Reminds me of this ridiculous story I read a few years ago.  The d00d is a pilot — in uniform fer chrissakes — and TSA wouldn’t let him take his personal set of airline silverware through.  The same butter knife they give to everyone on the airplane. 

“Sorry.” She throws it into a bin and starts to walk away.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “That’s airline silverware.”

“Don’t matter what it is. You can’t bring knives through here.”

“Ma’am, that’s an airline knife. It’s the knife they give you on the plane.”

“No knives. Have a good afternoon, sir.”

                                ...

Now, do I really need to point out that an airline pilot at the controls would hardly need a butter knife if he or she desired to inflict damage?

I know it’s frequently called “security theater,” but it’s more like “theater of the absurd.”

Yes well you may enjoy your generic zipper bags now, but how will you enjoy them when the terrorists fly a plane into your house while you’re putting things in said zipper bag?

QED

They “wiped” my fingers today, like they were expecting to find mysterious (but explosive!) residues.  (For the record, there would have been traces of soap, hand cream, dandruff, makeup, plaster atoms, and computer keyboard cruft, but giving another passenger a reason to scorn the TSA probably brightens their days.)

I got groped in San Jose.

And told “that’s what happens when you opt out!” plus “we’re not going away”

All because of the threatening act of wishing to board my return flight home.  It’s so infuriating.  So unAmerican.  At least the America I grew up in.  Post 9/11, we’re the USSR, only without the free housing and guaranteed food and healthcare.

I love how I carry-onned like a dozen lighters this past weekend both ways without even thinking about it.

#4 EXACTLY.  A few months ago it dawned on me that today’s Republican party (and pretty much anyone involved with Homeland security) is yesterday’s communist party, with a slightly different though no less corrupt economic system.  We truly have become the thing we most feared.  I for one will never forget that we actually were a free country once upon a time.  One where airlines didn’t treat their customers like criminals and protesters weren’t corralled into “Free Speech Zones” far from the delicate ears of the powerful.

Oh, and is there any doubt that if this had been a teenage boy’s wallet it would have sailed through security?  Perhaps you can weigh in on this Amanda.  Does your boyfriend receive the same kind of scrutiny you do when traveling?

Now I’m wondering if showing up early to leave time to get through security doesn’t make us more likely to get searched (Our trips usually start in Omaha or Halifax, neither large airports).

‘Course, after the hassle we dealt with last time we flew (remember that guy who set himself on fire a couple years ago? We were flying out two days after that) we’re probably going to be making most of our trips by car from now on. It won’t take much longer, and we’ll have more legroom.

On 10/11/01 I flew out of an airport in New Hampshire.  Just ahead of me in line was an older gentleman wearing what was likely his favorite leather jacket.

Emblazoned with an NRA emblem.

He got searched at least four times before we boarded.

Although that wasn’t the TSA, it was the national guard worried that Johhnie Redneck with a Savior Complex was packing in case there were any terrorists ... but it still was annoying that he was searched so many times, cleared, and searched again.

Slow or small airports usually mean bored and grumpy TSA agents, making the risk of searching high.

I fly almost exclusively out of a very small and slow airport (seriously, ten minutes from bus stop to gate, consistently), and I think a lot of this has to do with how well the TSA did with hiring. The agents at my airport are always happy, they usually make jokes at me that I don’t get because it’s six o’clock in the effing morning and I just want to go back to bed. No backscatter, just a metal detector. I had a bag get flagged as suspicious once, they ran a hand through it and put it back through the scanner and gave it right back to me. They were nice about it, too.

Contrast that to my time coming back from abroad through LAX - I wouldn’t take off my sweater because I wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath it, and got treated like an absolute criminal. The dude yelled at me until I started crying (I’d just been on a plane for eight hours and did not want to strip down to my bra in front of an airport of people), and while I didn’t get strip-searched, it was probably the least pleasant TSA experience I’ve ever had in the largest airport I’ve ever been in.

So size of airport isn’t necessarily correlated to bitchiness of TSA.

I usually get searched—guy with a pony tail and beard, so I look like a radical.  Then again, I am a radical…

Usually, when I fly, I have to check bags.  Since I usually only fly for wildlife photography, my camera gear needs to be checked; there’s too much for carry-on.  It is always opened and searched.  I have enough frequent flier miles to be considered “elite” when I fly, so I can get the fast lane.

I actually get the worst treatment at Newark airport (my parents home airport for when I visit them), the best at San Francisco (my home airport.)

My mother has an artificial hip, my father a pacemaker.  They trigger extra searching every trip; the result is they’ve stopped flying.

It’s theater, pure and simple. The message is: be afraid. Not of terrorists, of course. Those are protected against much more by secured pilot doors and passengers who now know to fight back. The message is to be afraid of the TSA. Make sure not to laugh too loudly while in line or look too peeved when they search your shit, or they may decide you really look dangerous and need extra searching. They have the power to make you miss your flight, and that danger is immediate and very real, unlike the vague threats of terrorism that all this security is supposedly there to prevent.

What’s the point of a police state if the police don’t get to have some fun with their power?

What if you had a tattoo of a gun? Would you have to chop off the offending body part?

You know, it’s funny - I’ve flown lots of times since 9/11, and other than one time getting a pat-down when I declined a body scan, I’ve never been searched at an airport checkpoint. Why yes, I am a white man; why do you ask?

Many times I’ve been given hokey instructions and then told, no, that’s not what they want me to do, go back and do it again.  That seems to be a standard kind of ploy for keeping persons with boobs or butts or legs from getting away too quickly.  I think I first encountered it at the age of 12.

TSO positions don’t attract the kind of people they need because the position pays so low, it has such high turnover.

You don’t HAVE to be an idiot with Fascist proclivities to work for the TSA, but it HELPS!

If somebody makes a poster/t-shirt/coffee mug with that on it, just send me one of each and we’ll call it even.

the purse is super cool, i want one like it..

Last year, U.S. carriers flew more than 10 million flights and hauled more than 700 million passengers

-From http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/2011-01-21-RWaircrashes20_ST_N.htm

And no fatalities!

But I doubt the TSA had anything to do with making 2010 a good year to fly. I doubt they’ve even stopped a single person intending to commit an attack ever, ‘cause I think the media would’ve exploded over how justified the TSA would be at that.

I do think that the TSA (and airport security) may have had a few innocent travelers killed by taser or shooting; sexually harassed countless women and GBLT people and some straight men; religiously humiliated many non-Christians; and humiliated and harassed and destroyed disabled peoples’ equipment; and make the elderly show them their diapers.

I can’t wait for some probe to show that TSA agents have been saving thousands to hundreds of thousands of peoples’ naked images with the body scanners.

I hope they never get the power to search laptop hard-drives like border agents have.

Lincoln, Nebraska. They go through every checked bag and steal shit! EVERY TIME!

@ James #11:  You’re right, SFO screeners are pretty great, very professional, etc.  They’re employed by a private contractor, not TSA, which makes a big difference.  Newark is both horrible and ineffective. The screeners there failed 90% of the undercover security tests for things like guns, bombs, and weapons.

Love Caren’s post up there at #4.  Will we ever go back to the pre-Soviet era of American flying?  After a couple of harrowing searches—never thought to notice that being female made it worse, but yeah, it did—I wrote to my congresscritter and senator.  They couldn’t have cared less.  Nobody asks the millions of dollars of corruption and waste to explain itself.  I worry that a generation is growing up thinking security theatre at the airport is normal, useful, necessary.

@ Comment #4: Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes

You didn’t, no one, deserves what happened to you.

Bullies never go away, they just get jobs, training, and exemptions from punishment so they can be more effective bullies.

I think of airports as the perfect form of fascism. It is amazing to think that 90% (guessing) of people hate and realise the absurdity of the TSAs practices, and yet it continues.  If you get annoyed enough you can always get some of these shirts. I am not sure if wearing one of these will increase or decrease your search rate.

Well, that’s surreal in the truest sense. What would happen if, underneath the picture, it said “Ceci n’est pas un fusil”?

Like Amanda says the cockpit is secure and the passengers know to kill anyone who tries anything. What more defense could we need?

Well, maybe good counterintelligence that goes after whatever plots might be out there, and remains silent when they prevent a plot. The plot fails, the culprits disappear, there is no press. That’s how the Secret Service operates. Don’t you think there have been many attempts on Obama’s life? Fox News has been calling for his death since before the election. But what Have we heard about? Just that crazy guy a couple of weeks ago.

An effective DHS would be almost as invisible as the Secret Service is. As things are, DHS and the TSA are Zero Tolerance for adults, a way to train the population to accept fascism.

Ebonmuse, I’m a white man and I’ve been searched more than a few times at airports since 9/11. Never a pleasant experience. Especially when the TSA look at my files over my protests and these files are supposed to be confidential between my clients and I. At least till the Court hearing.

  Everybody who flies frequently and civil liberties types hate security theatre. However, security theatre is popular with people who very rarely fly or who don’t fly at all. The latter group is a majority and politicians know that. Thats why we never get rid of security theatre.

My wife has no trouble at all getting her knitting needles on planes.  They are the circular kind and so could be used to garrote someone as well as stab them.  In other words, they actually could be used as a weapon, very easily.

On the other hand I was in Europe recently and picked up a tin of foie gras and another of rillettes at duty-free in Charles de Gaulle airport.  When I got back to the States they made me put them into the bag I had been using as carryon and then check it to my final destination, because these counted as a “liquid, cream, or gel” and I was over the 3.4 oz. limit on such things.  I had a receipt, appropriately date- and time-stamped, from the Petrossian store at CDG, they were in cans with all the information you find on canned goods these days, the Petrossian logo, price tags, etc. etc., but still I had to check them or lose them.

I will say, in fairness, that the TSA guy had the decency to look a little chagrined, was very polite, and even though the airport was busy, he helped me get to the right place to check the bag, and told me to jump the line when I came back through security, rather than wait again, so it could have been worse.  I was lucky in that I had a long layover so I could take the time, but if my connection had been tight I would just have had to abandon them and would have been out 50 Euros for nothing.

So a potential actual weapon can easily be brought on board, but canned goose products, no.

Makes me feel safer.

Ms. Kate @9:
Manchester has always been really weird.  I once had my bag searched at check in.  I was really early, they were board and asked if I minded.  Still really early, I went through security screening, and my carrry-on was searched, including the swab for the explosives detection unit.  As we were getting in line to board the plane, I was asked to step aside so they could rescreen both me and my carry-on.  When I asked why they said I had come up randomely, I pointed out I had already been given extra screening at the security check point.  She didn’t care.  I explained that it was not random, we both knew it was not random, that I was being searched because it was a one way ticket bought by an airline because they had cancelled my previous days flight and couldn’t get me into one of theirs that day).  I pointed out it was rediculous to search me and my stuff again when several passengers hadn’t been searched at all.  I’m sure the only reason I wasn’t held up and locked down in security was because I was openly wearing my FAA badge for civilians in a position of public trust (meaning a background check way more stringent than her SIDA one) and I was polite about it, if a pain in the butt.  I still had to let them search my stuff again before they would let me one the damn plane.

Oh, and the latest place my spouse has been groped by airport security was by a female security agent in the domestic terminal out of Saigon airport just last month.  Screening can be almost as bad elsewhere in the world, and is as variable with the person doing the screening as this was far from the first time we had flown through there and it had never happened before.

Oh yeah. I remember when I got hassled at my very small town airport about the lip gloss I forgot to put in the clear baggie. My husband and I were the only ones in the security line.

MTS @28, I always think the same thing about my girlfriend’s knitting needles.  Haven’t some of these TSA workers been to prison and see a shiv?  My macabre joke is “make a sweater out of your intestines.”

Refusing to let a purse with a picture of a gun on it on board?  That’s just crazy…

Now, if it had been a picture of a bomb or a box-cutter on a purse, that would be different…

***

This points up another huge difference between the 1% and the rest of us:  they get to carry on anything they damn well please.  Why?  Because they’re flying on hyper-expensive private jets.

Limo ride to the airport, right ouHt to the plane (no waiting for the plane either — it waits for you).  Hop on board without so much as a glance from a lowly service-person like a TSA drone.  Pleasent flight direct to destination airport (no stopovers here).  Get off the plane at your destination, climb into another limo and your air travel experience is over, with no naked back-scatter images posted on the Internet, no taking off your shoes, no groping by members of the underclass, no searching through your stuff (nobody gives a crap about that cute little pistol daddy gave you for Cristmas last year — it’s not safe on the streets these days), no one finding that cocaine or weed you keep with you at all times, no checking for explosive residue, or forcing you to dump that bottle of Evian, or whatever other security silliness du jur.

If the massive corporation you’re an executive in or a board member of owns the plane, then the company even gets to depreciate the cost of the plane for a tax break!

It’s the only way to fly…

I think of airports as the perfect form of fascism. It is amazing to think that 90% (guessing) of people hate and realise the absurdity of the TSAs practices, and yet it continues.  If you get annoyed enough you can always get some of these shirts. I am not sure if wearing one of these will increase or decrease your search rate.
Comment #24: benjaminsa on 12/07 at 03:44 AM

Another possibility for the bloody-minded is the Bill of Rights Security Edition, printed on a metal card.  When it is detected at a security checkpoint, you can hand it to the TSA agent and say, “Oh, I’m sorry.  Here, take my rights.”

I got a pat down recently in Chicago after going through the scanner. What’s the fucking point of the scanner if you still do the patdown afterwards?

I think the best small airport I’ve been through is Little Rock. They’ve always been polite to me even though it’s never busy, and twice they’ve wanted to look through my bag for something - one time it was a pair of scissors that I forgot I had, which I let them throw away, and the other time it was a jump rope. They actually got a laugh out of that one, because they couldn’t figure out what it was from the X-Ray, and when the woman saw the rope she laughed and apologized for making me wait.

Now, San Jose is another story. They recently renovated the terminal, and now there are 4 security lanes with backscatter machines, but I have only ever seen one of them in use. When the line of people waiting to go through it gets long, they start letting people go through the metal detector instead, but if you look like you want to go through the metal detector (and honestly, who wouldn’t? modesty and radiation issues aside, the metal detector is just way faster), they get dodgy and make you go into the other line.  Seeing those other unused lanes just pisses me off.

My Hometown Riverton Wyo airport - only a two or three flights a day. They are Nazis. They even have local police on hand who act as ‘good cops’ to the TSA shock troops. Its like because they aren’t really doing that much they have to scrutinize people extra hard.

This ties into the latest Senate attempt to turn the US into a straight up police state. On a good day it’s humiliating and then on a bad day - well you have no recourse at all.

I’ve never had a bad experience in Des Moines.  They must be big enough not to be bored and cranky, and small enough not to be overworked and cranky.

Seattle: pretty friendly, unlikely to be searched. However, they did once find an assault rifle bullet buried in a ball of yarn in my carry on. The yarn was from a thrift store so I have no idea how it got there, but they were cool about it and basically said that with all the traffic to Alaska, they get people all the time who forget to take out all their weaponry from their carry ons. I was briefly detained politely by customs, then sent on my way.

San Francisco: never been searched. TSA is indifferent.

New York: been searched five times. Perhaps because I am brown?  Or maybe because I always go to New York for work, and carry like 10 power cords with me. JFK folks are really good at finding things in your bag that you’d forgotten, like a swiss army knife or a knitting needle, or a bottle of fluid that exceeds 3 ounces but is less than 5. They are always polite about it though.

Dallas: have had my belongings searched numerous times. Not sure why. 

I rarely fly into small airports, but the few times I have, they seem to be overly zealous about a lot of the rules. I guess cause there’s nothing else to do?

I honestly don’t know that it’s quadratically worse than it was. When I was young, I flew fairly often and I remember my mom and dad making it absolutely clear that I was not to utter any thing remotely about bombs or guns in the security line, even “as a joke.”  Even back then, a seven-year old girl making some silly remark was enough to yank her whole family in for extended questioning.

I was searched once and I was fully expecting it: one way ticket, purchased two hours earlier, minimal luggage (my mother was dying). 

I’m usually the one who 1) has everything in its right place and 2) is helping the confused elderly person who hasn’t flown in years in line behind me set everything into bins and chill out.  Consequently, I very, very often get waved through the metal detector without a scan and on my way.

My checked luggage gets searched now and then, but that’s expected when you shove two bottles of wine in with a folding bicycle.  It looks kind of odd on x-ray.

I think the strangest thing (I always get flagged by security. I must not be very good at my “docile and compliant” face…certainly my coworkers are onto me) was in Chicago, when after the backscatter thingy they required me to take my hair out of its bun lest I smuggle some kind of thermonuclear device in there with the bobby pins.

Threat level: DEATHBUN.

@40: If groping, strip searches, naked-body scans, and forbidden hairstyles are not quadratically worse than flying in the pre-9-11 era* then I really don’t know what it would take. Do they need to start punching us in the face just as a precaution?

*With which I am also familiar

The TSA is reminding me more and more of the war on drugs. Nobody wants to take responsibility for loosening any restriction or ceding a power, because of the fear that if a terrorist act happens, they will be blamed.

One thing to bear in mind—this is a bipartisan disaster. Indeed, the TSA was basically a Democratic Party creation, though once it was created Bush supported every rights intrusion.

Well, what? I think those things always existed, it’s just now they’re not even trying to be discrete about it.

MP, when I flew in from St. Louis to LAX 34 years ago, I witnessed some teens getting questioned by the cops because they did make jokes about hijacking, but the security was neither as onerous or intrusive as it is today, although it could be on occasion embarrassing.

When I flew out of the international airport in Manila, the Philippines in 2004, I was asked 3 separate times by security personnel to take off my shoes before I finally boarded my flight.

Well, what? I think those things always existed, it’s just now they’re not even trying to be discrete about it.

Pretty sure the backscatter naked-scans were just invented in the past couple of years, so….no. And I think there’s sufficient difference between “security personnel might sometimes be assholes who will grope you during a routine search” and “our policy is to touch your breasts and vulva” to call the latter a new development.

Twas not ever thus, as uncomfortable as it may be to recognize. Shit done got worse. And is getting more terrible all the time. We can’t brush it off as the natural state of things.

t-ster @39:  My sil actually forgot she had a pistol in her purse once when she was getting on a plane in Fairbanks to visit her g-kids in Idaho.  They caught it at Fairbanks though, so she was able to send it home with her husband.

“I honestly don’t know that it’s quadratically worse than it was. When I was young, I flew fairly often and I remember my mom and dad making it absolutely clear that I was not to utter any thing remotely about bombs or guns in the security line, even “as a joke.”  Even back then, a seven-year old girl making some silly remark was enough to yank her whole family in for extended questioning.”

Joking about bombs or guns or hijacking was never okay, and so far as I know, it’s not okay anywhere in the world.  No one is allowed to have a sense of humor about that.  But pat-downs and taking off your shoes and the stupid three-ounce rule?  That’s all new, and it is worse than it used to be.  Going through security used to mean the metal detector and a luggage scan.  Now it means a naked photo.

I think the strangest thing (I always get flagged by security. I must not be very good at my “docile and compliant” face…certainly my coworkers are onto me) was in Chicago, when after the backscatter thingy they required me to take my hair out of its bun lest I smuggle some kind of thermonuclear device in there with the bobby pins.

Threat level: DEATHBUN.

Well, in all fairness, you could have had a nest of spiders breeding in there.

And who wants motherfucking spiders on their motherfucking plane?

Whatever you do, refuse the back scatter, body scan, or whatever the hell you want to call it. They’re medical devices meant to be used rarely, and calibrated frequently by medical technicians.

There’s only one reason they’re installed in our airports: Congress critters benefited greatly from the lobbying of the company peddling them as security theater.

“One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit…

Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines. Still, the TSA has repeatedly defined the scanners as “safe,” glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation — the kind beamed directly at the body by the X-ray scanners — increase the risk of cancer…

“Even though it’s a very small risk, when you expose that number of people, there’s a potential for some of them to get cancer,” said Kathleen Kaufman, the former radiation management director in Los Angeles County, who brought the prison X-rays to the FDA panel’s attention…

the FDA has limited authority to oversee some non-medical products and can set mandatory safety regulations. But the agency let the scanners fall under voluntary standards set by a nonprofit group heavily influenced by industry.

As for the TSA, it skipped a public comment period required before deploying the scanners. Then, in defending them, it relied on a small body of unpublished research to insist the machines were safe, and ignored contrary opinions from U.S. and European authorities that recommended precautions, especially for pregnant women. Finally, the manufacturer, Rapiscan Systems, unleashed an intense and sophisticated lobbying campaign, ultimately winning large contracts.”
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1312/452/The_Facts_About_The_TSAs_Dangerous_X-Ray_Scanners_Finally_Come_To_Light.html?currentSplittedPage=1

When confronted with a back scatter at the Phoenix airport, I recoiled and said, “I’m not going through that thing: it’s a medical device, which must be calibrated by medical technicians.”

I was assured that the TSA calibrates the machines three times a day, “But you’re not medical technichians,” I replied.

“I’m not going through that, and you shouldn’t either,” I advised the nice young girl TSA.

“I don’t have to, and I don’t get the chance to travel much,” she replied (ah ha!)

But my pat down was friendly and not too invasive: maybe because I was playing the little old lady card, and Phoenix is a busy airport.

I wonder if Tim Gunn has to change his name when he goes through security.

My period is scheduled to hit right around Christmas when I’m traveling. I wonder if the Diva Cup is going to show up on the backscatter machine at SJC, which they seem to use pretty consistently now. I’m one of those people who, if challenged by an agent, would love to politely comply by yanking it out and dumping an ounce of goopy blood on the stainless steel inspection table in front of a line of horrified fellow travelers.

I’m not saying “oh, it’s always like this so we shouldn’t care.” I’m saying “It’s always been like this and it’s fucked up.”

It’s nuanced, I know, but recent advances in technology didn’t change the underlying culture. All of the changes to TSA measures post-9/11 are simply allowing them to get as crazy as they have always wanted to be. We took the leash off, we didn’t teach them any new tricks.

For some reason I had a set of silverware in my bag going to the Huntsville, Alabama airport. They confiscated the spoon, but let me keep the slightly sharper fork and knife. I am still confused about the whole affair.

When I asked why they said I had come up randomely, I pointed out I had already been given extra screening at the security check point.

I was flagged once for their extra special screening (this was post-9/11, but pre-underwear and shoe bomber), and they fully searched me at every. single. checkpoint. on my way to the plane.  They put my checked luggage through a special machine, searched me fully at the main security line, and searched me again at the gate.  Which really makes a lot of sense (they marked my ticket with a highlighter to indicate that I was randomly selected to be on their shit list).  Obviously, a real terrorist is going to continue on to his plane when he’s clearly been selected for extra screening.  Fucking idiots.

Re: Knitting needles:  Do a search.  The TSA didn’t allow them after 9/11, but had to bow to public pressure to eventually rule on them and then allow them.

What gets me is the TSA agents aren’t required to have a posted list of their rules for the day the same as the web page so we both know what the damn rules are.  As it is, you can go read the ones on the web page and you’ll still get your key fob taken away despite your caution.

http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/prohibited/permitted-prohibited-items.shtm

You’ll notice box cutters and knives of any length are back on the prohibited list - but they were off it last July.  No notice, no record, no discussion.  But sharp scissors are allowed!  Bet that changes, too.

And the TSA’s machines have failed their tests of how much radiation they’re supposed to be using:  http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-03-11-tsa-scans_N.htm

Of course, we supposedly have no standing to sue, yet they use it on the public.

#51:

The backscatter machines were not installed because of a sweetheart deal. It’s really convenient to believe that whenever something bad happens, it’s some big corporate conspiracy. But it wasn’t.

The backscatter machines were installed because of the underwear bomber. The governing principle of the TSA and the entire security apparatus is to avoid being blamed for a terrorist act. And to avoid the blame, you have to have extremely overbroad and overzelaous protection, because if you don’t, there’s a slight likelihood that something might happen.

And—and this is why I say that the corporate conspiracy storyline is convenient rather than accurate—the worst of it is that just like with drugs, this “zero tolerance” attitude has a lot of public support. Indeed, if it didn’t have so much public support, there wouldn’t be groping and irradiating.

9/11 caused a fair segment of the American people to both overstate the danger of terrorism and overstate the precautions reasonably necessary to stop it. As a result, we have a political climate where you can almost never go wrong advocating an antiterrorist proposal and rights get short shrift. Only the most organized lobbies, such as the NRA and the general aviation lobby, are powerful enough to resist this. And even they don’t always get what they want.

Until some politician is willing to make the argument that it’s worth taking some slight risk of a terrorist attack in exchange for eliminating the gropings and the irradiatings and the other overzealous forms of security theater, this is what we are going to get.

Mighty Ponygirl @ 53 - minor nit, but the TSA didn’t exist pre-9/11. It was an agency specifically created after the attacks to put on performances of security theater. Before that, security at airports was generally farmed out to private contractors. It still wasn’t a pleasant experience then, but I don’t think anyone ever thought of three ounce bottles in the plastic bags or removing your shoes or the rest of it. And you could still actually meet people at the gate.

We were removing shoes prior to 9/11 in San Jose.  It got to the point I would specifically wear running shoes so I wouldn’t be asked.

I don’t bother anymore and just wear my steel-toed boots.

The backscatter machines were installed because of the underwear bomber.

No.

The contracts for the machines pre-existed the underwear bomber.  Deployment was put back on track because of, but the lobbyists and contracts pre-existed the underwear bomber.

Like all other TSA policies, this one also wouldn’t have caught the underwear bomber.

Just like a match wouldn’t have made the plastic explosive sans blasting cap explode for the shoe bomber, and x-raying shoes won’t find plastic explosive shoes, and three ounce jars wouldn’t stop the liquid-bomb plan, etc, etc.

I always like to point out that the Bojinka bomber smuggled nitroglycerin onto his flight in 1995 in a bottle of contact lens cleaner, which was likely less than 3 ounces.  The three-ounce rule is just stupid and totally made up, but I suppose it’s better than no liquids at all, which was the rule for a brief time after 9/11, and was a giant pain. I’m okay with checking for explosives and weapons, but security measures that don’t actually make us any safer (and may make us less safe, by diverting attention and resources from measures that might actually improve our safety with less intrusion and humiliation) drive me nuts.

@ #7 Would it have happened to this girl’s boyfriend? I can say with near certainty that yes, it would. I had a very cool looking belt buckle that I had purchased in London confiscated in Minneapolis on my way home. It was a depiction of two pistols , roughly the same size as the revolver depicted on that bag, on either side of a skull. How a two-dimensional depiction of a weapon is supposed to pose a threat, I’ll never know.

Although I really should have put that buckle in my checked bag, because I *knew* I was gonna have something like that happen in Lindbergh Airport. Earlier when I was waiting in line at Customs I was behind the yellow line where you gather before filing into columns for the various kiosks. I happened to be on the side that had as one of its agents, a living breathing stereotype straight out of central casting: A huge, pot bellied collection of resentments poured into a uniform. I was sure his name was Bubba. I caught Bubba’s eye somehow while he was dealing with a passenger ahead of me, and although at that point it wasn’t certain I would have to go through Bubba’s kiosk, I knew that if I were to make a move to avoid that I would be in for extra-special attention. So I had to wait in place and try to act nonchalant as Bubba’s eyes burned holes in me while he rushed through everyone that was keeping him from making my life hell. There seemed to be something about this heavily tattooed punk coming back from an international flight that visibly enraged him. He kept looking back at me while rubber-stamping the other passengers, he was literally grinding his teeth and staring at me the whole time. Thankfully, right when it was my turn, the flight crew came in and of course they have the privelege of going through as they come in, no waiting. So Bubba had to run them through and I got to go to another kiosk operated by someone much more pleasant.

I tried very hard not to look back when I passed through, but couldn’t resist a slight peek over my shoulder, he was still staring at me and actually smashed his fist down on his counter. Unbelievable.

It’s nuanced, I know, but recent advances in technology didn’t change the underlying culture. All of the changes to TSA measures post-9/11 are simply allowing them to get as crazy as they have always wanted to be.

OK, I just spoke with a relative who was a flight attendant in the 1970s and early 1980s. She said that security at that time was IN NO WAY similar to today’s hostile, rights-eroding hot mess. If you were acting like an ass, joking about bombings and shooting the pilot, yes, they came down on you like a ton of bricks. If you were a raging drunk or carrying something absurd, like a bowie knife, then yes, you were probably going to get the security stinkeye and have your stuff searched and x-rayed. This was the exception and not the rule.

Is it possible that secretly, the security staff of those decades spent years of misery over their thwarted fascist tendencies? I suppose so. But there’s no way to say that definitively. And again: I would argue strenuously that “fucked in the head but generally constrained from acting on it,” while bad, is less harmful to society than “fucked in the head and actively encouraged to act on it.”

No.

The contracts for the machines pre-existed the underwear bomber.  Deployment was put back on track because of, but the lobbyists and contracts pre-existed the underwear bomber.

Like all other TSA policies, this one also wouldn’t have caught the underwear bomber.

Just like a match wouldn’t have made the plastic explosive sans blasting cap explode for the shoe bomber, and x-raying shoes won’t find plastic explosive shoes, and three ounce jars wouldn’t stop the liquid-bomb plan, etc, etc.

This is basically urban legend. No, actually, the backscatter machines were scheduled for spot-testing before the underwear bomber (this has been a longstanding concern—Richard Reid’s shoe bomb was another example of it), they will certainly detect CERTAIN sorts of on-body explosives that a magnetometer won’t, and that’s basically the entire logic of security personnel.

Seriously, I think if anyone at the TSA would see these comments they’d crack up at how naive some people are. Yes, folks, they really do care about security, not catering to fatcat corporations. Having said that, the problem is their definition of security is “zero tolerance”, and even more unfortunately, the American public is easily moved to support that position. And that’s why we have so much overzealous security.

OK, I just spoke with a relative who was a flight attendant in the 1970s and early 1980s. She said that security at that time was IN NO WAY similar to today’s hostile, rights-eroding hot mess. If you were acting like an ass, joking about bombings and shooting the pilot, yes, they came down on you like a ton of bricks. If you were a raging drunk or carrying something absurd, like a bowie knife, then yes, you were probably going to get the security stinkeye and have your stuff searched and x-rayed. This was the exception and not the rule.

Is it possible that secretly, the security staff of those decades spent years of misery over their thwarted fascist tendencies? I suppose so. But there’s no way to say that definitively. And again: I would argue strenuously that “fucked in the head but generally constrained from acting on it,” while bad, is less harmful to society than “fucked in the head and actively encouraged to act on it.”

I took my first flight in the late 1970’s and flew for many years before the TSA was formed.

What I can tell you is that pre-9/11 security was much more concerned with a single, particular threat, which was hijackings for ransom / to take the plane to an undesired destination. The one thing that’s totally honest about our security theater culture is that they really weren’t focused on the idea of suicide attacks pre-9/11. There actually had been one—a PSA plane was downed by an airline employee in California—but the whole system had been built to prevent hijackings to Cuba, D.B Cooper ransom plots, and the like.

What has happened—and what has probably produced the TSA agents’ power trip—is the switch from a narrow mission to prevent a few specific types of act to a broad mission to prevent anything that could possibly compromise the security of a flight, no matter how remote the possibility.

This is basically urban legend.
Comment #65: Dilan Esper on 12/07 at 06:36 PM

You quoted me but you didn’t actually disagree with me.  I said the contracts pre-existed the underwear bomber and so did you.

I always wonder why they need to stop air crews from having tools and liquids - sure, check for guns or bombs, they might be forced to be a mule or something - but in general, if an aircrew member wants to damage the flight, they don’t need a butter knife or bomb to do it!  They totally have tools and the controls of the aircraft and can directly cause it to crash.

I have given up flying for the duration.  Unless it’s ordered by and paid for by whatever company I’m working for at the time, I will not step foot on an airplane again as long as this ridiculousness continues.

You quoted me but you didn’t actually disagree with me.  I said the contracts pre-existed the underwear bomber and so did you.

The reason they rushed them into airports WAS because of the underwear bomber. They were testing them prior to that.

It wasn’t corporatism. It was CYA fear. Which is at the root of all of the security theater.

As usual, Dilan’s nitpick is wrong, but he insists on it anyway, despite readily available facts.

Read the below for paragraphs on the intense lobbying, which “somehow” coincided with ignoring the FDA, congresscritters whose constiuencies benefited, and so on and so forth:
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1312/452/The_Facts_About_The_TSAs_Dangerous_X-Ray_Scanners_Finally_Come_To_Light.html?currentSplittedPage=1

Judi, the “facts” consist of people lobbying for the installation of their machines. Big deal. That’s what always happens. You think magnetometer and x-ray conveyer belt manufacturers didn’t lobby for the original security checkpoints in the 1970’s? You think that credit card companies don’t lobby for requirements that impose additional security on people who pay cash for airline tickets?

In the real world, there’s often a confluence between the interests of some corporation and what the government wants to do anyway. Correlation is not causation. And people who view all government as a series of corporate conspiracy theories are out of touch with reality.

These machines are in there because we have a zero tolerance paradigm for airline security. Indeed, the 3 ounce liquid rule that was mentioned above proves this. There was no corporate lobbying for a 3 ounce liquid rule that I am aware of. What there was is some Homeland Security official saying that people could, hypothetically, combine liquids to bomb a plane and that if that happened, everyone would get fired or get in trouble.

Believing that the security apparatus is the puppet of major corporations is a very uninformed way of viewing this. Those machines would be there even if the government manufactured them, because the whole TSA paradigm is about making sure that we take way too many precautions rather than a tiny risk of something bad happening.

“Seriously, I think if anyone at the TSA would see these comments they’d crack up at how naive some people are. Yes, folks, they really do care about security, not catering to fatcat corporations.”

Bullshit.

First of all, even if one accepts the (erroneous) notion that pornoscanners make any sense at all, security concerns didn’t motivate the choice of backscatter over millimeter-wave.  Millimeter-wave avoids the radiation issue (though not the issues with “‘random’” selection of people who are not “normal”, who some TSA shithead operator thought it would be fun to see naked, or who are trans).  Canada, which has a less corrupt government, went with millimeter-wave.

Second, Germany recently decided not to buy any pornoscanners after a trial run in one airport, because they didn’t reliably find contraband in tests and they’re too slow.  Now, don’t you think that if the TSA were truly motivated by effectiveness, it might—like Germany—consider evaluating security measures on the basis of whether they actually work?

Third, I’ll remind you that the TSA very often fails test runs with actual dangerous items in carry-on luggage.  There is no point in catching some putative underwear bomber if half the clowns who try to get guns and knives through will succeed.  So if the TSA “cares” about security, they don’t seem able to translate their “caring” into real effectiveness.

Fourth, there are still quite a few airports in the US that don’t have pornoscanners.  And at many airports, only some of the checkpoints have them.  So do you think the TSA believes simultaneously that (1) pornoscanners are essential to security, but (2) it’s fine that numerous airports, nearly 2 years after the Great Exploding Underwear Disaster, don’t have pornoscanners at every checkpoint?  The only way to reconcile these beliefs is to also believe that terrorists are incapable of typing “tsastatus.net” into a web browser.  (This also rebuts your oblique defense of the TSA’s practices as motivated by “zero tolerance”: if the pornoscanners are in fact necessary, you are not applying “zero tolerance” by letting people choose to fly out of airports that don’t have pornoscanners!)

Ninety percent is a good hit rate. I’ll bet Jesse has an even simpler algorithm for guessing if he’s going to be searched.

MissPrism:

Well, that’s surreal in the truest sense. What would happen if, underneath the picture, it said “Ceci n’est pas un fusil”?

Using a foreign language is suspicious, especially languages like Arabic or French.

As usual, Dilan, both a lack of reading comprehension on your part, and aynrandian corporate cheerleading.

Funny how one is inevitably connected to the other.

Security theater has literally become superstitious, as if merely thinking about guns behind the holy TSA security line is going to conjure them into being, along with terrorists to use them against people.

WORD.

I’m also mad because this is so stupid that any joke I can think of to make about it fails to live up to the absurdity of the situation.

Also, WORD.

So how do I predict with 90% certainty if I’m going to get my shit torn up that day? Is it because there’s a whiff of terror in the air? Does it have to do with the likelihood of a terrorist attack starting in the airport I’m in? Does it reflect some orders from on high?

No. None of that. My nearly-foolproof system is to look at the TSA agents. If they are busy and/or having a good time joshing each other, then you won’t get searched. If they’re bored or in a bad mood, you’re getting searched. Works, like I said, 9 out of 10 times.

Uh, WORD.

It’s theater, pure and simple. The message is: be afraid. Not of terrorists, of course. Those are protected against much more by secured pilot doors and passengers who now know to fight back. The message is to be afraid of the TSA. Make sure not to laugh too loudly while in line or look too peeved when they search your shit, or they may decide you really look dangerous and need extra searching. They have the power to make you miss your flight, and that danger is immediate and very real, unlike the vague threats of terrorism that all this security is supposedly there to prevent.

Damn. WORD.

@Comment #58: Dilan Esper on 12/07 at 03:24 PM

@Comment #65: Dilan Esper on 12/07 at 05:36 PM

@Comment #66: Dilan Esper on 12/07 at 05:41 PM

@Comment #70: Dilan Esper on 12/07 at 10:11 PM

@Comment #72: Dilan Esper on 12/08 at 02:39 PM

More cowbell.

Trackless @ 73:
Point 1 - Canada less corrupt? God are you naive.  Differently corrupt, yes; less, no.
Point 2 - yes, speed was the deciding factor, from what I understand.
Point 3 - because every system works perfectly in real life? um, okay.  But agreed that what is used is not decided necesarily by what would be absolutely most effective (see 4 for onother input).
Point 4 - The scanners do not just plug into a standard outlet.  Many airports require upgrades to not only wiring but to already over-stressed internal grids.  The checkpoints require actual physical modifications as well as changes to the existant wiring.  These are NOT plug and play items.  Even if they were, they are made on order for the TSA as the ordrs are made and fabrication is not instant.  Most of the items TSA uses end up being long lead.  The damn roller tables (the things that lead into and out of the bag scanners) are 30 days with a rush for standard sizes with no curves.  You clearly have no comprehension of what it takes to install these things.
I would really have rather the money and effort had gone into building more ATC radars and control towers.  The installation contractors (and there subs) are pretty much the same folks and don’t generally care for security theater any more than the general public does.