Because half the time the last bomb wasn’t even a threat. Didn’t chemists prove it’s a non-starter to try to make a mixed liquid bomb in an airplane bathroom? And yet I can’t bring my water on the plane.
Because they are clearly using random and blanket searches, not as a supplement to threat-targeted ones (as would be the case if actual security rather than security theater were the objective), but as the primary line of defense.
Personally, I’m all for it! What the fuck do I care that some overpaid moron in a TSA suit gets to look at my junk on a blurry screen? My objections to TSA is that they don’t do a single positive thing in the way of security, not that they sit around fapping to back-scatter images. That and they have attracted the worst kind of authoritarian personalities into their employ.
I almost want to book a flight for Wednesday just to participate in the protest. Unfortunately it’s kind of a waste of time and money to fly from here to Louisville where I’m going.
Considering the quality of even the best backscatter scanner images, I couldn’t give a damn. If you want a naked picture of someone, I could make a far better image in photoshop if you give me a headshot. I don’t think I’d even recognize myself in a backscatter image.
There are other, much more persuasive arguments against the TSA’s actions- like the fact that nothing they’ve done would have prevented 9/11.
As a traveler who used to fly over 200K a year, I have come to loath TSA and it’s completely bullshit security policies. Like someone said earlier, if terrorists want to blow up a plane they will find a way to do it. All the BS at the airport is a staged show to make it seem like TSA is doing something about it.
I loath the process enough to change into a different role at my company that has cut my air travel by 95%. Traveling on business was getting old even before 9/11, the TSA ridiculousness since then has made it unbearable.
Well, to use the argument that the pro-TSA people are using in the current thread in GD:
You don’t actually have to fly, you know. It is your choice to fly, deal with it.
I flew last week, and told my son that we might have a choice of a naked picture or getting felt up. I was going to request a female hand job if I could - but I really don’t think that the individual TSA person is the appropriate target of my ire.
I do want to find some type of body paint so that I can write messages across my skin that will show up in the backscatter device. THAT would be awesome. Smiley face on ass, arrows pointing at my genitals, or just a big “Hi Mom, Send Money” across my back.
And it’s exactly those authoritarian personalities that I don’t want to see me naked, blurry or not. I think I might take to wearing one of (warning: NSFW)these* through security just for fun.
*For those who can’t/don’t want to click, it’s a soft, realistic penis and testicles.
You know, its not the nude pictures that bothers me so much as the lies that went along with it.
Oh - don’t worry it can’t store images! Yes, it can.
Oh - don’t worry, we won’t save the images! Yes we do.
Oh - but you don’t match it up with the real person. Yes, we do that too.
Oh - but it won’t ever be made public. And that’s why I saw so many of the pics on Gawker that match the nude image up with the person.
Lying fucks.
Rational thinking is really leading the way among the opponents to new security measures. For instance, these folks who think the TSA is into child porn and elder abuse:
“We can ensure passenger safety without making nude images of our children or groping our grandmas.”
If the upheaval over this leads to more parents keeping their kiddies at home for fear of misuse of nudie images, it’s a good thing.
Meantime, the day before Thanksgiving has been officially designated “Jeer At The Clueless People In The Pat-Down Line” at airports.
Now that’s a cause I can get behind! 
Yes, we’ll just use that OTHER transportation option that allows you to make a trip that would take days or weeks by car or boat in mere hours. :smack:
I think that perhaps it should be more of a national “don’t fly until they stop this shit” opt out period and then after a few milliseconds of lost profits, the airlines will scream for assistance from the government, forcing them to choose between scuttling a program or scuttling an industry. Won’t happen, but I’d love to see how that grabs 'em.
Right by the balls, that’s how!
Umm, did you miss the “changed jobs” part there? I still have to fly a little, you know, to earn a living and all. In my profession, some travel is always going to be required, but I have minimized it. And don’t tell me to change professions, I’ve got 20+ years invested in this one, thank you very much.
Still doesn’t change my opinion, as someone who has been inspected/mutilated/felt up/scanned and generally shat on by TSA, that what they do is window-dressing.
There is no way to make air travel 100% safe, so the question really is, how much shit are we willing to put up with to go from 98.7248% safe to 99.1648 safe? (percentages made up for your amusement)
So there. Deal with it.
In the latest example of that, earlier this month the TSA banned inkjet and laser toner cartridges that weigh more than sixteen ounces from carry-on and checked baggage.
The ban on liquids is particularly annoying and pointless. My parents flew a few months ago and my brother was convinced the TSA wouldn’t have a problem with their stuff, so he had them carry on everything. But the TSA confiscated my father’s Brylcreem, my mother’s hand cream and some food they were bringing to me.
During the pat-down scream out “YES, OH YES, RUB ME LIKE THAT, YES, YES, I’M COOOOMMMINNNG!!!”
Were they over 3 ounces?
Pointless it may well be, but is there even a word for how clueless you have to be these days to not know about the 3-ounce rule?
Or did your brother know about the rule but figured it somehow wouldn’t be enforced on him? A different kind of clueless.
Or was he trying to make some statement by deliberately flouting the rule? Then he’s a jerk.
I totally get thinking that the 3-ounce limit is stupid. In fact, I agree. But I have no sympathy for people who scream about being inconvenienced because they did something that everybody in the world knows you’re not supposed to do.
I’ll give anyone who does that a dollar. Two, if you film it.