The moment I pull out my ipad and macbook and entrust the fate of around 3000 dollars worth of electronics to the competence and benevolence of government officials who barely give a shit is my least favorite part of the travel experience
I don’t know why, but for me it’s the shoes. My laptop bag makes it fairly easy to take my laptop out and put it back in, but dealing with taking my shoes on and off really fucking bugs me. It’s totally irrational, I know.
Shoes cross the line to requiring the removal of clothing in my head. It's not exactly the same, of course, but they are much closer to clothing than luggage.
I think your feeling is pretty rational. It's pretty annoying for no benefit. I wish they also offered flights with lower security. I'm fine getting on a plane if everyone went through a metal detector and kept their shoes on.
> I'm fine getting on a plane if everyone went through a metal detector and kept their shoes on.
that's an interesting thought. May be if the price of a ticket could be made cheaper by cutting out these TSA bullshit, the market could correct this problem.
This already exists in the form of regional airlines.
I live in Harrison, AR. I can fly to Memphis or Dallas for like $40 each way if I book a couple of weeks out. There is no TSA in Harrison, and the airline operates from their own hangars, not the general terminal on the other end.
I usually travel with a handgun, which I of course declare in my checked bag. They hand me my bag back and I carry it to the plane with me, and in a couple of instances have even asked me to put it under my seat due to limited cargo space. I’ve been told multiple times that I shouldn’t even bother declaring it by airport staff but I’m not clear enough on the laws there to take that advice.
I would be fine without any screening at all. It would be like getting on a train or bus and no one seems to have an issue with using those methods of transportation without any security checks.
I’d use my Keen sandals for a similar reason, but they’re actually very hard to get back into. This is useful when I use them fishing, but bad in an airport.
I would love to see a comparison of the probability of contracting a foot fungus or other contagious disease in a security line vs. being a victim in a terrorist attack.
Seeing as the TSA has never caught a terrorist (and has missed several) I’d bet a statistical case could be made that their security lines are more dangerous to the public than any terrorist attacks they may have prevented.
The real comparison is with the number of human lifetimes wasted getting to the scareport extra early and waiting in line. It is on the order of one thousand per year.
No, it's not irrational. It's because you are being made less secure. When traveling, one generally packs their stuff well and keeps it together to maintain control of it. The TSA makes you do the exact opposite - unpack it all and splay it out in many unmanageable bins so they can carry out their their charade. You're then plainly vulnerable to easy theft, never mind if something happened where you actually had to hoof it and you're just standing there like an idiot struggling to get to your shoes!
Imagine traveling with five laptops, overseas, because your corporate InfoSec policy doesn't let you ship laptops to your coworkers. Then imagine being picked at random for additional screening and being asked to let $10,000 in company assets roll on through out of site while you get the pat-down.
The only time I ever made polite insistence to a TSA Agent, that day.
I accidentally left my MacBook in the bin at MIA. I didn’t notice till I got home a few states away. It made it to lost and found and my father was able to pick it up for me. I was pretty shocked. This was before Pre. Since I’ve had Pre it’s not necessary to remove the laptop.
This CDC study[0] looked into that question, the answer was inconclusive (with some workers receiving a higher annual dose than is allowed, while most received a safe dosage). The problem seems to be malfunctioning scanners.
> Given the strengths and weaknesses of this study, the need for a routine radiation dosimetry program for TSA screeners can neither be justified nor refuted at this time.
I assumed above that people would read the link before responding.
I often travel with a big Ziploc bag of stickers (life of a Developer Evangelist). Have started removing it from my bag for security because it usually triggers a search.
It been stated that it makes the X-Ray scan easier to read, because passengers have been stuffing their carry on items so full of stuff. Maybe there is some explosive item that has the density of some food.
Sadly it isn't even faster and requires more staff to operate.
While the CT pilot program didn’t show reduced wait times at participating airports, the agency is expecting the technology will speed up lines as passengers and staffers get used to the new processes. Pekoske said he expected more staff to be needed initially as the new machines are put in place.
They're planning on using "AI" (Machine learning/Computer Vision) to slowly automate identification. They already do this now, but are limited by the quality of images.
> For example, TSA is working to develop new algorithms that use machine learning approaches to discriminate between threats and benign objects, making the screening process more effective and efficient. Machine learning also offers a way to screen for all prohibited items (explosives, firearms, sharp objects, etc.) automatically. It is anticipated that machine learning algorithms not only will improve security effectiveness but also will support automation in future security systems, thereby enhancing operation efficiency and improving passenger experience through increased throughput and decreased false alarm rates. More broadly, machine learning algorithms can be applied to assess security performance and provide system-level improvements beyond performance enhancements realized at individual screening operations.
It is worth noting the limitations of such techniques: Familiarity. Back when Apple switched their Macbooks from HDDs to SSDs, a lot of early purchasers got flagged at TSA because their laptop didn't match a profile (i.e. looking for a spinning stack of platters).
With CT technology, we could see even more nuanced differences get flagged for unusual.
>With CT technology, we could see even more nuanced differences get flagged for unusual.
Good, that's more data to learn from and that would only be a minor issue for a short period of time for new devices. How often have you flown with something that other passengers hadn't likely have flown numerous times with before you? Even if the system picks out 0.1% of items for manual classification and training, that's still mountains and mountains of data for it to learn from and that would only take a tiny fraction of the time for airport security to identify compared to what they deal with now.
They could do that now with the current x ray images if they wanted to. Also by classification I'm just referring to classifying in broad categories such as benign, weapon, drugs, bomb, etc. Right now when you go through security the images aren't tied directly to the owner, just a location and a time. Unless the scanner gets tied to e.g. scanning your boarding pass when putting a bin through that doesn't give you a way to tie that information to an individual. Additional cameras with some AI to track people from the boarding pass scan through the checkpoint would allow for what you're talking about but all of that is orthogonal to what specific type of scanner is being used.
Global entry/TSA pre-check is the best $100 you can spend (or not since the application fee is covered by a lot of premium credit cards)
Keep shoes, keep laptop in bag, keep jacket on, way shorter line...I’m simulateously happy that not everyone is doing it and dumbfounded why anyone who travels more than a few times a year wouldn’t have it by now.
Yes. I felt bad about giving TSA my money, but like you say, it's worth it, especially if you fly semi-frequently.
Global Entry is the best part because after a long international flight the last thing you probably want to do is wait another hour or three on some long passport line.
On the one hand it’s great. But on the other nobody should have to go through the security theater that is regular non-precheck TSA.
I’ve long believed the only solution is to mandate that Congress travel as regular citizens so they realize how slow and pointless the process has become.
I used to feel the same way. I shouldn't have to, but if the choice is paying or getting felt up, I pay. Me not paying won't stop the feeling up anyway.
Whenever I (or whoever I’m traveling with) gets selected for the full pat down I always make a comment about usually getting charged extra for this service or some other equally stupid joke.
They always end the pat down early and move on to the next person.
As someone who has enough regular xrays (to keep an eye on my bone tumor) I always opt for the pat down and avoid the machines. Extra bonus when security staff member feels the massive bone tumor on my femur and thinks I've got something strapped to my inner thigh.
If there's no Pre-Check line and you have Pre-check then they give you a big laminated card that says "Pre-Check" and you don't need to take shoes off / remove laptops belts etc.
Yeah, with Global Entry it's worth paying for the priority baggage otherwise you'll just spend 45 minutes waiting by yourself in the baggage claim area as the bag belts get clogged up and stop with the bags of the passengers still stuck in the passport lines.
The TSA employees did not care about Pre-Check. They said that it was an international terminal (I was flying domestic) so there was no Pre-Check. The only perk I got was to be able to go through the old style detector. I still needed to remove electronics. They did not care.
Also, the line I am referring to is the baggage check for customs. First comes the passport check, then you retrieve your luggage, and then you go through customs again with your luggage (which is never checked). Global Entry does not help you with that last line, which can be brutal at some airports.
How hard is it to pour your possible explosive liquid into a bin with all the other possible explosives in the center of the largest, densest crowd in the airp... Oh wait I see your point.
Lots of us had the same thought with those famously huge crowds at airport security just post-9/11. Cabinet member on one channel (we had channels then) telling us how sophisticated, dedicated, well-funded, and capable our adversary is, and how they're basically everywhere. Change the channel, story about massive lines at airports. Put two and two together, quick mental math involving how long air travel might be crippled in the entire OECD by a single attack at a security line and the economic damage of that—not to mention the, you know, terror of such a follow up attack, I mean it's right there in what we call this whole thing—then the cost of such an attack versus the entire 9/11 project (a fraction), and as the weeks pass and the obvious doesn't happen you start to go "hey wait a minute, that may have been a crazy fluke by some not-well-coordinated group and the cabinet member's just bullshitting me about this Bond villain terrorist organization thing."
I suspect having had that thought was a common differentiator between the folks who were on board with the plan at least until Iraq, and those who were already going "hey can we wait a minute?" before the invasion of Afghanistan.
Don’t be nervous. TSA misses the vast majority of weapons during screening in repeated tests, so it is evident that basically no one wants to commit mass violence on/with planes.
Neat idea. But while I don't know the instantaneous toxicity of liquid explosives, I'll conjecture that a suicide bomber might have the commitment and stomach for a wee sip of his boom juice as he passes the first gate to martyrdom.
I think they don't mind if you commit suicide, they'd just prefer you did it before you got on the plane. The assumption is that explosives would be disagreeable to drink.
Thinking about it more, it occurs to me that it could also just be security theater.
I am imagining David Blaine regurgitating a bottle of butane and fire-breathing it inside the terminal now. I believe he can hold the frogs down while this is happening and spit them up later as he's boarding.
Last time I flew (three weeks ago) I accidently left a bottle of water in my backpack and a TSA agent just took it out, swabbed it, and put it back without even saying anything.
Carrying a bottle of water that you got from inside the secured airport area, on a previous flight. That the TSA agent is going to confiscate, and promptly take the prohibited water inside the area it's prohibited from so that he can dump it down a drain.
I guess by "theater" you mean that there's no actual purpose to taking your laptop out of the bag other than making people feel better? I have a hard time believing that's true. There's people who spend their whole career understanding airline security and (since I know nothing about it) I'm inclined to trust they aren't wasting my time.
Every TSA red team test has overwhelmingly found that they miss massive amounts of contraband. They aren't just missing pocket knives and nail clippers, red teams bring through mock firearms, large knives, drugs, bombs, etc. And overwhelmingly the TSA misses those items. The TSA is overwhelmingly security theater.
About a year ago I was at an airport (Boston? New Jersey?) outbound that had a sign or TV monitor saying "Great news, you no longer need to take your laptop out of your bag!"
I read this sign as a TSA worker shouted every 30 seconds to the shuffling line about how everyone needed to take out all laptops, "ipads", cameras, etc.
I wonder if it was a pilot program. Or more likely, just part of the constantly shifting fabric of pointless theater. I fully expect these new machines are primarily to sell machines, and not to fulfill any other purpose.
Yeah, it's always up to the whims of the underpaid TSA agent who happens to be there that day. Back when iPads were new, I got scolded for taking it out of my bag, and scolded for leaving it in my bag, by agents at the same airport on two trips a few weeks apart.
I was on a business trip in a suit years ago and had to take my belt off. By the time I got through, someone took my belt. TSA agents couldn't find it. Didn't have time to do much else besides suck it up. I was flying w/ a superior mentioned TSA lost it. Not sure if he believed me... but definitely cost a lot to buy a new belt at the next airport. Still had my laptop though.
At one point, I was travelling with my dad when the "shoes off" policy was relaxed (I think the shoes-off policy was relaxed a couple of weeks/months after the shoe bomber plot, but I can't recall exactly when -- and then it was put back permanently).
"Agent": Sir, I recommend you take your shoes off.
Dad: That's okay. I don't need to take my shoes off.
"Agent": Sir, I'm going to need you to take your shoes off NOW!
In addition to challenging the authority of the Memphis TSA agent, my dad is half Japanese and looks quite a bit less white than I do.
I've seen this sort of things in videos of police encounters, too. "I suggest you do X" or "would you mind doing X" is some officers' way of being polite, but it leads to dangerous misunderstandings. When people say no, taking the statement literally, cops see them as trying to start a fight.
I'd love to see law enforcement trained in using basic, declarative sentences: "Sir, regulation X.Y.Z says you have to take your shoes off. Please step aside, do so, and rejoin the line."
It should not be the responsibility of individual members of the public not be threatened or assaulted by the authorities! Such rapid escalation from friendly to threatening should be a retraining issue.
> They'll be obvious about it if it's not optional.
I don't believe this is required (or even typical) in the US. Law enforcement is generally allowed to make non-mandatory requests and hope that you comply with them. A prime example is needing to explicitly invoke your right to remain silent (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127352...). You might also look up videos of people refusing to cooperate with the immigration checkpoints in various states along the Mexican border.
That would require them to know what regulation backs up their request. Which in turn would require such a regulation to exist. TSA has a particularly bad track record on this (to be fair, the regulations did change absurdly rapidly for the first decade or so of their existence), but I’ve even encountered this problem with police officers.
My father has stopped flying entirely. He's got a pacemaker and sometimes needs a cane and has a small list of medications that he legitimately needs to have with him at all times. He's diabetic, as well. Though he's not very overweight, he just doesn't move as well as he once did.
TSA has made flying for him and people like him so incredibly difficult. He's just opted out. I don't blame him, either, though it does make visits more challenging now.
I mean honestly.... Why do people like this have to take their shoes off and manage all of their carry-ons and personals into bins and onto belts and ... The entire farce of the TSA is all so callous and genuinely stupid.
I'd really like to see an analysis of the total number of passenger-minutes that are spent waiting in TSA lines. Divide that by the avg human lifespan and compare it to the number of people killed or injured by a terrorist attack.
When looked at like that, TSA costs more total lifetimes than have ever been taken through terrorist attacks.
By multiple orders of magnitude proabably. I'm going to go ahead and call 5000 people who have been killed by aviation terrorism events. Assuming they all live to 90 years old, that's 450,000 man years tragically lost.
The FAA website stats that 630,000,000 people fly per year. If each of them takes 10 minutes to cross the line, that's 105,000,000 man-years lost per year...
Wow, you're absolutely right. Screwed the math hard there. 10 minutes was a very low estimate though, especially in bigger airports like Seattle, SF, NYC.
Yeah they told me to leave my belt on before going through the metal detector at OAK a few years ago. That worked out about as well as expected. More recently I flew out of JFK T4 a couple times (protip: don't) and on one of these trips all hell broke loose when someone's pet cat escaped. Security theater indeed.
SFO->PDX: "Remove all electronics and any metal from your person." "You can keep your watch on."
I'm wearing a smart watch, of course, with plenty of metal in its construction.
Nowadays, I just stash anything not made from cotton in the bag to go through the X-ray well before I get into range where TSA officers can given contradicting instructions and then berate me for not following their directives.
> I got scolded for taking it out of my bag, and scolded for leaving it in my bag, by agents at the same airport on two trips a few weeks apart.
You are describing the the usual daily cluster-fuck of life in the military, and in fact, government service in general. I don't know why it is that way, but it is. I have not experienced it in my now 20 years of life in the private sector, but back when I was in the military it's just like that, all the time.
If I had to guess about the military, it would be a combination of the fact that doing it wrong gets people killed, a constant need to optimize, improve, or respond to changing conditions, and a lack of sophistication to tell the two apart.
It's always so strange to me that people seem to consistently have bad experiences with TSA. I've travelled more than the average person and have never had a bad experience with TSA. Maybe because I'm a young white male?
Once I even accidentally packed a small toolkit in my carry-on rather than my checked luggage and they let me keep it!
How do you react to petty authority figures in general? How much did it bother you when, for example, elementary school playground monitors enforced arbitrary rules capriciously?
It bothered me a lot, to the extent that I still have vivid memories of it, and I also hate the TSA with every fiber of my being.
I've been thinking about this lately because I also hate the TSA way more than is even remotely rational.
Even for frequent fliers, the TSA is pretty far down on any rational list of complaints about government. I fly almost every week, but in the past 12 months I have probably spent a lot more time at city hall on a stupid residential parking permit than I did in (non-customs) airport security lines.
In addition to personality, a lot of people project much larger political ideologies onto the TSA. You see a lot of that even in this comment section.
Right, I'll be the first to admit that it isn't totally rational. I get much more upset about the TSA, since I see their petty authoritarianism face to face, than I do about things that affect me much more but only indirectly.
> the TSA is pretty far down on any rational list of complaints about government
Only if focusing exclusively on direct interactions.
From an ideological perspective, I don't think it's projection (your wording) to observe that in their current form they align closely with both general government authoritarianism and the exercise of federal power over the states.
From a pragmatic perspective, I think it's perfectly reasonable to be alarmed about how such security measures seem to normalize invasive government behaviors in general. Societal norms and values aren't static, so how we do things in the present can and does affect how the public views things in the future.
i think its just the invasive aspect. personally i have not had too much issue but one time i pulled up my pants possibly weirdly (boxers and pants unaligned that i could feel) and a overzealous tsa officer thought it looked suspicious not a strip search but they got grabbier than usual. white male too.
I actually got in trouble more for leaving a Kindle and a game system in a bag on my last trip than on the previous trip when I accidentally had a utility knife in my bag's pocket.
I was sure I was about to be detained for the knife, but they simply told me I could leave it there or exit the security line and mail it back to my house for a $15 fee. I took that mailer option, walked out of the line unescorted with a knife, filled out a mailing form, put the knife in the bag, and went through security again.
This most recent trip, I checked carefully for knives before heading to SFO. When I entered the line, they were low on bins. I started taking things out and asked if I needed to remove the Kindle and game system. The TSA agent said I could leave them in, so I did. By the time I got to the other end, I was pulled aside and questioned, as they checked for any suspicious residue on the devices. They eventually handed me the devices back and escorted me to the beginning of the line, where I had to go through all over again, this time with the Kindle and game system in a bin.
Scolding is the essential foundational mentality of the job. They get paid to actively look for bad behavior. This makes it very easy to find all things to be suspicious at a minimum.
It actually makes it quite hard to not start seeing everything and everyone through a suspicious lens. The odds are good that there are additional structural reinforcements. They probably don't get rewarded for anything else. They may even get actively penalized for not behaving that way.
At my corporate job, I was instructed to a. Look for a reason to pay a claim rather than looking for a reason to deny it and b. Look out for the customer rather than cover my own ass.
Then I had a claim for a benefit that was only paid once a year. I knew the six week period it occurred in, but not the actual date. I got dinged by Quality for paying it.
My ultimate solution: I no longer work there. But most people just do what they need to do to get their damn paycheck. Fighting the good fight is usually not what they get rewarded for.
Office Space:
"I have 7 bosses. If I do something right, no one cares. If I do something wrong, everyone comes down on me like a ton of bricks. I spend all my time trying to not get yelled at."
If I had a dollar for every time I heard "listen to me, not the sign" from a TSA agent, I'd have enough money that the TSA would detain me for questioning about why I was traveling with that much money.
It seems every airport has its own different security theatre just to keep us on our toes.
In Newark, I put my backpack in the plastic bin. Vegas, put the bag directly on the conveyor belt. LaGuardia, stack the bins after picking up your items. Vegas, do not stack the bins.
My favourite is when different countries create different carryon regulations.
Pro tip: if you’re crafting aircraft security regulations for a living, get on one of those aircraft to get together to create a harmonized set of regulations.
Bought mine at BestBuy. Samsonite 5580680. The zipper goes all the way down so the bag is split in 2, a pouch holding your laptop and the other half holds the rest of your stuff. This lets TSA X-Ray equipment inspect your laptop only without cables, cellphone, and gadgets on the way.
Yea i Bought a backpack advertised as TSA friendly that can open completely. While in theory it works, the TSA agent still yells at you to take everything out.
Unfortunately I’ve found that the new tray systems they’re installing make the backpack versions of this obsolete since they won’t open all the way inside the bin.
>"Or more likely, just part of the constantly shifting fabric of pointless theater. I fully expect these new machines are primarily to sell machines, and not to fulfill any other purpose."
Indeed that's the more likely. I recently had a TSA moron tell me that my iPad did not need to come out because "it's not a computer." I explained that it might not be a laptop but it was still very much a computer. You can't make this stuff up.
Unless there's low volume that day so they don't open the pre-check line. Or the airport is too "small" to have a pre-check line. When it works, it's great, but it seems to be luck of the draw whether they'll actually honor pre-check status.
I’m not the most frequent flier in the world, but I have never flown to a US airport without a precheck line. At worst, they’ve handed me a placard for the people manning the scanners saying I can leave my laptop in my bag and my shoes on through the standard metal detector.
And many other nationalities through Global Entry (GE includes TSA Pre), plus Canadians and Canadian permanent residents via NEXUS (which includes GE and through that also TSA Pre).
There was a time where what you say was true, but they've broadened access.
I have an extreme aversion on principle to paying mafia protection money, and will only do so if my life or livelihood actually depends on it. I certainly won't do so just to make my life a bit more convenient.
Principle was the wrong word. I'm not taking an ethical stand -- I just hate this sort of humiliation from authority figures so much that I genuinely can't bring myself to make the rational decision to get Pre Check.
Such is the nature of a government that is based on violence. I too object vehemently to it but as another commenter pointed out, you will incur costs if you do, and costs if you don’t.
Minimize the costs to you and just pay them. You only get one life.
In the long run, it will make you more efficient, and hopefully provide you with greater resources to fight them.
There are a few credit cards that will cover the cost for you. I believe both the Capital One Venture card and Chase Sapphire Reserved card will do this for you.
Wow new technology? What now-lost mysterious technology was it that allowed us to get along fine without taking our laptops out of our bags 20 years ago?
Not in passengers but in the officials: what if somebody sneaks something in, and blows a plane? To alleviate that, a "we are doing all we can" CYA strategy should be in place.
I was always amazed how I had to take my laptop out ... but I carried cameras, gaming devices, all sorts of other electronics in bags and nobody cared.
It's fascinating how the security theatre has gotten so big that now it basically just rolls forward under its own momentum. It's been around long enough that people accept it as normal, it serves no other purpose than to employ the unemployable and fill contractors' coffers, and it seems that no entity is able to stop or dismantle it.
It was quite safe in the 15 years before 2001 too. As for the major incident that happened in 2001 -- it wouldn't have been stopped by any amount of scanning of people's laptops.
Cockpits are locked. Passengers are more vigilant. Bruce Schneier argues that this made all the difference. I don't know if it's right but it seems like not a stretch.
If anything, the most (or only) effective aspect of TSA checks are that they remind people to be vigilant. That may be the single best reason to continue using security theater, and a very strong argument in favor of keeping it.
This is a pretty cynical viewpoint but I agree. It’s clear that TSA doesn’t do much. Someone I know has acidentially brought a pocketknife through security multiple times without it being found. They keep it in my backpack as a regular item and just forgot to take it out.
But one time I was trying to bring a fish, and had a next to impossible time trying to get them to agree that water was a "life sustaining liquid" as defined by their exemptions on the 3oz rule wrt to fish.
Trying to prevent people carrying through chemicals that could be combined in the airplane bathroom to make explosives I believe.
There was a terrorist plot to do this, which was caught by the security services, and then despite the terrorists being caught the liquids ban was put into place forever more to stop future attacks.
First, a slight clarification: while the main charge and the detonator were separated during transit and intended to be assembled on the plane, the explosive liquid itself was not a binary compound; it was live in the soft drink bottles.
It sounds like you're arguing that this regulation is not necessary any more because that particular plot was foiled. I find that line of reasoning odd, given that the 2006 attack was the last in a string of plots using liquid explosives to target airliners. The type of group which carried out attacks like this still exists, with similar goals.
Given that it's reasonably effective at deterring a technique which has actually been used (the Japan test run in the 90s) and which has been attempted multiple times, I think it's possibly the least objectionable regulation. It doesn't address all modes of attack (obviously), and it's very debatable whether the likelihood of attack makes the invasiveness of the countermeasure acceptable, but unlike body scanners it's at least effective at deterring the specific modality it's aimed at.
A pretty good summary and a bonus foreshadowing of this article.
I have had a pretty good experience with the new scanners. I have global entry/Precheck and one remaining headache with the old scanners was remembering to take my double walked flask out and show the TSA that it was empty by removing the cap. The new scanners can see that it’s empty from inside my bag, which is very handy.
At least every airport I've been to (Europe, Dubai and India) have provided the 1L baggies for free. I usually get 4-5 uses out of them before they start tearing.
It's just a diminutive form of "bag", ie. "small bags"?
Just like you have for instance "telefonino" as the diminutive of "telefono" in Italian, literally "small telephone". And in German you add -chen or -lein to words to create the diminutive, so "Hund" becomes "Hündchen" (adding an umlaut as well, if applicable).
Generally I think it's very common for a lot of languages to add a cutesy suffix to the base word, in order to create the diminutive.
This is a pretty silly conspiracy. Do you think the manufacturers of those products have some sort of lobbying arm to convince politicians to make draconian TSA regulations?
The much more likely scenario is that the politcians, who sometimes have ownership interest in the companies that get government contracts, want to be able to sell new equipment. This is also supported by the constant equipment updates we see at TSA lines.
They could have just banned liquids all together, but they picked some magic 15 mL limit (or whatever it is) that no existing containers at the time fit under.
> The much more likely scenario is...
Why do you phrase this as an either or situation? "My conspiracy is more likely than your conspiracy" as if there can't be more than one conspiracy.
That reminds me of the time, sometime before the statute of limitations expired, I was coming back to the US from Montreal with a bunch of illegal raw milk cheese in my carry-on. No problem.
Are personal amounts of raw-milk cheese restricted or prohibited from entry into the US? This CBP page says nothing about raw cheese or pasteurization. It clearly states that hard and semi-soft cheeses are fine to bring in passenger baggage, as long as they don't contain meat.
Just because the FDA requires raw-milk cheeses to have aged for at least 60 days in order to be sold in the USA, that doesn't mean you can't bring some in with you and consume it.
I had an emergency pocket knife at the bottom of my bag -- I totally forgot about it, I went through 2 US airports and 2 European airports before it was found in London.
Yep. The last few times I've been through London they've insisted on absolutely emptying my backpack because, and I quote, I had "carefully coiled cables in it". I'm an IT guy, I travel with a laptop, several devices for entertainment on a plane, chargers, etc. I promised them that next time I would toss the cables in haphazardly so as to prevent further issues. They were...unamused.
I used to keep a rather large pocket knife clipped to the lighter pocket in my jeans. I accidentally took it through security a few times. Once when I was on the plane I was looking at it thinking, “Holy shit, how is this possible?” I looked it up and it turns out the scanners actually have a hard time seeing objects on your hip because of the way they scan. They are good at seeing objects in front of you or behind you, but an object perfectly aligned with the plane of your hips will often be missed.
I keep two pocket knives in my backpack, and I've accidentally brought them through security three times. And I have flown maybe a dozen times in the past 18 years.
I accidentally went through security with my infant son's boarding pass, separately from my wife and son who went through with my boarding pass, the TSA agent only checked my wife's boarding pass and not my son's. Not to mention how trivial it is to get liquids on a plane without them being searched. Bruce Schneier notably went through security with two of the biggest bottles of saline solution for contact lenses he could buy without them actually searching the bottles. When asked by the TSA why he had two bottles he told them "two eyes" and they let him through. Not to mention he was using a forged boarding pass at the time to go through security.
My wife was also wearing my son in a wrap at the time and just walked through a metal detector, no searching pockets or taking off the wrap or anything like that. Anyone trying to sneak contraband through could just carry it through with the baby knowing it won't be searched and then just leave after exchanging the contraband past security and walk out. You could easily sneak 10lbs worth of contraband through so long as it wouldn't set off the metal detector.
A friend went through security twice with a couple of cooking gas canisters forgotten in their backpack. How aren't those the largest red flag of them all?
> It's been around long enough that people accept it as normal, it serves no other purpose than to employ the unemployable and fill contractors' coffers
It serves the purpose of removing liability for security from airlines, which is the major reason why it was created. It also serves the purpose of getting people used to progressively more intrusive government inspection during routine situations.
> and it seems that no entity is able to stop or dismantle it.
There are entities that are able to, but they don't want to, because they like what it does.
Hrm, that's interesting. I went through Schipol a few days ago and don't recall having to go through a metal detector. Nude body scanner yes, metal detector no. Maybe I just wasn't looking?
To my knowledge, those "nude body" scanners (millimeter-wave or X-ray backscatter) can detect suspicious irregularities underneath clothing, but they do not specifically detect metals, and cannot search body cavities.
people as an individual also don't deal with fears rationally. This is exploited by those in power (or whoever that can) to further their own agenda - whether it's greed or control or whatever.
It’s quite unfair to characterize the entirety of a huge organization based simply on certain functions at which it’s ineffective. Probably the most important thing it does is to keep the world from descending into a flaming fireball of constant wars between countries.
There are literally thousands of other things at which it exce.
"Probably the most important thing it does is to keep the world from descending into a flaming fireball of constant wars between countries"
How many millions were killed by government in the 20th century? WW1, WWII, concentration camps, gulags, Mao's great leap forward, Vietnam, and the list goes on. War has been a constant for most of the 21st century.
There is a strong argument that much of the above would not have been feasible without large centralized states.
> There is a strong argument that much of the above would not have been feasible without large centralized states.
Precluding that was small states engaged in constant warfare. Note that I'm not saying that centralized states are necessarily the solution, but that the US Federal Government has been successful in its objective of preventing further World Wars and that itself is a huge achievement.
Naturally I disagree. The US has been waging a never ending global war on "terror" since 2001. I'll also cite Hans Herman Hoppe's lecture refuting Steven Pinker. Apologies in advance for his thorough technique.
"Pinker devotes some 10 pages (pp. 228-238) to this case, and the central information is condensed in a single graph (p. 230) depicting the “rate of death in conflicts in greater Europe, 1400-2000.” If anything, however, this graph demonstrates the opposite of Pinker’s progress thesis. What it shows is that the longest period of (relative) peacefulness and low levels of violence were the almost 200 years from 1400 until the very end of the 16th century. Yet this period falls precisely within the longer period of the European Middle Ages (and marks its end), and the Middle Ages, as I have argued before, are a prime example of a State-less social order. (Interestingly, Pinker concurs with this assessment of medieval Europe as State-less, but he then fails to see that this assessment implies, according to his own data, an empirical refutation of his thesis.)
And it gets worse for Pinker’s case. According to the same graph, the following historical period, from the late 16th century on to the present, is characterized by three huge spikes in the level of violence. The first spike, from the late 16th century until the Westphalian Peace in 1648, is largely associated with the 30-Years-War; the second, from the late 18th century until 1815 and somewhat less steep than the first, is associated with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; and the third and greatest spike, from 1914-1945, is associated with the 20th century’s two World Wars. As well, for all intermediate periods, the level of violence remained well above that of medieval times and this level was only reached again, three centuries later, during the period from 1815-1914, and again during the post-WW II era. All in all, then, the record for post-medieval Europe in terms of violence appears rather depressive. And yet, the entire period, from the late 16th century until today, is the era of States, which Pinker considers the driving forces of a “civilizing process.” "
Nobody, I repeat NOBODY ever gets fired for adding more security, no matter how asinine or counterproductive it is. That is the unfortunate fact & it is not limited to Airport security.
I was flying form Twin Falls to L.A. and when I went through the metal detector I set it off. So, what to the TSA people do? They don't use the metal detector wand, they take some paper and rub it on my hands and put it in a machine to detect for explosive residue/powder...
That's what you think but the TSA has left me bloody on two occasions and despite reports supported with pictures and other passenger statements, they were still on the job days and weeks later.
They're unaccountable, ineffective, and completely useless. It's a modern day Work Project.
>Please don't irritate the TSA agents. If they don't get you for it, they will take it out on everyone behind you.
We really shouldn't tolerate people like that though, should we? If you don't respect TSA agents, it's your duty to remind them of that. Our ability to change the TSA through the democratic process has been on the wane for years now, but we can still force change by making it hard for the TSA to hire. If they have to double their salaries because being a TSA agent makes you a figure of mockery, they might fondle people a bit less.
As for how they take it out on the people behind me, that's their decision. They're adults, not dogs, their behavior is their responsibility, not mine.
This is a really shitty attitude to have towards your fellow human beings. Do you also shame people working at McDonalds for enabling their rich corporate overlords? Do you hate gas station attendants for contributing to global warming?
If you really want to make a statement, stop flying and stop paying money into the TSA.
Neither of those two parties is doing anything wrong; you just invented fanciful abstract offenses to be argumentative. TSA agents are doing something concretely wrong every time they grope my genitals, even if it is sanctioned by the state.
It's certainly unoptimal that we'd ever have to be rude to people to change things for the better, but we don't actually live in a wholly civil society, evidenced by the fact that my genitals get groped every time I book a flight.
I've had my genitalia groped exactly zero times by the TSA. I'm guessing that you probably got put on some TSA shitlist, probably from behavior like the above, or you're an ordinary person of color, not sure which.
>If you really want to make a statement, stop flying and stop paying money into the TSA.
This is a non-argument. Flying is a part of modern life. For a large percentage of the population, refusing to fly would lose them their job, as would refusing to use a mobile phone or insisting on being paid with cash.
It is self evident to any rational person that it is acceptable to attempt to change a system rather than opting out of it if one sees a problem with that system.
>This is a really shitty attitude to have towards your fellow human beings. Do you also shame people working at McDonalds for enabling their rich corporate overlords? Do you hate gas station attendants for contributing to global warming?
I don't see the connection to McDonalds employees. Please explain how McDonalds employees are like TSA workers.
From what I've seen over the last few years, the metal detectors in many airports also serve the purpose of randomly selecting for body scans and/or explosives checks. I imagine it's an attempt to reduce discrimination and bias by humans.
It's likely that had it detected metal it would have made a different sound / colour. What you heard was probably the RNG landing on "check them for explosives".
It's also interesting to compare the prevailing opinion here on the TSA with that of the FAA, given that they serve the same industry.
It appears that most people on HN feel that TSA regulations are pointless theater and should be weakened or eliminated, while the FAA is to be blamed for not exercising their regulatory power strongly enough (especially in light of the 737 MAX).
Both agencies seem to follow a similar methodology: when there's an incident, analyze the cause and enact regulations that would have prevented it, building up a system leads to fewer incidents over time. And they seem to have led to similar results -- over the past decade, there has been only one passenger fatality on commercial flights within the US due to accidents, and zero due to hijackings/bombings.
Why the difference in opinion? Is it that TSA regulations are personally annoying to travelers while FAA
regulations are mostly invisible to passengers?
I don't claim to speak for the parent, but my difference in opinion comes from the fact that when tested, the red team managed to get banned weapons and mock explosives through TSA 95% of the time.
> Both agencies seem to follow a similar methodology: when there's an incident, analyze the cause and enact regulations that would have prevented it, building up a system leads to fewer incidents over time. And they seem to have led to similar results -- over the past decade, there has been only one passenger fatality on commercial flights within the US due to accidents, and zero due to hijackings/bombings.
Because that's not actually the case? Only a small part of the FAA's activities is post hoc incident analysis. They do quite a bit of scientific studies, certification, licensing etc. And in fact the most recent outrage against the FAA has been the feeling that they have bene derelict in their duties in regards to the 737-MAX by adopting the problematic self-regulatory approach used by, say, the Department of Agriculture.
By contrast, the TSA (which is much smaller than the FAA and has, for all intents and purposes, only one responsibility) on has never demonstrated competency, clearly awards contracts based on cronyism (the millimeter wave system have no science supporting them), engage in absurd scope creep (checking bags on some train or bus stations, pretending to be law enforcement) and reducing security from where it was before the agency was created (e.g. "TSA locks" which have permitted an increase in theft from bags) etc.
It is an interesting question. For the FAA, there is at least data that the number of fatal accidents has decreased, but it's hard to say for sure if that is due to the FAA.
Sounds like this will be less damaging for photographic film? Not that the carry on x-ray scanners were bad in the first place but the less damage potential the better.
"While the CT pilot program didn’t show reduced wait times at participating airports, the agency is expecting the technology will speed up lines as passengers and staffers get used to the new processes. "
So, they just agreed to $97 million worth of new technology with no proven benefit. Great.
New technology with no proven benefit in the airport security context, which is going to be applied to every passenger's luggage for no extra charge, and will retain it's tremendous cost in the truly life-saving medical environment.
'Some of the devices came with "detector cards" which were programmed, the fraudsters claimed, to detect everything from explosives, to human beings and dollar bills through concrete, water and from great distances'
We’ve had this (or something similar) at Amsterdam Schiphol for a while now. With the scanners here, everything stays in the bag, electronics and liquids. The time savings are quite noticeable, because people are so slow at taking apart their baggage. Now they just throw on their bag, take off their coat, and maybe their boots, and they’re done, easily saving 1/3 of the time spent at other airport security lines.
Pretty sure they had this at McCarren when I was there late last year, just had to dump my bag in the tray and walk through the metal detector (didn't even need to take my shoes off - although they had a sniffer dog earlier in the line)
Seemed to work OK, well, until my bag got pushed into the "additional screening" line and had to open it up for the guy to look at
It's revolting how much money will be spent by the American government on mandatory luggage CT scans, especially considering the cost such scans have in the medical context where lives are truly at stake...
CT scans are actually fairly cheap, as far as medicinal imaging goes, unless you need to acquire a ton of slices really quickly (e.g., to image the heart). The 256 slice ones can run into the millions, but you can get a used 8 slice machine for ~five figures, and there aren’t a lot of consumables.
An MRI machine will easily run into the millions ($4M or so for a 3T, much more for the newer high field ones), and you need a steady supply of cryogens to keep the magnet cold.
254 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 233 ms ] threadthat's an interesting thought. May be if the price of a ticket could be made cheaper by cutting out these TSA bullshit, the market could correct this problem.
I live in Harrison, AR. I can fly to Memphis or Dallas for like $40 each way if I book a couple of weeks out. There is no TSA in Harrison, and the airline operates from their own hangars, not the general terminal on the other end.
I usually travel with a handgun, which I of course declare in my checked bag. They hand me my bag back and I carry it to the plane with me, and in a couple of instances have even asked me to put it under my seat due to limited cargo space. I’ve been told multiple times that I shouldn’t even bother declaring it by airport staff but I’m not clear enough on the laws there to take that advice.
Probably a 9 minute video that hijacks your IFE about which button to press if you see a shoe bomber.
[0] https://www.merrell.com/US/en/jungle-moc/17703M.html
Seeing as the TSA has never caught a terrorist (and has missed several) I’d bet a statistical case could be made that their security lines are more dangerous to the public than any terrorist attacks they may have prevented.
The only time I ever made polite insistence to a TSA Agent, that day.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And there is more radiation in total since now there's there are multiple images, while before it was just a single one per bag.
I'd also be concerned about backscatter going out the sides, since there is more radiation in total.
All that said, the shielding should take care of it.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/hhe/reports/pdfs/2003-0206-3067.pd...
> Given the strengths and weaknesses of this study, the need for a routine radiation dosimetry program for TSA screeners can neither be justified nor refuted at this time.
I assumed above that people would read the link before responding.
I often travel with a big Ziploc bag of stickers (life of a Developer Evangelist). Have started removing it from my bag for security because it usually triggers a search.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/2018/03/27/tsa-might-a...
While the CT pilot program didn’t show reduced wait times at participating airports, the agency is expecting the technology will speed up lines as passengers and staffers get used to the new processes. Pekoske said he expected more staff to be needed initially as the new machines are put in place.
> For example, TSA is working to develop new algorithms that use machine learning approaches to discriminate between threats and benign objects, making the screening process more effective and efficient. Machine learning also offers a way to screen for all prohibited items (explosives, firearms, sharp objects, etc.) automatically. It is anticipated that machine learning algorithms not only will improve security effectiveness but also will support automation in future security systems, thereby enhancing operation efficiency and improving passenger experience through increased throughput and decreased false alarm rates. More broadly, machine learning algorithms can be applied to assess security performance and provide system-level improvements beyond performance enhancements realized at individual screening operations.
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/TSA%20-...
It is worth noting the limitations of such techniques: Familiarity. Back when Apple switched their Macbooks from HDDs to SSDs, a lot of early purchasers got flagged at TSA because their laptop didn't match a profile (i.e. looking for a spinning stack of platters).
With CT technology, we could see even more nuanced differences get flagged for unusual.
Good, that's more data to learn from and that would only be a minor issue for a short period of time for new devices. How often have you flown with something that other passengers hadn't likely have flown numerous times with before you? Even if the system picks out 0.1% of items for manual classification and training, that's still mountains and mountains of data for it to learn from and that would only take a tiny fraction of the time for airport security to identify compared to what they deal with now.
Just don’t get consistent with luggage and suddenly go unique!
The real fun starts when they create a social graph of people carrying similar things.
For your safety of course.
It probably could feed into an interesting friend-making system if they assigned seats based on the info.
Keep shoes, keep laptop in bag, keep jacket on, way shorter line...I’m simulateously happy that not everyone is doing it and dumbfounded why anyone who travels more than a few times a year wouldn’t have it by now.
Global Entry is the best part because after a long international flight the last thing you probably want to do is wait another hour or three on some long passport line.
I’ve long believed the only solution is to mandate that Congress travel as regular citizens so they realize how slow and pointless the process has become.
They always end the pat down early and move on to the next person.
Global entry only covers the line for the passport check. You still need to due the next line for luggage (hello LAX) with everyone else.
Yeah, with Global Entry it's worth paying for the priority baggage otherwise you'll just spend 45 minutes waiting by yourself in the baggage claim area as the bag belts get clogged up and stop with the bags of the passengers still stuck in the passport lines.
Also, the line I am referring to is the baggage check for customs. First comes the passport check, then you retrieve your luggage, and then you go through customs again with your luggage (which is never checked). Global Entry does not help you with that last line, which can be brutal at some airports.
I suspect having had that thought was a common differentiator between the folks who were on board with the plan at least until Iraq, and those who were already going "hey can we wait a minute?" before the invasion of Afghanistan.
Thinking about it more, it occurs to me that it could also just be security theater.
The elephant deterrence strategy?
I read this sign as a TSA worker shouted every 30 seconds to the shuffling line about how everyone needed to take out all laptops, "ipads", cameras, etc.
I wonder if it was a pilot program. Or more likely, just part of the constantly shifting fabric of pointless theater. I fully expect these new machines are primarily to sell machines, and not to fulfill any other purpose.
CMH->MCO ‘remove your belts please’
MCO->SEA ‘keep your belts on’
SEA->CMH ‘i’d recommend you take your belt off’
"Agent": Sir, I recommend you take your shoes off.
Dad: That's okay. I don't need to take my shoes off.
"Agent": Sir, I'm going to need you to take your shoes off NOW!
In addition to challenging the authority of the Memphis TSA agent, my dad is half Japanese and looks quite a bit less white than I do.
I'd love to see law enforcement trained in using basic, declarative sentences: "Sir, regulation X.Y.Z says you have to take your shoes off. Please step aside, do so, and rejoin the line."
I don't believe this is required (or even typical) in the US. Law enforcement is generally allowed to make non-mandatory requests and hope that you comply with them. A prime example is needing to explicitly invoke your right to remain silent (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127352...). You might also look up videos of people refusing to cooperate with the immigration checkpoints in various states along the Mexican border.
TSA has made flying for him and people like him so incredibly difficult. He's just opted out. I don't blame him, either, though it does make visits more challenging now.
I mean honestly.... Why do people like this have to take their shoes off and manage all of their carry-ons and personals into bins and onto belts and ... The entire farce of the TSA is all so callous and genuinely stupid.
When looked at like that, TSA costs more total lifetimes than have ever been taken through terrorist attacks.
The FAA website stats that 630,000,000 people fly per year. If each of them takes 10 minutes to cross the line, that's 105,000,000 man-years lost per year...
Otherwise, thanks for doing the math on how much of our lives is killed by security screening.
I'm wearing a smart watch, of course, with plenty of metal in its construction.
Nowadays, I just stash anything not made from cotton in the bag to go through the X-ray well before I get into range where TSA officers can given contradicting instructions and then berate me for not following their directives.
You are describing the the usual daily cluster-fuck of life in the military, and in fact, government service in general. I don't know why it is that way, but it is. I have not experienced it in my now 20 years of life in the private sector, but back when I was in the military it's just like that, all the time.
Once I even accidentally packed a small toolkit in my carry-on rather than my checked luggage and they let me keep it!
It bothered me a lot, to the extent that I still have vivid memories of it, and I also hate the TSA with every fiber of my being.
So I think it might just be a personality thing.
Even for frequent fliers, the TSA is pretty far down on any rational list of complaints about government. I fly almost every week, but in the past 12 months I have probably spent a lot more time at city hall on a stupid residential parking permit than I did in (non-customs) airport security lines.
In addition to personality, a lot of people project much larger political ideologies onto the TSA. You see a lot of that even in this comment section.
Only if focusing exclusively on direct interactions.
From an ideological perspective, I don't think it's projection (your wording) to observe that in their current form they align closely with both general government authoritarianism and the exercise of federal power over the states.
From a pragmatic perspective, I think it's perfectly reasonable to be alarmed about how such security measures seem to normalize invasive government behaviors in general. Societal norms and values aren't static, so how we do things in the present can and does affect how the public views things in the future.
I was sure I was about to be detained for the knife, but they simply told me I could leave it there or exit the security line and mail it back to my house for a $15 fee. I took that mailer option, walked out of the line unescorted with a knife, filled out a mailing form, put the knife in the bag, and went through security again.
This most recent trip, I checked carefully for knives before heading to SFO. When I entered the line, they were low on bins. I started taking things out and asked if I needed to remove the Kindle and game system. The TSA agent said I could leave them in, so I did. By the time I got to the other end, I was pulled aside and questioned, as they checked for any suspicious residue on the devices. They eventually handed me the devices back and escorted me to the beginning of the line, where I had to go through all over again, this time with the Kindle and game system in a bin.
It actually makes it quite hard to not start seeing everything and everyone through a suspicious lens. The odds are good that there are additional structural reinforcements. They probably don't get rewarded for anything else. They may even get actively penalized for not behaving that way.
At my corporate job, I was instructed to a. Look for a reason to pay a claim rather than looking for a reason to deny it and b. Look out for the customer rather than cover my own ass.
Then I had a claim for a benefit that was only paid once a year. I knew the six week period it occurred in, but not the actual date. I got dinged by Quality for paying it.
My ultimate solution: I no longer work there. But most people just do what they need to do to get their damn paycheck. Fighting the good fight is usually not what they get rewarded for.
Office Space:
"I have 7 bosses. If I do something right, no one cares. If I do something wrong, everyone comes down on me like a ton of bricks. I spend all my time trying to not get yelled at."
(Or words to that effect.)
In Newark, I put my backpack in the plastic bin. Vegas, put the bag directly on the conveyor belt. LaGuardia, stack the bins after picking up your items. Vegas, do not stack the bins.
Pro tip: if you’re crafting aircraft security regulations for a living, get on one of those aircraft to get together to create a harmonized set of regulations.
Bought mine at BestBuy. Samsonite 5580680. The zipper goes all the way down so the bag is split in 2, a pouch holding your laptop and the other half holds the rest of your stuff. This lets TSA X-Ray equipment inspect your laptop only without cables, cellphone, and gadgets on the way.
TSA continues to fulfill its mission flawlessly.
Indeed that's the more likely. I recently had a TSA moron tell me that my iPad did not need to come out because "it's not a computer." I explained that it might not be a laptop but it was still very much a computer. You can't make this stuff up.
There was a time where what you say was true, but they've broadened access.
---
[1] https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-...
More customers paying for pre-check incentivizes TSA to make the regular experience comparatively worse.
Minimize the costs to you and just pay them. You only get one life.
In the long run, it will make you more efficient, and hopefully provide you with greater resources to fight them.
Not in passengers but in the officials: what if somebody sneaks something in, and blows a plane? To alleviate that, a "we are doing all we can" CYA strategy should be in place.
But one time I was trying to bring a fish, and had a next to impossible time trying to get them to agree that water was a "life sustaining liquid" as defined by their exemptions on the 3oz rule wrt to fish.
There was a terrorist plot to do this, which was caught by the security services, and then despite the terrorists being caught the liquids ban was put into place forever more to stop future attacks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_...
It sounds like you're arguing that this regulation is not necessary any more because that particular plot was foiled. I find that line of reasoning odd, given that the 2006 attack was the last in a string of plots using liquid explosives to target airliners. The type of group which carried out attacks like this still exists, with similar goals.
Given that it's reasonably effective at deterring a technique which has actually been used (the Japan test run in the 90s) and which has been attempted multiple times, I think it's possibly the least objectionable regulation. It doesn't address all modes of attack (obviously), and it's very debatable whether the likelihood of attack makes the invasiveness of the countermeasure acceptable, but unlike body scanners it's at least effective at deterring the specific modality it's aimed at.
A pretty good summary and a bonus foreshadowing of this article.
I have had a pretty good experience with the new scanners. I have global entry/Precheck and one remaining headache with the old scanners was remembering to take my double walked flask out and show the TSA that it was empty by removing the cap. The new scanners can see that it’s empty from inside my bag, which is very handy.
An entire new line of single use toiletry products was invented to meet this regulation.
Just like you have for instance "telefonino" as the diminutive of "telefono" in Italian, literally "small telephone". And in German you add -chen or -lein to words to create the diminutive, so "Hund" becomes "Hündchen" (adding an umlaut as well, if applicable).
Generally I think it's very common for a lot of languages to add a cutesy suffix to the base word, in order to create the diminutive.
The much more likely scenario is that the politcians, who sometimes have ownership interest in the companies that get government contracts, want to be able to sell new equipment. This is also supported by the constant equipment updates we see at TSA lines.
> The much more likely scenario is...
Why do you phrase this as an either or situation? "My conspiracy is more likely than your conspiracy" as if there can't be more than one conspiracy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_...
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=563298...
Just because the FDA requires raw-milk cheeses to have aged for at least 60 days in order to be sold in the USA, that doesn't mean you can't bring some in with you and consume it.
Our screening is worthless
https://www.schneier.com/news/archives/2008/11/the_things_he...
My wife was also wearing my son in a wrap at the time and just walked through a metal detector, no searching pockets or taking off the wrap or anything like that. Anyone trying to sneak contraband through could just carry it through with the baby knowing it won't be searched and then just leave after exchanging the contraband past security and walk out. You could easily sneak 10lbs worth of contraband through so long as it wouldn't set off the metal detector.
Unfortunately, the UK doesn’t have the same simple exemption for contact lens solution bottles, so they seized it while I was transiting.
There’s bit of irony from seizing something that anyone can fly in with.
It serves the purpose of removing liability for security from airlines, which is the major reason why it was created. It also serves the purpose of getting people used to progressively more intrusive government inspection during routine situations.
> and it seems that no entity is able to stop or dismantle it.
There are entities that are able to, but they don't want to, because they like what it does.
1) A fucking racket.
2) Totally worth it!
I just cannot understand the logic.
people as an individual also don't deal with fears rationally. This is exploited by those in power (or whoever that can) to further their own agenda - whether it's greed or control or whatever.
There are literally thousands of other things at which it exce.
How many millions were killed by government in the 20th century? WW1, WWII, concentration camps, gulags, Mao's great leap forward, Vietnam, and the list goes on. War has been a constant for most of the 21st century.
There is a strong argument that much of the above would not have been feasible without large centralized states.
Precluding that was small states engaged in constant warfare. Note that I'm not saying that centralized states are necessarily the solution, but that the US Federal Government has been successful in its objective of preventing further World Wars and that itself is a huge achievement.
"Pinker devotes some 10 pages (pp. 228-238) to this case, and the central information is condensed in a single graph (p. 230) depicting the “rate of death in conflicts in greater Europe, 1400-2000.” If anything, however, this graph demonstrates the opposite of Pinker’s progress thesis. What it shows is that the longest period of (relative) peacefulness and low levels of violence were the almost 200 years from 1400 until the very end of the 16th century. Yet this period falls precisely within the longer period of the European Middle Ages (and marks its end), and the Middle Ages, as I have argued before, are a prime example of a State-less social order. (Interestingly, Pinker concurs with this assessment of medieval Europe as State-less, but he then fails to see that this assessment implies, according to his own data, an empirical refutation of his thesis.)
And it gets worse for Pinker’s case. According to the same graph, the following historical period, from the late 16th century on to the present, is characterized by three huge spikes in the level of violence. The first spike, from the late 16th century until the Westphalian Peace in 1648, is largely associated with the 30-Years-War; the second, from the late 18th century until 1815 and somewhat less steep than the first, is associated with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; and the third and greatest spike, from 1914-1945, is associated with the 20th century’s two World Wars. As well, for all intermediate periods, the level of violence remained well above that of medieval times and this level was only reached again, three centuries later, during the period from 1815-1914, and again during the post-WW II era. All in all, then, the record for post-medieval Europe in terms of violence appears rather depressive. And yet, the entire period, from the late 16th century until today, is the era of States, which Pinker considers the driving forces of a “civilizing process.” "
https://mises.org/wire/libertarian-quest-grand-historical-na... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTWrFTFxGbk
Gang wars are much tinier than state wars.
"Whoa.. whatever you just did, do it again."
or
"Can I have her give me the pat down instead?"
And you can really irritate them if you say the little spiel along with them. It rattles them.
Instead, write your congresscritters. Nearly all of them fly every week, so they feel your pain.
They're unaccountable, ineffective, and completely useless. It's a modern day Work Project.
We really shouldn't tolerate people like that though, should we? If you don't respect TSA agents, it's your duty to remind them of that. Our ability to change the TSA through the democratic process has been on the wane for years now, but we can still force change by making it hard for the TSA to hire. If they have to double their salaries because being a TSA agent makes you a figure of mockery, they might fondle people a bit less.
As for how they take it out on the people behind me, that's their decision. They're adults, not dogs, their behavior is their responsibility, not mine.
If you really want to make a statement, stop flying and stop paying money into the TSA.
It's certainly unoptimal that we'd ever have to be rude to people to change things for the better, but we don't actually live in a wholly civil society, evidenced by the fact that my genitals get groped every time I book a flight.
>or you're an ordinary person of color, not sure which.
Yeah, and that's fine, right? We shouldn't go out of our way to tell the TSA that's not acceptable or anything /s
This is a non-argument. Flying is a part of modern life. For a large percentage of the population, refusing to fly would lose them their job, as would refusing to use a mobile phone or insisting on being paid with cash.
It is self evident to any rational person that it is acceptable to attempt to change a system rather than opting out of it if one sees a problem with that system.
>This is a really shitty attitude to have towards your fellow human beings. Do you also shame people working at McDonalds for enabling their rich corporate overlords? Do you hate gas station attendants for contributing to global warming?
I don't see the connection to McDonalds employees. Please explain how McDonalds employees are like TSA workers.
It's likely that had it detected metal it would have made a different sound / colour. What you heard was probably the RNG landing on "check them for explosives".
It appears that most people on HN feel that TSA regulations are pointless theater and should be weakened or eliminated, while the FAA is to be blamed for not exercising their regulatory power strongly enough (especially in light of the 737 MAX).
Both agencies seem to follow a similar methodology: when there's an incident, analyze the cause and enact regulations that would have prevented it, building up a system leads to fewer incidents over time. And they seem to have led to similar results -- over the past decade, there has been only one passenger fatality on commercial flights within the US due to accidents, and zero due to hijackings/bombings.
Why the difference in opinion? Is it that TSA regulations are personally annoying to travelers while FAA regulations are mostly invisible to passengers?
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/exclusive-undercover-dhs-test...
Because that's not actually the case? Only a small part of the FAA's activities is post hoc incident analysis. They do quite a bit of scientific studies, certification, licensing etc. And in fact the most recent outrage against the FAA has been the feeling that they have bene derelict in their duties in regards to the 737-MAX by adopting the problematic self-regulatory approach used by, say, the Department of Agriculture.
By contrast, the TSA (which is much smaller than the FAA and has, for all intents and purposes, only one responsibility) on has never demonstrated competency, clearly awards contracts based on cronyism (the millimeter wave system have no science supporting them), engage in absurd scope creep (checking bags on some train or bus stations, pretending to be law enforcement) and reducing security from where it was before the agency was created (e.g. "TSA locks" which have permitted an increase in theft from bags) etc.
Not at all the same.
http://planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm
If xray is damaging, this will be more damaging.
So, they just agreed to $97 million worth of new technology with no proven benefit. Great.
'Some of the devices came with "detector cards" which were programmed, the fraudsters claimed, to detect everything from explosives, to human beings and dollar bills through concrete, water and from great distances'
Seemed to work OK, well, until my bag got pushed into the "additional screening" line and had to open it up for the guy to look at
An MRI machine will easily run into the millions ($4M or so for a 3T, much more for the newer high field ones), and you need a steady supply of cryogens to keep the magnet cold.
I'm in perfect health & if I have a choice I never fly. I take the Amtrak or drive even though they are more expensive options.
Looks like we'll have to concede defeat to the security theatre monsters. The terrorists have really won!!