I like this solution. The only problem, as I understand it, is that there is a shortage of dogs and it’s expensive and time consuming to train them. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I have no idea how true it is.
At a minimum, what I’d like to see is that anyone can discreetly opt for an exam by a medical professional in a private room, and can bring a traveling companion with them if they desire. TSA “muscle” can be present in a hands off capacity if it’s felt that it’s necessary. I’d still think it’s a violation but it would be more acceptable than the current situation.
The line is drawn somewhere and that is where it is drawn. Obviously we haven’t crossed it with the TSA pat downs and peeping machines: if so, they wouldn’t be in use. It would be too expensive and impractical to have guards at every rental place, besides the fact that you could just buy a truck instead of renting one. Thus reality inserts itself and tells the government that the line cannot be drawn where they wish. Reality hasn’t yet reached that point for air travel yet
Just to know where you stand, are you contending that using such hyperbole is done as an effort to undermine the security guidelines or that most people using it believe what they are saying? I have no problems with the former, but wish to educate the latter.
I was unaware that my statement contradicts that assessment.
These are different times precisely because those things happened to us. It was unthinkable before even when it was happening a lot in other parts of the globe. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, but for whatever reason, we are more of a target now than 10 or 20 years ago. So times change and you change with it
People have different standards. It’s not invasive if you allow it. Sure, if a guy did that to me on the streets I’d be pissed. But as part of a security screening? Go for it but don’t mind if I moan
To me, it’s better that we cut off one avenue of attack rather than say we cannot slide down a slippery slope of strip searches and passengers locked in cages. They did a front attack, you stop it. Try to plug up the holes. If and when they switch tactics, you plug up that hole too, and you keep doing it until you either plug up all the holes or get sick of the plugs and take your chances. atomic and I obviously aren’t sick of it yet. Why should we acquiesce to your standards? (and by the way, in response to your next question: you should acquiesce to our standards because it’s the law currently and the majority of people do not disagree with it. It is incumbent upon you to change until either everything thinks like you or you stop participating in the thing that makes you angry)
It works in the same way as extrapolating data from a smaller sample works. Scan and pat down enough people and there’s a higher chance that either a terrorist would be caught or they would be deterred
Did that really happen? If so, perhaps you were assaulted or fondled by somebody clueless or malicious. However, don’t assume your experience is the standard. In your case, if that happened, you should lodge a complaint and hire a lawyer. But for the rest of us who don’t get such close scrutiny, no, it’s not a molestation
I think most of us would agree that, while it may work a few times, it’s impractical and dangerous to just assume that passengers are to police themselves.
What can someone with a knife do? If the cockpit doors are properly locked, they can’t threaten the crew. They can threaten the crew with passengers, but the passengers have an interest in self-preservation too.
Anyway, I’m not advocating letting someone with a knife onto the plane. X-rays and metal detectors have done a pretty good job of catching that stuff, so far as I know. But pointing out that an anti-explosive measure won’t stop knives is pretty fucking weak.
For fuck’s sake, are you really this bereft of critical thinking skills? As has been stated many times and in many ways previously the reason that the 11 September 2001 attacks were able to do so much damage was because the flight deck was unsecured, an issue that has sense been addressed. Even if a would-be terrorist were to somehow jam a knife or boxcutter up his rectum and threaten to use it on passengers during a flight, he could do no more harm than he could by walking into a coffeeshop or retail store and doing the same thing.
So, if TSA can’t provide well-trained agents performing effective security measures, they should implement poorly-trained agents performing ineffectual security pantomime in the hopes that by going to through the ceremonial gestures will ward off the evil sprits of the shadowy terrorists which haunt every nook and cranny? Why not just start using telepathy and astrology to detect and predict terrorist attacks? It’ll be every bit as effective, will satisfy the majority of Americans who are disinclined to criticize such methods on factual “science-y” basis, and best of all, will be cheaper and less intrusive than the legions of blue-shirted former convenience store workers. The only downside is the unemployment resulting from the elimination of a government jobs program, but no problem there; we’ll just detail them to roadside cleanup of interstate highways. They can even keep their blue shirts.
On the other hand, if they allow anyone to leave the more invasive scan after they’ve tried to get through the less invasive one, doesn’t that just encourage potential terrorists to keep trying? I think you err on the side of caution in this case: they’ve already tried to get through the scan so they’ve consented as a condition of flight knowing they might be required to do a more invasive pat down. However, I don’t currently have a good recourse for people like Una who needs to fly and objects to the heightened security
It’s only weak if you ignore history. They could have 5 dogs for every passenger on 9/11 and it wouldn’t have sniffed out the knives
And seriously, you can’t imagine that a group of determined hijackers being able to somehow get a door open? I’d need to see what kind of secured cockpit door the airlines build before I can totally trust them with my safety.
With current security, they could have caught the 9/11 hijackers with their boxcutters. It may be fighting the last war, but at least it cuts off an avenue of attack. And I don’t know how much it would cost the airlines to have secured doors but since it’s been mentioned that they declined to put it in once before due to cost, you’d have to talk to them and not the TSA about putting up the cash for new doors on all their planes. That’s not a TSA issue, that’s an airline issue
My response was to your statement that “it’s not invasive if you allow it”. My point was that people don’t have a choice about allowing it, therefore it’s invasive.
So you can’t argue that it’s not invasive, only that you believe that the invasion is justified; that the large trade off of our fundamental freedoms is worth it for the small increase in physical security. I disagree.
I’m not even convinced that this really gives us any increase in physical security. I have to wonder how many people will choose driving over flying due to these procedures. I have to further wonder how many extra highway deaths will occur due to that extra driving. I also have to wonder about the number of increased cancers from the scanning machines since there are legitimate scientific concerns about the safety of those machines. Claims that the exposure from them is a fraction of what you’re exposed to inflight are disingenuous at best, since they ignore factors like the type of radiation and the delivery method and timing.
This isn’t about preventing deaths. It’s about preventing high-profile-all-at-once deaths that will blanket the TV news cycle for weeks. Increased highway or cancer deaths won’t be on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox.
I assume that everyone that’s left to date instead of allowing the pat down was not a terrorist. In fact, I haven’t heard of a terrorist trying to get on a plane in quite a while now. I agree that they are probably watching and scheming to though.
The terrorist tried smuggling flammable liquids, now we have 3-1-1- rule. They tried a shoe bomb, now the TSA demand to search our shoes. They tried an underwear bomb, so now our underwear and more is “examined.” As the terrorist continue to find new places to hide explosives, are we going to allow more invasive searches? Where are you willing to draw the line here?
Jesus, you are one seriously ignorant son of a bitch. First of all, all commercial airlines are required to install and maintain doors that can only be opened from within the cockpit during flight. Second, the 11 September 2001 hijackers didn’t need boxcutters to force open the flight deck; they used them to attempt to subdue passengers. This is an example of reflexively targeting objects rather than looking for actors or proactively eliminating avenues of attack. Third, no amount of security would have “caught the 9/11 hijackers with their boxcutters” because it wasn’t fucking illegal to bring boxcutters on board an aircraft at that time! However, had the flight decks of those aircraft been secured, the attackers could have done no more than injure a few dozen passengers; they would not have been able to take control of the aircraft and fly them into buildings. Fourth, I don’t believe there is a single incidence of someone trying to sneak a boxcutter, knife, gun, or other melee or projectile weapon in his or her genitalia has occurred. Any metallic weapon should be detected by functioning metal detectors. Even if an attacker were to get inside the security perimeter and on board a plane with a weapon, he could do no more than attack other passengers, which he could do in any other venue as well. It has already been acknowledged that the current methods would very likely not have detected Abdulmutallab, and of course, as passengers are allowed to walk on with a quart-sized bag full of liquids and gels, there is a giant hole in this supposed foolproof screening right there.
You’re apparently willing to uncritically accept security measures that are ineffectual and easily bypassed, but are untrusting of measures that actually secure the primary point of attack because you can’t “totally trust them.” Your whole argument is based on nothing more than a bunch of duck-n-weave maneuvers to justify your irrational fear of being attacked by the hordes of nebulous expert airplane hijacking terrorists that have totally failed to emerge from the woodwork while minimizing the significant privacy, health, and emotional issues resulting from search protocols that are both invasive and intentionally ambiguous.
For the record, 14 CFR 25.795 sets out the requirements for locking cockpit doors. Before a door design can be accepted it is physically tested by the FAA, which unlike the TSA has an actual history of competence and professionalism in the scope of its regulatory duties.
You may “like the new TSA pat downs.” You may feel comfortable, or indeed, as it appears, even jubilant about the prospect of having your genitals examined by someone who is not only a medical professional or trained law enforcement agent and without any justification whatsoever. You may be perfectly satisfied that a government agency can wield regulations and guidelines that they refuse to publish or publicize. You may regard all this as a free choice undertaken by people who are flying on a personal whim. But it is clear that the majority of the public has a serious problem with these measures and what the represent in terms of both personal decency and humiliation and overarching abeyance of liberties which has been ongoing under the guise of “Now is not the time to question your government” ever since the attacks that the same government, which had plenty of evidence and warning, totally failed to recognize or take any significant measures to prevent. This isn’t just closing the barn door after the cows have fled, but then turning around and setting the barn on fire.
From your post, I gather you’re against the overreaction to such high profile deaths?
Would you have ignored 9/11? After all, that was only 3000 deaths, insignificant compared to the amount killed every year by regular driving, smoking, or heart disease. If you are willing to concede that sometimes high profile deaths are more significant even if smaller in number, I can concede that maybe the more stringent security measures do not save as many lives as people hope
Would I have liked a 9/11 response that ignores Afghanistan and passed a law simply to have secured doors on airplanes? Maybe. Taken to its conclusion, that seems to be the kind of world that some people want to live in. After all, it was the doors’ fault, so beef those up. More security wouldn’t have caught the terrorists anyway, so don’t change that. And Osama only killed 3000 people, we should end heart disease before we think about attacking Afghanistan
Not sure what a 3-1-1 rule is.
I’ve said that to me, these pat downs don’t cross the line. When it does, I’ll stand up with the rest of you and protest, but for now, I don’t see how outcries of any increase in security, no matter how small, is appropriate.
If you are not acquainted with the basic procedures involved in air travel, you are clearly not well-informed enough to even have a credible opinion on this issue.
Well you guys are kind of going in circles with the whole knife thing, but that’s not why I quoted you. Feel free to fill in any gaps here, but it seems like one position holds that the end-result is what is ultimately important, while the other (“It doesn’t help to remember history if you take the wrong lessons from it”) holds it isn’t if nobody learned anything.
Collective selfishness going the right way for once = right choice for the wrong reasons. I’m okay with this, although of course making the right choice for the right reasons is better.
Doesn’t help to remember history if you take the wrong lessons = wrong choice for the right reasons (sort of). Not really okay with this. Ignoring history entirely would be the wrong choice for the wrong reasons.
