6 ms·
> A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it. I've had and overheard multiple conversations at the airport where s
by mft_ 8mo ago
> A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it. I've had and overheard multiple conversations at the airport where somebody felt uncomfortable boarding a plane because they saw the screening agent asleep at the desk.
I’d hazard that this may be true now, but this feeling was created by the same “security measures” we’re discussing.
Anyway, such major population-wide measures shouldn’t be about stopping people being “uncomfortable” - they should be about minimising risk, or not at all. If you start imposing laws or other practices every time a group of people feel “uncomfortable”, the world will quickly grind to a halt.
- scott_w 8mo ago> I’d hazard that this may be true now, but this feeling was created by the same “security measures” we’re discussing. Slight tangent but I recall travelling within the Schengen Zone for the first time and just walking off the plane and straight into a taxi. When I explained what I did to someone she asked "but what about security? How do they know you've not got a bomb?" I don't think I had the words to explain that, if I did manage to sneak a bomb onto the plane into Madrid, I was probably not going to save it for the airport after I landed...
- kelnos 8mo agoEr, I don't get it. I do the same thing at every airport in the US: walk off the plane and straight into a taxi.
- rkomorn 8mo agoI think they're talking about international travel and not having to go through border control within the Schengen space even though you're traveling to different countries.
- mothballed 8mo agoI flew once from Iraq to Sweden (in a private capacity). There was zero controls other than stamping the passport, passport control but no customs inspection. No check of bags and no question of what I might have been doing in Iraq or why I would go from there to Sweden. It was shocking. Just welcome to sweden and off to the street. Hopefully they haven't changed. It's nice to see a place still left without the paranoia.
- InitialLastName 8mo agoBorder entry at airports is concerned with a) smuggling and b) immigration control. Passport control may have been all you saw but there was almost certainly heavy profiling and background checking going on behind the scenes. If you had matched a more suspicious pattern than "high-power passport without suspicious history flying an unusual route", you likely would have faced more scrutiny.
- ghaff 8mo agoYes, but border control isn't security. I don't go through security when I arrive in the US either. (I do have global entry but that just means I usually go through immigration faster.) If I have a connecting flight after arriving in the US I do sometimes have to go through security again with my carryon but that's a function of airport layout.
- rkomorn 8mo agoLooks like even OP was confused about it so I guess it wasn't something to be made sense of.
- scott_w 8mo agoJust to be clear: I understand the difference. What I couldn’t do was explain to someone who has no concept that customs are not a security check. Or that you don’t need customs for (effectively) internal flights. I suspect part of this is that in the UK, we don’t get many internal flights (beyond connections), so people don’t have an experience of just walking off a plane and out of the airport.
- rkomorn 8mo agoYes, I meant you were confused about the nature of the comment/question (like you mentioned in a sibling response somewhere). :)
- graemep 8mo agoI think the point is that some people expect security even where it would be pointless.
- scott_w 8mo agoBasically this. She was confusing Customs with Security, I think.
- scott_w 8mo agoNeither did I, thus why I didn’t really know how to respond.
- torginus 8mo agoYeah, those people are welcome to drive if it makes them feel safer. Meanwhile lets focus on actually making sure planes are safe.
- mlsu 8mo ago> If you start imposing laws or other practices every time a group of people feel “uncomfortable”, the world will quickly grind to a halt. I mean, yes, quite an apt description of our reality. This has basically been the modus operandi of the whole of American society for the last 3 decades. Can't have your kids riding bikes in the neighborhood. Can't build something on your own property yourself without 3 rounds of permitting and environmental review. Can't have roads that are too narrow for a 1100 horsepower ladder truck. Can't get onto a plane without going through a jobs program. Can't cut hair without a certificate. Can't teach 6 year olds without 3 years of post grad schooling + debt. Can't have plants in a waiting room because they might catch on fire. Can't have a comfortable bench because someone who looks like shit might sleep on it. Can't can't can't can't ...
- danielschonfeld 8mo agoThis is it. It’s amazing how accepting people of this reality and how resigned they are about it.
- mft_ 8mo agoIt's an interesting thought experiment to consider how you would organise your ideal society. I lived in Switzerland for a time and there are many notorious rules (e.g. don't shower or flush your toilet after 10pm; don't recycle glass out of working hours) governing day-to-day behaviour which initially seem ridiculous and intrusive. However, what you quickly realise is that many of these are rooted in a simple cultural approach of "live your life as you wish, just don't make other people's life worse" - an approach I came to appreciate.