31 ms·

Airport Security Is Killing Us

263 points by Umalu 14y ago

joonix 14y ago
I opt-out of the x-ray scanner every single time, and so should you. It really doesn't take much longer to go through the process. Show up 3 minutes earlier if you have to. You're rushing to the gate, for what? To sit there longer? Boarding with the crowds is stressful anyways. The most relaxed way to board is at the very end -- there's no more line, I just walk right into the plane, most people are seated, and just grab my seat. Why would you want to maximize the time spent sitting, especially on a cramped plane? I understand the situation is different if you really want your carry-on bag to stow above you. If everyone opted out, the program would be scrapped. You can tell me about how the scanners give harmless amounts of radiation, but I don't really care. You have to stand for your principles. In this situation, a government contractor forced more security theater upon a country, with the only benefit of the entire charade going to their bottom line. Nobody is safer, an entire mode of transport has a new bottleneck, a government agency has expanded and is emboldened and now wants even broader jurisdiction, and as the article states, people are driving more and dying. If we don't stand up and push back now, things will only get worse. More invasive, more annoying, more useless, more dangerous. And not an inch gained against the stated purpose of deterring terrorist attacks.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  > I understand the situation is different if you really want your carry-on bag to stow above you. Or in the cabin. If you're the last to board, there's a very real possibility that they may have to gate-check your bag, which adds additional wait time at the end of your journey at best, and your bag arriving in Minnesota while you're touching down in Dallas at worst.
  - epoxyhockey 14y ago
    and your bag arriving in Minnesota while you're touching down in Dallas at worst Is this even possible when gate checking? They literally walk your bag down the stairs at the end of the gate and place it into the plane cargo hold. EDIT: At the end of the flight, your bag is walked up the stairs back into the jetway. I personally love the gate check loophole. If you intentionally wait to board last, you get a free bag check.
    - pkteison 14y ago
      I have had a gate-checked bag forgotten about and left in the boarding ramp. So yes, problems are still possible with gate check.
    - gjm11 14y ago
      I don't know whether exactly that is possible, but I have had the following happen: my bag got gate-checked on an intra-US connecting flight, and my carrier then wouldn't return it until I reached my final destination in London. Which meant that I didn't have it with me when my flight to London was cancelled and I had to stay overnight in Chicago (too bad since it had my washkit and a change of clothes in it) and that when the replacement flight was also cancelled and I ended up going to London with a different carrier, my bag didn't get home until a couple of days after I did. I will not be flying with United Airlines again in a hurry.
      - ejdyksen 14y ago
        Next time just tell them you have medicine in that bag that you need in the next 8 hours (which is why you tried to carry it on).
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago
      > Is this even possible when gate checking? On a direct flight, your bag is safe. If you have connections, may god have mercy on your pants.
  - citizens 14y ago
    Which, of course, has become much more of a problem since the airlines started charging for checked bags/IRS made baggage fees tax-exempt. "...amounts paid for baggage services (such as Service G) are not subject to the tax" [http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/1002004.pdf http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/1002004.pdf]
    - streptomycin 14y ago
      If all the overhead compartments are full and they have to check your carry-on, they won't charge you any fee, at least on the major US airlines I've flown on.
    - sharkweek 14y ago
      I don't have the link handy, but there was a great article arguing that the airlines could actually save more money not charging for checked bags because less people will try to cram their oversized luggage into the overheads, speeding up boarding times. Thus allowing for a lower rate of delayed takeoffs, which, over a long enough timeline, allows for more flights in a day they can charge for (and the added bonus of better customer retention).
- Anechoic 14y ago
  It really doesn't take much longer to go through the process. Show up 3 minutes earlier if you have to. YMMV with respect to the additional time. I also opt out and have had to wait as long as 15 minutes for the pat down (and to make matters worse in that instance, there was an elderly passenger behind me who had a medical exemption from the scanner and they waved him through while I had to stand and wait). My advice is that if you do plan to opt out, allow for more than 3 minutes.
  - toomuchtodo 14y ago
    Most opt outs cost you about 15 minutes extra; one time flying from MIA to ORD, I had to wait 40 minutes extra because I opted out.
- WarDekar 14y ago
  I used to opt out, but I also get fed up with being groped by old men. I'm not sure what the solution is because unless a significant portion of people opt out this doesn't accomplish anything and my groin has been fondled a few too many times at this point for me to want to continue opting out. The entire procedure is completely bogus of course- everyt time I fly in the US now it's a question of: "How do I want to be violated today?"
  - Osiris 14y ago
    I opted out or chose a lane without a scanner for a long time until they implemented the new groin-feeling pat down. I opted out and got that enhanced pat down one day and I felt more uncomfortable with someone physically touching me than I did with the idea of someone seeing a picture of me. So now, I try to find a lane without a scanner, but I have gone through a scanner a few times just to avoid being felt-up. And yes, I'm entirely certain that one of the reasons for that pat down process was to push people toward not opting out.
- socialist_coder 14y ago
  I also opt-out every time, but I would estimate the average additional time to be in the order of 10 minutes. It's highly variable. Sometimes you get the pat-down right away and then it only takes about 3 minutes, but most of the time you have to wait for the agent to come get you, and that can take up to 10 minutes in my experience. But in any case, it's worth it (for the reasons you mentioned). I wish there were more of us that always opted-out.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - grecy 14y ago
    > The radiation from the body scanner is less than you experience just from flying, or sitting next to another human being. You missed the point. He doesn't recommend opting out because of radiation, he recommends opting out as a form of protest against the existence of the scanners.
  - adrr 14y ago
    Thats with a properly working scanner. The scanner can produce lethal amounts of radiation and you're one software glitch from getting this dose. Its happened in past. Scary thing is these devices aren't under the same rules as medical devices which has checks and procedures in place to prevent malfunctions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    Read your own article. Nobody beyond the scanner manufacturers have confirmed those radiation doses. There is no transparency in this process whatsoever, there is a very real health risk since There Is No Consequence-Free Exposure To Ionizing Radiation, and these machines are not operated by trained medical professionals. Horrible accidents have happened in vastly more regulated instances.
  - epoxyhockey 14y ago
    We've already been through this discussion countless times. The radiation you are exposed to is concentrated in the outer layer of your skin. All of the comparisons that you mention are when radiation is applied to the whole body mass. Also, do you really want the outer layer of your reproductive parts to be dosed with ionizing radiation? Why not opt out? Are you scared of sticking up for your reproductive organs.. and your rights?
  - acabal 14y ago
    That NPR article you linked seems to say the opposite: "The government says it's OK, but scientists aren't so sure." I personally opt out every time for the reasons in the OP: my principles. Getting the pat-down is unpleasant and I have indeed had my "junk" jabbed at by zealous TSA agents. (The sides of their hands go up your inner thigh until they encounter "resistance"--which is a nice euphemism for something much more sensitive.) You end up feeling like a common criminal. Neither of these was required just a few years ago--so saying one is better than the other isn't a good argument, because both are bad for more than a few reasons. Whether or not you believe in scanning on a principled ground, you should also be wary of what the government--and more importantly, a private company the government has contracted--tells you is OK. The same country told veterans that Agent Orange was OK. Of course the private company that makes billions is going to tell you their product is OK. Even if you give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume they think they're telling the truth, they might have misunderstood, or not completely researched, things. I would never trust the government to irradiate me with a technology only a few years old, in any amount. I do trust thoroughly-researched technology that time has proven--medical x-rays, air travel.
- adrr 14y ago
  I noticed that not all security check points have the "naked" scanners, even at major airports you can find one security line at a lesser used security checkpoint that only has a standard metal detector. If goal is security, shouldn't all security lines have the scanners? Security is only as strong as the weakest link. The bigger concern isn't the checkpoints inside the airpot, its the checkpoints on the roads to the airport. I want to know how the police can search my car without a warrant on a public road.
- marssaxman 14y ago
  I'm with you - I opt-out every time, and I will keep on doing so as long as I can. I have yet to have any trouble with my carry-on. What's more, these days I always choose to fly in a kilt, commando style, to make the whole process as awkward as possible for the screeners.
- switch007 14y ago
  In the UK, you can't opt out. Also, you're subjected quite often to a full grope (if you set off the metal detector) before they select people to go through the X-ray scanners!
- methodover 14y ago
  I wonder if there's a better way to register one's complaint rather than merely opting out. (And I happen to agree with another poster who said that the 'enhanced pat down' can be more degrading than the scanner if you get someone who gets a little overzealous when they 'encounter resistance.') What about a t-shirt, perhaps? Printed on the shirt would be a calm and clear explanation of the problems with the scanners/groping. Everyone standing in line around you would see it, the TSA officers would see it, and it could get some conversations started.
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    If they're already hand-raping you because you don't want to go through the scanners (the only x-ray you can get in the US that's not run by a professional, btw), what makes you think they wouldn't let you go through the scanners and then grope you anyway if you wear such a shirt?
DamnYuppie 14y ago
"The attention paid to terrorism in the U.S. is considerably out of proportion to the relative threat it presents." I agree 100%! The formation of this organization was reactionary policy making at its worst. The TSA is nothing more then a works program for people who are barely qualified to do anything.
- sageikosa 14y ago
  Yay! Terrorists have made America a less free place. Sort of makes you wonder who's winning this "war"...
seiji 14y ago
What is the answer though? Can you imagine a politician running under a "massively downsize the TSA" banner? Would any existing Washington elected official take up the cause? They can't even repeal the comically silly shoe removal procedure (unless you're under 12 or over 75, because no terr'ist would ever foot kerplode those demographic stereotypes).
- jdh 14y ago
  Not a politician but still a courageous voice : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577335783535660546.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230381540457733...
- Lewisham 14y ago
  Well, you could imagine a politician taking up the cause if the Republican party returned to its small government ideals, rather than "Small government, except when it meets our special interests (which most definitely include defense and scaremongering)" Obama won't do it, because he's shown himself to keep whatever things from Bush are convenient if unsavory, like Guantanamo (saying you're going to close it and actually closing it are two different things).
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    I'm not going to argue with your main point, but I think that closing Guantanamo has proven to be more difficult than merely inconvenient.
- mstefanko 14y ago
  This is my questions as well, I think the TSA at this point is far more trouble than the massive budget the government is wasting on them. I've read countless articles and watched countless videos complaining about the TSA, pointing out their flaws. But I've yet to see a reasonable plan to cut their budget. And even if someone was able to lower their budget, what happens if something does happen then. I'd love to see any plans, but just cutting the TSA budget entirely has obvious ill effects, it's definitely not as easy as saying, "The TSA is useless, get rid of them."
indiecore 14y ago
If you can avoid it* never travel through the united states. *Edit
- cryptoz 14y ago
  That's excellent advice to those who live elsewhere, but there are hundreds of millions of people who cannot possibly follow your advice.
  - grecy 14y ago
    Luckily it's only ~4.5% of the world's population.
    - chollida1 14y ago
      Useless statistic for what we're measuring. What percentage of flights actually have the US as part of their journey would be a better measurement.
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    Most of those people have the power to vote this nightmare away though. If they won't then they're just getting what they wanted (if you think I'm being extreme, there are people in this very thread claiming this is necessary after all the evidence that's shown conclusively that it's useless).
- grecy 14y ago
  Yup. I managed a hostel in Ecuador for 5 months, and the vast majority of European travelers swore they would never again transit through America due to the nightmares they had experienced with security and immigration, all for a 1 hour layover in the airport.
- Coincoin 14y ago
  Exactly. I'm Canadian and because of the TSA, I don't travel through the US anymore, even if it means my ticket are a couple hundred dollars more expensive.
jeshan 14y ago
This is so NOT relevant at HackerNews. Why do you guys think other 'hackers' would be interested in such news? Can't they find newspapers on their own?
- nollidge 14y ago
  Is not the presence of upvotes an indication that it IS relevant?
- gnosis 14y ago
  From the HN Guidelines[1]: "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did." [1] - http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - jeshan 14y ago
    Thanks, I forgot about the guidelines. My point was that it was not nerd stuff..Citing the first phrase there, "Anything that good hackers would find interesting". Besides, anything in this world could "gratify one's intellectual curiosity". I come to this site to find interesting content and I love it, that's the only reason why I posted that comment.
- Stratoscope 14y ago
  It's a story of unintended consequences, of an attempted bug fix that introduces a new bug. A story about choosing a technology that seems to serve your needs but doesn't serve your customers. A story of what can go wrong when you've locked yourself into your business model and company culture and can't pivot.
rplst8 14y ago
Someone else did an analysis of airline travel and highway travel and came up with a similar finding. Blow up one plane per month over the continental US and flying would still be two orders of magnitude safer than driving or riding in an automobile over your lifespan. There's no proof that TSA is making things any safer either. No one will ever pull another fast one on the passengers of a plane again. We all know that the planes themselves are weapons, so I'm pretty sure most passengers will go down fighting if terrorists try to take control of the cockpit. This is precisely why it's called security theater.
- Osiris 14y ago
  * We all know that the planes themselves are weapons * Which is why I don't understand why pilots have to be screened. They are flying a huge flying bomb. What will screening them for nail-clippers solve? (Side note: I did, in fact, have my nail clippers taken by the TSA once)
  - dagw 14y ago
    Which is why I don't understand why pilots have to be screened A person could be supportive of the cause without being willing to sacrifice his life. If pilots could get into restricted areas un-screened they could bring in bombs or weapons which they hand off to third parties. This would also be a more efficient use of a limited resource (the hypothetical Taliban sympathizer flying for a commercial airline).
  - EliRivers 14y ago
    Perhaps it's so the bad pilot can't easily kill the nice pilot sitting next to her.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
I think this is a pretty novel argument, basically the cure is worse than the disease. Basically intrusive security measures make flying less desirable which moves people to other forms of transportation (notably cars) where they are more likely to die. It doesn't help that people don't internalize risk well so its hard for folks to see the merits of the argument but I applaud whomever came up with it.
anu_gupta 14y ago
Tangentially - the thing that most surprised me about this article was reading that over 150,000 Americans have been murdered in less than a decade. I find that number utterly staggering. Wikipedia says that the homicide rate in the US is 4.2 per 100,000, which is more than 2.5 times the rate in Canada and 3.5 times the rate in the UK.
- ProCynic 14y ago
  You'll probably find this interesting then. It's about how violence rates have changed over time, and some guesses about causation. http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Nature-ebook/dp/B0052REUW0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1353437806&sr=8-2&keywords=better+angels+of+our+nature http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Nature-ebook/dp/B005...
  - anu_gupta 14y ago
    Yes, that does look interesting. Have Kindled it, thanks!
- engtech 14y ago
  If you find that staggering, then absolutely avoid looking at Japan homicide stats. Japan is 0.4 per 100,000. Japan has had the strictest gun control in the world for the longest time, and has a homicide rate to match. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
  - Domenic_S 14y ago
    Suicide rate in Japan is 23.7 per 100,000, double that of most developed countries. Also, Japan's murder stats are rigged -- if the police don't know who the killer is it isn't a murder, it's an "abandoned body". See Freakonomics for more on this.
  - makmanalp 14y ago
    I support gun control and everything, but how do you know that the low homicide rate is because of the gun control? Japan has been a model for social order (putting aside organized crime, in the sense that you lose your wallet and it gets returned to you, muggings don't happen often, etc.) for a long time.
reneherse 14y ago
While waiting this morning to get through security, I overheard a TSA agent saying they were undergoing a downsizing at that airport (BDL, which is a pretty small international airport in Connecticut) from 200 to 50 on staff. So there's one "anecdata" point that the footprint of the TSA may already be shrinking. He also mentioned it was downsizing through attrition rather than layoffs, which is probably an easier strategy for elected and appointed officials to get behind.
- clauretano 14y ago
  BDL just keeps getting worse. It's already hundreds of dollars less expensive (during the holidays) and takes less time to fly into say Newark and take an Amtrak to Connecticut.
  - throwaway1979 14y ago
    Do you mean "more" expensive?
    - tbrownaw 14y ago
      I read it as « It's faster and cheaper to use (other airport plus Amtrak) instead of flying in to BDL. »
tokenadult 14y ago
Hear. Hear. I want to be able to walk into an airport with my shoes on and walk calmly to an arrival gate to greet arriving passengers there. And I want to be able to carry a Swiss Army knife in an airline carry-on bag. And I want the terrorists to be attacked relentlessly where they live, so that they have to hide in caves and ride on goats, while Americans and other people in developed countries get to lead civilized, advanced lives in the Twenty-First Century. Taliban delenda est. AFTER EDIT: I wonder what aspect of this people disagree with. Do you still want to have to take your shoes off in airports? Further edit, to reply to the first kind reply: I still don't think attacking terrorists relentlessly is ever beneficial. I guess that's an empirical question of history and current events. What does help people lead tolerant, civilized lives and be at peace with other people who may have differing opinions? I read a biography of Joseph Stalin back in the 1990s, after the Soviet archives became available to independent researchers, and the striking thing about how Joseph Stalin developed his influence in the Bolshevik movement was that he was a very active terrorist, frequently directly involved in random bomb attacks. We should consider the facts about Sri Lanka and Rwanda and other places to get a reality check on the power of terrorism. I think communism mostly collapsed (as it mostly has by now) with the help of information flow into countries living under communist dictatorships that were established in some cases by domestic terrorism and in some cases by armed invasion from another country. The case of eastern and western Germany is especially illustrative: it's just where the tanks stopped after the armistice that ended the European phase of World War II that determined which parts of Germany became the postwar Federal Republic of Germany (BRD) and which became the German Democratic Republic (DDR). Several of the communist governments of eastern Europe were turned out of power largely peacefully when Western mass media made it all too apparent how different life was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But it took an entire human lifetime for communism to decline in its influence on Europe. So, yeah, if a peaceful process of information flow could bring Afghanistan into the Twenty-First Century, I'm all for that. I don't see how any rational person who knows well how other people live could want a whole country to be living under Taliban rule. But the Taliban's method is not to let most people in Afghanistan or Pakistan decide the issue freely. Their method is to give girls and women no voice, all non-Muslims little or no voice, and any Muslim who thinks that Islam is consistent with science and progress little or no voice. They use violence and thuggery to get their way in the areas they control. So, yes, if they are willing to send people onto airplanes to fly from Europe to the United States with bombs in their shoes (as they have been), I say let loose the drones, and let's keep the Taliban leaders hiding in caves and unable to travel more rapidly than at goat speed until peaceful news and education campaigns have enough time to win over so many of the common people of the world that the Taliban can no longer gain influence even through threats. Taliban delenda est. Peacefully or violently, the Taliban must be destroyed.
ry0ohki 14y ago
Odds of dying from fireworks: 1 in 652,046 Odds of dying from lightning strike: 1 in 134,906 Odds of being legally executed: 1 in 111,179 Odds of dying from contact with bees/wasps: 1 in 79,842 Odds of being shot: 1 in 6,609 Odds of dying from a fall 1 in 163 Odds of dying in a terrorist attack: 1 in 3,500,000 Maybe we should switch the TSA to bee patrol. (Source: http://www.nsc.org/NSC%20Picture%20Library/News/web_graphics/Injury_Facts_37.pdf http://www.nsc.org/NSC%20Picture%20Library/News/web_graphics...)
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  Odds of developing cancer: 1 in 3 Lets convert it to a cancer awareness foundation; where they touch you for actually important reasons. Source: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/lifetime-probability-of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/lifetime-probabili...
  - natrius 14y ago
    Don't give them any ideas. They might just add testicular cancer screenings to the current procedure.
    - smsm42 14y ago
      That would require almost no changes, so I'd say win-win.
- swohns 14y ago
  The numbers themselves aren't the real takeaway, it's how preventable these deaths are.
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    Exactly, and one can conclude that the dollars spent versus lives saved makes the waste seem even greater. Converting the TSA to bee control as mentioned above would lively save more lives (to take an extreme example).
mkhattab 14y ago
I've always felt that airport security was always about testing the limits of the complacency of the people and not really about security. I imagine some person complaining during a security checkpoint, holding up the line, and some lady yelling from behind in support of the government keeping "us" safe. It's kind of pathetic and undignified.
cousin_it 14y ago
> In fact, extremist Islamic terrorism resulted in just 200 to 400 deaths worldwide outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq — the same number, Mueller noted in a 2011 report (http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/CNApart.pdf http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/CNApart.pdf), as die in bathtubs in the U.S. alone each year. Can anyone find a citation for the "200 to 400 deaths" claim? The NCTC report (http://www.nctc.gov/docs/2011_NCTC_Annual_Report_Final.pdf http://www.nctc.gov/docs/2011_NCTC_Annual_Report_Final.pdf) seems to give much higher numbers, unless I'm missing something.
jpxxx 14y ago
A quibble, because this whole fucking disgusting thing fills me with limitless rage: TSA agents do not perform 'pat-downs'. Pat-downs are very quick checks to see if any obvious weapons are being concealed on someone's body. Police will do these before putting a suspect into a police vehicle, for instance. TSA employees do what are called 'custody searches', designed to find contraband material on detainees. These are only performed under specific scenarios, such as being incarcerated. Custody searches in this context are forbidden by the fourth amendment, by the way, regardless of what the TSA's legal team may claim.
- aneth4 14y ago
  > Custody searches in this context are forbidden by the fourth amendment, by the way, regardless of what the TSA's legal team may claim. As is x-raying baggage and body-scans. Fourth amendment rights don't apply to the same extent when you are on private property, when there are balancing security concerns, when you enter a courthouse, when you enter a school, etc. You know the deal when you enter these places and you have a choice whether to enter them. The idea that you have the same fourth amendment rights boarding a plan as you do in your house or car is ridiculous. I'm not saying I agree with TSA searches, only that your normal forth amendment standard does not apply.
  - pyre 14y ago
    > when you enter a courthouse > you have a choice whether to enter them Not necessarily...
    - aneth4 14y ago
      True, though the security concerns of weapons in a courthouse surely justify a baggage scan, metal detector, and pat down. Security is far more of an issue in a courthouse even than on a plane.
      - Zigurd 14y ago
        Having recently been on a jury, I wish airport security was as hassle free as a courthouse in Massachusetts, where my bag was x-rayed with my laptop in it, and I walked, shoes on, through a metal detector. I also agree that, in practical terms, security at a courthouse faces many more real-world challenges than air travel. That should tell us something about appropriate levels of security.
Domenic_S 14y ago
The TSA has the same problem car alarms or home security systems have: there's no way to prove how many events they've prevented.
- krichman 14y ago
  Yep, imagine the horrors that would have fallen upon us if a terrist had gotten through with some nail clippers. Many security experts think it is trivial to get weaponry past them. They aren't extensively trained, you know, they are cheap rental guards following a procedure. So in fact I would say the TSA has stopped nothing, the only prevention has come from the FBI and CIA, locking the cockpit door, and putting air marshals on the plane.
  - Domenic_S 14y ago
    > So in fact I would say That's the point, right, that you aren't in a position to guess, and it's slimy position to be put in. It's the same way ADT can sell millions of home alarms every year - there's just no way to prove how many events a reactive system stops.
- smsm42 14y ago
  There's however the documented cases of the guns carried onboard that they did not prevent. And there's documented evidence of TSA confiscating butter knife from the pilot (obviously, he was going to hijack himself), purse with picture of a gun from a 17-year girl (that was undoubtedly Hermione Granger and TSA knew she could turn picture of a gun to a real gun with her magic), plastic lightsaber from a small kid (Anakin Skywalker, I presume, and everybody knows how he turned out, so better to be safe) and a plastic 4 inch GI Joe gun from another kid (again, who knows those underage magicians - maybe they could turn it to the real one). I have no idea why they have problems proving they prevent many acts of terror, with such record. People must be stupid.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Magical rocks have this same problem.
gsnedders 14y ago
I don't see why there isn't more interest in high speed rail in the US: New York and Boston/Washington DC could be less than two hours travel time apart, which though it may well be an hour slower than a flight, has a lot less overhead (no arriving two hours before departure, etc). The technology is quickly reaching the point where San Francisco to Los Angeles may be equally doable in around two hours, again an obvious gain if you have to arrive at the airport that long before departure.
- mahyarm 14y ago
  The overhead comes from the government, otherwise air flights would be like taking a greyhound bus, and in the past, they used to be like that. Now the TSA is leaking to Amtrak and so on, so you might see similar delays in the future with rail! High speed rail has a lot of land acquisition problems for the most part, air flight doesn't.
- mikeash 14y ago
  Long-distance rail travel is politically unpalatable in the US. For reasons I don't really understand, government subsidies are almost impossible, even though every other form of transportation gets them. High-speed rail in the Boston-DC corridor would be pretty pricey, too. Amtrak tries it, but their idea of "high speed" is sad compared to what the rest of the world thinks it means. While the Acela is somewhat similar to the TGV, it peaks at only 150MPH, and the average speed is far lower because the track doesn't support high speeds in a lot of places, and because it makes about three times more stops than it should. Proper high-speed trains in that corridor would require new tracks built for much of it, and with level crossings pretty much impossible for high-speed trains, it would need a ton of bridges or tunnels and a huge expense. A lot of politicians will only support such a thing if they can bring service to their hometown, or where their constituents live, or whatever, so you end up spending way too much time stopped at irrelevant stations instead of going fast. The Acela makes seven stops between DC and New York alone, not even counting DC or New York themselves. It makes six more stops after NYC before getting to Boston. Covering a similar distance in a rational high speed system would involve maybe one intermediate stop. As it stands, when I take the train from DC to NYC, I don't even bother trying to get a place on the Acela unless it's the cheapest option, because it only saves about half an hour out of a four-hour journey. I think it's ultimately a self-fulfilling prophesy. People don't think it can work, which allows politicians to screw it up, which means that it either never happens or happens poorly. So it doesn't work, and people don't think it can work, so....
16s 14y ago
Guys with heavy beards... do you get more attention from the TSA? I heard that any male (regardless of race/religion) with a heavy beard is checked more closely. Has this been true for you or people you know with heavy beards?
- ProNihilist 14y ago
  I'm a 6' male with a beard, used to have long hair too. I always got selected for "randomized" searches when flying (in the UK). At UK airports everyone goes through a metal detector. It would always beep when I went through even if I took off my shoes and belt.
F_J_H 14y ago
The sad fact is, I think TSA type security is hear to stay, and won't lighten up very much, regardless of the facts that question its efficacy. Why? Picture this. Someone (likely a politician) crusades hard to have the TSA dismantled, and is successful. No matter how much better the system that replaces it is, there is always a chance that someone slips through and takes down a plane, and 300+ people are killed. In the throng of people screaming that "something needs to be done to stop this from happening again", who wants to be "that guy" who lobbied to have the TSA dismantled/replaced? Former TSA proponents will jump up and down and scream "See! This is why we can't have nice things!" I don't think anyone will touch it...
- specialist 14y ago
  Yea. It's one of those ideological dead ends that are hard to back out of. Just like the War on Drugs, Tough on Crime, Privatize and let the Free Market Decide, War on Terror, etc.
- krichman 14y ago
  The USA would need to somehow simultaneously remove sociopaths from office and remove voting privileges from idiots before they can have rational legislation in favor of the people.
- WettowelReactor 14y ago
  Bruce Schneier address this very topic in his post on CYA security. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1...
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Then you just stand up and point out that TSA never caught a single terrorist in its entire history so there's no reason to believe it would have handled this incident.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > Then you just stand up and point out that TSA never caught a single terrorist ... Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise -- you're using flawed logic. What would you think of an oncologist whose patients never contract serious, life-threatening cancer? Is he ordering unnecessary tests and procedures on people who aren't really sick, or is he catching all the cancers so early that they're never life-threatening? See the point? I'm certainly not arguing one way or another about the TSA, just that your argument contains a very serious logical flaw. Maybe terrorists, knowing about the TSA, won't take the risk of going near an airport. > ... so there's no reason to believe it would have handled this incident. Flawed argument, flawed conclusion.
bjhoops1 14y ago
The probability of a tragedy occurring is almost completely irrelevant to the common person (including my mother and wife). What does get people's attention is the shock factor when that one-in-10-million event occurs. Which helps explain the bewildering popularity of Nancy Grace...
jlnazario 14y ago
I wonder about the deterring effect. How many attacks do not occur because security is there. It's hard to measure, with a high risk to reward factor.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Yea, that's what I tell people when they tell me this rock hasn't been protecting me from tiger attacks. Maybe the rock isn't doing anything, but is the risk of being mauled by a tiger worth testing this? Use your head people!
a_c_s 14y ago
Am I the only one to have pleasant experience flying? I usually travel 2-4 times a year by myself as a single male. I plan for security (eg. I don't try to bring along liquids and wear shoes that are easily removed) and haven't had to wait in a security line longer than 15 minutes in the US in 6+ years. I have been pulled aside twice to be patted down by the TSA, neither of which invasive nor did they get near my genitals. In contrast I have also been patted down by airport security in Belgium (much more invasive, didn't touch crotch) and been frisked twice by police in the USA (very invasive, definitely did touch crotch). [I have no knowledge of the female experience of being frisked - unfortunately I suspect a much higher level of both discomfort and inappropriate groping] I don't like that our security is based stupid rules instead of smart security analysis, but the level of vitriol I see in the internet is totally disproportionate to my experience. The worst part of flying for me is getting stuck in the security line behind some person who still doesn't know full bottles of water aren't allowed through security and then try to argue with the TSA agents in an attempt to save $4 - and given that I still get through the line often under 10 minutes, that is more of pet peeve than a real issue worth complaining about.
- mikeash 14y ago
  You're lucky and compliant. I don't think your experience is the norm, and my experience certainly doesn't match. It's always a delightful start to a journey to hold your struggling infant in your bare socks while some college dropout pretending to be a lab tech tests your formula for explosive residue and your wife figures out how to cram the stroller through the X-ray machine. Definitely try to avoid flying now.
- bzbarsky 14y ago
  The issue is not the time it takes to clear security. The issue is whether it makes you feel like shit to clear it. If it doesn't make you feel like shit given how airport security works right now, I respectfully submit your shit-meter is calibrated wrong. But also, two points: 1) Your flying experience would be quite different with kids. 2) The flying experience varies very widely by airport. Often by terminal within airport. Flying Virgin America out of BOS is a very different proposition from flying Virgin America out of SFO, and also quite different from flying United out of BOS.
tocomment 14y ago
Unless someone cares a whole awful lot nothing's going to get better its not.
at-fates-hands 14y ago
"The attention paid to terrorism in the U.S. is considerably out of proportion to the relative threat it presents." W O W. My jaw completely dropped when I read this sentence. Considering we've averted 40 terrorist plots since 2001 this is pretty scary somebody would actually print such a statement. Keep in mind, those 40 are the ones we actually know about as well. I'll continue to put up with the minor headaches as long as we continue to stop these plots before airplanes crash into skyscrapers or car bombs start exploding in times square.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  Did you read the entire article? The author rather explicitly showed that even if all 40 of those incidents would have resulted in the loss of a plane we'd still be better off going back to pre-9/11 security. And the TSA doesn't have anything to do with car bombs in Times Square.
- EliRivers 14y ago
  How many of those were instigated by the FBI?
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  40 terrorist plots! What a load of nonsense. I see it works on some people though. The fact is, most of the cases I've followed had no follow up... because they were thrown out for being ridiculous (remember the Disney world "bombers"?). The ones I've been hearing about for the past few years were almost certainly FBI entrapment (i.e. the person would had done nothing had the FBI not convinced them to and funded everything). So I'd put this number at closer to zero. Even if it's one or two, they still would have killed less people than have died on the highways trying to avoid TSA.
anigbrowl 14y ago
In fact, extremist Islamic terrorism [since 2001] resulted in just 200 to 400 deaths worldwide outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq—the same number, Mueller noted in a 2011 report (PDF), as die in bathtubs in the U.S. alone each year. Indeed. But the problem is how to get the votes in Congress to support a significant downsizing of the TSA. Were the President to do so unilaterally (which he may well have the ability to do), he'd be accused of disregarding Americans' safety and chances are that a good number of those accusations would come from inside Congress since there's still plenty of political capital to be made from opposing him. As I've said before, there are three factors that support reducing the TSA's budget (and powers) in the coming yeas: the withdrawal from Aghanistan, budget cutting due to deficit management, and economic growth meaning that there will be jobs available for the laid-off TSA employees. These point to a downsizing of the TSA during 2015-16, after the 2014 midterm elections. According to one estimate of direct and indirect costs borne by the U.S. as a result of 9/11, the New York Times suggested the attacks themselves caused $55 billion in “toll and physical damage,” while the economic impact was $123 billion. But costs related to increased homeland security and counterterrorism spending, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, totaled $3,105 billion. This, on the other hand, is extremely disingenuous. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been major, major expenses (and major drivers of our national debt, since we didn't raise any new revenue to pay for them). Mentioning them last, as if they were some minor component of the TSA budget, reverses the order of significance.
davemel37 14y ago
There is an old Proverb, "Only Our Enemies Truly Know How Many Plots We Foiled." I hate TSA as much as the next guy, but their presence and efforts could have deterred and foiled thousands of plots you and I would never hear about because they don't even know about them. Denying the reality of the potential danger airplanes can cause to major population centers, like we saw on 9/11 is foolish. Airport Security May Suck. But, It May Be Saving More Lives Than It's Killing Indirectly.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Total load of bullshit. TSA has never caught a single would-be terrorist. Not one. I'd submit that the FBI/CIA have also never stopped a terrorist plot that we don't know about. The reason I'm confident in saying this is because of the ones they have told us about. Why would you tell the public about cases where you pretty clearly entrapped someone if you had better examples?
codex 14y ago
Before we checked luggage for bombs, bombers took down entire aircraft by checking in explosive laden bags. Before we checked passenger shoes, a bomber attempted to detonate theirs. If we relax our security, how do we ensure these things don't happen again?
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  >Before we checked luggage for bombs, bombers took down entire aircraft by checking in explosive laden bags Not sure what you're talking about here. The reason 911 actually happened was because no one on the plane expected anymore more than a bit of inconvenience (flying to a different destination). I'd say do nothing. There aren't enough people trying to do this sort of thing to make it worth the effort or expense. Especially since they have to die every time they do it.

263 points by Umalu 14y ago

I opt-out of the x-ray scanner every single time, and so should you. It really doesn't take much longer to go through the process. Show up 3 minutes earlier if you have to. You're rushing to the gate, for what? To sit there longer? Boarding with the crowds is stressful anyways. The most relaxed way to board is at the very end -- there's no more line, I just walk right into the plane, most people are seated, and just grab my seat. Why would you want to maximize the time spent sitting, especially on a cramped plane? I understand the situation is different if you really want your carry-on bag to stow above you. If everyone opted out, the program would be scrapped. You can tell me about how the scanners give harmless amounts of radiation, but I don't really care. You have to stand for your principles. In this situation, a government contractor forced more security theater upon a country, with the only benefit of the entire charade going to their bottom line. Nobody is safer, an entire mode of transport has a new bottleneck, a government agency has expanded and is emboldened and now wants even broader jurisdiction, and as the article states, people are driving more and dying. If we don't stand up and push back now, things will only get worse. More invasive, more annoying, more useless, more dangerous. And not an inch gained against the stated purpose of deterring terrorist attacks.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
> I understand the situation is different if you really want your carry-on bag to stow above you. Or in the cabin. If you're the last to board, there's a very real possibility that they may have to gate-check your bag, which adds additional wait time at the end of your journey at best, and your bag arriving in Minnesota while you're touching down in Dallas at worst.
- epoxyhockey 14y ago
  and your bag arriving in Minnesota while you're touching down in Dallas at worst Is this even possible when gate checking? They literally walk your bag down the stairs at the end of the gate and place it into the plane cargo hold. EDIT: At the end of the flight, your bag is walked up the stairs back into the jetway. I personally love the gate check loophole. If you intentionally wait to board last, you get a free bag check.
  - pkteison 14y ago
    I have had a gate-checked bag forgotten about and left in the boarding ramp. So yes, problems are still possible with gate check.
  - gjm11 14y ago
    I don't know whether exactly that is possible, but I have had the following happen: my bag got gate-checked on an intra-US connecting flight, and my carrier then wouldn't return it until I reached my final destination in London. Which meant that I didn't have it with me when my flight to London was cancelled and I had to stay overnight in Chicago (too bad since it had my washkit and a change of clothes in it) and that when the replacement flight was also cancelled and I ended up going to London with a different carrier, my bag didn't get home until a couple of days after I did. I will not be flying with United Airlines again in a hurry.
    - ejdyksen 14y ago
      Next time just tell them you have medicine in that bag that you need in the next 8 hours (which is why you tried to carry it on).
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    > Is this even possible when gate checking? On a direct flight, your bag is safe. If you have connections, may god have mercy on your pants.
- citizens 14y ago
  Which, of course, has become much more of a problem since the airlines started charging for checked bags/IRS made baggage fees tax-exempt. "...amounts paid for baggage services (such as Service G) are not subject to the tax" [http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/1002004.pdf http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/1002004.pdf]
  - streptomycin 14y ago
    If all the overhead compartments are full and they have to check your carry-on, they won't charge you any fee, at least on the major US airlines I've flown on.
  - sharkweek 14y ago
    I don't have the link handy, but there was a great article arguing that the airlines could actually save more money not charging for checked bags because less people will try to cram their oversized luggage into the overheads, speeding up boarding times. Thus allowing for a lower rate of delayed takeoffs, which, over a long enough timeline, allows for more flights in a day they can charge for (and the added bonus of better customer retention).
Anechoic 14y ago
It really doesn't take much longer to go through the process. Show up 3 minutes earlier if you have to. YMMV with respect to the additional time. I also opt out and have had to wait as long as 15 minutes for the pat down (and to make matters worse in that instance, there was an elderly passenger behind me who had a medical exemption from the scanner and they waved him through while I had to stand and wait). My advice is that if you do plan to opt out, allow for more than 3 minutes.
- toomuchtodo 14y ago
  Most opt outs cost you about 15 minutes extra; one time flying from MIA to ORD, I had to wait 40 minutes extra because I opted out.
WarDekar 14y ago
I used to opt out, but I also get fed up with being groped by old men. I'm not sure what the solution is because unless a significant portion of people opt out this doesn't accomplish anything and my groin has been fondled a few too many times at this point for me to want to continue opting out. The entire procedure is completely bogus of course- everyt time I fly in the US now it's a question of: "How do I want to be violated today?"
- Osiris 14y ago
  I opted out or chose a lane without a scanner for a long time until they implemented the new groin-feeling pat down. I opted out and got that enhanced pat down one day and I felt more uncomfortable with someone physically touching me than I did with the idea of someone seeing a picture of me. So now, I try to find a lane without a scanner, but I have gone through a scanner a few times just to avoid being felt-up. And yes, I'm entirely certain that one of the reasons for that pat down process was to push people toward not opting out.
socialist_coder 14y ago
I also opt-out every time, but I would estimate the average additional time to be in the order of 10 minutes. It's highly variable. Sometimes you get the pat-down right away and then it only takes about 3 minutes, but most of the time you have to wait for the agent to come get you, and that can take up to 10 minutes in my experience. But in any case, it's worth it (for the reasons you mentioned). I wish there were more of us that always opted-out.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- grecy 14y ago
  > The radiation from the body scanner is less than you experience just from flying, or sitting next to another human being. You missed the point. He doesn't recommend opting out because of radiation, he recommends opting out as a form of protest against the existence of the scanners.
- adrr 14y ago
  Thats with a properly working scanner. The scanner can produce lethal amounts of radiation and you're one software glitch from getting this dose. Its happened in past. Scary thing is these devices aren't under the same rules as medical devices which has checks and procedures in place to prevent malfunctions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Read your own article. Nobody beyond the scanner manufacturers have confirmed those radiation doses. There is no transparency in this process whatsoever, there is a very real health risk since There Is No Consequence-Free Exposure To Ionizing Radiation, and these machines are not operated by trained medical professionals. Horrible accidents have happened in vastly more regulated instances.
- epoxyhockey 14y ago
  We've already been through this discussion countless times. The radiation you are exposed to is concentrated in the outer layer of your skin. All of the comparisons that you mention are when radiation is applied to the whole body mass. Also, do you really want the outer layer of your reproductive parts to be dosed with ionizing radiation? Why not opt out? Are you scared of sticking up for your reproductive organs.. and your rights?
- acabal 14y ago
  That NPR article you linked seems to say the opposite: "The government says it's OK, but scientists aren't so sure." I personally opt out every time for the reasons in the OP: my principles. Getting the pat-down is unpleasant and I have indeed had my "junk" jabbed at by zealous TSA agents. (The sides of their hands go up your inner thigh until they encounter "resistance"--which is a nice euphemism for something much more sensitive.) You end up feeling like a common criminal. Neither of these was required just a few years ago--so saying one is better than the other isn't a good argument, because both are bad for more than a few reasons. Whether or not you believe in scanning on a principled ground, you should also be wary of what the government--and more importantly, a private company the government has contracted--tells you is OK. The same country told veterans that Agent Orange was OK. Of course the private company that makes billions is going to tell you their product is OK. Even if you give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume they think they're telling the truth, they might have misunderstood, or not completely researched, things. I would never trust the government to irradiate me with a technology only a few years old, in any amount. I do trust thoroughly-researched technology that time has proven--medical x-rays, air travel.
adrr 14y ago
I noticed that not all security check points have the "naked" scanners, even at major airports you can find one security line at a lesser used security checkpoint that only has a standard metal detector. If goal is security, shouldn't all security lines have the scanners? Security is only as strong as the weakest link. The bigger concern isn't the checkpoints inside the airpot, its the checkpoints on the roads to the airport. I want to know how the police can search my car without a warrant on a public road.
marssaxman 14y ago
I'm with you - I opt-out every time, and I will keep on doing so as long as I can. I have yet to have any trouble with my carry-on. What's more, these days I always choose to fly in a kilt, commando style, to make the whole process as awkward as possible for the screeners.
switch007 14y ago
In the UK, you can't opt out. Also, you're subjected quite often to a full grope (if you set off the metal detector) before they select people to go through the X-ray scanners!
methodover 14y ago
I wonder if there's a better way to register one's complaint rather than merely opting out. (And I happen to agree with another poster who said that the 'enhanced pat down' can be more degrading than the scanner if you get someone who gets a little overzealous when they 'encounter resistance.') What about a t-shirt, perhaps? Printed on the shirt would be a calm and clear explanation of the problems with the scanners/groping. Everyone standing in line around you would see it, the TSA officers would see it, and it could get some conversations started.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  If they're already hand-raping you because you don't want to go through the scanners (the only x-ray you can get in the US that's not run by a professional, btw), what makes you think they wouldn't let you go through the scanners and then grope you anyway if you wear such a shirt?

DamnYuppie 14y ago

"The attention paid to terrorism in the U.S. is considerably out of proportion to the relative threat it presents." I agree 100%! The formation of this organization was reactionary policy making at its worst. The TSA is nothing more then a works program for people who are barely qualified to do anything.

sageikosa 14y ago
Yay! Terrorists have made America a less free place. Sort of makes you wonder who's winning this "war"...

seiji 14y ago

What is the answer though? Can you imagine a politician running under a "massively downsize the TSA" banner? Would any existing Washington elected official take up the cause? They can't even repeal the comically silly shoe removal procedure (unless you're under 12 or over 75, because no terr'ist would ever foot kerplode those demographic stereotypes).

jdh 14y ago
Not a politician but still a courageous voice : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577335783535660546.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230381540457733...
Lewisham 14y ago
Well, you could imagine a politician taking up the cause if the Republican party returned to its small government ideals, rather than "Small government, except when it meets our special interests (which most definitely include defense and scaremongering)" Obama won't do it, because he's shown himself to keep whatever things from Bush are convenient if unsavory, like Guantanamo (saying you're going to close it and actually closing it are two different things).
- MartinCron 14y ago
  I'm not going to argue with your main point, but I think that closing Guantanamo has proven to be more difficult than merely inconvenient.
mstefanko 14y ago
This is my questions as well, I think the TSA at this point is far more trouble than the massive budget the government is wasting on them. I've read countless articles and watched countless videos complaining about the TSA, pointing out their flaws. But I've yet to see a reasonable plan to cut their budget. And even if someone was able to lower their budget, what happens if something does happen then. I'd love to see any plans, but just cutting the TSA budget entirely has obvious ill effects, it's definitely not as easy as saying, "The TSA is useless, get rid of them."

indiecore 14y ago

If you can avoid it* never travel through the united states. *Edit

cryptoz 14y ago
That's excellent advice to those who live elsewhere, but there are hundreds of millions of people who cannot possibly follow your advice.
- grecy 14y ago
  Luckily it's only ~4.5% of the world's population.
  - chollida1 14y ago
    Useless statistic for what we're measuring. What percentage of flights actually have the US as part of their journey would be a better measurement.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Most of those people have the power to vote this nightmare away though. If they won't then they're just getting what they wanted (if you think I'm being extreme, there are people in this very thread claiming this is necessary after all the evidence that's shown conclusively that it's useless).
grecy 14y ago
Yup. I managed a hostel in Ecuador for 5 months, and the vast majority of European travelers swore they would never again transit through America due to the nightmares they had experienced with security and immigration, all for a 1 hour layover in the airport.
Coincoin 14y ago
Exactly. I'm Canadian and because of the TSA, I don't travel through the US anymore, even if it means my ticket are a couple hundred dollars more expensive.

jeshan 14y ago

This is so NOT relevant at HackerNews. Why do you guys think other 'hackers' would be interested in such news? Can't they find newspapers on their own?

nollidge 14y ago
Is not the presence of upvotes an indication that it IS relevant?
gnosis 14y ago
From the HN Guidelines[1]: "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did." [1] - http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jeshan 14y ago
  Thanks, I forgot about the guidelines. My point was that it was not nerd stuff..Citing the first phrase there, "Anything that good hackers would find interesting". Besides, anything in this world could "gratify one's intellectual curiosity". I come to this site to find interesting content and I love it, that's the only reason why I posted that comment.
Stratoscope 14y ago
It's a story of unintended consequences, of an attempted bug fix that introduces a new bug. A story about choosing a technology that seems to serve your needs but doesn't serve your customers. A story of what can go wrong when you've locked yourself into your business model and company culture and can't pivot.

rplst8 14y ago

Someone else did an analysis of airline travel and highway travel and came up with a similar finding. Blow up one plane per month over the continental US and flying would still be two orders of magnitude safer than driving or riding in an automobile over your lifespan. There's no proof that TSA is making things any safer either. No one will ever pull another fast one on the passengers of a plane again. We all know that the planes themselves are weapons, so I'm pretty sure most passengers will go down fighting if terrorists try to take control of the cockpit. This is precisely why it's called security theater.

Osiris 14y ago
* We all know that the planes themselves are weapons * Which is why I don't understand why pilots have to be screened. They are flying a huge flying bomb. What will screening them for nail-clippers solve? (Side note: I did, in fact, have my nail clippers taken by the TSA once)
- dagw 14y ago
  Which is why I don't understand why pilots have to be screened A person could be supportive of the cause without being willing to sacrifice his life. If pilots could get into restricted areas un-screened they could bring in bombs or weapons which they hand off to third parties. This would also be a more efficient use of a limited resource (the hypothetical Taliban sympathizer flying for a commercial airline).
- EliRivers 14y ago
  Perhaps it's so the bad pilot can't easily kill the nice pilot sitting next to her.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

I think this is a pretty novel argument, basically the cure is worse than the disease. Basically intrusive security measures make flying less desirable which moves people to other forms of transportation (notably cars) where they are more likely to die. It doesn't help that people don't internalize risk well so its hard for folks to see the merits of the argument but I applaud whomever came up with it.

anu_gupta 14y ago

Tangentially - the thing that most surprised me about this article was reading that over 150,000 Americans have been murdered in less than a decade. I find that number utterly staggering. Wikipedia says that the homicide rate in the US is 4.2 per 100,000, which is more than 2.5 times the rate in Canada and 3.5 times the rate in the UK.

ProCynic 14y ago
You'll probably find this interesting then. It's about how violence rates have changed over time, and some guesses about causation. http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Nature-ebook/dp/B0052REUW0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1353437806&sr=8-2&keywords=better+angels+of+our+nature http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Nature-ebook/dp/B005...
- anu_gupta 14y ago
  Yes, that does look interesting. Have Kindled it, thanks!
engtech 14y ago
If you find that staggering, then absolutely avoid looking at Japan homicide stats. Japan is 0.4 per 100,000. Japan has had the strictest gun control in the world for the longest time, and has a homicide rate to match. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
- Domenic_S 14y ago
  Suicide rate in Japan is 23.7 per 100,000, double that of most developed countries. Also, Japan's murder stats are rigged -- if the police don't know who the killer is it isn't a murder, it's an "abandoned body". See Freakonomics for more on this.
- makmanalp 14y ago
  I support gun control and everything, but how do you know that the low homicide rate is because of the gun control? Japan has been a model for social order (putting aside organized crime, in the sense that you lose your wallet and it gets returned to you, muggings don't happen often, etc.) for a long time.

reneherse 14y ago

While waiting this morning to get through security, I overheard a TSA agent saying they were undergoing a downsizing at that airport (BDL, which is a pretty small international airport in Connecticut) from 200 to 50 on staff. So there's one "anecdata" point that the footprint of the TSA may already be shrinking. He also mentioned it was downsizing through attrition rather than layoffs, which is probably an easier strategy for elected and appointed officials to get behind.

clauretano 14y ago
BDL just keeps getting worse. It's already hundreds of dollars less expensive (during the holidays) and takes less time to fly into say Newark and take an Amtrak to Connecticut.
- throwaway1979 14y ago
  Do you mean "more" expensive?
  - tbrownaw 14y ago
    I read it as « It's faster and cheaper to use (other airport plus Amtrak) instead of flying in to BDL. »

tokenadult 14y ago

Hear. Hear. I want to be able to walk into an airport with my shoes on and walk calmly to an arrival gate to greet arriving passengers there. And I want to be able to carry a Swiss Army knife in an airline carry-on bag. And I want the terrorists to be attacked relentlessly where they live, so that they have to hide in caves and ride on goats, while Americans and other people in developed countries get to lead civilized, advanced lives in the Twenty-First Century. Taliban delenda est. AFTER EDIT: I wonder what aspect of this people disagree with. Do you still want to have to take your shoes off in airports? Further edit, to reply to the first kind reply: I still don't think attacking terrorists relentlessly is ever beneficial. I guess that's an empirical question of history and current events. What does help people lead tolerant, civilized lives and be at peace with other people who may have differing opinions? I read a biography of Joseph Stalin back in the 1990s, after the Soviet archives became available to independent researchers, and the striking thing about how Joseph Stalin developed his influence in the Bolshevik movement was that he was a very active terrorist, frequently directly involved in random bomb attacks. We should consider the facts about Sri Lanka and Rwanda and other places to get a reality check on the power of terrorism. I think communism mostly collapsed (as it mostly has by now) with the help of information flow into countries living under communist dictatorships that were established in some cases by domestic terrorism and in some cases by armed invasion from another country. The case of eastern and western Germany is especially illustrative: it's just where the tanks stopped after the armistice that ended the European phase of World War II that determined which parts of Germany became the postwar Federal Republic of Germany (BRD) and which became the German Democratic Republic (DDR). Several of the communist governments of eastern Europe were turned out of power largely peacefully when Western mass media made it all too apparent how different life was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But it took an entire human lifetime for communism to decline in its influence on Europe. So, yeah, if a peaceful process of information flow could bring Afghanistan into the Twenty-First Century, I'm all for that. I don't see how any rational person who knows well how other people live could want a whole country to be living under Taliban rule. But the Taliban's method is not to let most people in Afghanistan or Pakistan decide the issue freely. Their method is to give girls and women no voice, all non-Muslims little or no voice, and any Muslim who thinks that Islam is consistent with science and progress little or no voice. They use violence and thuggery to get their way in the areas they control. So, yes, if they are willing to send people onto airplanes to fly from Europe to the United States with bombs in their shoes (as they have been), I say let loose the drones, and let's keep the Taliban leaders hiding in caves and unable to travel more rapidly than at goat speed until peaceful news and education campaigns have enough time to win over so many of the common people of the world that the Taliban can no longer gain influence even through threats. Taliban delenda est. Peacefully or violently, the Taliban must be destroyed.

ry0ohki 14y ago

Odds of dying from fireworks: 1 in 652,046 Odds of dying from lightning strike: 1 in 134,906 Odds of being legally executed: 1 in 111,179 Odds of dying from contact with bees/wasps: 1 in 79,842 Odds of being shot: 1 in 6,609 Odds of dying from a fall 1 in 163 Odds of dying in a terrorist attack: 1 in 3,500,000 Maybe we should switch the TSA to bee patrol. (Source: http://www.nsc.org/NSC%20Picture%20Library/News/web_graphics/Injury_Facts_37.pdf http://www.nsc.org/NSC%20Picture%20Library/News/web_graphics...)

jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
Odds of developing cancer: 1 in 3 Lets convert it to a cancer awareness foundation; where they touch you for actually important reasons. Source: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/lifetime-probability-of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/lifetime-probabili...
- natrius 14y ago
  Don't give them any ideas. They might just add testicular cancer screenings to the current procedure.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    That would require almost no changes, so I'd say win-win.
swohns 14y ago
The numbers themselves aren't the real takeaway, it's how preventable these deaths are.
- lostlogin 14y ago
  Exactly, and one can conclude that the dollars spent versus lives saved makes the waste seem even greater. Converting the TSA to bee control as mentioned above would lively save more lives (to take an extreme example).

mkhattab 14y ago

I've always felt that airport security was always about testing the limits of the complacency of the people and not really about security. I imagine some person complaining during a security checkpoint, holding up the line, and some lady yelling from behind in support of the government keeping "us" safe. It's kind of pathetic and undignified.

cousin_it 14y ago

> In fact, extremist Islamic terrorism resulted in just 200 to 400 deaths worldwide outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq — the same number, Mueller noted in a 2011 report (http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/CNApart.pdf http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/CNApart.pdf), as die in bathtubs in the U.S. alone each year. Can anyone find a citation for the "200 to 400 deaths" claim? The NCTC report (http://www.nctc.gov/docs/2011_NCTC_Annual_Report_Final.pdf http://www.nctc.gov/docs/2011_NCTC_Annual_Report_Final.pdf) seems to give much higher numbers, unless I'm missing something.

jpxxx 14y ago

A quibble, because this whole fucking disgusting thing fills me with limitless rage: TSA agents do not perform 'pat-downs'. Pat-downs are very quick checks to see if any obvious weapons are being concealed on someone's body. Police will do these before putting a suspect into a police vehicle, for instance. TSA employees do what are called 'custody searches', designed to find contraband material on detainees. These are only performed under specific scenarios, such as being incarcerated. Custody searches in this context are forbidden by the fourth amendment, by the way, regardless of what the TSA's legal team may claim.

aneth4 14y ago
> Custody searches in this context are forbidden by the fourth amendment, by the way, regardless of what the TSA's legal team may claim. As is x-raying baggage and body-scans. Fourth amendment rights don't apply to the same extent when you are on private property, when there are balancing security concerns, when you enter a courthouse, when you enter a school, etc. You know the deal when you enter these places and you have a choice whether to enter them. The idea that you have the same fourth amendment rights boarding a plan as you do in your house or car is ridiculous. I'm not saying I agree with TSA searches, only that your normal forth amendment standard does not apply.
- pyre 14y ago
  > when you enter a courthouse > you have a choice whether to enter them Not necessarily...
  - aneth4 14y ago
    True, though the security concerns of weapons in a courthouse surely justify a baggage scan, metal detector, and pat down. Security is far more of an issue in a courthouse even than on a plane.
    - Zigurd 14y ago
      Having recently been on a jury, I wish airport security was as hassle free as a courthouse in Massachusetts, where my bag was x-rayed with my laptop in it, and I walked, shoes on, through a metal detector. I also agree that, in practical terms, security at a courthouse faces many more real-world challenges than air travel. That should tell us something about appropriate levels of security.

Domenic_S 14y ago

The TSA has the same problem car alarms or home security systems have: there's no way to prove how many events they've prevented.

krichman 14y ago
Yep, imagine the horrors that would have fallen upon us if a terrist had gotten through with some nail clippers. Many security experts think it is trivial to get weaponry past them. They aren't extensively trained, you know, they are cheap rental guards following a procedure. So in fact I would say the TSA has stopped nothing, the only prevention has come from the FBI and CIA, locking the cockpit door, and putting air marshals on the plane.
- Domenic_S 14y ago
  > So in fact I would say That's the point, right, that you aren't in a position to guess, and it's slimy position to be put in. It's the same way ADT can sell millions of home alarms every year - there's just no way to prove how many events a reactive system stops.
smsm42 14y ago
There's however the documented cases of the guns carried onboard that they did not prevent. And there's documented evidence of TSA confiscating butter knife from the pilot (obviously, he was going to hijack himself), purse with picture of a gun from a 17-year girl (that was undoubtedly Hermione Granger and TSA knew she could turn picture of a gun to a real gun with her magic), plastic lightsaber from a small kid (Anakin Skywalker, I presume, and everybody knows how he turned out, so better to be safe) and a plastic 4 inch GI Joe gun from another kid (again, who knows those underage magicians - maybe they could turn it to the real one). I have no idea why they have problems proving they prevent many acts of terror, with such record. People must be stupid.
flyinRyan 14y ago
Magical rocks have this same problem.

gsnedders 14y ago

I don't see why there isn't more interest in high speed rail in the US: New York and Boston/Washington DC could be less than two hours travel time apart, which though it may well be an hour slower than a flight, has a lot less overhead (no arriving two hours before departure, etc). The technology is quickly reaching the point where San Francisco to Los Angeles may be equally doable in around two hours, again an obvious gain if you have to arrive at the airport that long before departure.

mahyarm 14y ago
The overhead comes from the government, otherwise air flights would be like taking a greyhound bus, and in the past, they used to be like that. Now the TSA is leaking to Amtrak and so on, so you might see similar delays in the future with rail! High speed rail has a lot of land acquisition problems for the most part, air flight doesn't.
mikeash 14y ago
Long-distance rail travel is politically unpalatable in the US. For reasons I don't really understand, government subsidies are almost impossible, even though every other form of transportation gets them. High-speed rail in the Boston-DC corridor would be pretty pricey, too. Amtrak tries it, but their idea of "high speed" is sad compared to what the rest of the world thinks it means. While the Acela is somewhat similar to the TGV, it peaks at only 150MPH, and the average speed is far lower because the track doesn't support high speeds in a lot of places, and because it makes about three times more stops than it should. Proper high-speed trains in that corridor would require new tracks built for much of it, and with level crossings pretty much impossible for high-speed trains, it would need a ton of bridges or tunnels and a huge expense. A lot of politicians will only support such a thing if they can bring service to their hometown, or where their constituents live, or whatever, so you end up spending way too much time stopped at irrelevant stations instead of going fast. The Acela makes seven stops between DC and New York alone, not even counting DC or New York themselves. It makes six more stops after NYC before getting to Boston. Covering a similar distance in a rational high speed system would involve maybe one intermediate stop. As it stands, when I take the train from DC to NYC, I don't even bother trying to get a place on the Acela unless it's the cheapest option, because it only saves about half an hour out of a four-hour journey. I think it's ultimately a self-fulfilling prophesy. People don't think it can work, which allows politicians to screw it up, which means that it either never happens or happens poorly. So it doesn't work, and people don't think it can work, so....

16s 14y ago

Guys with heavy beards... do you get more attention from the TSA? I heard that any male (regardless of race/religion) with a heavy beard is checked more closely. Has this been true for you or people you know with heavy beards?

ProNihilist 14y ago
I'm a 6' male with a beard, used to have long hair too. I always got selected for "randomized" searches when flying (in the UK). At UK airports everyone goes through a metal detector. It would always beep when I went through even if I took off my shoes and belt.

F_J_H 14y ago

The sad fact is, I think TSA type security is hear to stay, and won't lighten up very much, regardless of the facts that question its efficacy. Why? Picture this. Someone (likely a politician) crusades hard to have the TSA dismantled, and is successful. No matter how much better the system that replaces it is, there is always a chance that someone slips through and takes down a plane, and 300+ people are killed. In the throng of people screaming that "something needs to be done to stop this from happening again", who wants to be "that guy" who lobbied to have the TSA dismantled/replaced? Former TSA proponents will jump up and down and scream "See! This is why we can't have nice things!" I don't think anyone will touch it...

specialist 14y ago
Yea. It's one of those ideological dead ends that are hard to back out of. Just like the War on Drugs, Tough on Crime, Privatize and let the Free Market Decide, War on Terror, etc.
krichman 14y ago
The USA would need to somehow simultaneously remove sociopaths from office and remove voting privileges from idiots before they can have rational legislation in favor of the people.
WettowelReactor 14y ago
Bruce Schneier address this very topic in his post on CYA security. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_1...
flyinRyan 14y ago
Then you just stand up and point out that TSA never caught a single terrorist in its entire history so there's no reason to believe it would have handled this incident.
- lutusp 14y ago
  > Then you just stand up and point out that TSA never caught a single terrorist ... Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise -- you're using flawed logic. What would you think of an oncologist whose patients never contract serious, life-threatening cancer? Is he ordering unnecessary tests and procedures on people who aren't really sick, or is he catching all the cancers so early that they're never life-threatening? See the point? I'm certainly not arguing one way or another about the TSA, just that your argument contains a very serious logical flaw. Maybe terrorists, knowing about the TSA, won't take the risk of going near an airport. > ... so there's no reason to believe it would have handled this incident. Flawed argument, flawed conclusion.

bjhoops1 14y ago

The probability of a tragedy occurring is almost completely irrelevant to the common person (including my mother and wife). What does get people's attention is the shock factor when that one-in-10-million event occurs. Which helps explain the bewildering popularity of Nancy Grace...

jlnazario 14y ago

I wonder about the deterring effect. How many attacks do not occur because security is there. It's hard to measure, with a high risk to reward factor.

flyinRyan 14y ago
Yea, that's what I tell people when they tell me this rock hasn't been protecting me from tiger attacks. Maybe the rock isn't doing anything, but is the risk of being mauled by a tiger worth testing this? Use your head people!

a_c_s 14y ago

Am I the only one to have pleasant experience flying? I usually travel 2-4 times a year by myself as a single male. I plan for security (eg. I don't try to bring along liquids and wear shoes that are easily removed) and haven't had to wait in a security line longer than 15 minutes in the US in 6+ years. I have been pulled aside twice to be patted down by the TSA, neither of which invasive nor did they get near my genitals. In contrast I have also been patted down by airport security in Belgium (much more invasive, didn't touch crotch) and been frisked twice by police in the USA (very invasive, definitely did touch crotch). [I have no knowledge of the female experience of being frisked - unfortunately I suspect a much higher level of both discomfort and inappropriate groping] I don't like that our security is based stupid rules instead of smart security analysis, but the level of vitriol I see in the internet is totally disproportionate to my experience. The worst part of flying for me is getting stuck in the security line behind some person who still doesn't know full bottles of water aren't allowed through security and then try to argue with the TSA agents in an attempt to save $4 - and given that I still get through the line often under 10 minutes, that is more of pet peeve than a real issue worth complaining about.

mikeash 14y ago
You're lucky and compliant. I don't think your experience is the norm, and my experience certainly doesn't match. It's always a delightful start to a journey to hold your struggling infant in your bare socks while some college dropout pretending to be a lab tech tests your formula for explosive residue and your wife figures out how to cram the stroller through the X-ray machine. Definitely try to avoid flying now.
bzbarsky 14y ago
The issue is not the time it takes to clear security. The issue is whether it makes you feel like shit to clear it. If it doesn't make you feel like shit given how airport security works right now, I respectfully submit your shit-meter is calibrated wrong. But also, two points: 1) Your flying experience would be quite different with kids. 2) The flying experience varies very widely by airport. Often by terminal within airport. Flying Virgin America out of BOS is a very different proposition from flying Virgin America out of SFO, and also quite different from flying United out of BOS.

tocomment 14y ago

Unless someone cares a whole awful lot nothing's going to get better its not.

at-fates-hands 14y ago

"The attention paid to terrorism in the U.S. is considerably out of proportion to the relative threat it presents." W O W. My jaw completely dropped when I read this sentence. Considering we've averted 40 terrorist plots since 2001 this is pretty scary somebody would actually print such a statement. Keep in mind, those 40 are the ones we actually know about as well. I'll continue to put up with the minor headaches as long as we continue to stop these plots before airplanes crash into skyscrapers or car bombs start exploding in times square.

Symmetry 14y ago
Did you read the entire article? The author rather explicitly showed that even if all 40 of those incidents would have resulted in the loss of a plane we'd still be better off going back to pre-9/11 security. And the TSA doesn't have anything to do with car bombs in Times Square.
EliRivers 14y ago
How many of those were instigated by the FBI?
flyinRyan 14y ago
40 terrorist plots! What a load of nonsense. I see it works on some people though. The fact is, most of the cases I've followed had no follow up... because they were thrown out for being ridiculous (remember the Disney world "bombers"?). The ones I've been hearing about for the past few years were almost certainly FBI entrapment (i.e. the person would had done nothing had the FBI not convinced them to and funded everything). So I'd put this number at closer to zero. Even if it's one or two, they still would have killed less people than have died on the highways trying to avoid TSA.

anigbrowl 14y ago

In fact, extremist Islamic terrorism [since 2001] resulted in just 200 to 400 deaths worldwide outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq—the same number, Mueller noted in a 2011 report (PDF), as die in bathtubs in the U.S. alone each year. Indeed. But the problem is how to get the votes in Congress to support a significant downsizing of the TSA. Were the President to do so unilaterally (which he may well have the ability to do), he'd be accused of disregarding Americans' safety and chances are that a good number of those accusations would come from inside Congress since there's still plenty of political capital to be made from opposing him. As I've said before, there are three factors that support reducing the TSA's budget (and powers) in the coming yeas: the withdrawal from Aghanistan, budget cutting due to deficit management, and economic growth meaning that there will be jobs available for the laid-off TSA employees. These point to a downsizing of the TSA during 2015-16, after the 2014 midterm elections. According to one estimate of direct and indirect costs borne by the U.S. as a result of 9/11, the New York Times suggested the attacks themselves caused $55 billion in “toll and physical damage,” while the economic impact was $123 billion. But costs related to increased homeland security and counterterrorism spending, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, totaled $3,105 billion. This, on the other hand, is extremely disingenuous. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been major, major expenses (and major drivers of our national debt, since we didn't raise any new revenue to pay for them). Mentioning them last, as if they were some minor component of the TSA budget, reverses the order of significance.

davemel37 14y ago

There is an old Proverb, "Only Our Enemies Truly Know How Many Plots We Foiled." I hate TSA as much as the next guy, but their presence and efforts could have deterred and foiled thousands of plots you and I would never hear about because they don't even know about them. Denying the reality of the potential danger airplanes can cause to major population centers, like we saw on 9/11 is foolish. Airport Security May Suck. But, It May Be Saving More Lives Than It's Killing Indirectly.

flyinRyan 14y ago
Total load of bullshit. TSA has never caught a single would-be terrorist. Not one. I'd submit that the FBI/CIA have also never stopped a terrorist plot that we don't know about. The reason I'm confident in saying this is because of the ones they have told us about. Why would you tell the public about cases where you pretty clearly entrapped someone if you had better examples?

codex 14y ago

Before we checked luggage for bombs, bombers took down entire aircraft by checking in explosive laden bags. Before we checked passenger shoes, a bomber attempted to detonate theirs. If we relax our security, how do we ensure these things don't happen again?

flyinRyan 14y ago
>Before we checked luggage for bombs, bombers took down entire aircraft by checking in explosive laden bags Not sure what you're talking about here. The reason 911 actually happened was because no one on the plane expected anymore more than a bit of inconvenience (flying to a different destination). I'd say do nothing. There aren't enough people trying to do this sort of thing to make it worth the effort or expense. Especially since they have to die every time they do it.