The TSA is a waste of money that doesn't save lives and might actually cost them
vox.com
vox.com
At that point I realized that air travel is by far the worst traveling experience money can pay for.
If an alternative airport wanted to do things a little different, such as "fly at your own risk" "no lifeguard on duty", aka no TSA b.s., I'd happily take the "at your own risk" option rather than the TSA controlled situation we're subjected to currently.
I walk up to the security checkpoint checkpoint, where I show the agent my phone. They see my boarding pass with the green checkmark and send me to the empty TSA Pre line.
I walk through the metal detector with no adjustments to my attire.
I am at the gate in 5 minutes.
I like how trains basically let you show up last minute, and a 3 hour train ride actually means a 3 hour train ride, compared to airport, checkpoints and boarding time, possibly waiting on the runway, and air time.
But you really just need to upgrade your travel accommodations to make your airport experience more seamless.
That costs money. Many people take the train or a shuttle or lean on a friend.
>I walk up to the security checkpoint checkpoint, where I show the agent my phone. They see my boarding pass with the green checkmark and send me to the empty TSA Pre line. I walk through the metal detector with no adjustments to my attire.
You paid for that TSA PreCheck privilege which, while not in the grand scheme a large amount, is technically something.
It's also beside the point. TSA PreCheck is the result of a careful plan:
1. Make everyone undergo an intrusive, invasive, and time-consuming process that provides little to no additional security.
2. Allow people to pay for the privilege of not going through that procedure.
3. Profit!
I don't do PreCheck because buying your rights is not something we should be able or have to do. It's a perversion that leaves us happy to pay for something that was commonplace until 9/10/01.
The standard answer is that airplane travel, just as being able to drive on public roads is not a right. Founding fathers apparently failed in their inability to predict we'd be able to amazingly fly through the air one day. So it is not in the Constitution. Therefore please step right into the Rapeyscan machine if you want to make it to your job interview, or to see your family across country.
It seems to claim a right to travel unimpeded you'd have to walk, on public land, or ride a horse or bicycle. Basically what you might have done 200 years ago.
I think a traditional interpretation of the constitution is that unenumerated rights are reserved for the people, so this shouldn't be an issue, as designed. In reality, we can't even seem to maintain the rights that are explicitly reserved for the people (cough4th amendmentcough).
The Department of Homeland Security (of which the TSA is a part of) has a budget and its priorities are set in Congress. There is no "profit" motive here.
The US is throwing money at this problem, and money that only creates inconveniences for us.
I also consider my time to be more valuable.
Trains have their delays, too, such as long waits on passing sidings to clear the way for freight trains. Much of Amtrak's routes (72% by mileage) are on freight company owned rails that Amtrak pays for access to.
The freight companies gives their own trains priority over Amtrak. They are supposed to give Amtrak priority, but there is little effort spend on enforcement.
49 USC 24308 (c) says:
"Preference Over Freight Transportation. - Except in an emergency, intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation provided by or for Amtrak has preference over freight transportation in using a rail line, junction, or crossing unless the Board orders otherwise under this subsection. A rail carrier affected by this subsection may apply to the Board for relief. If the Board, after an opportunity for a hearing under section 553 of title 5, decides that preference for intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation materially will lessen the quality of freight transportation provided to shippers, the Board shall establish the rights of the carrier and Amtrak on reasonable terms."
Although on my last flight I did learn that Nutella is a liquid. Maybe I should have frozen it?
Heathrow's FAQ: "Do I need to remove my shoes at security? Only if you’re asked. Some passengers will be asked to remove shoes in order for them to be x-rayed."
Gatwick's FAQ: "You may be asked to remove your shoes and belt before going through the security archway."
Of course they'd just change their already-arbitrary rules and force us all through the X-ray machines anyway, if we started refusing to use them en masse; but that'd create its own kind of legal push-back, and hopefully something good would come of the resulting mess. In any case, I'm not putting up with their nonsense while there is some means left I can use to resist it.
And I always fly in a kilt, regimental-style. TSA training has improved over the years, but the handful of times I managed to utterly flummox a TSA screener, suddenly confronted with a man wearing a "skirt," went a long way toward making me feel better about the humiliation of the whole exercise.
I don't blame you for paying that fee, but doesn't that just feed the monster?
Besides, "anti-TSA" is painting with too broad a brush. Air Marshals are part of the TSA, as are a myriad of other useful agencies.
Its really just the pre-screen and invasive checks that need to stop. I think we all can agree that a dedicated force of Air Marshals is a good idea, right? As is the "intelligence" unit who is looking for active threats vs Airports.
On top of that, I've seen a number of recent reports from people who said that the Precheck lanes were randomly shut down at peak travel times, forcing Precheck members to get stuck in the regular lines with everybody else. Others report that large numbers of non-Precheck people are getting randomly sent through that lane, dramatically slowing things down and causing wait times of 30-60+ minutes.
Precheck is great, but even those of us who have a relatively privileged flying experience need to stay involved and aware about the monster that is the TSA.
edit: deleted a word
Silly Me.
The first and most obvious response is that tsa-pre requires your fingerprints, and tsa does not. That obviously leads to an amount of pre-vetting that is never capable of being done in tsa.
In addition to this, I'd compare tsa to a blacklist and tsa-pre to a whitelist. Perhaps if your estranged ex-wife's crazy uncle goes to the same bar as a known terrorist suspect then tsa would prefer you go through the additional screening (and thus deny you to tsa-pre). However, the connection to the uncle is only made once you apply to tsa-pre (as its a whitelist), and thus more vetting is done.
Most airlines provide the same digital boarding passes, I often travel with my pass added to Apple Wallet.
> If an alternative airport wanted to do things a little different, such as "fly at your own risk" "no lifeguard on duty", aka no TSA b.s., I'd happily take the "at your own risk" option rather than the TSA controlled situation we're subjected to currently.
The problem here is that it's not just "your own risk" if that plane is directed at a populated area.
It's a crap comparison, anyway - the TSA is better at finding toys than they are at finding bombs and weapons. Dogs and x-ray detectors could do just as well, and "alternative airports" could choose to have those.
This. We live in a different world now. I find it very difficult to imagine a plane full of people not standing up together to take down a threat.
The wait times and hassle increase until its easier just to drive so people fly less, reducing wait time, allowing the TSA to do even less brining wait times back up...
The whole system balances at some convergence point. A really sucky convergence point.
> there's other evidence that 9/11 led to an increase in driving, which cost at least a thousand lives
... that airport and flights emanating from it would be perfectly safe! Why? Because, like everyone, terrorists, too, would love this airport so much, they wouldn't want to do anything to prevent it from operating.
This was solved when they locked the cockpit doors. Every other airport security restriction has been an overreaction in my opinion.
Flight 11 was crashed 30 minutes after hijacking, 175 20 minutes, 77 about 45 minutes, and 93 about 35 minutes later. Even if you tighten the loop between a hijacking and getting a fighter jet in the air to counter it, it will still take you about 15 minutes at best to do it.
Then you're left with the problem of figuring out which one of the contacts on your military radar doesn't have a transponder. Go to a map like <https://flightaware.com/live/> and observe the Ohio/Pennsylvania airspace in the middle of the day. You have 15 minutes to figure out the hijacked flight, guess its flight path, and then order fighters to intercept it and shoot it down.
Quite frankly, if a plane gets hijacked in the Northeast, there is no way you can get a military jet to shoot it down in time.
Destroying an aircraft over potentially populated areas can be useful to shift who and how many people are at risk when it hits the ground, but its not really (even if you can reliably destroy it when you need to, which -- absent a highly-reliable remote destruct device built into the plane [0], is hard to guarantee) a great way to "protect those on the ground". Because the wreckage is going to hit somewhere, and you don't really have precision control of that.
[0] which raises its own problems, of course
Really, though, that was more of a glib remark. The more salient point IMO is the fact that the military is far from guaranteed to succeed in bringing down a hijacked airliner before it hits its target, or without killing other people on the ground.
Besides, since 911 the doors of plane cockpits are almost like a bank vault.
:(
And if you could afford it, they called you part of "the jet set." I bet this - where more people can use air travel - is better. It's just not special any more. UX is a secondary consideration.
There aren't enough people ready and willing to take that risk to make it a competitive business model for airlines. They are a business that only works at massive scale due to extreme competition on price.
Not that I'm a fan of the TSA by any stretch, but that's a pretty grievous misunderstanding of the root issue.
Holding the "pleebs" to a higher standard than the rich is unconscionable IMO.
2. Money buys you things. By definition people with more money will not be burdened by the same things as those with less.
The commons are a superset of things provisioned by government, and we expect that the commons will be relatively unburdened and available equally to rich and poor.
Being unburdened by hunger and stress about paying rent is one thing; being unburdened by preferential treatment by the state is another.
Rate for a Gulfstream jet was about $2500 per hour.
So, "for the rich".
I think we're upper-middle-class-ish, but there's no way we could justify chartering a jet for a family vacation if it costs as much as a car (a smaller jet might "only" be around $12,000 for the same trip AFAICT).
Can a Cessna 172 take me and my wife and child across the country to New York? Is parking a plane there free?
"Especially as a hobby" has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. Horseback riding is also affordable as a hobby, but nobody's bringing it up in a thread about the TSA because it has just as much relevance.
Can a Cessna 172 get you to New York? Sure, if you have the time. It'll be a long and monotonous flight though.
Now, with all of that said, your point still stands. GA flying is a hobby and almost always more expensive than hopping on an airline.
You can drive at 70MPH. Windspeed doesn't impact you. The Cesna will cruise at ~140MPH. Windspeed might delay your arrival to the point that it's much faster to drive for shorter trips though. The jet will do 530MPH.
Maybe the Cesna makes sense if there's no reasonably direct route by freeway. Or you're island hopping. It seems like a fairly small window where chartering a Cesna makes sense though (IMO). You can't transport a family of 4 with luggage. It'll be more expensive than the (commercial, not private) Jet, and take about 4 times longer. For every 1-1/2 hours of Jet travel, you'll have to refuel the Cesna as well. And if you though economy class on a commercial Jet was uncomfortable you're in for a rude awakening as well. ;-)
Right. Like, laws and shit.
I'm not sure what's unreasonable about the comparison. If the TSA were actually necessary, it would seem like a huge gap in security to allow just anyone with the cash to charter a few private jets around the country.
I'm not calling the comparison unreasonable, I'm simply saying that the two are not the same, so it's perfectly reasonable for the security to be different too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4jr1td/the_tsa_...
A TSA Screener job is about the closest we'll get to Basic Income: stand around in an airport occasionally groping people for $13-18/hr, plus awesome Federal benefits. Qualifications: essentially none.
The TSA is not a jobs program, especially for screening, etc.; those jobs directly replaced private sector jobs. The function was nationalized to move potential liability from the airlines (who contracted with the organizations operating airports, who contracted with private security firms) when they complained about the potential liability for security failure in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
> TSA is a major part of DHS, having a workforce of about 62,000 people. TSA became a large organization very quickly after 2001, when it replaced 16,500 private airport screeners with more than 40,000 federal screeners.
The nationalization of the function in the TSA, though, had nothing to do with jobs, and everything to do with liability.
The point is that security is fear-motivated. 99% doesn't matter if it isn't 100%, even if logic and probability puts that 1% insecurity in a .001% chance of actually happening. So if you let the 1% slip through and something happens, well, who wants to take the blame?
And now we have this mess.
Why would I fly when I could get on a bus at midnight and then wake up in LA at 7AM? When flying, sometimes my time spent in security is literally longer than my time in air. And that's not even taking cost into account, you can do $40-50 round trip on Greyhound vs. ~$140 for a flight.
Cars are more flexible for more people. Trains travel to and from fixed points on fixed schedules.
For some reason people get all romantic about the idea of train travel but in the 21st century USA it's not going to happen.
What are the rules on trains?
Express service between Philly and Chicago would probably require new, dedicated, above-grade track, and would not be competitive with any of airline, automobile, or bus travel for decades. Existing passenger trains in the US (other than the Acela) just can't get from A to B fast enough--or even just arriving at a predictable time!--to be worth the fare.
It is definitely easier to build a self-driving car than fix passenger rail in the US, probably by two orders of magnitude.
We have a very robust infrastructure for cars already in place, and it is pretty dynamic. The infrastructure for trains would have to be built and is a lot more static.
In the US cars are also associated with autonomy and independence. The train can take me from Philly to Chicago and I'm on it's schedule, but with a car I'm on my schedule and I can detour to Cincinnati or Detroit. In the US the needs of the individual for the most part trump the need of the masses.
You need some security. That was clear before 9-11. Airports had security and it was pretty similar to how TSA does it right now. You put your bags on an Xray machine, show your ID, and walk through a metal detector.
I'd suggest keeping the government in charge of what procedures to use, but then using private contracts to actually manage the airport security.
The real problem with TSA isn't that it is intrusive. It's that is terrible mismanaged and has no incentive to improve the experience.
Although apparently airports can opt out of the TSA.
No, actually, it's really easy.
> You need some security. That was clear before 9-11.
No, it was not clear then, and it is not clear now. There are two salient facts:
1. When tested, the TSA misses 90% or so of the weapons people try to smuggle past them
2. Notwithstanding #1, there have been zero successful terrorist attack on aircraft in the U.S. since 9-11.
So it is far from clear that there is actually a problem that needs to be solved (other than people freaking out about an insignificant risk, which is a real problem).
How much is due to the TSA, as opposed to civilian and military intelligence work at home and abroad and simple measures such as having air marshals and preventing any access to the cockpit during flight?
>How much is due to the TSA
I would say a large part of it is because a 9/11 style attack just wouldn't work anymore. 9/11 worked only because the passengers were thinking "hijacking", where there was some chance to live.
Once the passengers understand the consequences (as with United 93), they will fight back.
That totally changes the risk/reward profile for terrorists. Your chances of taking down the plane are lower, and your chances of aiming it at a high value target are almost nil.
The fact that there have been attempts to blow up airplanes, and they all involved using explosives designed to get around TSA procedure suggests it works or terrorists think it works. The shoe bomber had to put a tiny bomb into his shoe without electronics. The underwear bomber had to build a crude bomb on board the plane.
If there was no security, they'd walk on with a prebuilt bomb and take out a flight.
In the 60's and 70's there was a goldenage of hijacking airplanes. If you could just walk onto a plane with a gun, people would do it again.
Maybe you think that risk is low enough per flight to not matter. Objectively it's still less risky than driving to the airport. But like you allude to, the people aren't going to buy that argument. "Just accept that al Qaeda or Isis will bring down a 747 or two each year, it's still safer than a roadtrip" will get you punted out of office in record time.
No, they wouldn't. In the 70's the unwritten rule was: you hijack the plane, land it, make your demands, get your TV time, and then you surrender (or get away) but no one gets hurt. It is only because of that unwritten rule that you could get away with it because everyone assumed that the best route to survival was to cooperate with the hijacker.
All that changed on 9-11. Cooperating is no longer seen as a viable option, and so if you try to hijack a plane you can expect the passengers and crew to put up a fight. At best you can bring down the plane. But you won't get your TV time, which is what most hajackers really want.
Actually, you don't even need to look at the track record on airplanes. The TSA, by making everyone stand in line, is creating a nice soft target just outside the security zone. Any terrorist who wanted to make the headlines would set off a bomb in the TSA line at O'Hare. It would be trivial. The fact that no one has tried it is more evidence that our fear of terrorism is a vastly bigger problem than actual terrorism.
(Apparently the FAA adopted the 2 person rule along with locking the door. Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 made it clear to other jurisdictions that it was a good idea)
>Any terrorist who wanted to make the headlines would set off a bomb in the TSA line at O'Hare. It would be trivial.
Trivial, but less carnage than a full plane going down. Airplane bombings multiple the deaths by 10X.
[1] Terrorists getting their hands on a nuke is a different matter.
How realistic the bomb was would radically change the test.
Not really - the screening is done by looking at x-ray images of bags on a conveyor belt. The visual representation of a 'bomb' on the agent's screen would not change one iota if a pipe bomb didn't contain a real detonator.
Detecting the presence or absence of a real detonator would require much more sophisticated techniques, equipment, and personnel than are in use at tsa checkpoints
If your argument is that current airport security arrangements don't even prevent that, then why did attacks fall off so sharply once basic security was implemented?
Passengers under a hijacking still don't expect to survive by cooperating, so the cost of cooperation is still effectively infinite high.
Guns still run out of bullets, and are somewhat difficult to wield in a close-quarters situation - it's not a magic first-person shooter. The cost becomes higher than fighting someone with a box cutter, but still lower than evaporating into mist.
If you think we need some security but only at pre-9/11 levels, then you and I are on the same page there.
How about recognizing that 9/11 was a troll, and we fell for it? The attackers hated the U.S.'s idea of freedom, but they were too powerless to take away our freedom. So they figured out a clever way to make us take away our own freedom ourselves. And yep, we did exactly that.
We honor U.S. military who defend our freedom with their lives. They value freedom more than personal safety, and we respect them for doing that. So why does the rest of our society pick the opposite and humiliate ourselves daily by choosing personal safety over freedom? Why have millions of us agreed to walk around in socks at airports just because some jerk tried to scare us 15 years ago?
A "workable alternative" would be what the Flight 93 people did: beat the living daylights out of people who act up. That approach has worked for tens of thousands of years. Yeah, sometimes you'll get killed, but most of the time you won't, just like our honored military. But most important you'll stop being trolled.
They didn't attack us because they "hate our freedom". Sure, they don't like western lifestyles or values, but that's not the primary reason we're enemies. Al-queda intends to establish a caliphate in the Muslim world, and part of that involves attacking allies of the countries that get in the way of that.
Please stop repeating this falsehood. The TSA is horrible for our freedom and completely ineffective at protecting our safety, but we can't evaluate how to deal with these issues if we subscribe to a flawed model of why terrorism is.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
This does not at all describe the operation of the TSA's search and seizure. Notably, the statute's language makes no allowance for implicit consent based on location or attempting to use some private transportation system. A sensible compromise is to privatize airline security, since the constitution does not prohibit Delta employees from searching and seizing without a warrant.
You definitely don't have to agree with the correctness of this line of cases; you should just be aware that the courts have looked at the question and have a theory they've been pursuing for about four decades about why totally suspicionless searches are "reasonable" and hence constitutional in this context. A tricky thing about the fourth amendment text is that it talks about what the requirements are to get a warrant, but doesn't explicitly say whether searches without a warrant are exactly the same as "unreasonable" searches. Courts have interpreted this for a long time to suggest that some kinds of searches without a warrant are nonetheless "reasonable", although Davis was a pretty enormous expansion; I wouldn't be surprised if searches pursuant to it are an absolute majority of all the searches performed by the government!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United...
This gives me an idea for a constituency that might have standing to challenge Davis: Active-duty members of the military flying commercial, on orders, to remote locations accessible solely by air, who explicitly cannot "...avoid the search by electing not to fly" by orders of the same government that is searching them.
Of course there is the whole issue of whether the line of reasoning is correct.
"Persons, houses and effects" is domain-dependent and cannot be made absolute.
That said, my personal opinion leans closer to your position.
Surely an organisation (i.e. an airline, an airport) can enforce searches as part of the conditions of travel.
There's enough stuff sold after the security check which can be used for mixtures one could cause problems with. There's food, liquor, batteries, electronics, smokes, lighters, watches, power outlets, and many other things after the security check. You can even buy clothes there.
If I didn't know the outcome would be more restrictions, I'd love for an investigative journalist to go through there with an expert and have them build a chaos device of some sort just with elements bought after the security check. If somebody did this on media, it wouldn't help fix the theater, we would only get more restrictions, although I hope that wouldn't be the case.
This is a pretty bad worst case scenario! That really only prevents a kamikaze scenario. Most terrorism against airplanes has been either blowing it up or hijacking for hostages.
Blowing up an airplane is a solved problem. It's been done many times.
No, it's not. The article proposed it, airports are already considering it, and even you proposed it (see next quote).
> I'd suggest keeping the government in charge of what procedures to use, but then using private contracts to actually manage the airport security.
The TSA didn't prevent those terrorist attacks--the people on the plain, luck/ineptitude did.
The political risks of looking "soft on terrorism" are just too high. Imagine being a politician responsible for a TSA rollback, and then, by dumb luck, a terrorist attack succeeds a short while later. There may be zero correlation, but do you think the media will care? Do you think the public will care? Do you think your political opposition will care? Ha. Your career would be over in a heartbeat. And if your opponents really felt like twisting the knife, they might drum up hearings and lawsuits against you. So call me cynical, but I just don't see any lawmaker or policy wonk sticking his or her neck out anytime soon.
This is why it's in the hands of airports to push for any particular change. They're not running for office.
They rely on federal funding for new infrastructure, which brings more air traffic, which brings more gate fees, which results in more money for those running the airport.
It also seems unlikely. If the feds withhold infrastructural funding out of spite for X, Y, or Z airports, they will cause a lot of collateral economic damage. Commercial airline passengers are just one of the many types of traffic that airports service every day. There's also stuff like FedEx, UPS, DHL, and all of the companies who rely on them for shipping, fulfillment, and logistics. That rabbit hole runs deep.
1) Provide our dear politicians the satisfaction that they "Did something" - Security theater is very useful during election times (Tough on Crime et al)
2)Provide a convenient excuse to expand the govt. ability to dictate yet another aspect of people's normal lives. The govt. now has another tool to harass "undesirables" - simply put their name on a "No fly", "No Train" , "No $SomeOtherThing" list and have their TSA buddies enforce it. Or have the "undesirables" be pulled aside for Random screenings every single time [1].
[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/citizenfour-filmm...
This is the real purpose of the TSA. Your safety or saving lives is irrelevant.
If you assume 75 years x 365 days x 24 hours, that's 657,000 hours in a fairly typical life. Millions of travelers waiting an hour or more each = a lot of "lives" wasted standing in line.
I'm not American and haven't been there for a long time so forgive my ignorance. TSA is an agency of DHS so I believed that its presence in airports was mandated by the government. Can airports really replace it with anybody they like? If this is the case, why they didn't do it before? Only because TSA is for free and airports have to pay private security companies?
The other time I brought some Chinese takeout that had a lot of liquid in it. The scanner said for future reference try to order drier dishes (I brought a papaya with soup embedded in the cavity), but she was going to look the other way and winked at me and told me to enjoy dinner.
Never had to wait long either (but I have TSA Precheck) and don't recall being barked at... I did have to wait quite a bit in the official TSA Precheck line in EWR though (those were DHS employees) and dealt with a slew of surly employees...
Stockholm syndrome indeed.
The small benefit being that it's probably much easier to fire one group of nitwits.
Terrorists would seriously have to step up their game to kill more than 500 people each year in the US, especially with passengers no longer operating under the "hijack just means a free trip to Cuba" assumption and actually fighting back.
Sad to say but money is a big motivator, and until the airlines get the message that we don't want to deal with this shit, they aren't going to really push for actual change.
I also don't really see a reason to stop flying. There's nothing wrong with flying itself--if we simply fix the issue with the TSA it'll be as good as it ever was. And it looks like it finally might change, based on what people are saying and articles like these.
I pledge not to fly again unless there is a medical or family reason to do so, until the TSA is no longer at the airports I need to use.
No more vacations, no more business trips... that pledge (if made by enough people) would hit airlines in their pocketbook rather quickly, and the TSA would be show the exit.
And if by chance a significant number of people did stop flying, the TSA would just expand into whatever people are using (train stations; bus stops; or heck, maybe the TSA starts building their own “checkpoints” on highways — you know, to ensure “transportation security”).
Competition can also be a good motivator. If you want to fix the TSA, cut their responsibilities in half at a particular airport and assign the other half to some startup that offers the same services. Then you come up with a few common-sense ways to measure how good they’re doing, and you pit them against each other. May the most efficient, cost-effective and customer-satisfying organization win.
How was this agency not looking at actually travel data that they failed to hire more staff as the number of air travelers increased? This was over a two year period. The idiot in charge of the TSA said they anticipated more people would sign up for TSA prescreen. At some point in the last two years they couldn't see that this trend wasn't transpiring?
This same idiot said they he was asking congress for more money for overtime for TSA employees. Great, make the same miserable people work even longer hours. That sounds like a great solution.
He also made a statement to the effect that their "mandate is to keep America safe' yet he seems to not grasp that if we can't get on the plane it doesn't much matter.
They also seem to blame part of the increased wait on the tragedy in Belgium but do you mean to tell me that not one person in this agency could see that the departure halls's were a huge a blind spot?
I imagine that lawmakers in Washington don't have to wait in the long lines like the rest of us? That's generally how the broken stuff in the US stays broken b/c lawmakers aren't exposed to it. This is true of healthcare as well. Congress has indemnity health plans which is why they have no idea how bad it is for the rest of us.
"Media: Look the line is 2 hours long at the airports"
"TSA: That's right, we are so very overworked, we need more funding".
"Uncle Sam: here is more money for TSA"
"TSA: Thanks"
You would expect that an agency tasked with the security of citizens might be a data-driven organization so the fact that this current shortage of staff while there's an increase in the flying population is just inexcusable.
The probability that a bottle of water or anything that looks like water will cause an airline disaster is effectively ZERO. It is not a risk, and not even slightly concerning, period. This is not worth checking even once, even at random, much less millions of times a day.
And pocket knives? They SERVE FOOD WITH KNIVES on planes. They literally give you a knife in first class. If it was someone’s goal to obtain a knife on board, they would not need to bring it through security. And frankly, one could argue that knives are the opposite of risky: a few passengers with knives to defend themselves may very well be able to prevent a handful of hijackers from doing anything. Either way, I am strongly on the side of “teach people to band together and defend themselves”, not “cower and be fearful of everything”.
And don’t even get me started on having to take off shoes. It is frankly sad that we have been so fixated on ONE piece of clothing, for years and years and years, as a reaction to ONE passenger out of millions who couldn’t even carry out his “threat” successfully.
Besides, the entire concept of “prohibited items” does not eliminate risk. There are human beings who are powerful enough and skilled enough to cause serious damage or death all by themselves. They don’t need “prohibited items”, they simply are deadly. A group of passengers that knows how to band together and fight back can subdue anyone, even a passenger that is deadly all by himself.
Despite everyone hating it, including Big Business, it persists and will likely continue to exist until the U.S. Government collapses. It is nearly impossible to ratchet back a government program dedicated to "security", among other sacred words.
Look at the solutions being offered: add more workers, more bomb dogs, etc.
The system cannot fix itself. Perhaps the system does not want to fix itself.
Absolutely! The horrible truth is that there is nothing to fix when you make hundreds of millions of dollars off of scared public. If you don't believe me, ask Chertoff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chertoff#Body_scanners
http://gawker.com/5437499/why-is-michael-chertoff-so-excited...
Think the USA sounds more appealing, and I'm a white, obviously non-Muslim Brit.
I've seen them yell at passengers, drift off, sit around talking with long lines waiting, and every other conceivable offense. Most are fine but there are a lot of exceptions.
They contribute nothing, and I for one fly less frequently because of them.
As to pre-check: at Atlanta that doesn't always get you a short line or fast security wait time.
Edit to include I also think the TSA is making things slower on "purpose" but that's a whole other topic.
It is not the traveler's concern whether the TSA finds it more burdensome to screen someone wearing polished, straight-laced oxfords than someone wearing slipshod flip-flops. The traveler is not wasting anybody's time. The TSA that cannot process an unprepared, ignorant, yet cooperative traveler as quickly or as easily as a million-mile air travel expert is actually the party wasting everybody's time.
Imagine for a moment that someone sets out to intentionally slow down the screening queue. Whose fault is it if he is easily able to do so? The people that established the operating procedures for the screening are responsible. On a highway, the slow car is passed, using a different lane. On a computer, the processor hog may be interrupted so that other processes and threads may still execute. Unfortunately, as you suspect, the TSA has a motive for keeping the lines slow. Slow lines may lead to bigger budgets, as they complain about being "resource constrained".
Perhaps you are making it more convenient for yourself by transferring your irritation to those who are not able to retaliate against your visible annoyance, by abusing their authority to perform additional unnecessary screenings the instant you reach the head of the queue? Stop blaming the victims!
I have no irritation with passengers wasting everyones time in line, I expect many people to be inconsiderate of others, that is human nature. I also note how many pass the blame onto others instead of realizing there are things they can do to help their fellow passengers, but they don't, to me it says a lot about that person.
I place blame of the slowdown on anything that causes the slowdown, including inconsiderate people and inept TSA policy and people.
Um, excuse me? If I've just been made to disassemble my person and be less secure, you can damn well bet I am going to take my time reassembling myself and making sure I have everything back in its rightful place before proceeding. I'd recommend everybody do the same, even if that means holding your ground if the goons start trying to assault you into moving forward.
To each there own, I just know they are part of the problem.
So become a lobbyist, basically.
My question is, what does the US look like without the TSA, and can we ever get there?
If you go through a screening line and a liquid is found, the liquid is not tested. It is not handled carefully. It is not thoroughly inspected. It is tossed in the closest garbage can.
If the liquid really did pose a danger, wouldn't it be handled more carefully?
> As security expert Bruce Schneier likes to note, such screenings don't have to be perfect; they just have to be good enough to make terrorists change their plans: "No terrorist is going to base his plot on getting a gun through airport security if there's a decent chance of getting caught, because the consequences of getting caught are too great."
That is, the act of confiscating the liquids almost ensures that the liquids are already harmless. But if they didn't confiscate the liquid, it (supposedly) might not be harmless. It's a bit like Newcomb's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox
How much liquids do you need for a decent explosives? A few liters, 10 liters? 20? So get 10 or 20 of your followers to bring it in.
That said, am I the only one who doesn't have these long security waits? I typically show up at the airport ~1h before boarding is to begin, and am often at my gate 50min before boarding begins.
I typically fly out of SFO, and I do admit, several journeys ago, I was actually IN LINE at security for 30 minutes which seemed absurdly painful and I was actually starting to sweat being late for boarding. Of course, at SFO they had TONS of extra machinery, they just didn't bother staffing it.
As much as I HATE taking off my watch, fitbit, ring, car keys, wallet, belt, shoes, phone, then the scramble to take my laptop out of my bag as soon as I get room on the table (it becomes a high pressure situation to do the laptop thing as by the time you get to the table you have roughly 8 seconds before you're holding people up!).. the actual lines are quite tolerable.
I typically fly SFO, SEA, SAN, SJC, and fly cross country at least once or twice a year. I just got back from Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Munich airports, and again, no problems. I've fairly recently been to Auckland, Queenstown, Reykjavik, Heathrow, Florence, Paris as well.
There's no doubt most other countries do a better job than the US; the automated machinery for dealing with your possessions to be xrayed (they hold your bin until it's empty and then automatically return it to the beginning of the line!) and the switching between 10-15 security lines so that you're never behind more than a few people was a revelation.
But the actual time in security is rarely all that bad inside or outside the US.
ATL is the absolute worst. There are three checkpoints for the entire domestic side of the airport, two of which are often closed. Wait times are normally 45 minutes in the normal lines. There are 3 checkpoints for about 150 gates.
FLL, OTOH, is one of my favorites. This is because the terminals don't have a central entrance, so there's a security checkpoint per 15-ish gates and some checkpoints actually serve fewer than 10 gates.
Even a month or so ago, things were reasonable. Now, the biggest airports are recommending getting to the airport 3 hours early.