[Bolding mine.] I see your point and I agree with you wrt Yogsoth’s ignorance. But, frankly, I wouldn’t recommend continuing with this assertion as I’m not entirely sure I agree with you. It has already been pointed out several times that the TSA’s 3-1-1 policy has been enforced somewhat capriciously as indicated by mine and others’ experiences of getting through security with contraband liquids and materials, with nary a sideways glance. It is certainly quite possible and I can fully accept that **Yogsoth **may very well have had a similar experience and been allowed through with the half bottle of water that we all know is prohibited.
That, of course, only reinforces the argument that the TSA security theatre is full of holes that can be exploited for nefarious purposes if one were so inclined to do so.
Or you’re just irrationally optimistic. Whatever, we’ll never agree on this.
If what you posted is really that easy and that cheap, why hasn’t it been done already? As far as putting thought into this, I freely admit I don’t know how much more training it would take, or how much the cost will be. But I’ve been on record saying that if that is not going to bankrupt us or cause unreasonable delays, then I’m all for it. I’ll just leave it at that: I agree with you if everything you suggested can be implemented in a cost effective and efficient manner.
Did you catch that? Was that a slip up? You said it was “a lot less reliable”, but not “completely unreliable”. Is that your admission that it helps, however little? I didn’t choose to agree with what the TSA is doing out of some sadistic desire to see people patted down and naked pictures taken of them. I chose to support them because I agree with the basic premise that pat downs and scanners work, maybe not as much as other methods, but they are reliable in some ways that would be cost prohibitive and inefficient to do otherwise. That’s all. This picture you’re painting me as of someone laughing as children and elderly get stripped and fondled naked is really inaccurate, to say the least.
So is it a lot less reliable or completely unreliable? Because if it’s the former, then it’s better than nothing, which is basically what I’ve been repeating this whole time.
Are you asking me to prove a negative or predict the future? Because if you have any imagination at all, you can imagine an airport without pat downs and naked scanners and see which one terrorist would try to attack. And no, in this experiment, we are not automatically assuming that the airport without pat downs and scanners have the dogs and the well-trained agents. Given a choice after 9/11 between doors, scanners, and pat downs, and simply doors, the dichotomy is clear: more security makes us more safer. I don’t have to do an experiment in a parallel universe to test that theory, I can simply point to what would have been caught had we had those security measures versus what we didn’t catch
Now is it worth it for the amount of extra security for the possibly small increase in safety? I don’t know, I don’t have the cost figures to make that decision. But then again this topic was never about that, it was simply about how I don’t mind the security procedures and think anyone who calls it molestation is a loon
Pop quiz, hotshot: If you have 0.01% of people out of a million try to carry weapons onto a plane, and you had to bet which method would catch at least one of them, which would you choose? Metal detectors and the previous pat downs, or metal detectors, more aggressive pat downs, and naked scanners? Just by math alone you can see that more security measures would mean more catches, and if not, it would scare more people. Tell me my math is wrong. Tell me you think less security would be more effective. At this point, all you’re arguing is that less security is preferable and more security isn’t worth the increase in safety, but less security is still less safety.
Shit, why not take it to the extreme? 1 metal detector or 10? You can say 10 doesn’t make us that much safer, use all of arguments you’re using now, but the fact is 10 would make us safer, because what if there’s a 1 in a million chance the 1 metal detector fails or lets someone through? Better to have 10 right?
Right, the doors again.
Not, of course, the dogs or the better trained agents, since we still don’t know if that’s feasible. Please don’t pretend you somehow won that argument and add those layers of security in to whatever argument you’re using, ok? The argument is, better doors + old security, or better doors + new security. New wins because it’s, admittedly, more intrusive. Hell, if you don’t take away any security and instead add more, how the hell can you be less secure?
The existence of punishment would make some think twice
If there were no laws, I’d loot me a new car. I’m not a bad person, but there are people in the world I’d like dead and I would kill them if murder wasn’t against the law. I’m generally moral, but if I ran into someone in the streets, I’d flee if there were no laws against it. You’re arguing against human nature, that people wouldn’t think twice if there were lax security. That is simply wrong. Of course people think twice, they do it because there is punishment and because they can get caught. If nobody would get caught for a crime unless they turned themselves in, then we would have no crime except for the very very virtuous, and there’s not a lot of them around
No, that’s a half truth. Regular people get randomly picked for enhanced security screenings. Of that sample, the screenings are random. Those with special needs such as wheelchairs are singled out in addition to the other regular passengers, yes, but that’s due to the nature of the equipment they’re carrying. Unfortunately for them, they need to bring metal into a plane. And unfortunately for them, metal can hide other metal, like knives or guns. So yes, those people get picked out. However, I do want to remedy this, I’m not deaf to their needs. It is unfortunate but necessary that we watch out for people with such equipment since they can potentially be hiding things, but as I’ve said over and over again, the TSA needs to implement training to make sure these special needs are treated with the proper respect
Now this makes me wonder, others have shot down my suggestion that regular TSA agents cannot be trained medically to handle these types of passengers in a special way. Why not? And why is it that we cannot train them medically, yet you’re proposing it’s so easy and quick to train them to detect terrorists by simply talking to them? As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason why you can’t train them to handle passengers with special needs.
You haven’t been reading the thread, have you? :dubious:
3 main things have been suggested here: dogs, trained agents like they have in Israel, and secured doors. The first two are debatable whether or not they can even be implemented, which leaves doors. My objection to that is clear. Therefore, these people have been asking for the impossible and extra doors. Nothing strawman about that, their arguments are worthless because they place their trust in better doors after 9/11. And as I’ve said over and over again, I want to know exactly how secured these doors are before I trust my life over to one
You’re contending that criminals magically can avoid all security? I mean, you’re basically saying that metal detectors, pat downs, and naked scanners are somehow physically unable to detect criminals, as if a simple change in your thoughts on whether or not you’re going to commit a crime is enough to render these things ineffective. Hell, if you pick out random people from any sample population, you’d get some criminals! It’s basic statistics! Criminals fly! Given a method of security that randomly searches people, some of those searches will be conducted on, guess what? Criminals! And you know what? Some criminals are in wheelchairs, some have medical conditions! These non-targeted enhanced screening tactics are sometimes done to criminals!
I’m sorry, I misspoke. Yes, I know there were metal detectors, but I meant to include that those metal detectors can be tuned to be more or less sensitive. Had we had the rules in place for metal detectors that increased its sensitivity AND rules that banned box cutters which the metal detectors could then catch, we wouldn’t be talking about a post 9/11 world now. Seriously, use your imagination, can you imagine any way in which doors can fail? Can you imagine any way a metal detector or a pat down may find a box cutter? Maybe I have an overactive imagination or maybe yours isn’t very good
Like you said, they exploited a loophole. If they weren’t able to get boxcutters onto a plane to hijack it and crash it into buildings, they would have adjusted their intentions. Or tried harder. Either way, it’s not an argument against the enhanced security, it’s an argument for better and more security
To be honest, I don’t know how many dogs we could get for that amount of money, nor do I know if the TSA has done a cost analysis before buying the machines. However, I know that government has a lot of layers of bureaucracy and it would be impossible to ok something like the hundreds of millions of dollars used for the backscanners without layers and layers of approval and cost analysis. Deride the government all you want, but they can be needlessly meticulous.
However, what you provided is actually quite helpful though, thank you. Given your prompt, I googled a few things trying to find out why more dogs aren’t used in US airports instead of scanners. From what I can tell, there’s a serious problem with the dogs in that there are no universal standards where a dog must pass in order to be certified to do this kind of work. That leads many dogs to give falsereadings, and it’s not even at airports but in other places like schools and a traffic stop. Maybe that’s why more dogs aren’t being used, because their detection can be challenged in court, unlike, say, a photograph of a bomb in your underwear. Though a poster on the Huffington Post suggested that it’s due to money and there’s less of it going to people since no one organization owns dog shelters. It certainly seems like they need more training for dogs and for the government to set up some kind of universal test or create a standard for these animals.
The news stories also point to only about 700 dogs working in airports throughout the US. More checking revealed approximately 14000-16000 airports in the US, though only about 5000 were paved, I guess those would be the “normal” airports. Plus, given that the dogs can’t work 24 hours a day and there are multiple gates, you’re looking at a lot more dogs. Why aren’t we using them? Maybe it is cost
Take your cited cost for the scanners ~$150000, and the cost estimate over the next few years ~$700000000. 700million/150000 = 4666, so lets’ round up to 5000. So basically, 1 machine for each airport.
Then let’s take the low end of the dog cost, $7500. Add in the cost of the trainer, assuming they make a low annual wage (I have no clue how much they make really), $40000. So to have $47500 * 5000 airports would be $237500000, so approximately $250 million. That’s a good savings, but dogs need to be cared for, food provided, medical, housing and the person itself needs pension, health insurance, and training himself. How much are we really saving? And given the fact that there are no standards, are we really that much safer? I wouldn’t mind setting national standards and increased training for these. And maybe, I don’t know, the trainers themselves are paid through their normal employment and wouldn’t necessarily add their salaries and insurance to the budget. Maybe we simply are paying for the $7500 dogs and some food, a dog house, and a vet checkup. If so, sign me up!
I’ve long ago bowed out of this argument, but I wanted to point out that I think I have never had to do so much scrolling to get through one single post before. That was … epic, Yog.
Since boxcutters were not illegal on planes before 911, I doubt anything would have stopped the hi-jackers. The airlines did not want to put safe doors to the pilot room because it would have been expensive to retro-fit the fleets. With corporations, it is always about money. Safety can be very expensive, but the illusion is much cheaper.
And trains and busses and sidewalks and schools and church and everywhere else. Slippery slope? Maybe yes, maybe not. Hell, if I were a terrorist, I would make a beeline to where TSA has all those “targets” stuck in a bottleneck “holding” area.
I have to wonder, how much do we have to accept, just so the Chicken Littles of the world can feel safe (as if they ever will).
Is it true that when the cockpit doors were reinforced, they forgot about the very thin wall between the cockpit and the 1st class lavatory? One swift kick should do it…
That does not answer what to me, is a very simple question. So I take it you are in favor of ever increased and more invasive searches, in an ever widening “area of influence”, without end? Where wold we draw the line to make you feel safe? Or do we just keep increasing it forever?
You will never ever be perfectly safe anyway. That is an impossibility.
Not very good math, though. Notice how he took $700 million applied it to the cost of the equipment only, but (correctly) added additional training and maintenance costs to the $7500 cost of the bomb-sniffing dog. Apparently, you don’t have to train people to use the scanners, pay anyone to install them or even maintain the equipment. Why did I bother to include links?
I managed to get through Yog’s post, but I’m too tired to beat my head against this wall anymore. There was just so much wrong in there, but I’m tired of repeating myself.
I don’t recall that happening. However are you saying it is impossible to keep passengers out of the cockpit?
It was a fix that was recommended and rejected by airlines because of the cost. It was logical but threatened short term profits. That is a the biggest crime against business that you can have,. Don’t cost them profits.
Someone who does not understand the basic concept of resource allocation* is not qualified to argue this issue with people who do.
*Example: If your house is infested with black widow spiders, doing an anti-spider dance is better than nothing, because you may happen to step on and crush one. Researching which sprays are most effective at killing black widow spiders, going out and buying the one that looks most promising, and applying it would do more good. Time and effort spent on the former approach becomes unavailable for the latter approach – thus, the former approach is a net loss, not a net gain.
Repeating the error about resource allocation does not make it any less erroneous.
It’s the same thing we saw a few years ago, with Homeland Security starting up, and the news that we were being watched by our own government - looking to see what books we check out at the library, warrantless wiretaps, the latest flap about police putting tracers on cars without a warrant, and people getting “renditioned” to protect us, and GITMO, etc. Hell there’s plenty more but you get the point. Every time, it’s the same old crap. There’s just MORE of it all the time. It’s a fucking pattern.
*Why do you hate America. Why do you hate our freedoms (which they are oh so eager to give away). Why are you letting the terrorists win. OMG they gonna kill us all. The government is protecting us. I especially like the rghtwing tough guys - the boogyman will kill us all if we don’t knuckle under and I’m gonna kick your ass if you don’t join our “sky is falling dance”. * I’m STILL waiting for the last tough sumbitch to give me the ass kicking he promised.
I don’t want the government or some untrained mall cop or anyone else bugging my phone, checking my library records or squeezing my nuts at the airport. Fuck it. Enough is enough. Some of these people will never feel safe no matter what, they will drink whatever KoolAid is put in front of them, and I don’t have the time or the patience to put up with more unnecessary BULLSHIT just because some “Achmed the dead terrorist guy” scared them.
Someone I know calls it the “boiled frog theory”. Maybe he is right. They are slowly raising the heat in the water to cook us, and we don’t even notice it. Just like we keep giving up more and more simple DIGNITY (like who the fuck body searches cripples and toddlers) while letting Achmed walk right through. So y’all can take your “I’m scared so you better play along” and strangle on it.
We don’t have any rights, alienable, inalienable, unalienable, or disalienable. Why? Because the sheep are so fucking eager to give them ALL away.
I want to be able to go along my way without answering to the police, politicians or the TSA. I believe I should be left alone unless you got a damn good reason to invade my space. You should be polite when you ask.
You are not taking the rights from a criminal. you are taking the rights of an American citizen.
Given the state of security and how ‘thorough’ it is, then it should have found some terrorists who didn’t manage to get onto the plane. Not all terrorists would be as ‘cunning’ as the shoe and underwear bombers were and so should have been stopped at a checkpoint. But we know that there were no other terrorists because planes haven’t been falling from the sky on a regular basis and because organizations like the TSA haven’t been finding terrorists at their checkpoints. If they had found terrorists at checkpoints they’d trumpet it to the world demonstrating how effective they are.
Where are all the terrorists with other inventive ways to blow planes up? It is obvious we can’t stop them when they do make the attempt until they are on the plane. It is equally obvious that anyone making the attempt to blow up a plane can do so in such a way that no amount of security at checkpoints will stop them. Yet I know of only two who have made the attempt so far and both were utterly incompetent in the final execution of their plan. Really, what the hell are we panicking about?
