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Ok, the TSA sucks big time and should be abolished. I get that. But what about the alternatives? In this day and age it's just not thinkable to let people ente

Ok, the TSA sucks big time and should be abolished. I get that. But what about the alternatives? In this day and age it's just not thinkable to let people enter a plane without a security check. So you need some entity performing it. I think one factor on providing successful and to the passenger acceptable (they will never be pleasant) security checks is adequate funding and employing adequately compensated professionals. It's weird that my wait time on any European airport I ever use is literally always below 10 minutes and usually much less than that. And it's not that checks are less thorough around here. It really just seems to be a funding issue.

MichaelBurge 11y ago
I think the original plan was that the TSA would set some rules and make the airports comply with them, and the airports would be responsible for doing screenings. Somehow that got warped into government agents doing the work. Why is it 'unthinkable' to let people enter a plane without a security check? We let people get on a bus without a security check. If you're worried specifically about someone taking over the plane and crashing it into a building, you can protect the pilots separately from the people. International flights are a little different, because someone already needs to verify a passport. Even there, I don't think the security checks are actually necessary. I'm definitely opposed to classifying this as a 'funding issue' and giving the TSA even more money.
- CaptainZapp 11y ago
  Then we probably have to agree to disagree. Air travel is in that sense special that you and up to 500 of your fellow passengers are in a metal tube in 12'000 metres height, which makes it conceptually a bit different from a bus, or even a train. Cockpit doors are already re-inforced, but the cockpit is not the only sensitive part of a plane when a passenger wants to cause mayhem with a high powered rifle, or a - pistol. In addition I, for one, prefer to take a flight without a bunch of open carry zealots believing that they have a god given rigth to take their guns everywhere and which would surely wind up armed on commercial flights. But again, we seem to have a completely different opinion here and I have no urge to try to convince you why I don't think it's a good idea to abolish security checks for flights.
  - MichaelBurge 11y ago
    You can ban the guns on planes and fine people if anyone spots them. That should discourage open carry zealots. You could also ban carry-on bags, so it's harder to hide them. I guess people could bring on knives, pistols, or box-cutters; I don't know if there's a technical way to make planes resistant enough to these to give the pilot a chance to land in an emergency. There's still room for disagreement even after all of these, though.
  - saint_fiasco 11y ago
    A normal metal detector will deter the open carry zealots. What's wrong with pre-911 security + reinforced cockpits?
    - CaptainZapp 11y ago
      Nothing, except that bags where scanned prior to 9/11. What was essentially added was prohibitions to take a nail clipper onto a plane (which, of course is utterly ludicrous), the rules regarding liquids and the whole cowboy attitude (apparently mostly in the US). Reinforcing the cockpit doors was actually one of the better ideas. Unless, that is, you have a psychotic, suicidal first officer. But that's a whole different story and anyway couldn't have been caught by airport security.
- panglott 11y ago
  You're thinking about this backwards. Passengers are willing to tolerate hour-long intrusive security screenings before boarding an airplane, so we should look at implementing security screenings on buses and trains. Right now, they're totally unsecure!
- avn2109 11y ago
  >> "...the original plan was that the TSA would set some rules and make the airports comply with them..." The TSA was created solely to transfer liability from the airlines to the government in order to prevent the airlines from being sued into oblivion after 9/11. As nice side effects, it trains the population to accept the trappings of the police state and to disregard the sanctity of the 4th Amendment while proliferating bureaucracy. But the main purpose is corporate welfare for commercial passenger aviation.
- superuser2 11y ago
  > the airports would be responsible for doing screenings Airports are generally productions of municipal governments and badly mismanaged, money-losing construction projects. I don't anticipate county-managed security programs being any less awful than federally-managed security programs.
mcherm 11y ago
> In this day and age it's just not thinkable to let people enter a plane without a security check. Few would suggest that. But the security measure that were in place in the US prior to 9-11 took far less time and cost much less, and in my opinion provided a similar level of security. > And it's not that checks are less thorough around [any European airport ]. Really? Do they require you to remove shoes and belts, plus all items (even scraps of paper) from your pockets? Do they require you to stand motionless, hands raised for 1-2 mins to be scanned by a millimeter wave or backscatter x-ray machine or submit to a 15 min careful patdown and swabbing? > It really just seems to be a funding issue. I disagree -- I think it is largely an issue of what security measures they choose to utilize.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > > And it's not that checks are less thorough around [any European airport ]. > Really? Do they require you to remove shoes and belts, plus all items (even scraps of paper) from your pockets? Do they require you to stand motionless, hands raised for 1-2 mins to be scanned by a millimeter wave or backscatter x-ray machine or submit to a 15 min careful patdown and swabbing? "Intrusive" is not the same thing as "thorough". You are describing how intrusive the US measures are. How thorough the measures are depends on their effectiveness at actually detecting what they set out to detect (all the information that has come out about the tests of the US system in that regard have shown that, while intrusive, it is absolutely not thorough.)
dragonwriter 11y ago
> But what about the alternatives? The alternative is returning the responsibility and the accountability to the industry. The nationalization of air travel security wasn't done to improve security, it was to done to save the airlines by removing the potential drag of liability for future security incidents from them by nationalizing a function for which they had been responsible. This hasn't improved security, but it has meant that the screening process is now provided by a cost-insensitive bureaucracy with the excuse of national security to avoid transparency and accountability.

MichaelBurge 11y ago

I think the original plan was that the TSA would set some rules and make the airports comply with them, and the airports would be responsible for doing screenings. Somehow that got warped into government agents doing the work. Why is it 'unthinkable' to let people enter a plane without a security check? We let people get on a bus without a security check. If you're worried specifically about someone taking over the plane and crashing it into a building, you can protect the pilots separately from the people. International flights are a little different, because someone already needs to verify a passport. Even there, I don't think the security checks are actually necessary. I'm definitely opposed to classifying this as a 'funding issue' and giving the TSA even more money.

CaptainZapp 11y ago
Then we probably have to agree to disagree. Air travel is in that sense special that you and up to 500 of your fellow passengers are in a metal tube in 12'000 metres height, which makes it conceptually a bit different from a bus, or even a train. Cockpit doors are already re-inforced, but the cockpit is not the only sensitive part of a plane when a passenger wants to cause mayhem with a high powered rifle, or a - pistol. In addition I, for one, prefer to take a flight without a bunch of open carry zealots believing that they have a god given rigth to take their guns everywhere and which would surely wind up armed on commercial flights. But again, we seem to have a completely different opinion here and I have no urge to try to convince you why I don't think it's a good idea to abolish security checks for flights.
- MichaelBurge 11y ago
  You can ban the guns on planes and fine people if anyone spots them. That should discourage open carry zealots. You could also ban carry-on bags, so it's harder to hide them. I guess people could bring on knives, pistols, or box-cutters; I don't know if there's a technical way to make planes resistant enough to these to give the pilot a chance to land in an emergency. There's still room for disagreement even after all of these, though.
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  A normal metal detector will deter the open carry zealots. What's wrong with pre-911 security + reinforced cockpits?
  - CaptainZapp 11y ago
    Nothing, except that bags where scanned prior to 9/11. What was essentially added was prohibitions to take a nail clipper onto a plane (which, of course is utterly ludicrous), the rules regarding liquids and the whole cowboy attitude (apparently mostly in the US). Reinforcing the cockpit doors was actually one of the better ideas. Unless, that is, you have a psychotic, suicidal first officer. But that's a whole different story and anyway couldn't have been caught by airport security.
panglott 11y ago
You're thinking about this backwards. Passengers are willing to tolerate hour-long intrusive security screenings before boarding an airplane, so we should look at implementing security screenings on buses and trains. Right now, they're totally unsecure!
avn2109 11y ago
>> "...the original plan was that the TSA would set some rules and make the airports comply with them..." The TSA was created solely to transfer liability from the airlines to the government in order to prevent the airlines from being sued into oblivion after 9/11. As nice side effects, it trains the population to accept the trappings of the police state and to disregard the sanctity of the 4th Amendment while proliferating bureaucracy. But the main purpose is corporate welfare for commercial passenger aviation.
superuser2 11y ago
> the airports would be responsible for doing screenings Airports are generally productions of municipal governments and badly mismanaged, money-losing construction projects. I don't anticipate county-managed security programs being any less awful than federally-managed security programs.

mcherm 11y ago

> In this day and age it's just not thinkable to let people enter a plane without a security check. Few would suggest that. But the security measure that were in place in the US prior to 9-11 took far less time and cost much less, and in my opinion provided a similar level of security. > And it's not that checks are less thorough around [any European airport ]. Really? Do they require you to remove shoes and belts, plus all items (even scraps of paper) from your pockets? Do they require you to stand motionless, hands raised for 1-2 mins to be scanned by a millimeter wave or backscatter x-ray machine or submit to a 15 min careful patdown and swabbing? > It really just seems to be a funding issue. I disagree -- I think it is largely an issue of what security measures they choose to utilize.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> > And it's not that checks are less thorough around [any European airport ]. > Really? Do they require you to remove shoes and belts, plus all items (even scraps of paper) from your pockets? Do they require you to stand motionless, hands raised for 1-2 mins to be scanned by a millimeter wave or backscatter x-ray machine or submit to a 15 min careful patdown and swabbing? "Intrusive" is not the same thing as "thorough". You are describing how intrusive the US measures are. How thorough the measures are depends on their effectiveness at actually detecting what they set out to detect (all the information that has come out about the tests of the US system in that regard have shown that, while intrusive, it is absolutely not thorough.)

dragonwriter 11y ago

> But what about the alternatives? The alternative is returning the responsibility and the accountability to the industry. The nationalization of air travel security wasn't done to improve security, it was to done to save the airlines by removing the potential drag of liability for future security incidents from them by nationalizing a function for which they had been responsible. This hasn't improved security, but it has meant that the screening process is now provided by a cost-insensitive bureaucracy with the excuse of national security to avoid transparency and accountability.