37 ms·

20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

495 points by prostoalex 5y ago

voidfunc 5y ago
Pay the TSA Pre shakedown fee and you don't need to take your shoes off. The problem is we created a monetary incentive to keep the current policy in place.
satya71 5y ago
I already don’t. Turns out the solution is to give up some privacy and pay some money.
- syops 5y ago
  This is one reason why it will be hard to get rid of the silly requirement to take shoes off. DHS has a financial interest in keeping the theater going.
  - version_five 5y ago
    Not just financial interest, but also getting a free pass to make people do what authorities want without having to convince them, and to crack down on anyone they don't like for any reason. Rules like this that don't really have a point and are applied unevenly (like drug laws, many traffic laws, public intoxication...) are just a lazy way to make sure authorities can make anyone or any group they want "fall in line" while not actually preventing favored individuals or groups from doing what they want. It's the most unfair and unequal kind of regulation, and in general people cant6get enough of it, precisely because they know it will be used mostly against groups they don't like, but they dont have to explicitly identify those groups or otherwise acknowledge their prejudice.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  That is what I find so strange, isn't it likely that this privileged group could be infiltrated?
  - bserge 5y ago
    Very likely, if anyone cares enough.
chrisseaton 5y ago
I thought shoes were due to Richard Reed, not 9/11?
- giancarlostoro 5y ago
  https://www.fbi.gov/history/artifact-of-the-month/december-2020-richard-reids-shoes https://www.fbi.gov/history/artifact-of-the-month/december-2... Man I had no idea this even happened, I either forgot or never heard of it cause it seems to have been an open and shut event.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  "19 years and 10 months after the shoe bomber: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?" didn't fly with the editor.
88 5y ago
I thought the removal of shoes was a response to the Shoe Bomber plot, not 9/11? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid
- dpeck 5y ago
  It was shortly afterwards so falls in the same mental “bucket” for all practical purposes.
- leecarraher 5y ago
  Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught Richard Reid, was a direct response to 9/11 . Either Way, it is still mainly security theater to make passengers less apprehensive about taking what is still the safest mode of travel per passenger mile( there might be other metrics, but this is the only one I've read recently).
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught the Richard Reid Eh? But he wasn't caught due to airport security. He got onto the plane and tried to set off the bomb during the flight. He would have been caught if someone had looked at his shoes.
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      But if he knew they were checking shoes at airport security, then he probably would have put it somewhere else.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        Well isn't that the reason for it? Deny an avenue of attack so they to use another less effective option? But anyway - the point was 'general escalation of security in airports which caught the Richard Reid' is a provably false statement.
reidjs 5y ago
Get TSA precheck
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Cheapest way is with a Nexus card I believe. Great program.
  - moftz 5y ago
    Some travel credit cards will pay for TSA Precheck for you.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    Remember back in the day when the one good thing about the airport security line was not having anyone use it as a stick for the hard sell?
  - davemtl 5y ago
    I have Nexus, since getting it no more need to take my shoes off or take my laptop/tablet out of my carry-on. You practically get waved through security. Also, at the border in Canada & US, you effectively skip the line and use the Nexus machines allowing you faster entry into the country.
  - 5555624 5y ago
    It's also free to US Service members and DoD civilians.
dpeck 5y ago
No, because we’ve made it some anyone with the power and means to make a change is unaffected by it for a nominal fee.
tyingq 5y ago
The interesting part to me is that the mode of attack for 9/11 can't easily be repeated. It depended on passengers assuming the plane was being hijacked, and that they would eventually be released. That stopped working on the 3rd (edit: 4th) plane. I don't see how it would work again. Passengers now default to assuming there's no path to live other than fighting back. Meaning many of the measures we still take aren't really preventing anything. I do understand this doesn't apply to the shoes (shoe bomber), but that's just one of many things we've put in place.
- antihero 5y ago
  Any attempt at this, the terrorists will have a game plan of how to convince people on the flight to chill out, that they have no mal-intent towards the passengers, etc etc. I mean it might not work, but I reckon they'd put on a really good act and manipulate people heavily into making it feel like they are actually quite safe and it would be a poor decision to try and overrun them.
  - BoHerfIIIJrEsq 5y ago
    > how to convince people on the flight to chill out My sense is that there is nothing they could say. Hijack a plane, a bunch of men are going to attack you. That's it.
    - ansible 5y ago
      Yes, I'd be someone who jumps up to rush the hijackers. Because I'd have nothing to lose. And if all I do is soak up some damage and die, it may give others behind me a chance. I'm not especially brave or fearless or anything. But if you back me into a corner with no way to survive, then I'll fight back like a caged, starving rat.
    - Stevvo 5y ago
      It depends on the social dynamic of the group; for example I don't expect a plane full of mainland Chinese passengers would attack a terrorist.
    - 5y ago
giancarlostoro 5y ago
Disney Springs in Orlando has new metal detectors that you just walk through, wondering if airports will eventually feature the same. I kind of doubt it though.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  There's the body scanners, but I don't know if they can detect anything weird in shoes. That said, how many shoe bombs have they intercepted? That should be a pretty good indication about whether it's still necessary, and I like to think the policy change (or lack thereof) is data-driven.
  - depaya 5y ago
    I've never liked the argument "how many shoe bombs have been intercepted?" or "how many terrorists have been stopped?" when it comes to TSA-style security. The presence of the security isn't necessarily meant to find people in the act of carrying out terrorism, it's mean to deter it in the first place since you will be found out (well, in theory anyway...). It's impossible to quantify how many plots have been deterred due to this. I'm no TSA apologist, it's obviously security theater, but is it totally without merit?
    - iso1210 5y ago
      I have a rock that deters tigers you might want to buy
      - brigandish 5y ago
        In Greece I would sometimes encounter packs of aggressive dogs roaming the streets. If you bend down and reach for the ground like you're about to pick up a stone then they disperse immediately. There doesn't even need to be a stone there. I've not had the chance to try it with a tiger but if it works with them too then I'm afraid you won't fetch much for your stone.
    - k1t 5y ago
alexfromapex 5y ago
I try not to fly and this is one of the major reasons I find flying so annoying. I've been through airports where they just use bomb sniffing dogs, why can't that be the norm?
- murgindrag 5y ago
  Allergies. You end up with a large segment of the population who sneezes a little bit, which is sort of annoying but sort of okay. You end up with a small segment of the population with asthma attacks, anaphylaxis, and other life-threatening conditions. Universal use of dogs would mean that there would be people who simple cannot travel, ever, anywhere beyond driving distance. There's a small war between extremist dog-owners (the ones who believe dogs are people too, and sneak them into all sorts of places dogs aren't allowed as "activism") and people with severe allergies.
  - sidlls 5y ago
    I have never heard of any life-threatening allergic reaction to any drug or bomb sniffing dog. Has that actually happened? If so...how, when, and where?
    - woofie11 5y ago
      Asthma attacks are not uncommon in response to dog dander. Those can be life-threatening, but can be managed with albuterol. 30 seconds with Google will turn up countless documented instances. Anaphylaxis is a very rare response to animal dander, but there have been a few documented instances: https://www.petful.com/misc/can-pet-allergies-kill-me/ https://www.petful.com/misc/can-pet-allergies-kill-me/ What's amazing is the number of dog owners who don't believe in dog allergies, or who believe their dogs are hypoallergenic due to fur/hair (dander is in the saliva).
      - sidlls 5y ago
        Countless documented instances of asthma induced by the dander of drug/bomb sniffing dogs or just dogs in general? I have asthma and have occasionally reacted to animal dander—but never in an airport or other location due to service animals.
aww_dang 5y ago
If you liked expanded government powers necessitated by the War on Terror, you're going to love the new biosecurity state. Remember, it is for your own safety! >“I don’t see it changing,” said Lora Ries, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “It never seems to be fewer requirements … the direction always seems to be for more.” >Security screening, he said, will also be expanded to passenger drop-off points and airport and off-airport parking lots, in addition to walkways and tunnels approaching departure and ticket kiosks.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  >Security screening, he said, will also be expanded to passenger drop-off points and airport and off-airport parking lots, in addition to walkways and tunnels approaching departure and ticket kiosks. That's the protocol in Israel. The airport is fairly isolated and before you can even get on the entry road your car is pulled over. Outside the airport entrance there are dogs and officers and then you go through security before you even get to baggage drop off and then another security for some questioning, etc. You are deemed suspicious if you don't arrive a few hours before your flight. Any drinks you buy after security are taken away as your carry on baggage is looked at one more time before you board. I often buy a couple liters of water before long trips and the to have them taken away (and probably put back on the shelves and sold!) before boarding was a bit annoying.
stoolpigeon 5y ago
The US is the only place I think I've had to remove shoes for flight security in years. But in Europe taking off a belt is often required while in the US it is not. In Budapest they stopped having us remove laptops from bags a bit ago. My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way.
- j16sdiz 5y ago
  Taking belt off because it trip off the metal detector.
- 101008 5y ago
  I always though taking off a belt it was bcause if not the metal sensor would trigger, so to avoid it, they just ask to remove your belt in case it contains metal?
  - NikolaNovak 5y ago
    In Canada that's the case. But small belts can go through. So it depends on the security guard what exactly they ask you to do. I had purposefully bought a small belt that would not trigger alarm when I flew weekly pre-covid for years. No joy : Half the security guards told me to take it off as a precaution when I tried to go through, half would get upset I'm taking my small belt and delaying everyone - sometimes there's no winning, just say "yes sir/ma'am" to whatever they ask that particular day :-/
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    It is. I don't take off my belts with no metal parts in Europe and it's been fine. Once they even asked me and I said 'no metal' so they didn't press.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  "My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way." It can differ from airport to airport. I traveled from Ottawa to Toronto often enough for it to be mindless but differences between two national airports in same province of same country on same airline still caught me if I went too much on autopilot. And then I'd fly to Halifax and all my instincts went out the window :). Sometimes it'd differ shift to shift. Agents would get mad at me for taking or not taking tablet from my bag. Mentioning "your colleague instructed me otherwise, can you kindly confirm the rule so I can comply in future" only gets you marked as belligerent - the power trip is definitely there :-/
spraveenitpro 5y ago
There was an underwear bomber though.
yalogin 5y ago
The TSA is just a huge scam to siphon money and they need to show they are providing value. Taking shoes off is that value, so yeah it’s never going away. We could get out of Afghanistan but will never get rid of the TSA.
- p_l 5y ago
  TSA continued existence means lower insurance premiums for airlines, iirc.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  It's all incompetent theatre. I remember around 2006 or 2007 snaking through a terribly managed security line in ATL taking off my shoes, doing all the questions and scanning and pat downs and irradiation and getting through and then some random person shouted "did someone drop their passport?" and realizing it was mine and my passport had fallen out of my bag. So I call back "yep, I did" and it gets handed to me by said random person (who hadn't passed screening yet), with nobody in TSA even batting an eyelash or checking to verify that I didn't just grab someone else's passport (or taken something else of security concern.) Meanwhile I remember flying through Frankfurt in 1994 and opening my (inspected before baggage drop) suitcase briefly to move something and getting pulled politely aside and my items re-inspected. Security policies that made sense and were executed competently by respectful and well-trained staff. Since 9/11 I just try to avoid flying to or from the US entirely.
  - camillomiller 5y ago
    Well, just before the pandemic I flew through Frankfurt, Milan and Berlin Tegel forgetting about the Leatherman knife in my backpack's side pocket. I noticed it only when I was back home after my flight back.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Haha… nope. I had a friend bring 1L containers of liquid through security in Europe and no one said a word. The limit was 100mL. Nobody was looking at the scanner. Don’t fool yourself.
- 5y ago
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I wonder what the angle for this article is. They interview a member of the Heritage Foundation, a 'think tank' heavily funded by conservatives and the oil industry whose more controversial efforts are climate change denial, vote fraud claims and opposition of critical race theory.
- murgindrag 5y ago
  Stereotype much?
isodev 5y ago
Isn’t this one of the main aspects of “terrorism” - while tragic, the act itself is merely trigger to induce fear and impact society in more subtle (and long lasting) ways. e.g we get screened, we fear people who look “suspicious” (even when they are just normal people) etc.
bedhead 5y ago
Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.
- ridaj 5y ago
  Except many, many more deaths in the case of Covid, and we don't have, thankfully, a federal Covid Corps to enforce any of the related policies...
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Many deaths in a certain age group above 65 y.o.. Most age groups had very few deaths.
    - bedhead 5y ago
      You're wasting your time. COVID deaths could be entirely amongst 97 year old obese smokers with stage 4 cancer and half the country would still give the same obtuse responses, call you granny-killer, tell you you're selfish for not wanting to wear a mask, say "pandemic" like it's a mic drop, etc etc etc. You'll be stuck in a COVID version of the "This amp goes to 11" conversation. It turns out that shocking people with a million volts of raw terror does in fact blow a fuse in many people's brains (go figure) causing them to lose all cognitive abilities.
      - bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
        I disagree with you, even in your hypothetical situation. I'd gladly wear a mask to protect 97-year-old obese smokers, if they were a vulnerable group. I feel like you invented this group to distance the vulnerable population from "us", but it just makes it sound like you have no empathy for other humans.
        5y ago
Minor49er 5y ago
20 years after 9/11, the official story still doesn't add up
- temptemptemp111 5y ago
  Wow... A single HN reader gets it ;P
cm2187 5y ago
At Geneva airport they have a separate line with what looks like some new machines that basically require nothing, you just drop your bag full of laptops, tablets and liquids and you go through the metal detector. Can’t wait for it to generalise.
noetic_techy 5y ago
I'll take it a step further. We need a total paradigm redesign of airports. Imagine and airport designed to the point where you can literally drive up (or be dropped by an autonomous vehicle) 10 minutes before your flight, Throw your luggage onto a belt where a robot auto tags it based on your a facial recognition algorithm, and walk through an unobtrusive security point that's totally AI driven, and walk direct to your plane ready to go. As someone who travels a lot, I say forget shoes, this is the ultimate dream. The "arrive 2 hours before your flight" nonsense should be automated into oblivion on both ends. I think we just accept this paradigm of air travel now and our airports have become these bohemoths of capture to sell you food, beverage and overpriced trinkets with abhorent wait times for the actual flight logistics. Why cant I just be dropped off directly at my gate and bumble on in less then 5 minutes!
- baybal2 5y ago
  It just needs to be abandoned. No point talking about it more.
- fma 5y ago
  This would really only apply for fights where I'm checking in luggage...international flights, for example. I wouldn't mind a feature where I can drop off my luggage somewhere near my house the day before my flight and it gets tagged, bulked transferred and inspected at the airport. This would allow me to straight to the gate and not need to check in large luggage or fumble with luggage while rushing for a flight. This also forces me to pack early and now the night of the flight and be sleep deprived.
  - O5vYtytb 5y ago
    No thanks. Airlines seem to lose enough baggage already, I wouldn't trust them with another major logistics project.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I'm half-surprised we don't already have this. The airlines already use some sort of uber-like self-employed contractors to deliver lost luggage. They could offer the same service in the other direction.
alliao 5y ago
belt off in London, shoes off in NY. If you're an unfit middle aged male flying between London and New York will make you consider flying private sooner rather than later. That's my hypothesis anyway.
wefarrell 5y ago
It's amazing that we still have to take our shoes off in airports 20 years after 9/11, yet we still don't have mandatory paid sick leave in the US despite Covid killing 20 times the amount of people.
GDC7 5y ago
And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter. Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train station also don't matter. Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships. It ain't about safety from ill-intentioned people...it's about protecting the POTUS from having to give the order to open fire on an hijacked civilian plane. That's the reason why every administration is so concerned with planes and so lax about trains and buses and cruise ships.
- imglorp 5y ago
  It's also much easier to get SWAT onto a train or ship or stadium. Airplane over a city has only one option. Oh, and only one of these things will be heading for Congress potentially.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    I was very surprised by a recent shooting at Chicago Union Station: Amtrak finds out this murderer on the run is taking a train across the country arriving in Chicago. They don’t tell anyone on the train this, they don’t intercept the train in the middle of the night in a small town - they wait until the guy detrains at one of the busiest stations in the country before chasing him and shooting him. Bizarre. https://abc7chicago.com/union-station-shooting-chicago-shooter-jamar-jason-taylor/10975958/ https://abc7chicago.com/union-station-shooting-chicago-shoot...
- anaganisk 5y ago
  Duh, all u have to do is increase the speed of the train, and derail of the dead end. /s
- UncleDiaz12 5y ago
  Cruise ships do search you quite thoroughly before boarding, but they are looking for booze.
- justin66 5y ago
  > And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter. Plenty of people are harassed by DEA, customs or immigration on Amtrak trains. They don't seem too concerned with terrorism or souls, though.
Tenoke 5y ago
For comparison I think I've been asked once out of my last 50 flights to take my shoes off in Europe and it still feels too stringent here.
wjp3 5y ago
I always refer to it as "security Kabuki theatre"...
TrevorJ 5y ago
Shoes off, masks on. In perpetuity.
- 99mans 5y ago
  Mask up. Vax up. Shut up. This is what they want.
option 5y ago
“those willing to give up a little bit of freedom to gain a little bit of security deserve neither and will soon lose both”
refurb 5y ago
We had almost zero airport security in the US until the 60’s. And that never went away, so that’s your answer.
FigurativeVoid 5y ago
When I was last traveling, the person in front of me asked TSA agent "Why do we have to take our shoes off?" He replied, "Have you heard of the shoe bomber?" When I think about it, that's a crazy policy to have since it only happened once (and it didn't even work). If we follow that sort of logic we should be wearing masks every time we fly. It's just a bizarre policy.
- danans 5y ago
  > If we follow that sort of logic we should be wearing masks every time we fly. We do wear masks every time we fly nowadays. Or maybe that was your point?
  - FigurativeVoid 5y ago
    Sorry. Forever. We had an incident once, and we now have to follow guidelines to that incident forever. Wearing masks now is appropriate.
hourislate 5y ago
WE should all be grateful they still allow us to wear our underwear while going through these security check points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab Most of this screening is to avoid profiling. It would be considered politically not correct if we were to just screen Muslims so Grand Pa who received the Medal of Honor in WWII, has to be stripped searched after they get him out of the wheel chair.
- tawaysdfas4 5y ago
  Ummm yeah, so guys like these can get into the airport? https://youtu.be/NWNyxDUSriA?t=40 https://youtu.be/NWNyxDUSriA?t=40 This just happened last week. It probably happens every week. Since the attacker is white, we dont classify it as terror. If the person were Muslim, he'd be in prison already. Firstly, we already profile Muslims extensively. Secondly, a non Muslim person with guns, usually motivated by GOP/church/nation regularly commits atrocities, there is a news article like every other week. Apologists like you like to look the other way.
  - hourislate 5y ago
    Ummm, there is a big difference between raging and trying to blow up an aircraft. If the 911 bombers started fist fights in the airport lobby instead of hijacking airplanes, I'm sure we wouldn't be living with the heighten security apparatus we have today. Can you list the race or religion of all the terrorists who tried to bring down an aircraft 911 to present day, just curious? I think you're the apologist in this case.
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      You do realize ISIS or Al Qaeda can just find a white convert to send through? Or that there are white Muslims to begin with (Balkans)?
helge9210 5y ago
We have to wear a sign of obedience on our faces anywhere we go for more than a year now. In some countries periodic anal swabs are mandatory and even diplomatic status is not an excuse to skip one. Not taking about mandatory periodic injection of an unknown substance combined with regular mandatory DNA material harvesting. Are we still concerned with shoes at airports?
zxcvbn4038 5y ago
Or you can pay a fee and bypass the lines, not remove your clothing, whiz through the diplomatic lane at JFK. I think most of the screening is less about security and more about selling convenience.
- irae 5y ago
  I was tempted for a moment to agree. Maybe for the flight companies and airports it could be true. But since many of those measures became law, then it is a political problem. It would bring bad reputation to any politician trying to remove the law. So it is a much bigger issue now.
- donclark 5y ago
  But why have to pay a fee? Seems like the people that want "security theater" should have to pay - not the people that want less.
mrmcd 5y ago
Just pay the government a $100 bribe^W 'application processing fee' for Precheck or Global Entry, and no more taking off your shoes. Or taking out your laptops or liquids, or having a government employee look you over in the nudie scanner. Also, shorter, faster lines. But all this is actually necessary and not security theater. We promise.
- bluedino 5y ago
  $85 and it lasts for 5 years. Quite the deal.
  - mrmcd 5y ago
    Right. GE is $100/5 years. So, might as well pay the extra $3/yr for faster passport lines too.
duxup 5y ago
So much security that not sense. I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security. Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security. It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity there where there is no security ... than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out. If someone did want to do something at such a sporting event, nothing is stopping them from doing it at the gates where there is a reliable and unsecured mass of humanity, and I don't think anyone is bothering with that ... I used to wheel my grandfather into games on a wheelchair... they didn't check anything, just waved you through. A wheel chair sized bomb would be easy to bring in, but you don't even have to bring it in. We have secure ID schemes that I believe most if not all of the 9/11 attackers would have qualified to get ... In the US we don't have mass terrorist events that any of this would prevent. Why do we keep subjecting non-terrorists to these systems? What are we doing this for?
- spoonjim 5y ago
  That security isn’t necessarily to stop terrorism. It’s also to stop people from bringing in weapons and then using them in drunken brawls.
  - duxup 5y ago
    >using them in drunken brawls. That's not a thing at games I've been to. Lots of drunken folks, but fights are exceptionally rare.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    That is amazing reasoning. Assuming drunken brawls were a problem, instead of banning alcohol, the solution was the current TSA protocol.
    - spoonjim 5y ago
      Alcohol makes money, outside weapons don’t. If they could get away with selling you knives in the stadium they probably would.
michaelfeathers 5y ago
This is a lesson in incentives. The reason any of these procedures are not eradicated is that no one wants to be the person who does that and then have the next terrorist attack use a technique that would've been caught. It's interesting to note that we have had this in software development too. Prior to CI/CD, organizations that had QA departments (responsible for testing) had a lot of incentive to hold up releases because they were blamed if a bug escaped into production. When developers test, they are responsible for both delivery and defects so there is balance. It's hard to see how something like this could be applied for security. Making the TSA responsible for wait times seems like a good idea but there's always going to be an asymmetry when life hangs in the balance. After the IRA bombings, train platforms didn't have trash bins for decades. Eventually some showed up with transparent bags so that the contents could be seen. The half-life of fear is long.
- Y_Y 5y ago
  I'd be willing to wear see-through shoes at the airport, if that's what you're suggesting.
- ggalaxximm 5y ago
  The half-life of fear is long.
MrGilbert 5y ago
Totally unrelated, but I still remember what I did on 9/11. I was in my teens. I know the date, I know the weekday, I know everything I did in the 24 hours it happened. However, despite being the much "fresher" events, I don't know the weekday my grandparents and parents passed away, let alone what I did back then. My memory is... interesting.
- macintux 5y ago
  Memory in general is very capricious, but world-changing, emotional events tend to do that. Before 9/11 the most common one I heard people talking about was JFK's assassination. For me, it's the Challenger disaster, 9/11, Columbia.
  - MrGilbert 5y ago
    Yes.. Thinking about it, before 9/11 I had the TV pictures of the Berlin Wall being torn down by an excavator in my mind. But I was way too young at this age to understand it.
- conductr 5y ago
  I'm a bit older and have experienced a handful of 9/11-like events [0]. They always stand out more vividly as a shared global/national experience whereas things like family members passing is highly localized to your family. You could easily escape the mourning by talking to friends/coworkers/etc that had no idea your family member passed and the conversation would give you a sense of normalcy. During/following 9/11, there was nobody to talk to that wasn't thinking about the events that just occurred. It consumed the nation for a fair bit of time. [0] Challenger, OKC, 9/11, even the first WTC attacks and princess Diana & OJ fit this category in terms of memory imprinting. I'm too young for JFK, but that was a big one too. My uncle says he can remember everyone being very sad and glued to the TV, he was 3.
  - MrGilbert 5y ago
    Yeah... Thinking about it, I remember my mum watching the funeral for Lady Diana back in 1997. > It consumed the nation for a fair bit of time. Now I'm European, and I remember that our teachers back in school spend the whole day explaining what happened, and maybe why. (It was late afternoon here, when the attacks started, so I'm talking about the next day). But everyone was in disbelief, and also afraid of the response.
ctrlp 5y ago
The obvious purpose of removing shoes at airports has long been more about security theater than safety. The authorities must be seen to be doing something to protect travelers or the industry might not survive the customer's perception of danger. But, the less obvious reasons surely include maintaining the function of the huge TSA security apparatus put in place after 9/11. The stated function of the TSA is to protect passengers from attack. The unstated (and unacknowledged function) that has perpetuated the practice despite every traveler hating it (and its obvious futility), is to intimidate travelers and provide a convenient mechanism of crowd-control. Step out of line (literally) and you will be treated as a potential criminal. There needn't be an official policy to do so, the benefits of the system ensure its continuance via other (stated) motives, not least the profit motive of the supporting economic interests. The upshot is that travelling via plane in the past 20 years is one of the many small lessons for living in the security/surveillance state. You must obey. Moreover, we see the logic of the security/surveillance state incorporating this convenient control mechanism by now restricting (or implicitly threatening to restrict, which is even better) the travel of domestic antagonists of power. If we had discontinued taking off our shoes, the symbolic effect of dispiriting and weakening the public (literally making us vulnerable in our unshod feet) would be unavailable now. Why would the administration willingly relinquish such a useful tool for managing the population? Of course it wouldn't. It would we more amazing if it had. Now, we will likely add further controls on travel in the form of digital health passports with infinitely more possibility for government mischief. When/if the pandemic ends, do you believe the passports will be discontinued?
- cujo 5y ago
  > Now, we will likely add further controls on travel in the form of digital health passports with infinitely more possibility for government mischief. How do you see digital health passports as having infinitely more possibility for govt mischief? Right now TSA has the ability to treat you like a criminal if they think you looked at them funny. The health passport "mischief" seems more along the lines of "you don't have vaccine X, so you can't board the plane." While potentially problematic, that's kind of the end of it. It becomes a no-fly list, but one where you can actually control your status on it.
mostertoaster 5y ago
What will the headline be 20 years in the future: “20 years after covid, will we ever ....”
Borrible 5y ago
Well, yes, inertia and symbolic action. But why don't you have to take them off before entering a high speed train? https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/SP0520-Terrorist-Attacks-Passenger-Rail-Transportation https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/SP0520-Terrorist-Attacks-...
jacquesm 5y ago
I haven't had to remove my shoes in airports for a decade or so, I suspect this is mostly a US thing at this point.
ldehaan 5y ago
Shoes off. Belt off Backpack ready for search Full body genital scan Mask scanner with RFID chip reader Vaccine passport Passport/drivers license or state ID Credit or bank card only Social media must be free of x/y posts -Or- Pay to skip the line
glugc 5y ago
20 years after covid: will we ever stop having mandatory masking and monthly lockdowns? Sounds facetious. I'm sure most people assumed 9/11 restrictions to be temporary as well.
99mans 5y ago
The fact the person responsible for the TSA also had a massive profit stake in body scanners says everything one needs to know about airport "security".
Diederich 5y ago
I flew a number of times post 9/11 and accidentally brought a pocket knife with me in my carry on backpack several times. It's all quite silly.
gridder 5y ago
And what about the stupid ban on liquids? This is even more nonsensical… Sure the airports shops are happy though. IIRC is related to a Heathrow 2006 attack…
u801e 5y ago
After the number of deaths and economic impact that resulted from the pandemic, I would be perfectly fine if we completely eliminated any type of security check associated with air travel. I would rather air travel be much like traveling by train, bus, or taxi instead of what it is now.
- q1w2 5y ago
  How would you eliminate the risk of hijackings?
  - bradstewart 5y ago
    Reinforced cockpit doors with strict policies in place for when the pilots can open it, which is what we do now (in the U.S. at least) even with all of the TSA stuff.
    - q1w2 5y ago
      Those doors don't stop a hijacker from executing stewardesses until the pilot opens the door.
      - u801e 5y ago
        This source[1] claims that the probability of getting hijacked while on a commercial flight is 0.000004%. On the other hand, the case fatality rate of covid-19 is around 2% based on what I'm able to find. So why are we worried about possible plane hijackings when a lot of people don't seem to be overly worried about something that's many times more risky. [1] https://findanyanswer.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-plane-getting-hijacked https://findanyanswer.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-plane-ge...
  - u801e 5y ago
    With the current measures in place (reinforced cockpit doors), it's not a significant enough risk to worry about.
- 123jay7 5y ago
ekianjo 5y ago
How about water bottles?
supperburg 5y ago
I just finished Islamic imperialism: a history. The fact that one man could change everyone’s lives like this is really amazing. It doesn’t seem like these measures are going to be necessary forever though.
Ericson2314 5y ago
Honestly, I am ok with bullshit TSA because it will help make long distance train travel more attractive in the US. Relatedly, I want someone to write a dark comedy set like 20 years hence where a bunch of airline execs, worried about their shrinking industry and some shiny new rail, band together to pay off some terrorist to blow up a moving train so train stations gets TSA security theater. Without the movie, I worry due to some stupid accident the rail TSA might actually happen!
quelsolaar 5y ago
I used to think security theater (like taking off your shoes) was the dumbest thing ever. Then I realized that Terrorism is "Insecurity theater". Its designed to make you feel unsafe. It is statistically not at likely to hurt you, and the people who do it are rare, you but its designed to scare you in to thinking you are under some massive threat by an army of people who can and do strike at anytime. Its psychological warfare. So how do you fight against that? You make people go through security theater to make them think they are safe! We beat the terrorists, not when there are no terror incidents, but when no one is afraid of them. Fear is the enemy. If forcing people to taking off their shoes makes some people feel safe flying, then it is an effective anti terrorist measure.
- kleiba 5y ago
  That's exactly why it is called "terror-ism".
- gelotar 5y ago
  Who is empowered when the masses are swallowed by fear? It is not some hooded maniac rubbing his hands together in his basement. It is the state, which maintains control. Control is maintained by fear; fear is engineered through psychological warfare. When did the state ever insruct us to stop fearing "terror"? Machiavelli wrote all about this.
j_m_b 5y ago
20 years after Covid: Will we ever stop putting up plastic and wearing masks?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
focusgroup0 5y ago
The TSA was never about Security. It's about lucrative gov't contracts, conditioning people to accept further invasions of privacy, and a jobs program for unemployable dregs of society. The spamdemic was never about Public Health,
psoots 5y ago
> It’s costly to have government employees because you have to pay benefits and they are unionized. Sometimes people say the quiet parts out loud.
aliswe 5y ago
I saw a documentary on border controls in afghanistan where they used a pretty ingenious idea. they frisk a guy and check his pulse at the same time. so a guy holds two fingers to the guys jugular vein, and the other one checks him. any increase in pulse and its an indicator they should keep searching.
- gelotar 5y ago
  So if some heavily armed stranger touches your neck and that makes you nervous, you're probably guilty of something?
ewagsjr 5y ago
I mean you can do TSA PreCheck and then only 10% of the time you have to take your shoes off.
aceki 5y ago
> The safety protocols have managed to protect airports and planes from further attack... Sorry, but no. The DHS performed a study on the TSA's effectiveness[0], finding that the TSA missed concealed weapons, explosives, and other contraband 95% of the time. The reason the shoe bomber[1], underwear bomber[2], and the UA 93 hijacking[3] were unsuccessful was because of the passengers and crew on the flight. The TSA did nothing. A TSA tactic that isn't as well known is the TSA SPOT program[4]. Basically, TSA agents stand around in the airport looking for "suspicious" activity which naturally leads to profiling (particularly for those of Middle Eastern descent). A score card from the program has been leaked[5], and with the sort of criteria on it, it would be easy to justify searching anyone at the airport. This is speculation, but I suspect that giving passengers a false sense of security would make them less likely to notice an attempted hijacking, bombing, or whatever else. But at least they'll be more comfortable, right? [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_shoe_bomb_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_shoe_bomb_attempt [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_253 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_253 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPOT_(TSA_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPOT_(TSA_program) [5] https://www.papersplease.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/spot-score.jpg https://www.papersplease.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/s...
kjkjadksj 5y ago
I flew out of LAX last month and they had us keep our shoes on.
fnord77 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
kureikain 5y ago
How do you manage to not losing your laptop, especially when traveling with kids? They lost mine once and I basically have to found it myself. Eventually found someone throw the bag in an corner...
- rwmj 5y ago
  I lost my passport between security and the gate once (the security staff inexplicably moved it into a new tray, so when I picked up my stuff from my two trays I missed the passport in the third tray). Losing your passport at this point turns out to be very complicated, but I was lucky that they held up the whole plane while I ran back to security to fetch it.
GhostVII 5y ago
We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousands of people per year. Not that I'm advocating for lower speed limits, just that there is a contradiction here. I bet that if instead of having people go through security at sporting events, you had them all do 20 push ups, you'd save more people from dying of heart disease than would die of terrorism.
- lonelyPM 5y ago
  Well said... I feel like someone out there has developed a dashboard like this.
  - hirako2000 5y ago
    We are pretty good at death counts, it's easy. All the data is there. Tied to anonymised health condition as aggregates. The problem is how do we even start to evaluate the cost of prevention. Measures? We have equipment and labour costs, that's easy to measure but the data is not made available. But then what is the opportunity cost on those who are inflicted the measures. A person goes on holiday and can perhaps browse a book while queuing for an hour to go through the security checks, a business traveller is simply standing there, unable to even make a phone call due to lack of privacy. Also, if we spend 1 trillion usd on say the prevention of terrorism, and we "only" suffered 20 death in the United States during that period, it doesn't mean halving the expense would only double the death toll. We put measures and have no tool to measure their effect, high number of variables, and each of their weight evolve dynamically. I think we better spend time educating the media industry to somewhat control the increasing rate of fear inducing columns published each second. And if they don't learn, regulate them since we are already regulating countless industries for that matter.
    - landemva 5y ago
durpleDrank 5y ago
I think the worry about these vaccine phone apps that track and trace is related.
Taylor_OD 5y ago
TSA jobs cant go away now that they exist. They probably never will. It will look bad for whatever president that does it because they will eliminate jobs and "national security" checks. Everyone knows its a joke but we will keep doing it.
- jedberg 5y ago
  They could easily phase it out. They already have. There is already a rule that an airport can hire a private security company as long as it's approved by the TSA. They could make a small rule change that allows the private security to make their own rules, or just make some of the rules optional, like shoes off. So we'd still have TSA agents in some places, but for example SFO already opts out of TSA agents. If they could opt out of the shoes off rule they probably would. At that point you've effectively eliminated the TSA without making a big deal about it.
jedberg 5y ago
The way you know it is all security theater is TSA pre. I haven't taken my shoes off, my laptop out, or gone through the hands-on-your-head scanner in years, because the TSA pre-check line doesn't require any of that. Because apparently verifying my ID before arrival at the airport makes me less of a threat. Or maybe it's the $80 they get every few years that makes me less of a threat...
- stormbrew 5y ago
  I mean, I agree in general but it is also likely that they're performing at least some kind of background check on you when you participate in Pre. They definitely do with Nexus. It does make a certain degree of sense as a program if you believe in the premise of the entire security theatre apparatus to begin with. Especially within the US where domestic air travel has traditionally required very weak identification (driver's license). That is, you're paying them for the privilege of reducing their attack surface a little bit.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    They run a background check on you whenever you buy an airline ticket. The airline submits their manifest to the TSA to cross check with the no-fly list. The only thing that TSA pre does is give you a number that is unique to you (as opposed to a name that you may share with someone else). They could easily solve this by having you submit your SSN or Passport number whenever you buy an airline ticket. I agree on Nexus, they basically do the entry interview ahead of time and then assume the answers are the same until they aren't (I have that too). That one actually makes sense.
    - stormbrew 5y ago
      The no-fly list isn't really a background check. It's just a simple name match, and it catches people who aren't on it because of that. An interview (like nexus or customs) also isn't a background check. These are three separate things. Everyone gets a check on the no-fly list, some people get advance background checks (Pre and programs like it I'd expect), and fewer still get an actual interview (international travellers who also have to supply a passport). Having a unique ID number tied to other information about you (like your license ID number or passport number or SSN) allows for a more in depth check, no doubt in ways you probably don't even explicitly consent to. If they did have your ssn or passport number from the airline at ticket purchase time then sure, that would allow for the same thing. But they don't. And if they did it'd be pretty expensive to do it for everyone. So, the current solution is basically just to make (some) people pay for their own background check.
monkeywork 5y ago
Topics like this is why I'm against domestic vaccine passports like the Canadian provinces are suggesting we use. Temporary measures that become perm and dramatically change our way of lives - especially with poor risk / reward evaluation.
throwaway20371 5y ago
I don't have to take my shoes off airports. A govt contractor looked at my birth certificate and driver's license and charged me $78, and then gave me a special number to put on my boarding pass. Now a man at security gives me a little red flag that says I don't have to take my shoes off. Honestly, I don't know why everyone doesn't pay for TSA PreCheck and GlobalEntry.
jarjoura 5y ago
Since we can't realistically ask everyone to succumb to background checks we at least have to put in some safety checks along the way. It's by design that it's annoyingly slow to get through airport security. It prevents people from rushing into the airport and rushing onto a plane unnoticed. What may look like incompetence is actually very meticulously structured. I really don't think it's that big of a deal. Besides, as airports are going through remodeling they are getting more and more comfortable to hang out in.
throwaway20371 5y ago
I would be happy to have more potential terrorist attacks if it meant less hassle at the airport. Even if every airport in the US got bombed once a year, it would still be 20,000 less deaths per year in the US than happen by automobile.
cannabis_sam 5y ago
Not if we disregard paranoid morons, but that’s apparently not an option, please don’t be a fascist by supporting this garbage.
Ajay-p 5y ago
https://archive.is/GLV2R https://archive.is/GLV2R
ubermonkey 5y ago
Certainly not. People who were paying attention back then knew this. This kind of intrusion is a ratcheting function. I feel like HN is a sort of older crowd, so a good chunk of those who can read this probably remember pre-9/11 travel, but for those that don't: I have, nearly every day of my adult life, carried a Swiss Army Knife. It's insanely handy, and not at all something that would be parsed as a weapon. (Even in 2021, the models I favor are legal for personal everyday carry in the UK, which is at this point somewhat notorious for restrictive knife laws.) Before 9/11, I carried it on the plane, in my pocket. I was also through security in mere moments -- sure, we still emptied our pockets, and took off big belt buckles (not me, but I live in Texas, so I saw it often) or chunky jewelry that might set off the metal detector, but security was a very very quick process. Nobody cared how much liquid you had in your carry-on. And we were almost exactly as safe then as we are now. Security expert Bruce Schneier has pointed out repeatedly that the only things that REALLY made a difference post-9/11 were (1) the reinforced cockpit door and (2) the now universal understanding that passengers must resist. Everything else is bullshit theater. *And in point of fact TSA is very, very bad at their job, and has NEVER prevented an attack.*
- t-writescode 5y ago
  And one big thing that used to happen that doesn't anymore: * Family would stay together basically right up to the gate. Eating dinner together, possibly, before a flight was had, or picking people up right from the plane, in situations where half the family flies away and the other half stays.
  - ubermonkey 5y ago
    Yeah, for sure. "Picking someone up at the airport" also meant YOU would park somewhere, and then possibly even meet them AT THE GATE. The other thing the airlines pushed in under the guise of "security" was insisting that everyone have photo ID matching their ticket name. Prior to that, they couldn't insist on this. As a result, a secondary market for tickets existed. You'd see "for sale, male DFW to JFK" for such-and-such a flight in these forums -- which, of course, only existed because the airlines (then as now) charged EXTORTIONATE fees to change a ticket. The airlines hated this, and so because "9/11" they pushed through the ID requirement and killed this market. Even though, it bears noting, that 100% of the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID.
makecheck 5y ago
Remember that airport security was not the only thing that changed. When they note that there have been fewer incidents, etc., we have to factor in things like reinforced cockpit doors, crew retraining, etc. and not just whatever procedures pass for “security” at the airport. I am also a bit skeptical that the much more complex new scanning machines are actually more effective at catching things than metal detectors. Meanwhile, we have to acknowledge the serious threats introduced by inefficient processes. The one that scares me is the unbelievable crowd sizes that now form at virtually every major airport. There is simply nothing secure about a giant crowd and it is ridiculous when the insecure crowd exists because of “security”!
- likpok 5y ago
  The new scanning machines will see things like paper or plastic in your pocket, so they can definitely see a lot more than metal detectors. You may think that's irrelevant, but it's not nothing. It's worth noting that 9/11 introduced a new threat that people hadn't really considered before: using planes as weapons. If you want to kill a bunch of people in the US there's lots of places with big crowds. A commercial airline r is a significant force multiplier: the OKC bombing killed "only" 168 people and the Las Vegas shooting only 68. 9/11 was an order of magnitude over that.
foxyv 5y ago
Honestly, if any politician managed to get rid of TSA checkpoints in airports I would vote for him every day of the rest of my life. They are just so pointless and intrusive.
yesdownvoteme 5y ago
The level of political commentary here is anemic, most likely from the heavy handed censorship employed by both moderators and users. TSA isn't about security or safety, it's about control and power. But the ability for anyone on HN to even begin this conversation is basically impossible.
linuxhansl 5y ago
Don't get me started. - 9/11 was a one-time thing, it only worked because the passengers would assume that as long as they cooperate they would get out alive. Without that "cooperation" 9/11 would have not happened (remember the 4th plane that was brought down because the passengers learned what happened) - Liquids. There was the potential that someone could mix together some liquids to make an explosive. It never actually happened, and the possibility was solidly debunked later. Yet, our lotion is still taken from us... And dumped right in the garbage near the most populous location in an airport. - Shoes. One failed attempt. One. Years, later we still need to take our shoes off. It's a security theater. Some of it obviously necessary, some of it just to make us feel safe. Meanwhile way more people die on their drive to the airport than from any flight related incidents.
rdl 5y ago
Our best shot at ending the TSA security theater was when the Covid biosecurity theater started -- TSA lines seem optimized for contagion. We didn't then, so I don't think we ever will.
EricE 5y ago
Anyone who thinks this mask crap is going to end any time soon is deluding themselves. This right here is why our politicians are so emboldened. We are nation of sheep :p
ncmncm 5y ago
It never had a purpose when it was new, beyond making people feel like "something is being done". To work, it has to be invasive enough that people still notice it. It has to be cheap enough that they don't, mostly. So, we will have it for as long as people feel like something, anything at all, needs to be done, no matter whether any good ever comes of it.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Some people say that the Taliban have won after the inevitable defeat in Afghanistan. I think they won 20 years ago when we introduced a massive billion dollar security theatre while cutting down our liberties some people hate so much, terrorists and domestic actors alike. That was an incredible victory.
mrpoopy 5y ago
It was never about safety

495 points by prostoalex 5y ago

Pay the TSA Pre shakedown fee and you don't need to take your shoes off. The problem is we created a monetary incentive to keep the current policy in place.

satya71 5y ago

I already don’t. Turns out the solution is to give up some privacy and pay some money.

syops 5y ago
This is one reason why it will be hard to get rid of the silly requirement to take shoes off. DHS has a financial interest in keeping the theater going.
- version_five 5y ago
  Not just financial interest, but also getting a free pass to make people do what authorities want without having to convince them, and to crack down on anyone they don't like for any reason. Rules like this that don't really have a point and are applied unevenly (like drug laws, many traffic laws, public intoxication...) are just a lazy way to make sure authorities can make anyone or any group they want "fall in line" while not actually preventing favored individuals or groups from doing what they want. It's the most unfair and unequal kind of regulation, and in general people cant6get enough of it, precisely because they know it will be used mostly against groups they don't like, but they dont have to explicitly identify those groups or otherwise acknowledge their prejudice.
Ekaros 5y ago
That is what I find so strange, isn't it likely that this privileged group could be infiltrated?
- bserge 5y ago
  Very likely, if anyone cares enough.

chrisseaton 5y ago

I thought shoes were due to Richard Reed, not 9/11?

giancarlostoro 5y ago
https://www.fbi.gov/history/artifact-of-the-month/december-2020-richard-reids-shoes https://www.fbi.gov/history/artifact-of-the-month/december-2... Man I had no idea this even happened, I either forgot or never heard of it cause it seems to have been an open and shut event.
willcipriano 5y ago
"19 years and 10 months after the shoe bomber: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?" didn't fly with the editor.

88 5y ago

I thought the removal of shoes was a response to the Shoe Bomber plot, not 9/11? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid

dpeck 5y ago
It was shortly afterwards so falls in the same mental “bucket” for all practical purposes.
leecarraher 5y ago
Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught Richard Reid, was a direct response to 9/11 . Either Way, it is still mainly security theater to make passengers less apprehensive about taking what is still the safest mode of travel per passenger mile( there might be other metrics, but this is the only one I've read recently).
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Correct, but I think the general escalation of security in airports which caught the Richard Reid Eh? But he wasn't caught due to airport security. He got onto the plane and tried to set off the bomb during the flight. He would have been caught if someone had looked at his shoes.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    But if he knew they were checking shoes at airport security, then he probably would have put it somewhere else.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      Well isn't that the reason for it? Deny an avenue of attack so they to use another less effective option? But anyway - the point was 'general escalation of security in airports which caught the Richard Reid' is a provably false statement.

reidjs 5y ago

Get TSA precheck

MattGaiser 5y ago
Cheapest way is with a Nexus card I believe. Great program.
- moftz 5y ago
  Some travel credit cards will pay for TSA Precheck for you.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Remember back in the day when the one good thing about the airport security line was not having anyone use it as a stick for the hard sell?
- davemtl 5y ago
  I have Nexus, since getting it no more need to take my shoes off or take my laptop/tablet out of my carry-on. You practically get waved through security. Also, at the border in Canada & US, you effectively skip the line and use the Nexus machines allowing you faster entry into the country.
- 5555624 5y ago
  It's also free to US Service members and DoD civilians.

dpeck 5y ago

No, because we’ve made it some anyone with the power and means to make a change is unaffected by it for a nominal fee.

tyingq 5y ago

The interesting part to me is that the mode of attack for 9/11 can't easily be repeated. It depended on passengers assuming the plane was being hijacked, and that they would eventually be released. That stopped working on the 3rd (edit: 4th) plane. I don't see how it would work again. Passengers now default to assuming there's no path to live other than fighting back. Meaning many of the measures we still take aren't really preventing anything. I do understand this doesn't apply to the shoes (shoe bomber), but that's just one of many things we've put in place.

antihero 5y ago
Any attempt at this, the terrorists will have a game plan of how to convince people on the flight to chill out, that they have no mal-intent towards the passengers, etc etc. I mean it might not work, but I reckon they'd put on a really good act and manipulate people heavily into making it feel like they are actually quite safe and it would be a poor decision to try and overrun them.
- BoHerfIIIJrEsq 5y ago
  > how to convince people on the flight to chill out My sense is that there is nothing they could say. Hijack a plane, a bunch of men are going to attack you. That's it.
  - ansible 5y ago
    Yes, I'd be someone who jumps up to rush the hijackers. Because I'd have nothing to lose. And if all I do is soak up some damage and die, it may give others behind me a chance. I'm not especially brave or fearless or anything. But if you back me into a corner with no way to survive, then I'll fight back like a caged, starving rat.
  - Stevvo 5y ago
    It depends on the social dynamic of the group; for example I don't expect a plane full of mainland Chinese passengers would attack a terrorist.
  - 5y ago

giancarlostoro 5y ago

Disney Springs in Orlando has new metal detectors that you just walk through, wondering if airports will eventually feature the same. I kind of doubt it though.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
There's the body scanners, but I don't know if they can detect anything weird in shoes. That said, how many shoe bombs have they intercepted? That should be a pretty good indication about whether it's still necessary, and I like to think the policy change (or lack thereof) is data-driven.
- depaya 5y ago
  I've never liked the argument "how many shoe bombs have been intercepted?" or "how many terrorists have been stopped?" when it comes to TSA-style security. The presence of the security isn't necessarily meant to find people in the act of carrying out terrorism, it's mean to deter it in the first place since you will be found out (well, in theory anyway...). It's impossible to quantify how many plots have been deterred due to this. I'm no TSA apologist, it's obviously security theater, but is it totally without merit?
  - iso1210 5y ago
    I have a rock that deters tigers you might want to buy
    - brigandish 5y ago
      In Greece I would sometimes encounter packs of aggressive dogs roaming the streets. If you bend down and reach for the ground like you're about to pick up a stone then they disperse immediately. There doesn't even need to be a stone there. I've not had the chance to try it with a tiger but if it works with them too then I'm afraid you won't fetch much for your stone.
  - k1t 5y ago

alexfromapex 5y ago

I try not to fly and this is one of the major reasons I find flying so annoying. I've been through airports where they just use bomb sniffing dogs, why can't that be the norm?

murgindrag 5y ago
Allergies. You end up with a large segment of the population who sneezes a little bit, which is sort of annoying but sort of okay. You end up with a small segment of the population with asthma attacks, anaphylaxis, and other life-threatening conditions. Universal use of dogs would mean that there would be people who simple cannot travel, ever, anywhere beyond driving distance. There's a small war between extremist dog-owners (the ones who believe dogs are people too, and sneak them into all sorts of places dogs aren't allowed as "activism") and people with severe allergies.
- sidlls 5y ago
  I have never heard of any life-threatening allergic reaction to any drug or bomb sniffing dog. Has that actually happened? If so...how, when, and where?
  - woofie11 5y ago
    Asthma attacks are not uncommon in response to dog dander. Those can be life-threatening, but can be managed with albuterol. 30 seconds with Google will turn up countless documented instances. Anaphylaxis is a very rare response to animal dander, but there have been a few documented instances: https://www.petful.com/misc/can-pet-allergies-kill-me/ https://www.petful.com/misc/can-pet-allergies-kill-me/ What's amazing is the number of dog owners who don't believe in dog allergies, or who believe their dogs are hypoallergenic due to fur/hair (dander is in the saliva).
    - sidlls 5y ago
      Countless documented instances of asthma induced by the dander of drug/bomb sniffing dogs or just dogs in general? I have asthma and have occasionally reacted to animal dander—but never in an airport or other location due to service animals.

aww_dang 5y ago

If you liked expanded government powers necessitated by the War on Terror, you're going to love the new biosecurity state. Remember, it is for your own safety! >“I don’t see it changing,” said Lora Ries, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “It never seems to be fewer requirements … the direction always seems to be for more.” >Security screening, he said, will also be expanded to passenger drop-off points and airport and off-airport parking lots, in addition to walkways and tunnels approaching departure and ticket kiosks.

nemo44x 5y ago
>Security screening, he said, will also be expanded to passenger drop-off points and airport and off-airport parking lots, in addition to walkways and tunnels approaching departure and ticket kiosks. That's the protocol in Israel. The airport is fairly isolated and before you can even get on the entry road your car is pulled over. Outside the airport entrance there are dogs and officers and then you go through security before you even get to baggage drop off and then another security for some questioning, etc. You are deemed suspicious if you don't arrive a few hours before your flight. Any drinks you buy after security are taken away as your carry on baggage is looked at one more time before you board. I often buy a couple liters of water before long trips and the to have them taken away (and probably put back on the shelves and sold!) before boarding was a bit annoying.

stoolpigeon 5y ago

The US is the only place I think I've had to remove shoes for flight security in years. But in Europe taking off a belt is often required while in the US it is not. In Budapest they stopped having us remove laptops from bags a bit ago. My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way.

j16sdiz 5y ago
Taking belt off because it trip off the metal detector.
101008 5y ago
I always though taking off a belt it was bcause if not the metal sensor would trigger, so to avoid it, they just ask to remove your belt in case it contains metal?
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  In Canada that's the case. But small belts can go through. So it depends on the security guard what exactly they ask you to do. I had purposefully bought a small belt that would not trigger alarm when I flew weekly pre-covid for years. No joy : Half the security guards told me to take it off as a precaution when I tried to go through, half would get upset I'm taking my small belt and delaying everyone - sometimes there's no winning, just say "yes sir/ma'am" to whatever they ask that particular day :-/
- Tenoke 5y ago
  It is. I don't take off my belts with no metal parts in Europe and it's been fine. Once they even asked me and I said 'no metal' so they didn't press.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
"My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way." It can differ from airport to airport. I traveled from Ottawa to Toronto often enough for it to be mindless but differences between two national airports in same province of same country on same airline still caught me if I went too much on autopilot. And then I'd fly to Halifax and all my instincts went out the window :). Sometimes it'd differ shift to shift. Agents would get mad at me for taking or not taking tablet from my bag. Mentioning "your colleague instructed me otherwise, can you kindly confirm the rule so I can comply in future" only gets you marked as belligerent - the power trip is definitely there :-/

spraveenitpro 5y ago

There was an underwear bomber though.

yalogin 5y ago

The TSA is just a huge scam to siphon money and they need to show they are providing value. Taking shoes off is that value, so yeah it’s never going away. We could get out of Afghanistan but will never get rid of the TSA.

p_l 5y ago
TSA continued existence means lower insurance premiums for airlines, iirc.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
It's all incompetent theatre. I remember around 2006 or 2007 snaking through a terribly managed security line in ATL taking off my shoes, doing all the questions and scanning and pat downs and irradiation and getting through and then some random person shouted "did someone drop their passport?" and realizing it was mine and my passport had fallen out of my bag. So I call back "yep, I did" and it gets handed to me by said random person (who hadn't passed screening yet), with nobody in TSA even batting an eyelash or checking to verify that I didn't just grab someone else's passport (or taken something else of security concern.) Meanwhile I remember flying through Frankfurt in 1994 and opening my (inspected before baggage drop) suitcase briefly to move something and getting pulled politely aside and my items re-inspected. Security policies that made sense and were executed competently by respectful and well-trained staff. Since 9/11 I just try to avoid flying to or from the US entirely.
- camillomiller 5y ago
  Well, just before the pandemic I flew through Frankfurt, Milan and Berlin Tegel forgetting about the Leatherman knife in my backpack's side pocket. I noticed it only when I was back home after my flight back.
- refurb 5y ago
  Haha… nope. I had a friend bring 1L containers of liquid through security in Europe and no one said a word. The limit was 100mL. Nobody was looking at the scanner. Don’t fool yourself.
5y ago

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I wonder what the angle for this article is. They interview a member of the Heritage Foundation, a 'think tank' heavily funded by conservatives and the oil industry whose more controversial efforts are climate change denial, vote fraud claims and opposition of critical race theory.

murgindrag 5y ago
Stereotype much?

isodev 5y ago

Isn’t this one of the main aspects of “terrorism” - while tragic, the act itself is merely trigger to induce fear and impact society in more subtle (and long lasting) ways. e.g we get screened, we fear people who look “suspicious” (even when they are just normal people) etc.

bedhead 5y ago

Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.

ridaj 5y ago
Except many, many more deaths in the case of Covid, and we don't have, thankfully, a federal Covid Corps to enforce any of the related policies...
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Many deaths in a certain age group above 65 y.o.. Most age groups had very few deaths.
  - bedhead 5y ago
    You're wasting your time. COVID deaths could be entirely amongst 97 year old obese smokers with stage 4 cancer and half the country would still give the same obtuse responses, call you granny-killer, tell you you're selfish for not wanting to wear a mask, say "pandemic" like it's a mic drop, etc etc etc. You'll be stuck in a COVID version of the "This amp goes to 11" conversation. It turns out that shocking people with a million volts of raw terror does in fact blow a fuse in many people's brains (go figure) causing them to lose all cognitive abilities.
    - bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
      I disagree with you, even in your hypothetical situation. I'd gladly wear a mask to protect 97-year-old obese smokers, if they were a vulnerable group. I feel like you invented this group to distance the vulnerable population from "us", but it just makes it sound like you have no empathy for other humans.
      - 5y ago

Minor49er 5y ago

20 years after 9/11, the official story still doesn't add up

temptemptemp111 5y ago
Wow... A single HN reader gets it ;P

cm2187 5y ago

At Geneva airport they have a separate line with what looks like some new machines that basically require nothing, you just drop your bag full of laptops, tablets and liquids and you go through the metal detector. Can’t wait for it to generalise.

noetic_techy 5y ago

I'll take it a step further. We need a total paradigm redesign of airports. Imagine and airport designed to the point where you can literally drive up (or be dropped by an autonomous vehicle) 10 minutes before your flight, Throw your luggage onto a belt where a robot auto tags it based on your a facial recognition algorithm, and walk through an unobtrusive security point that's totally AI driven, and walk direct to your plane ready to go. As someone who travels a lot, I say forget shoes, this is the ultimate dream. The "arrive 2 hours before your flight" nonsense should be automated into oblivion on both ends. I think we just accept this paradigm of air travel now and our airports have become these bohemoths of capture to sell you food, beverage and overpriced trinkets with abhorent wait times for the actual flight logistics. Why cant I just be dropped off directly at my gate and bumble on in less then 5 minutes!

baybal2 5y ago
It just needs to be abandoned. No point talking about it more.
fma 5y ago
This would really only apply for fights where I'm checking in luggage...international flights, for example. I wouldn't mind a feature where I can drop off my luggage somewhere near my house the day before my flight and it gets tagged, bulked transferred and inspected at the airport. This would allow me to straight to the gate and not need to check in large luggage or fumble with luggage while rushing for a flight. This also forces me to pack early and now the night of the flight and be sleep deprived.
- O5vYtytb 5y ago
  No thanks. Airlines seem to lose enough baggage already, I wouldn't trust them with another major logistics project.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I'm half-surprised we don't already have this. The airlines already use some sort of uber-like self-employed contractors to deliver lost luggage. They could offer the same service in the other direction.

alliao 5y ago

belt off in London, shoes off in NY. If you're an unfit middle aged male flying between London and New York will make you consider flying private sooner rather than later. That's my hypothesis anyway.

wefarrell 5y ago

It's amazing that we still have to take our shoes off in airports 20 years after 9/11, yet we still don't have mandatory paid sick leave in the US despite Covid killing 20 times the amount of people.

GDC7 5y ago

And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter. Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train station also don't matter. Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships. It ain't about safety from ill-intentioned people...it's about protecting the POTUS from having to give the order to open fire on an hijacked civilian plane. That's the reason why every administration is so concerned with planes and so lax about trains and buses and cruise ships.

imglorp 5y ago
It's also much easier to get SWAT onto a train or ship or stadium. Airplane over a city has only one option. Oh, and only one of these things will be heading for Congress potentially.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  I was very surprised by a recent shooting at Chicago Union Station: Amtrak finds out this murderer on the run is taking a train across the country arriving in Chicago. They don’t tell anyone on the train this, they don’t intercept the train in the middle of the night in a small town - they wait until the guy detrains at one of the busiest stations in the country before chasing him and shooting him. Bizarre. https://abc7chicago.com/union-station-shooting-chicago-shooter-jamar-jason-taylor/10975958/ https://abc7chicago.com/union-station-shooting-chicago-shoot...
anaganisk 5y ago
Duh, all u have to do is increase the speed of the train, and derail of the dead end. /s
UncleDiaz12 5y ago
Cruise ships do search you quite thoroughly before boarding, but they are looking for booze.
justin66 5y ago
> And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter. Plenty of people are harassed by DEA, customs or immigration on Amtrak trains. They don't seem too concerned with terrorism or souls, though.

Tenoke 5y ago

For comparison I think I've been asked once out of my last 50 flights to take my shoes off in Europe and it still feels too stringent here.

wjp3 5y ago

I always refer to it as "security Kabuki theatre"...

TrevorJ 5y ago

Shoes off, masks on. In perpetuity.

99mans 5y ago
Mask up. Vax up. Shut up. This is what they want.

option 5y ago

“those willing to give up a little bit of freedom to gain a little bit of security deserve neither and will soon lose both”

refurb 5y ago

We had almost zero airport security in the US until the 60’s. And that never went away, so that’s your answer.

FigurativeVoid 5y ago

When I was last traveling, the person in front of me asked TSA agent "Why do we have to take our shoes off?" He replied, "Have you heard of the shoe bomber?" When I think about it, that's a crazy policy to have since it only happened once (and it didn't even work). If we follow that sort of logic we should be wearing masks every time we fly. It's just a bizarre policy.

danans 5y ago
> If we follow that sort of logic we should be wearing masks every time we fly. We do wear masks every time we fly nowadays. Or maybe that was your point?
- FigurativeVoid 5y ago
  Sorry. Forever. We had an incident once, and we now have to follow guidelines to that incident forever. Wearing masks now is appropriate.

hourislate 5y ago

WE should all be grateful they still allow us to wear our underwear while going through these security check points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab Most of this screening is to avoid profiling. It would be considered politically not correct if we were to just screen Muslims so Grand Pa who received the Medal of Honor in WWII, has to be stripped searched after they get him out of the wheel chair.

tawaysdfas4 5y ago
Ummm yeah, so guys like these can get into the airport? https://youtu.be/NWNyxDUSriA?t=40 https://youtu.be/NWNyxDUSriA?t=40 This just happened last week. It probably happens every week. Since the attacker is white, we dont classify it as terror. If the person were Muslim, he'd be in prison already. Firstly, we already profile Muslims extensively. Secondly, a non Muslim person with guns, usually motivated by GOP/church/nation regularly commits atrocities, there is a news article like every other week. Apologists like you like to look the other way.
- hourislate 5y ago
  Ummm, there is a big difference between raging and trying to blow up an aircraft. If the 911 bombers started fist fights in the airport lobby instead of hijacking airplanes, I'm sure we wouldn't be living with the heighten security apparatus we have today. Can you list the race or religion of all the terrorists who tried to bring down an aircraft 911 to present day, just curious? I think you're the apologist in this case.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    You do realize ISIS or Al Qaeda can just find a white convert to send through? Or that there are white Muslims to begin with (Balkans)?

helge9210 5y ago

We have to wear a sign of obedience on our faces anywhere we go for more than a year now. In some countries periodic anal swabs are mandatory and even diplomatic status is not an excuse to skip one. Not taking about mandatory periodic injection of an unknown substance combined with regular mandatory DNA material harvesting. Are we still concerned with shoes at airports?

zxcvbn4038 5y ago

Or you can pay a fee and bypass the lines, not remove your clothing, whiz through the diplomatic lane at JFK. I think most of the screening is less about security and more about selling convenience.

irae 5y ago
I was tempted for a moment to agree. Maybe for the flight companies and airports it could be true. But since many of those measures became law, then it is a political problem. It would bring bad reputation to any politician trying to remove the law. So it is a much bigger issue now.
donclark 5y ago
But why have to pay a fee? Seems like the people that want "security theater" should have to pay - not the people that want less.

mrmcd 5y ago

Just pay the government a $100 bribe^W 'application processing fee' for Precheck or Global Entry, and no more taking off your shoes. Or taking out your laptops or liquids, or having a government employee look you over in the nudie scanner. Also, shorter, faster lines. But all this is actually necessary and not security theater. We promise.

bluedino 5y ago
$85 and it lasts for 5 years. Quite the deal.
- mrmcd 5y ago
  Right. GE is $100/5 years. So, might as well pay the extra $3/yr for faster passport lines too.

duxup 5y ago

So much security that not sense. I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security. Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security. It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity there where there is no security ... than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out. If someone did want to do something at such a sporting event, nothing is stopping them from doing it at the gates where there is a reliable and unsecured mass of humanity, and I don't think anyone is bothering with that ... I used to wheel my grandfather into games on a wheelchair... they didn't check anything, just waved you through. A wheel chair sized bomb would be easy to bring in, but you don't even have to bring it in. We have secure ID schemes that I believe most if not all of the 9/11 attackers would have qualified to get ... In the US we don't have mass terrorist events that any of this would prevent. Why do we keep subjecting non-terrorists to these systems? What are we doing this for?

spoonjim 5y ago
That security isn’t necessarily to stop terrorism. It’s also to stop people from bringing in weapons and then using them in drunken brawls.
- duxup 5y ago
  >using them in drunken brawls. That's not a thing at games I've been to. Lots of drunken folks, but fights are exceptionally rare.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  That is amazing reasoning. Assuming drunken brawls were a problem, instead of banning alcohol, the solution was the current TSA protocol.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    Alcohol makes money, outside weapons don’t. If they could get away with selling you knives in the stadium they probably would.

michaelfeathers 5y ago

This is a lesson in incentives. The reason any of these procedures are not eradicated is that no one wants to be the person who does that and then have the next terrorist attack use a technique that would've been caught. It's interesting to note that we have had this in software development too. Prior to CI/CD, organizations that had QA departments (responsible for testing) had a lot of incentive to hold up releases because they were blamed if a bug escaped into production. When developers test, they are responsible for both delivery and defects so there is balance. It's hard to see how something like this could be applied for security. Making the TSA responsible for wait times seems like a good idea but there's always going to be an asymmetry when life hangs in the balance. After the IRA bombings, train platforms didn't have trash bins for decades. Eventually some showed up with transparent bags so that the contents could be seen. The half-life of fear is long.

Y_Y 5y ago
I'd be willing to wear see-through shoes at the airport, if that's what you're suggesting.
ggalaxximm 5y ago
The half-life of fear is long.

MrGilbert 5y ago

Totally unrelated, but I still remember what I did on 9/11. I was in my teens. I know the date, I know the weekday, I know everything I did in the 24 hours it happened. However, despite being the much "fresher" events, I don't know the weekday my grandparents and parents passed away, let alone what I did back then. My memory is... interesting.

macintux 5y ago
Memory in general is very capricious, but world-changing, emotional events tend to do that. Before 9/11 the most common one I heard people talking about was JFK's assassination. For me, it's the Challenger disaster, 9/11, Columbia.
- MrGilbert 5y ago
  Yes.. Thinking about it, before 9/11 I had the TV pictures of the Berlin Wall being torn down by an excavator in my mind. But I was way too young at this age to understand it.
conductr 5y ago
I'm a bit older and have experienced a handful of 9/11-like events [0]. They always stand out more vividly as a shared global/national experience whereas things like family members passing is highly localized to your family. You could easily escape the mourning by talking to friends/coworkers/etc that had no idea your family member passed and the conversation would give you a sense of normalcy. During/following 9/11, there was nobody to talk to that wasn't thinking about the events that just occurred. It consumed the nation for a fair bit of time. [0] Challenger, OKC, 9/11, even the first WTC attacks and princess Diana & OJ fit this category in terms of memory imprinting. I'm too young for JFK, but that was a big one too. My uncle says he can remember everyone being very sad and glued to the TV, he was 3.
- MrGilbert 5y ago
  Yeah... Thinking about it, I remember my mum watching the funeral for Lady Diana back in 1997. > It consumed the nation for a fair bit of time. Now I'm European, and I remember that our teachers back in school spend the whole day explaining what happened, and maybe why. (It was late afternoon here, when the attacks started, so I'm talking about the next day). But everyone was in disbelief, and also afraid of the response.

ctrlp 5y ago

The obvious purpose of removing shoes at airports has long been more about security theater than safety. The authorities must be seen to be doing something to protect travelers or the industry might not survive the customer's perception of danger. But, the less obvious reasons surely include maintaining the function of the huge TSA security apparatus put in place after 9/11. The stated function of the TSA is to protect passengers from attack. The unstated (and unacknowledged function) that has perpetuated the practice despite every traveler hating it (and its obvious futility), is to intimidate travelers and provide a convenient mechanism of crowd-control. Step out of line (literally) and you will be treated as a potential criminal. There needn't be an official policy to do so, the benefits of the system ensure its continuance via other (stated) motives, not least the profit motive of the supporting economic interests. The upshot is that travelling via plane in the past 20 years is one of the many small lessons for living in the security/surveillance state. You must obey. Moreover, we see the logic of the security/surveillance state incorporating this convenient control mechanism by now restricting (or implicitly threatening to restrict, which is even better) the travel of domestic antagonists of power. If we had discontinued taking off our shoes, the symbolic effect of dispiriting and weakening the public (literally making us vulnerable in our unshod feet) would be unavailable now. Why would the administration willingly relinquish such a useful tool for managing the population? Of course it wouldn't. It would we more amazing if it had. Now, we will likely add further controls on travel in the form of digital health passports with infinitely more possibility for government mischief. When/if the pandemic ends, do you believe the passports will be discontinued?

cujo 5y ago
> Now, we will likely add further controls on travel in the form of digital health passports with infinitely more possibility for government mischief. How do you see digital health passports as having infinitely more possibility for govt mischief? Right now TSA has the ability to treat you like a criminal if they think you looked at them funny. The health passport "mischief" seems more along the lines of "you don't have vaccine X, so you can't board the plane." While potentially problematic, that's kind of the end of it. It becomes a no-fly list, but one where you can actually control your status on it.

mostertoaster 5y ago

What will the headline be 20 years in the future: “20 years after covid, will we ever ....”

Borrible 5y ago

Well, yes, inertia and symbolic action. But why don't you have to take them off before entering a high speed train? https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/SP0520-Terrorist-Attacks-Passenger-Rail-Transportation https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/SP0520-Terrorist-Attacks-...

jacquesm 5y ago

I haven't had to remove my shoes in airports for a decade or so, I suspect this is mostly a US thing at this point.

ldehaan 5y ago

Shoes off. Belt off Backpack ready for search Full body genital scan Mask scanner with RFID chip reader Vaccine passport Passport/drivers license or state ID Credit or bank card only Social media must be free of x/y posts -Or- Pay to skip the line

glugc 5y ago

20 years after covid: will we ever stop having mandatory masking and monthly lockdowns? Sounds facetious. I'm sure most people assumed 9/11 restrictions to be temporary as well.

99mans 5y ago

The fact the person responsible for the TSA also had a massive profit stake in body scanners says everything one needs to know about airport "security".

Diederich 5y ago

I flew a number of times post 9/11 and accidentally brought a pocket knife with me in my carry on backpack several times. It's all quite silly.

gridder 5y ago

And what about the stupid ban on liquids? This is even more nonsensical… Sure the airports shops are happy though. IIRC is related to a Heathrow 2006 attack…

u801e 5y ago

After the number of deaths and economic impact that resulted from the pandemic, I would be perfectly fine if we completely eliminated any type of security check associated with air travel. I would rather air travel be much like traveling by train, bus, or taxi instead of what it is now.

q1w2 5y ago
How would you eliminate the risk of hijackings?
- bradstewart 5y ago
  Reinforced cockpit doors with strict policies in place for when the pilots can open it, which is what we do now (in the U.S. at least) even with all of the TSA stuff.
  - q1w2 5y ago
    Those doors don't stop a hijacker from executing stewardesses until the pilot opens the door.
    - u801e 5y ago
      This source[1] claims that the probability of getting hijacked while on a commercial flight is 0.000004%. On the other hand, the case fatality rate of covid-19 is around 2% based on what I'm able to find. So why are we worried about possible plane hijackings when a lot of people don't seem to be overly worried about something that's many times more risky. [1] https://findanyanswer.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-plane-getting-hijacked https://findanyanswer.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-plane-ge...
- u801e 5y ago
  With the current measures in place (reinforced cockpit doors), it's not a significant enough risk to worry about.
123jay7 5y ago

ekianjo 5y ago

How about water bottles?

supperburg 5y ago

I just finished Islamic imperialism: a history. The fact that one man could change everyone’s lives like this is really amazing. It doesn’t seem like these measures are going to be necessary forever though.

Ericson2314 5y ago

Honestly, I am ok with bullshit TSA because it will help make long distance train travel more attractive in the US. Relatedly, I want someone to write a dark comedy set like 20 years hence where a bunch of airline execs, worried about their shrinking industry and some shiny new rail, band together to pay off some terrorist to blow up a moving train so train stations gets TSA security theater. Without the movie, I worry due to some stupid accident the rail TSA might actually happen!

quelsolaar 5y ago

I used to think security theater (like taking off your shoes) was the dumbest thing ever. Then I realized that Terrorism is "Insecurity theater". Its designed to make you feel unsafe. It is statistically not at likely to hurt you, and the people who do it are rare, you but its designed to scare you in to thinking you are under some massive threat by an army of people who can and do strike at anytime. Its psychological warfare. So how do you fight against that? You make people go through security theater to make them think they are safe! We beat the terrorists, not when there are no terror incidents, but when no one is afraid of them. Fear is the enemy. If forcing people to taking off their shoes makes some people feel safe flying, then it is an effective anti terrorist measure.

kleiba 5y ago
That's exactly why it is called "terror-ism".
gelotar 5y ago
Who is empowered when the masses are swallowed by fear? It is not some hooded maniac rubbing his hands together in his basement. It is the state, which maintains control. Control is maintained by fear; fear is engineered through psychological warfare. When did the state ever insruct us to stop fearing "terror"? Machiavelli wrote all about this.

j_m_b 5y ago

20 years after Covid: Will we ever stop putting up plastic and wearing masks?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

focusgroup0 5y ago

The TSA was never about Security. It's about lucrative gov't contracts, conditioning people to accept further invasions of privacy, and a jobs program for unemployable dregs of society. The spamdemic was never about Public Health,

psoots 5y ago

> It’s costly to have government employees because you have to pay benefits and they are unionized. Sometimes people say the quiet parts out loud.

aliswe 5y ago

I saw a documentary on border controls in afghanistan where they used a pretty ingenious idea. they frisk a guy and check his pulse at the same time. so a guy holds two fingers to the guys jugular vein, and the other one checks him. any increase in pulse and its an indicator they should keep searching.

gelotar 5y ago
So if some heavily armed stranger touches your neck and that makes you nervous, you're probably guilty of something?

ewagsjr 5y ago

I mean you can do TSA PreCheck and then only 10% of the time you have to take your shoes off.

aceki 5y ago

> The safety protocols have managed to protect airports and planes from further attack... Sorry, but no. The DHS performed a study on the TSA's effectiveness[0], finding that the TSA missed concealed weapons, explosives, and other contraband 95% of the time. The reason the shoe bomber[1], underwear bomber[2], and the UA 93 hijacking[3] were unsuccessful was because of the passengers and crew on the flight. The TSA did nothing. A TSA tactic that isn't as well known is the TSA SPOT program[4]. Basically, TSA agents stand around in the airport looking for "suspicious" activity which naturally leads to profiling (particularly for those of Middle Eastern descent). A score card from the program has been leaked[5], and with the sort of criteria on it, it would be easy to justify searching anyone at the airport. This is speculation, but I suspect that giving passengers a false sense of security would make them less likely to notice an attempted hijacking, bombing, or whatever else. But at least they'll be more comfortable, right? [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_shoe_bomb_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_shoe_bomb_attempt [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_253 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_253 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPOT_(TSA_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPOT_(TSA_program) [5] https://www.papersplease.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/spot-score.jpg https://www.papersplease.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/s...

kjkjadksj 5y ago

I flew out of LAX last month and they had us keep our shoes on.

fnord77 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

kureikain 5y ago

How do you manage to not losing your laptop, especially when traveling with kids? They lost mine once and I basically have to found it myself. Eventually found someone throw the bag in an corner...

rwmj 5y ago
I lost my passport between security and the gate once (the security staff inexplicably moved it into a new tray, so when I picked up my stuff from my two trays I missed the passport in the third tray). Losing your passport at this point turns out to be very complicated, but I was lucky that they held up the whole plane while I ran back to security to fetch it.

GhostVII 5y ago

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousands of people per year. Not that I'm advocating for lower speed limits, just that there is a contradiction here. I bet that if instead of having people go through security at sporting events, you had them all do 20 push ups, you'd save more people from dying of heart disease than would die of terrorism.

lonelyPM 5y ago
Well said... I feel like someone out there has developed a dashboard like this.
- hirako2000 5y ago
  We are pretty good at death counts, it's easy. All the data is there. Tied to anonymised health condition as aggregates. The problem is how do we even start to evaluate the cost of prevention. Measures? We have equipment and labour costs, that's easy to measure but the data is not made available. But then what is the opportunity cost on those who are inflicted the measures. A person goes on holiday and can perhaps browse a book while queuing for an hour to go through the security checks, a business traveller is simply standing there, unable to even make a phone call due to lack of privacy. Also, if we spend 1 trillion usd on say the prevention of terrorism, and we "only" suffered 20 death in the United States during that period, it doesn't mean halving the expense would only double the death toll. We put measures and have no tool to measure their effect, high number of variables, and each of their weight evolve dynamically. I think we better spend time educating the media industry to somewhat control the increasing rate of fear inducing columns published each second. And if they don't learn, regulate them since we are already regulating countless industries for that matter.
  - landemva 5y ago

durpleDrank 5y ago

I think the worry about these vaccine phone apps that track and trace is related.

Taylor_OD 5y ago

TSA jobs cant go away now that they exist. They probably never will. It will look bad for whatever president that does it because they will eliminate jobs and "national security" checks. Everyone knows its a joke but we will keep doing it.

jedberg 5y ago
They could easily phase it out. They already have. There is already a rule that an airport can hire a private security company as long as it's approved by the TSA. They could make a small rule change that allows the private security to make their own rules, or just make some of the rules optional, like shoes off. So we'd still have TSA agents in some places, but for example SFO already opts out of TSA agents. If they could opt out of the shoes off rule they probably would. At that point you've effectively eliminated the TSA without making a big deal about it.

jedberg 5y ago

The way you know it is all security theater is TSA pre. I haven't taken my shoes off, my laptop out, or gone through the hands-on-your-head scanner in years, because the TSA pre-check line doesn't require any of that. Because apparently verifying my ID before arrival at the airport makes me less of a threat. Or maybe it's the $80 they get every few years that makes me less of a threat...

stormbrew 5y ago
I mean, I agree in general but it is also likely that they're performing at least some kind of background check on you when you participate in Pre. They definitely do with Nexus. It does make a certain degree of sense as a program if you believe in the premise of the entire security theatre apparatus to begin with. Especially within the US where domestic air travel has traditionally required very weak identification (driver's license). That is, you're paying them for the privilege of reducing their attack surface a little bit.
- jedberg 5y ago
  They run a background check on you whenever you buy an airline ticket. The airline submits their manifest to the TSA to cross check with the no-fly list. The only thing that TSA pre does is give you a number that is unique to you (as opposed to a name that you may share with someone else). They could easily solve this by having you submit your SSN or Passport number whenever you buy an airline ticket. I agree on Nexus, they basically do the entry interview ahead of time and then assume the answers are the same until they aren't (I have that too). That one actually makes sense.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    The no-fly list isn't really a background check. It's just a simple name match, and it catches people who aren't on it because of that. An interview (like nexus or customs) also isn't a background check. These are three separate things. Everyone gets a check on the no-fly list, some people get advance background checks (Pre and programs like it I'd expect), and fewer still get an actual interview (international travellers who also have to supply a passport). Having a unique ID number tied to other information about you (like your license ID number or passport number or SSN) allows for a more in depth check, no doubt in ways you probably don't even explicitly consent to. If they did have your ssn or passport number from the airline at ticket purchase time then sure, that would allow for the same thing. But they don't. And if they did it'd be pretty expensive to do it for everyone. So, the current solution is basically just to make (some) people pay for their own background check.

monkeywork 5y ago

Topics like this is why I'm against domestic vaccine passports like the Canadian provinces are suggesting we use. Temporary measures that become perm and dramatically change our way of lives - especially with poor risk / reward evaluation.

throwaway20371 5y ago

I don't have to take my shoes off airports. A govt contractor looked at my birth certificate and driver's license and charged me $78, and then gave me a special number to put on my boarding pass. Now a man at security gives me a little red flag that says I don't have to take my shoes off. Honestly, I don't know why everyone doesn't pay for TSA PreCheck and GlobalEntry.

jarjoura 5y ago

Since we can't realistically ask everyone to succumb to background checks we at least have to put in some safety checks along the way. It's by design that it's annoyingly slow to get through airport security. It prevents people from rushing into the airport and rushing onto a plane unnoticed. What may look like incompetence is actually very meticulously structured. I really don't think it's that big of a deal. Besides, as airports are going through remodeling they are getting more and more comfortable to hang out in.

throwaway20371 5y ago

I would be happy to have more potential terrorist attacks if it meant less hassle at the airport. Even if every airport in the US got bombed once a year, it would still be 20,000 less deaths per year in the US than happen by automobile.

cannabis_sam 5y ago

Not if we disregard paranoid morons, but that’s apparently not an option, please don’t be a fascist by supporting this garbage.

Ajay-p 5y ago

https://archive.is/GLV2R https://archive.is/GLV2R

ubermonkey 5y ago

Certainly not. People who were paying attention back then knew this. This kind of intrusion is a ratcheting function. I feel like HN is a sort of older crowd, so a good chunk of those who can read this probably remember pre-9/11 travel, but for those that don't: I have, nearly every day of my adult life, carried a Swiss Army Knife. It's insanely handy, and not at all something that would be parsed as a weapon. (Even in 2021, the models I favor are legal for personal everyday carry in the UK, which is at this point somewhat notorious for restrictive knife laws.) Before 9/11, I carried it on the plane, in my pocket. I was also through security in mere moments -- sure, we still emptied our pockets, and took off big belt buckles (not me, but I live in Texas, so I saw it often) or chunky jewelry that might set off the metal detector, but security was a very very quick process. Nobody cared how much liquid you had in your carry-on. And we were almost exactly as safe then as we are now. Security expert Bruce Schneier has pointed out repeatedly that the only things that REALLY made a difference post-9/11 were (1) the reinforced cockpit door and (2) the now universal understanding that passengers must resist. Everything else is bullshit theater. *And in point of fact TSA is very, very bad at their job, and has NEVER prevented an attack.*

t-writescode 5y ago
And one big thing that used to happen that doesn't anymore: * Family would stay together basically right up to the gate. Eating dinner together, possibly, before a flight was had, or picking people up right from the plane, in situations where half the family flies away and the other half stays.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  Yeah, for sure. "Picking someone up at the airport" also meant YOU would park somewhere, and then possibly even meet them AT THE GATE. The other thing the airlines pushed in under the guise of "security" was insisting that everyone have photo ID matching their ticket name. Prior to that, they couldn't insist on this. As a result, a secondary market for tickets existed. You'd see "for sale, male DFW to JFK" for such-and-such a flight in these forums -- which, of course, only existed because the airlines (then as now) charged EXTORTIONATE fees to change a ticket. The airlines hated this, and so because "9/11" they pushed through the ID requirement and killed this market. Even though, it bears noting, that 100% of the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID.

makecheck 5y ago

Remember that airport security was not the only thing that changed. When they note that there have been fewer incidents, etc., we have to factor in things like reinforced cockpit doors, crew retraining, etc. and not just whatever procedures pass for “security” at the airport. I am also a bit skeptical that the much more complex new scanning machines are actually more effective at catching things than metal detectors. Meanwhile, we have to acknowledge the serious threats introduced by inefficient processes. The one that scares me is the unbelievable crowd sizes that now form at virtually every major airport. There is simply nothing secure about a giant crowd and it is ridiculous when the insecure crowd exists because of “security”!

likpok 5y ago
The new scanning machines will see things like paper or plastic in your pocket, so they can definitely see a lot more than metal detectors. You may think that's irrelevant, but it's not nothing. It's worth noting that 9/11 introduced a new threat that people hadn't really considered before: using planes as weapons. If you want to kill a bunch of people in the US there's lots of places with big crowds. A commercial airline r is a significant force multiplier: the OKC bombing killed "only" 168 people and the Las Vegas shooting only 68. 9/11 was an order of magnitude over that.

foxyv 5y ago

Honestly, if any politician managed to get rid of TSA checkpoints in airports I would vote for him every day of the rest of my life. They are just so pointless and intrusive.

yesdownvoteme 5y ago

The level of political commentary here is anemic, most likely from the heavy handed censorship employed by both moderators and users. TSA isn't about security or safety, it's about control and power. But the ability for anyone on HN to even begin this conversation is basically impossible.

linuxhansl 5y ago

Don't get me started. - 9/11 was a one-time thing, it only worked because the passengers would assume that as long as they cooperate they would get out alive. Without that "cooperation" 9/11 would have not happened (remember the 4th plane that was brought down because the passengers learned what happened) - Liquids. There was the potential that someone could mix together some liquids to make an explosive. It never actually happened, and the possibility was solidly debunked later. Yet, our lotion is still taken from us... And dumped right in the garbage near the most populous location in an airport. - Shoes. One failed attempt. One. Years, later we still need to take our shoes off. It's a security theater. Some of it obviously necessary, some of it just to make us feel safe. Meanwhile way more people die on their drive to the airport than from any flight related incidents.

rdl 5y ago

Our best shot at ending the TSA security theater was when the Covid biosecurity theater started -- TSA lines seem optimized for contagion. We didn't then, so I don't think we ever will.

EricE 5y ago

Anyone who thinks this mask crap is going to end any time soon is deluding themselves. This right here is why our politicians are so emboldened. We are nation of sheep :p

ncmncm 5y ago

It never had a purpose when it was new, beyond making people feel like "something is being done". To work, it has to be invasive enough that people still notice it. It has to be cheap enough that they don't, mostly. So, we will have it for as long as people feel like something, anything at all, needs to be done, no matter whether any good ever comes of it.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Some people say that the Taliban have won after the inevitable defeat in Afghanistan. I think they won 20 years ago when we introduced a massive billion dollar security theatre while cutting down our liberties some people hate so much, terrorists and domestic actors alike. That was an incredible victory.

mrpoopy 5y ago

It was never about safety