everyone safe all the time.

Having said that, and speaking directly to The Fed's BS response, there MIGHT be a reason to do some lesser version of this supposed security IF it accomplished anything. Here's an excellent interview with Bruce Schneier about the TSA. I know Bruce, and he's extremely knowledgable about security. Here are a few pieces from the interview.

Q: The machines have shown up in the wake of the so-called underwear bomber, who tried to blow up a plane with chemicals stored in his briefs. Would this technology have stopped him?

A: The guys who make the machines have said, "We wouldn't have caught that."...

Q: Has there been a case since 9/11 of an attempted hijacker being thwarted by airport security?

A: None that we've heard of. The TSA will say, "Oh, we're not allowed to talk about successes." That's actually bullsh*t. They talk about successes all the time. If they did catch someone, especially during the Bush years, you could be damned sure we'd know about it. And the fact that we didn't means that there weren't any. Because the threat was imaginary. It's not much of a threat. As excess deaths go, it's just way down in the noise. More than 40,000 people die each year in car crashes. It's 9/11 every month. The threat is really overblown....

Q: Is this security theater?

A: 100 percent. It won't catch anybody.

Bruce Schneier Interview - Security Theater and the TSA - Popular Mechanics

 

[Nords]

... as terrorists move to strategies like internal suicide bombs...

I think this technique needs to be examined by Mythbusters.

 

[jIMOh]

here is a novel idea... make security checks as complex as the tax code.

I have been to Canada and Mexico and that is the gist of me being "out of the country". How about having a segment of the flying population go thru an FBI/NSA background test. Similar to getting a government top secret security clearence? Then issue those people a special ID, and when I present that ID to fly, and avoid some of the obtrusive security checks.

For anyone which travels more and broader (meaning you go to Europe and South America), have an extra step in the background checking process. Might take 6-12 months longer to get your clearence (who you been visiting in south america?) and then issue a similar ID.

Eventually you can figure out who the terrorists are, because anyone flying to certain locations would be subject to screening 100% of the time. Ever been to Saudi Arabia? Or Pakistan? Sucks to be you, you cannot get the special ID and must be searched EVERY time for EVERY flight.

Makes too much sense to ever be done.

If a terrorist is homegrown, this presents a challenge (I guess), but anyone which has a passport and it has been tracked they have visited a certain country would always be subject to searching.

 

[clifp]

#4 please. actually. Someone else WILL be blown up or gassed or exposed to a deadly disease or something, because there is no such thing as perfect safety.

+3 or whatever here also.

The reason that Paquette and I are making a big deal about the radiation of the scanner isn't because it is huge risk, it is because the threat of terrorist is really small. Less than 25 people/per year killed on airplanes over the last decade including 9/11 .

Frankly I'd rather be blown up terrorist than die a slow painful death from skin or prostate cancer. I'm pissed at the TSA for making chose between groping and radiation.

 

[BigNick]

The reason that Paquette and I are making a big deal about the radiation of the scanner isn't because it is huge risk, it is because the threat of terrorist is really small. Less than 25 people/per year over the last decade including 9/11.

Well, not quite, with 2700 people killed on 9/11. But your point is still valid. 350,000 Americans have been killed on the roads since then.

Terrorism, as monitored by the US State Department, actually hit an all-time low in 2002. And outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is still way down on the 1970s, for example. But back then, we had the Soviets to worry about, so terrorism was a pinprick in comparison (or, rather, we already had one designated enemy). Once we didn't have the Reds to worry about any more, we needed another bogeyman (how prophetic was this piece?), and Al Qaeda was a slam dunk, right the way down to the evil leader sitting in a cave (do you think Osama strokes a cat while recording those messages to the infidels?).