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The sensible fix for long TSA lines is to eliminate the TSA and stop engaging in this silly security theater. It is demonstrably the case that the TSA security
by darawk 10y ago
The sensible fix for long TSA lines is to eliminate the TSA and stop engaging in this silly security theater. It is demonstrably the case that the TSA security procedures are so porous that they can't stop regular people from accidentally bringing weapons on board that they forgot about. The idea that they have prevented any terrorist attacks is ludicrous, yet they have imposed an enormous cost on air travel.
Eliminate the TSA and replace them with nothing. Cockpit doors are now reinforced, so the worst thing someone could do is blow up a plane, and if all you want to do is blow up a hundred people or so, you don't need to be on a plane to do it.
- curuinor 10y agoI mean, TFA says basically that, with a recognition that you still have to have bits of security. I liked the idea about shipping off people to consult at foreign airports.
- Diederich 10y agoI've posted this here before. I have accidentally brought my Gerber multitool (which has a nice blade in it) through TSA two separate times. Agreed: replace it with nothing, or close to nothing.
- gerbilly 10y agoOr use this alternative (quoting from the article) >Deploy more TSA staff overseas — in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America ...
- MichaelBurge 10y agoA strong president could probably do something here. I think the original intent of the law was that they'd issue guidelines for airports to follow, rather than do the inspections themselves. So a president might be able to fire everyone and replace them with a tiny agency that occasionally sends inspectors to Boeing to check that the windows and frame are bulletproof and that the cockpit is reinforced.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoIt's not Trump's guts that anyone is worried about, it's his narcissistic, babbling, bigoted brains.
- pessimizer 10y agoI'm pretty sure that Trump is going to be pro expanding anything that involves subcontractors, especially construction subcontractors. A vote for Trump is a vote for Berlusconi.
- darawk 10y agoYa unfortunately 'strong' presidents also tend to be authoritarian, and love things like the TSA.
- greedo 10y agoSo basically the last two Presidents?
- jessaustin 10y agoISTM this comment originally had something about Trump? Anyway it isn't clear to me that even an imperial president unilaterally could fire most of the personnel in any agency, even one as useless as TSA or CIA.
- MichaelBurge 10y agoThat used to be exactly the case. They changed the laws since then since each president would fire everyone and replace them with his own people. Now you have to be hired for merit and can't be fired for political affiliation. This is the "Civil Service". Restructuring an agency(and removing the positions) is different from replacing people, though. I'm sure there's something that could be done.
- jessaustin 10y agoSure that's what they tell us. In fact the spoils system served an important purpose: it limited the size of the executive branch, since you can only hire so many people at once. So much for that.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoIt might be worth having a small panel or advisory committee with good intelligence clearance, which periodically evaluates aviation threats and realistic ways to handle them. In cases where there are no good solutions, as you suggest, no security theater will be engaged in.
- criley2 10y agoWe do audit the TSA. They fail about 95% of the time (67 fails out of 70 tests) in official audits: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/politics/tsa-failed-undercover-airport-screening-tests/ http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/politics/tsa-failed-undercover...
- Aelinsaar 10y agoI'm not suggesting an audit of the TSA, since the TSA does nothing useful. I'm suggesting an audit of the likely threats, likely solutions, costs, etc. I.E. the thinking that led to reinforcing cockpit doors. The TSA doesn't enter into this, since they are much MUCH worse than flipping a coin.
- someguydave 10y agoExcept what do you mean by 'intelligence clearance'? The reason we have to screen everyone is because of the egalitarian jealousies of the masses.
- MatthaeusHarris 10y agoIntelligence as in information, not as in smarts. Intelligence clearance = access to classified information.
- someguydave 10y agoYes, I understand that was what you meant. What qualifies someone to have a clearance?
- rhino369 10y ago>so the worst thing someone could do is blow up a plane, and if all you want to do is blow up a hundred people or so, you don't need to be on a plane to do it. There is a reason we had security on airplanes before 9/11. We aren't willing to accept this risk. Plus airplanes are a carnage and terror multiplier. A bomb that could take down a plane would do less damage on the ground. And people are irrationally fearful of flying. One 737 blown up every 3 months would still make flying less risky than driving, but it would send the airline industry into a tailspin and TSA would come back stronger than ever.
- ghaff 10y agoAnd for that matter, there are at least cursory security inspections at all sorts of government facilities, among other places. One doesn't need to be a fan of current TSA procedures--I'm certainly not--to believe that it probably makes sense to have a modicum of airport security in place.
- rayiner 10y agoAlso, hijackings and airplane bombings were common before modern security protocols (in the late 1960's and 1970's): http://listverse.com/2012/10/27/top-10-us-airline-hijackings-of-the-sixties; http://listverse.com/2012/10/27/top-10-us-airline-hijackings... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/world/middleeast/airline-hijacking-history.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/world/middleeast/airline-h... ("By the mid-1970s, at least 150 planes had been “skyjacked” in the United States alone[.]"); http://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2014/06/Successful-Hijackings-Graph-from-Electro-Security-Paper.jpg http://99percentinvisible.org/app/uploads/2014/06/Successful... (FAA chart showing dramatic reduction in hijackings after introduction of airport screening in 1973).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Johnny555 10y agoI flew on about a dozen flights (including 4 flights in europe) over a 6 month period before TSA discovered that I had a prohibited multitool with a 1.5" blade. I asked him if I could use the bigger multitool in his discard bin to snap the blade off the tool and he said that no one is allowed to touch anything in the discard bin, and even if I did, I'd have to go out of the secure area and be completely re-screened. So I let him take my $20 tool and drop it in the bin with the rest of the tools. If I really wanted to threaten someone, I think the metal pen in my bag would be more of a threat than a tiny multi-tool knife that would probably fold back and cut my own finger if I tried to use it as a weapon.
- rdtsc 10y agoI think deep down a lot of people there realize the stupidity of what they are saying. But they also know any lapse or any deviation from the "rules" would put them back on the street or back to flipping burgers. I had an interesting encounter with a TSA agent. He flagged my bag because I had 10 notebooks in there ( I took them with me to read over my notes over a couple of years back ). He thought it was strange. So I told him, yeah, it is programming stuff. He said he likes programming, and would like to do it again sometime, asked what languages a popular these days (he knew about C++ only). I told him to try Python for example. At first I was annoyed at him for bothering me over stupid notebooks, it was ridiculous. But then felt kind of sorry. Here he is, thinking he wants to develop software, yet he has to flag down bags and look for shampoo bottles, notebooks, multi-tools sift through people's dirty laundry and so on.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoFlyer beware eh? My dad suggested a button in the cockpit that would de-pressurize the plane and not drop oxygen in the event of an emergency. Then bad thing starts "boom" turn off the air and everyone passes out. I pointed out that bad guys probably would have some sort of portable oxygen if they knew about it. So maybe it works once. I agree with the author's thesis that if it costs flyers 10x the effort to fly than it does the evil doers to do evil, then the evil doers are winning that battle. And the existing practices are due for a new look over. But not sure that eliminating them completely will achieve what you want.
- maxerickson 10y agoHow much brain damage to the passengers is acceptable in this scheme? Passing out from lack of oxygen is dangerous.
- logfromblammo 10y agoIf you think ischemia is bad, there is also something called reperfusion injury. Basically, if the lack of oxygen does not kill a cell directly, the spike in oxidative stress when the oxygen supply returns can cause it to become inflamed or even initiate apoptosis. This is why medically induced hypothermia is sometimes used on heart attack patients, so that the brain doesn't swell up and kill itself after normal oxygenated blood circulation is restored. So let's not casually mess around with air passengers' oxygen supply, mmkay? It would almost be better to just flood the passenger cabin with vaporized marijuana extract. The risk there is that someone might stage a fake attack just to turn the plane into a giant bong.
- dalke 10y agoA problem with rare things is it's hard to get good sense of what to do about them. We know the "no O2" method is very rarely needed, simply from observed statistics. We know that O2 masks come down more regularly than that. Such stories are not hard to find. Here's a list: http://www.avherald.com/h?search_term=Cabin+pressure&opt=256&dosearch=1&search.x=-862&search.y=-106 http://www.avherald.com/h?search_term=Cabin+pressure&opt=256... . Looks like a few dozen per year. If there were a switch like you suggest, what is the probability that it will engage by accident, and prevent the masks from otherwise deploying as they should?
- green_lunch 10y agoWe had virtually no airline security in the 1970s and there were hijack attempts every couple of months..including innocent people dying and a plane that was eventually blown up with no passengers on board. I sure as hell wouldn't fly if this was going on now. The real problem is that we aren't allowed to profile. Because we can't focus on a specific subset of travelers that are suspicious (based on data or behavior), everyone is treated as a threat and we get long lines as a result. We can learn a lot from Israel: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/what-israeli-airport-secu_b_4978149.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/what-israeli-air... They probably have more terrorist threats than anyone else in the world and have prevented nearly all attacks without the long lines. Mostly through a combination of profiling and hiring specially trained agents instead of $10/hour rent-a-cops to handle security. There's a reason why European Airports are targeted for attack, even though Israel is the main target. At some point we need to make a choice: political correctness or safety.
- cbd1984 10y agoTying profiling to political correctness means you want racial profiling or similar, which would have such a huge false negative and false positive rate as to be worse than useless. Besides, I'm sure the TSA already de facto does it, because sentiments like yours are so common. If you want to profile, ignore political correctness and do it based on something other than race, religion, or national origin.
- dionidium 10y agoIt can't possibly have a higher false positive rate than literally treating every person the same. When the first old white lady commits an act of terrorism, then let's screen them, but until then, let's not. That's an extreme example, but if you agree that we don't need to look at old white ladies, then we both agree that profiling is preferable. All that's left to discuss are the boundaries.
- Vraxx 10y agoThis x1000. I generally concur that there will need to be sacrifices in terms of false positives inconveniencing people by "profiling" them, but I seriously doubt that race, religion, and/or national origin is the best metric we can come up with for profiling reasons. Honestly, I think there's a strong parallel with the way we see neural networks "play" games without following the heuristics that work best for our brains (which we have seen historically that human generated heuristics are not optimal heuristics). And what else is the intention of profiling except to create a good enough "heuristic"? Let's strive for a better heuristic please.
- robbiep 10y agoIt's possible to have sensible screening with sensible wait times at security lines: see the experience at airports in Australia and Europe.