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Does he really think potential terrorists or criminals are going to hijack a plane using toothbrushes or popsicle sticks? The purpose of the TSA is to screen al

Does he really think potential terrorists or criminals are going to hijack a plane using toothbrushes or popsicle sticks? The purpose of the TSA is to screen all passengers for real threats like guns, blades, and most of all, bombs. He says there was no outcry over the backscatters. That's just out of touch; it was all over the Internet and even major news media back around November of 2010. Liberals and conservatives alike found the idea of their nude images too far. This kept backscatters from being deployed for the most part; have you ever seen one? Seems to me that the TSA has changed their backscatter approach since then. Instead of showing the full images to security personnel it will do some computational analysis of the images and then represent any anomalies on a simple drawing of a human. The people going through the machine will see the same images the TSA will. See this image: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/02/TSA-Body-Scanner-Image.jpg http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/02/TSA-Bo... Nobody likes waiting in line or taking off their shoes. But I'd much rather do that than let people get onto my plane with explosives. Forget patriotism, it's a matter of your own personal safety.

orthecreedence 15y ago
The point he's making, which I believe is valid, is that you can take over a plane with just about anything. Also, with some plastic explosive and a detonator in your Rolex, you could easily make a bomb. I've never seen security dogs, and I've frequented some of the busiest airports. So how would they find the C4 in your bag/pocket/butt? Not to mention, it's easy enough to go through security in a smaller airport and then get into the secured zone in a hub with minimal effort. If you want to blow up/hijack a plane, it's easy. It takes a smart person, ingenuity, and nerves of steel, but I don't think there's anything hard about it...the reason is that instead of the TSA sitting around and thinking for a few minutes about how someone could blow up a plane, they only think about how people have already blown up planes. Their methods are flawed, and I feel absolutely no safer travelling via air with the TSA around.
pkteison 15y ago
Trying to prevent an -extremely- unlikely event via a lousy ineffective attempt at prior restraint is worth treating everyone as a criminal, ignoring the 4th amendment, and curtailing freedom? In America? Why? Prior restraint is a great evil that needs to be carefully weighed against its benefit and I just don't see the pre-boarding perp walk actually making us enough safer to be worth it.
wmblaettler 15y ago
You are really missing the point. All of this is security theater. It will not catch people who want to exploit weaknesses. The 9/11 hijackers used boxcutters, not much different than a shiv as he describes. The problem with "outcry" in the US is that it is short lived and most people have short attention spans. Now that the media "furor" has died down, things will progress forward as the powers-that-be wish. I just flew round trip, BWI-SJO, was directed toward a backscatter machine and opted out. I was treated rather rudely at BWI and had to stand around until a 'male assist' or whatever they called the person that had to pat me down. The whole ordeal made me feel guilty of something when I had done nothing wrong. I oppose backscatters on multiple fronts. Health, invasion of privacy, corrupt contracts, general ineffectiveness, etc.
nitrogen 15y ago
...my plane... Are you a pilot? If so, I'd like to hear more about the subject of the TSA from your perspective. If not, consider that those of us who might prefer to travel with a slightly higher risk for significantly greater convenience have just as much right to call a plane "ours."
tmhedberg 15y ago
This kept backscatters from being deployed for the most part; have you ever seen one? I don't fly very frequently, but my understanding is that nearly all airports in the US now have them. Is this incorrect? Nobody likes waiting in line or taking off their shoes. But I'd much rather do that than let people get onto my plane with explosives. Forget patriotism, it's a matter of your own personal safety. The problem with the TSA's procedures has little to do with the minor inconvenience of taking off your shoes. It's about the bigger picture: the extreme reaction to an infinitesimal threat. Even daily activities like driving involve a far greater risk to your well-being than the threat of airline terrorism. If we're not suffering from crippling fear of the mundane but far more significant threats we face in our everyday lives, why do we allow this one far-fetched threat to literally terrorize us into giving up our basic rights and sacrificing billions of public dollars for the "privilege" of participating in air transit? The spectacular violence of a single event 11 years in the past has sent us into a downward spiral in which fear is increasingly winning out over logic and rationality. There have been no successful terrorist attacks on US flights in the decade since 9/11. And none of the failed attempts were foiled by the TSA; they were foiled by the foolish incompetence of the attackers and the permanently heightened vigilance of the public. For every carry-on item that the TSA can prohibit, "the terrorists" can come up with 100 more that aren't even checked for in the screening process. It's a hopeless losing battle. Like the author says, the holes in the screening process simply cannot be closed unless everyone is required to fly naked and handcuffed. In short, your personal safety when on board an airplane is not significantly improved by the ridiculous security theater that surrounds the boarding process. So why bother with it at all? Why inconvenience millions of innocent travelers, trample on their rights, and throw piles of money down the toilet just so that people can feel that "something is being done"?
javajosh 15y ago
> Does he really think potential terrorists or criminals are going to hijack a plane using toothbrushes or popsicle sticks? Yes. Actually there's an interesting connection with a recent HN article about how space missions are being severely hampered by an irrational aversion to the risk of loss of human life. In the same way, someone with a sharpened stick holding it at the throat of an innocent woman could very well lead to the hijacking of a plane because the people in the situation may very well consider doing "anything" to save that one life. Hollywood, and all that. > Nobody likes waiting in line or taking off their shoes. This is one reason why you may deserve some downvoting - this is a classic straw-man argument, and minimizes the true root of the problem: we have a vast, faceless beauracracy that seriously messes with millions of Americans (and foreigners!) for no good purpose. This is a serious problem, and minimizing it like this won't earn you any influence. P.S. I disagree with the parent comment, and yet I upvoted it because it is cogently argued, if wrong.
- joeyh 15y ago
  Holding sharp objects at someone's throat was a tactic that worked for only part of one day (on 9/11). Try it now and there will be one passenger with a cut throat, and an entire plane swarming you.
  - javajosh 15y ago
    I agree with you, and that they should really just let pocket knives on planes since they are an equivalent threat to a toothbrush and 5 minutes of modification.
jonhohle 15y ago
> have you ever seen one? > > Seems to me that the TSA has changed their backscatter > approach since then. Instead of showing the full images > to security personnel it will do some computational > analysis of the images and then represent any anomalies > on a simple drawing of a human. The people going through > the machine will see the same images the TSA will. Perhaps you don't travel often, but I have not been to an airport in the past 1½ years which didn't have either backscatter or millimeter wave scanners used as primary screening methods for the majority of passengers - PHX, SEA, FLW, MKE, AUS, MCI, SFO - those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Also, the generic image is only used with the millimeter wave scanners (the clear phone booth looking scanners). The back scatter machines still produce a grayscale nude image. Every plane is already equipped with hundreds of pounds of explosives. You wouldn't get anywhere without them. The statistical probability of that or any other explosive causing you harm - even in the event that harm is intended - approaches zero. It is far more likely you'll be the victim of assault, auto accident, or of unknown causes than have any harm come to you on or by an airplane and this has always been the case. Statistically, there is absolutely no personal or public safety issue with eliminating intrusive, unconstitutional searches in order to board planes.
- joeyh 15y ago
  Major cities probably all have them, but the US has a large number of smaller non-hub airports that feed into the hubs, and I know that at least some don't have them. In fact, I've only experienced them once, at SFO. When traveling TRI -> ATL -> LHR and returning via Detroit this summer, I experienced none. So if you don't mind spending an extra $150 per trip and running from the far ends of the airport where the feeders dock, you can still avoid the them, at least for now..
einhverfr 15y ago
I have seen the AIT machines. However, depending on where you are in the country, the machines are used differently. In Sea-tac for example, they try to pick out people more likely to be at risk and put them through the scanners. This would be correct except that they should be putting such people through metal detectors too. Defence in depth.... In LAX, I have seen separate lines for standard metal detectors vs AIT machines. This is just stupid and justifies so many jokes about LAZ security.... In Nashville TN, I haven't been there, but I understand from TSA employees that everyone goes through the bodyscanners. I don't think it is just a question of public acceptance. Really you have different courts looking at how the 4th Amendment applies to metal detectors in airports, and although they all agree that metal detector requirements are Constitutional, they arrive at this for different reasons. The 9th and 3rd circuits have adopted a balancing test (the most important case there in the third circuit was authored by none other than Samuel Alito btw), and this does not necessarily allow the TSA to get from the idea that metal detectors are per se Constitutional to the idea that bodyscanners are. The 11th and 5th Circuits however, have adopted a view that when you travel you consent to be searched as a condition to that travel, and unlike other consensual searches, consent cannot be withdrawn. This is a very broad ruling and it makes it hard to argue that anything the TSA might do in the course of a search infringes the 4th Amendment rights of the traveller. In other words, in these circuits, airports are 4th Amendment-free zones. So this varies quite a bit by region and even by airport culture. That doesn't make the use of the scanners any better on the whole, or change the fact that they should be reserved for individuals where there is a reasonable suspicion and that they should be used in tandem with metal detectors.
mbell 15y ago
Flew Boston -> New Orleans 2 weeks ago and New Orleans -> Boston last week. They scanned everyone with the back scatter both times. That is one major international airport (Boston) and one fairly small domestic only airport (New Orleans), both scanned everyone.
joeyh 15y ago
Speaking of security theater, the linked image smacks of it. Is that image what they see? Or what they want us to think they see? Who has the password that turns on display of the full images? How long are the full images retained? Who has access to them? If an algorithm is now the only thing handling the security scanning, how hard is it to get a copy, in order to develop an exploit?

orthecreedence 15y ago

The point he's making, which I believe is valid, is that you can take over a plane with just about anything. Also, with some plastic explosive and a detonator in your Rolex, you could easily make a bomb. I've never seen security dogs, and I've frequented some of the busiest airports. So how would they find the C4 in your bag/pocket/butt? Not to mention, it's easy enough to go through security in a smaller airport and then get into the secured zone in a hub with minimal effort. If you want to blow up/hijack a plane, it's easy. It takes a smart person, ingenuity, and nerves of steel, but I don't think there's anything hard about it...the reason is that instead of the TSA sitting around and thinking for a few minutes about how someone could blow up a plane, they only think about how people have already blown up planes. Their methods are flawed, and I feel absolutely no safer travelling via air with the TSA around.

pkteison 15y ago

Trying to prevent an -extremely- unlikely event via a lousy ineffective attempt at prior restraint is worth treating everyone as a criminal, ignoring the 4th amendment, and curtailing freedom? In America? Why? Prior restraint is a great evil that needs to be carefully weighed against its benefit and I just don't see the pre-boarding perp walk actually making us enough safer to be worth it.

wmblaettler 15y ago

You are really missing the point. All of this is security theater. It will not catch people who want to exploit weaknesses. The 9/11 hijackers used boxcutters, not much different than a shiv as he describes. The problem with "outcry" in the US is that it is short lived and most people have short attention spans. Now that the media "furor" has died down, things will progress forward as the powers-that-be wish. I just flew round trip, BWI-SJO, was directed toward a backscatter machine and opted out. I was treated rather rudely at BWI and had to stand around until a 'male assist' or whatever they called the person that had to pat me down. The whole ordeal made me feel guilty of something when I had done nothing wrong. I oppose backscatters on multiple fronts. Health, invasion of privacy, corrupt contracts, general ineffectiveness, etc.

nitrogen 15y ago

...my plane... Are you a pilot? If so, I'd like to hear more about the subject of the TSA from your perspective. If not, consider that those of us who might prefer to travel with a slightly higher risk for significantly greater convenience have just as much right to call a plane "ours."

tmhedberg 15y ago

This kept backscatters from being deployed for the most part; have you ever seen one? I don't fly very frequently, but my understanding is that nearly all airports in the US now have them. Is this incorrect? Nobody likes waiting in line or taking off their shoes. But I'd much rather do that than let people get onto my plane with explosives. Forget patriotism, it's a matter of your own personal safety. The problem with the TSA's procedures has little to do with the minor inconvenience of taking off your shoes. It's about the bigger picture: the extreme reaction to an infinitesimal threat. Even daily activities like driving involve a far greater risk to your well-being than the threat of airline terrorism. If we're not suffering from crippling fear of the mundane but far more significant threats we face in our everyday lives, why do we allow this one far-fetched threat to literally terrorize us into giving up our basic rights and sacrificing billions of public dollars for the "privilege" of participating in air transit? The spectacular violence of a single event 11 years in the past has sent us into a downward spiral in which fear is increasingly winning out over logic and rationality. There have been no successful terrorist attacks on US flights in the decade since 9/11. And none of the failed attempts were foiled by the TSA; they were foiled by the foolish incompetence of the attackers and the permanently heightened vigilance of the public. For every carry-on item that the TSA can prohibit, "the terrorists" can come up with 100 more that aren't even checked for in the screening process. It's a hopeless losing battle. Like the author says, the holes in the screening process simply cannot be closed unless everyone is required to fly naked and handcuffed. In short, your personal safety when on board an airplane is not significantly improved by the ridiculous security theater that surrounds the boarding process. So why bother with it at all? Why inconvenience millions of innocent travelers, trample on their rights, and throw piles of money down the toilet just so that people can feel that "something is being done"?

javajosh 15y ago

> Does he really think potential terrorists or criminals are going to hijack a plane using toothbrushes or popsicle sticks? Yes. Actually there's an interesting connection with a recent HN article about how space missions are being severely hampered by an irrational aversion to the risk of loss of human life. In the same way, someone with a sharpened stick holding it at the throat of an innocent woman could very well lead to the hijacking of a plane because the people in the situation may very well consider doing "anything" to save that one life. Hollywood, and all that. > Nobody likes waiting in line or taking off their shoes. This is one reason why you may deserve some downvoting - this is a classic straw-man argument, and minimizes the true root of the problem: we have a vast, faceless beauracracy that seriously messes with millions of Americans (and foreigners!) for no good purpose. This is a serious problem, and minimizing it like this won't earn you any influence. P.S. I disagree with the parent comment, and yet I upvoted it because it is cogently argued, if wrong.

joeyh 15y ago
Holding sharp objects at someone's throat was a tactic that worked for only part of one day (on 9/11). Try it now and there will be one passenger with a cut throat, and an entire plane swarming you.
- javajosh 15y ago
  I agree with you, and that they should really just let pocket knives on planes since they are an equivalent threat to a toothbrush and 5 minutes of modification.

jonhohle 15y ago

> have you ever seen one? > > Seems to me that the TSA has changed their backscatter > approach since then. Instead of showing the full images > to security personnel it will do some computational > analysis of the images and then represent any anomalies > on a simple drawing of a human. The people going through > the machine will see the same images the TSA will. Perhaps you don't travel often, but I have not been to an airport in the past 1½ years which didn't have either backscatter or millimeter wave scanners used as primary screening methods for the majority of passengers - PHX, SEA, FLW, MKE, AUS, MCI, SFO - those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Also, the generic image is only used with the millimeter wave scanners (the clear phone booth looking scanners). The back scatter machines still produce a grayscale nude image. Every plane is already equipped with hundreds of pounds of explosives. You wouldn't get anywhere without them. The statistical probability of that or any other explosive causing you harm - even in the event that harm is intended - approaches zero. It is far more likely you'll be the victim of assault, auto accident, or of unknown causes than have any harm come to you on or by an airplane and this has always been the case. Statistically, there is absolutely no personal or public safety issue with eliminating intrusive, unconstitutional searches in order to board planes.

joeyh 15y ago
Major cities probably all have them, but the US has a large number of smaller non-hub airports that feed into the hubs, and I know that at least some don't have them. In fact, I've only experienced them once, at SFO. When traveling TRI -> ATL -> LHR and returning via Detroit this summer, I experienced none. So if you don't mind spending an extra $150 per trip and running from the far ends of the airport where the feeders dock, you can still avoid the them, at least for now..

einhverfr 15y ago

I have seen the AIT machines. However, depending on where you are in the country, the machines are used differently. In Sea-tac for example, they try to pick out people more likely to be at risk and put them through the scanners. This would be correct except that they should be putting such people through metal detectors too. Defence in depth.... In LAX, I have seen separate lines for standard metal detectors vs AIT machines. This is just stupid and justifies so many jokes about LAZ security.... In Nashville TN, I haven't been there, but I understand from TSA employees that everyone goes through the bodyscanners. I don't think it is just a question of public acceptance. Really you have different courts looking at how the 4th Amendment applies to metal detectors in airports, and although they all agree that metal detector requirements are Constitutional, they arrive at this for different reasons. The 9th and 3rd circuits have adopted a balancing test (the most important case there in the third circuit was authored by none other than Samuel Alito btw), and this does not necessarily allow the TSA to get from the idea that metal detectors are per se Constitutional to the idea that bodyscanners are. The 11th and 5th Circuits however, have adopted a view that when you travel you consent to be searched as a condition to that travel, and unlike other consensual searches, consent cannot be withdrawn. This is a very broad ruling and it makes it hard to argue that anything the TSA might do in the course of a search infringes the 4th Amendment rights of the traveller. In other words, in these circuits, airports are 4th Amendment-free zones. So this varies quite a bit by region and even by airport culture. That doesn't make the use of the scanners any better on the whole, or change the fact that they should be reserved for individuals where there is a reasonable suspicion and that they should be used in tandem with metal detectors.

mbell 15y ago

Flew Boston -> New Orleans 2 weeks ago and New Orleans -> Boston last week. They scanned everyone with the back scatter both times. That is one major international airport (Boston) and one fairly small domestic only airport (New Orleans), both scanned everyone.

joeyh 15y ago

Speaking of security theater, the linked image smacks of it. Is that image what they see? Or what they want us to think they see? Who has the password that turns on display of the full images? How long are the full images retained? Who has access to them? If an algorithm is now the only thing handling the security scanning, how hard is it to get a copy, in order to develop an exploit?