9 ms·

After 20 Years of Failure, Kill the TSA

174 points by dandotway 5y ago

rrss 5y ago
definitely kill TSA precheck (and clear). It’s absurd to me that the government now offers a paid subscription service to enable people to bypass an entirely government-created problem that has little to no benefit.
- rrss 5y ago
  “We are instituting a policy in which the government employs people to hit travelers in the face with a board as they enter the airport” “If you would prefer not to be hit with a board as part of your travel experience, please apply for our new program and pay up.”
- setpatchaddress 5y ago
  That won’t add pressure to get rid of the TSA. I don’t know what will. I’d support an actually libertarian party at this point. One that did not consider women and black/brown people inferior and did not defer to megacorporations and multibillionaires.
  - mechanical_bear 5y ago
    This is a gross mischaracterization of libertarians, and a cheap straw man.
- coin 5y ago
  You’ve just defined a racket. Operating a racket is called racketeering.
dandotway 5y ago
My two favorite quotes: > But the Homeland Security Red Teams in the 2015 test actively concealed forbidden items just as real criminals and terrorist would. The result was that "TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints." > What the TSA is good at is high-visibility groping, scanning, and confiscating. Making people drop their pants, take off their shoes, and surrender their shampoo annoys people in a way that says "we're doing something" without actually accomplishing anything. It's what Schneier calls "security theater."
- nopcode 5y ago
  > potential weapons In case anyone is wondering, I've been part of similar Red Teams in Europe (incl flights towards USA) and "potential weapons" included AK-47's.
  - kilroy123 5y ago
    Did the weapons get through?
    - nopcode 5y ago
      Yes, we obtained >90% success rates with (large) guns.
      - noman-land 5y ago
        Wow that's not a comforting thought. How is that even possible?
        toomuchtodo 5y ago
        As everyone else has commented, security theater versus effective screening and detection methods.
      - GordonS 5y ago
        My sister worked in airport security for a while in the UK and their team also had >90% success rate.
      - evilos 5y ago
        Into carry on luggage? How do they miss assault rifles but catch my swiss army knife I forgot about? Every. Time.
        petre 5y ago
        Because swiss army knives are way more common than AK47s on carry on luggage? Directed Attention Fatigue? I heard a story from a guy who was a hunter about how he forgot about some misplaced ammo in a backpack that he then used as carry on luggage. Of course security found it and he got himself a criminal record. It happened in Europe, where one doesn't buy ammo at the grocery store and it has to be stored under key separately from the firearm etc.
pjc50 5y ago
Just like the invasion of Afghanistan, this was all driven by the need to "do something" after 9/11. Now the US has finally left, a decade after assasinating Bin Laden in Pakistan, maybe the domestic security theatre can be dismantled too. The salience of terrorism in the air has vanished when mobs fight each other in the street and the US loses a 9/11 worth of COVID deaths every two days. It also seems odd that mandatory groping never received as much pushback as, say, mandatory facemasks.
- dTal 5y ago
  >It also seems odd that mandatory groping never received as much pushback as, say, mandatory facemasks. Not really? Mandatory groping is an infrequent experience reserved only for those who travel by air, while mandatory face masks affect everyone, all the time. I don't know why you'd be surprised.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    Right. I avoid airports as often as possible
- petre 5y ago
  It seems like every 10 years the US uses something to reassert it's foreign policy, maybe also followed by a financial crisis? In 1991 it finally succeeded screwing up the Soviet Union, shortly followed by the war in Yugoslavia. In 2001 they used 9/11 and the War on Terror to invade a host of countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. In 2008/2009 the subprime mortgage crisis triggered a global financial crisis, followed by the NATO intervention in Libya. Now they're using Trump's trade war, Covid and a chip/comodity shortage to stir up things with China. It makes one wonder if it isn't all intended and planned in advance, or if it just reacts when opportunity arises.
- ecf 5y ago
  Unfortunately the political risk for dismantling protections and then having a new attack occur is something politicians won’t accept.
nobodyandproud 5y ago
It would help pay for the infrastructure bill, if we put the TSA out of its misery.
pddpro 5y ago
> "Never again will a terrorist be able to breach the cockpit simply with a box cutter or a knife. The cockpit doors have been reinforced, and passengers, flight crews and air marshals would intervene." I fail to understand this. How would the passengers and flight crews intervene against armed (with knife) assailants?
- zatertip 5y ago
  "Are you guys ready? Okay. Let's roll!"
  - deedubaya 5y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Beamer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Beamer
    - barbacoa 5y ago
      Just like how the seat cushion doubles as a flotation maybe arm rests should dispense 8 in knifes. Not much advantage to sneaking a weapon on a plane if everyone else has one too.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        Oh yes, we don't want violence on the plane so just give everyone weapons Frankly this is the asinine US view which results in so many shootings because there are just so many guns floating around basically unrestricted
        scollet 5y ago
        We could Home Alone it instead! Trip wire between the seats. Instead of those oxygen masks it's a hammer that swings down. Hot iron on the bathroom pull handle.
  - tamaharbor 5y ago
    Those guys were REAL heros.
kieselguhr_kid 5y ago
Guess I'm going to wholeheartedly agree with Reason Magazine today. Doesn't happen often, but they're totally right here; security theater was a knee jerk reaction and the sooner we get rid of it the better.
fmakunbound 5y ago
The TSA literally grabbed my balls in LAX on a flight to Dallas.
- muzika 5y ago
  Bowling balls can be used as deadly weapon on planes.
spoonjim 5y ago
I was putting my stuff on the belt when a TSA guy came up and slipped a lighter in my shoe. He did the “Shhh” gesture to me indicating he was testing the X ray guy but as a brown man I wasn’t having it. I started loudly yelling “he slipped the lighter in my shoe did you see that” and everyone around me nodded in agreement but despite the commotion the X ray guy still missed it. The guy who slipped the lighter in was very exasperated when I started yelling but even more exasperated when his colleague missed it, after the whole line was made aware of the frame up.
908B64B197 5y ago
I never understood using tax money to screen zero-risk travelers. It's a complete waste of time and resources for everyone involved. I guess it's a job program and a form of welfare.
Pigalowda 5y ago
I think some of this could be automated. The xrays show large radiopaque items. If TSA recorded the images of each scanner and collected a dataset then a real time object detector could be used to improve screening sensitivity and efficiency.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Imagine the billions of shoes removed because of the threat of one shoe bomb. War veterans being disassembled to make sure they aren’t terrorists. What a disaster.
ab_testing 5y ago
It is a jobs program for around 100000 people and a test ground for new scanning technologies. Why would any administration kill it ?
- avmich 5y ago
  Umm, because politically-elected bosses going to fire them otherwise? At least that's how it should be, right?
m0zg 5y ago
Speaking of, can someone explain why the TSA security theater does not include body temperature measurement (or any other screening for COVID symptoms) nowadays? The whole airport situation is weird: mask enforcement in the environment where people can plausibly socially distance (airport terminal) is hardcore, yet when they are stuffed into a plane like sardines for hours without any distancing they can take the masks off to drink or eat. Or even sneeze, as the case may be. And _nobody_ screens for even the most obvious symptoms of infection. You can sneeze and cough your way straight to the plane flying a domestic flight, and infect everyone inside if you wanted to. They should run a "red team" to show that.
- landemva 5y ago
  I would like to know why the food court employees go around TSA theater. These food workers going to their jobs often carry backpacks and nothing is screened.
nyx_land 5y ago
The TSA exists to normalize control. It doesn't matter if it works or not at stopping terrorists, the point was never to actually prevent terrorism. Much like "communism" or "drugs" during the wars on those two things, "terrorism" is just a convenient excuse to expand the surveillance and police states in the name of "security", and much like with the activities the NSA and social media companies get up to spying on people and stealing their data, everyone complains about the TSA but no one ever does anything to actually challenge the existence of it. In fact, it only helps this agenda that going through the TSA is often a demeaning or dehumanizing (especially if you're POC or trans, interestingly enough) or at least extremely annoying experience; we still have to put up with this, and the state knows this. When you go through the TSA, what you're supposed to get out of it is "I will comply with what the state wants even if it's completely nonsensical and unpleasant" In that respect I'd say the TSA has been a resounding success and probably isn't going anywhere.
- muzika 5y ago
  Bingo
eezing 5y ago
TSA is as useless as traffic police during rush hour.

174 points by dandotway 5y ago

rrss 5y ago

definitely kill TSA precheck (and clear). It’s absurd to me that the government now offers a paid subscription service to enable people to bypass an entirely government-created problem that has little to no benefit.

rrss 5y ago
“We are instituting a policy in which the government employs people to hit travelers in the face with a board as they enter the airport” “If you would prefer not to be hit with a board as part of your travel experience, please apply for our new program and pay up.”
setpatchaddress 5y ago
That won’t add pressure to get rid of the TSA. I don’t know what will. I’d support an actually libertarian party at this point. One that did not consider women and black/brown people inferior and did not defer to megacorporations and multibillionaires.
- mechanical_bear 5y ago
  This is a gross mischaracterization of libertarians, and a cheap straw man.
coin 5y ago
You’ve just defined a racket. Operating a racket is called racketeering.

dandotway 5y ago

My two favorite quotes: > But the Homeland Security Red Teams in the 2015 test actively concealed forbidden items just as real criminals and terrorist would. The result was that "TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints." > What the TSA is good at is high-visibility groping, scanning, and confiscating. Making people drop their pants, take off their shoes, and surrender their shampoo annoys people in a way that says "we're doing something" without actually accomplishing anything. It's what Schneier calls "security theater."

nopcode 5y ago
> potential weapons In case anyone is wondering, I've been part of similar Red Teams in Europe (incl flights towards USA) and "potential weapons" included AK-47's.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  Did the weapons get through?
  - nopcode 5y ago
    Yes, we obtained >90% success rates with (large) guns.
    - noman-land 5y ago
      Wow that's not a comforting thought. How is that even possible?
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        As everyone else has commented, security theater versus effective screening and detection methods.
    - GordonS 5y ago
      My sister worked in airport security for a while in the UK and their team also had >90% success rate.
    - evilos 5y ago
      Into carry on luggage? How do they miss assault rifles but catch my swiss army knife I forgot about? Every. Time.
      - petre 5y ago
        Because swiss army knives are way more common than AK47s on carry on luggage? Directed Attention Fatigue? I heard a story from a guy who was a hunter about how he forgot about some misplaced ammo in a backpack that he then used as carry on luggage. Of course security found it and he got himself a criminal record. It happened in Europe, where one doesn't buy ammo at the grocery store and it has to be stored under key separately from the firearm etc.

pjc50 5y ago

Just like the invasion of Afghanistan, this was all driven by the need to "do something" after 9/11. Now the US has finally left, a decade after assasinating Bin Laden in Pakistan, maybe the domestic security theatre can be dismantled too. The salience of terrorism in the air has vanished when mobs fight each other in the street and the US loses a 9/11 worth of COVID deaths every two days. It also seems odd that mandatory groping never received as much pushback as, say, mandatory facemasks.

dTal 5y ago
>It also seems odd that mandatory groping never received as much pushback as, say, mandatory facemasks. Not really? Mandatory groping is an infrequent experience reserved only for those who travel by air, while mandatory face masks affect everyone, all the time. I don't know why you'd be surprised.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  Right. I avoid airports as often as possible
petre 5y ago
It seems like every 10 years the US uses something to reassert it's foreign policy, maybe also followed by a financial crisis? In 1991 it finally succeeded screwing up the Soviet Union, shortly followed by the war in Yugoslavia. In 2001 they used 9/11 and the War on Terror to invade a host of countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. In 2008/2009 the subprime mortgage crisis triggered a global financial crisis, followed by the NATO intervention in Libya. Now they're using Trump's trade war, Covid and a chip/comodity shortage to stir up things with China. It makes one wonder if it isn't all intended and planned in advance, or if it just reacts when opportunity arises.
ecf 5y ago
Unfortunately the political risk for dismantling protections and then having a new attack occur is something politicians won’t accept.

nobodyandproud 5y ago

It would help pay for the infrastructure bill, if we put the TSA out of its misery.

pddpro 5y ago

> "Never again will a terrorist be able to breach the cockpit simply with a box cutter or a knife. The cockpit doors have been reinforced, and passengers, flight crews and air marshals would intervene." I fail to understand this. How would the passengers and flight crews intervene against armed (with knife) assailants?

zatertip 5y ago
"Are you guys ready? Okay. Let's roll!"
- deedubaya 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Beamer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Beamer
  - barbacoa 5y ago
    Just like how the seat cushion doubles as a flotation maybe arm rests should dispense 8 in knifes. Not much advantage to sneaking a weapon on a plane if everyone else has one too.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      Oh yes, we don't want violence on the plane so just give everyone weapons Frankly this is the asinine US view which results in so many shootings because there are just so many guns floating around basically unrestricted
      - scollet 5y ago
        We could Home Alone it instead! Trip wire between the seats. Instead of those oxygen masks it's a hammer that swings down. Hot iron on the bathroom pull handle.
- tamaharbor 5y ago
  Those guys were REAL heros.

kieselguhr_kid 5y ago

Guess I'm going to wholeheartedly agree with Reason Magazine today. Doesn't happen often, but they're totally right here; security theater was a knee jerk reaction and the sooner we get rid of it the better.

fmakunbound 5y ago

The TSA literally grabbed my balls in LAX on a flight to Dallas.

muzika 5y ago
Bowling balls can be used as deadly weapon on planes.

spoonjim 5y ago

I was putting my stuff on the belt when a TSA guy came up and slipped a lighter in my shoe. He did the “Shhh” gesture to me indicating he was testing the X ray guy but as a brown man I wasn’t having it. I started loudly yelling “he slipped the lighter in my shoe did you see that” and everyone around me nodded in agreement but despite the commotion the X ray guy still missed it. The guy who slipped the lighter in was very exasperated when I started yelling but even more exasperated when his colleague missed it, after the whole line was made aware of the frame up.

908B64B197 5y ago

I never understood using tax money to screen zero-risk travelers. It's a complete waste of time and resources for everyone involved. I guess it's a job program and a form of welfare.

Pigalowda 5y ago

I think some of this could be automated. The xrays show large radiopaque items. If TSA recorded the images of each scanner and collected a dataset then a real time object detector could be used to improve screening sensitivity and efficiency.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Imagine the billions of shoes removed because of the threat of one shoe bomb. War veterans being disassembled to make sure they aren’t terrorists. What a disaster.

ab_testing 5y ago

It is a jobs program for around 100000 people and a test ground for new scanning technologies. Why would any administration kill it ?

avmich 5y ago
Umm, because politically-elected bosses going to fire them otherwise? At least that's how it should be, right?

m0zg 5y ago

Speaking of, can someone explain why the TSA security theater does not include body temperature measurement (or any other screening for COVID symptoms) nowadays? The whole airport situation is weird: mask enforcement in the environment where people can plausibly socially distance (airport terminal) is hardcore, yet when they are stuffed into a plane like sardines for hours without any distancing they can take the masks off to drink or eat. Or even sneeze, as the case may be. And _nobody_ screens for even the most obvious symptoms of infection. You can sneeze and cough your way straight to the plane flying a domestic flight, and infect everyone inside if you wanted to. They should run a "red team" to show that.

landemva 5y ago
I would like to know why the food court employees go around TSA theater. These food workers going to their jobs often carry backpacks and nothing is screened.

nyx_land 5y ago

The TSA exists to normalize control. It doesn't matter if it works or not at stopping terrorists, the point was never to actually prevent terrorism. Much like "communism" or "drugs" during the wars on those two things, "terrorism" is just a convenient excuse to expand the surveillance and police states in the name of "security", and much like with the activities the NSA and social media companies get up to spying on people and stealing their data, everyone complains about the TSA but no one ever does anything to actually challenge the existence of it. In fact, it only helps this agenda that going through the TSA is often a demeaning or dehumanizing (especially if you're POC or trans, interestingly enough) or at least extremely annoying experience; we still have to put up with this, and the state knows this. When you go through the TSA, what you're supposed to get out of it is "I will comply with what the state wants even if it's completely nonsensical and unpleasant" In that respect I'd say the TSA has been a resounding success and probably isn't going anywhere.

muzika 5y ago
Bingo

eezing 5y ago

TSA is as useless as traffic police during rush hour.