New airline restrictions, oy.

Leaving aside your desire to fondle men’s privates in the name of your national security, what’s the fucking point?

Millions of Muslims travel every day, doubtless hundreds of thousands per day to various American destinations. Over the past ten years, how many of those literal millions have tried something? Ten?

The odds of achieving anything useful in your balls-fondling endeavours are astronomicaly low, and merely waste valuable money that could be spent on proper intelligence gathering, rather than reactive, pointless security theatre.

You remind me of the types who called for banning Irish Catholics from the UK during the Troubles. Just in case.

I’ll take a personal example on the pointless idiocy of your suggestion. I have me a cousin. Works in the City, married himself a nice Muslim girl he met in his financial circles. Ultra secular of course, wears short skirts you know. But to make the Fams happy, he did a little face saving conversion (not that it fooled anyone, as he tells me “Easy enough Cous., I went from being a non-observant Protestant that hadn’t seen the inside of a Church since I was a wee boy when your Mum dragged me there, to being a non-observant Muslim who’s not seen the inside of a mosque since the initial to do.”) - fucker sees more of the inside of a pub now than he did beforehand. Bloody unhealthy, but hey…

So they have themselves a son now, named Ryan. Seems there is a traditional Muslim name which is pretty much the same. And Mum’s name isn’t obviously Muslim either (Miriam, I mean really), nor her maiden name.

So this lad, he grows up, let’s say he gets alienated just like with our Nigerian. Goes from being a non-observant to radicalised. By your scheme, as nothing in an identity document says what his religion is, he gets skipped, walks on a Heathrow flight with lord knows what concoction shoved up his bum, and what the hell, maybe a fake tooth with the detonator or some such… And boomers mate.

Not that I am predicting my wee cousin will follow that track, but it vividly illustrates what utter nonsense your thinking is. Never mind European or American (or African or what not) converts who don’t legally change their names…

Good spywork and undercover people in the right circles, that is what you needed.

Edited to add:
Right Gala, I mean that solution would ban the lad’s Dad who took the extraordinary step of going to the Americans to denounce his own bloody son.

I mean that takes fucking balls. How many parents go so far as to go to a foreign service to denounce their own son as a threat.

You all have convinced me that banning and strip searching will not solve our problems.

Well done!

Pity, I liked beating you up…

But more seriously, good, it would be great if people like you would militate against American security theatre and argue for transferring resources to intelligence operations.

People like me!?!?!
What kind of people am I???

Frankly it was accusing me of being a damn homo.

Low brows who react to events by calling for or suggesting that whole religious or ethnic groups should be targeted without regard to intelligent analysis. The sort of person that 100-200 years ago engaged in religious and ethnic programs or based on rumour strung up black men from a tree and took souvenir photos.

A low-brow homophobic and largely clearly a knuckle dragger with ignorant tendencies to reflexive bigotry.

“Damn homo?” Charming.

No, actually I was suggesting you’re a closeted pervert who wants to exploit government security theatre to fondle stranger’s genitals for cheap jollies. Which is precisely what you yourself suggested. The fact you’re homophobic is merely added fodder.

You figured all that out from a few quick posts on a message board?

You are good!! How about going to work in the intelligence field?

Being 100% serious now… I’m all for intelligence measures and against politically correct security theater.

You clearly are operating under the false assumption that the airline industry looks at declining numbers and sees an opportunity to expand services.

I don’t think Clothawhatever is wrong, but frankly I don’t believe the airline industry is in the driver’s seat (excluding the luggage restrictions).

This is just asinine. Why must we be punished because the TSA is too incompetent to notice that the guy was already on a watch list?

Dunno, how long would it take YOU to go through 400,000 names to make sure the several hundred on EACH plane aren’t on it? Every day? Day after day? When the list keeps getting bigger and bigger? Are you absolutely SURE about those two guys on the same plane who have the same name and that name also appears on the watch list aren’t the guy on the list but just two coincidentally named people? Or maybe one of them is the terriss, but OMG WHICH ONE???

There are times when too much info is worse than not enough, and I’d say this is a textbook case of that. :rolleyes:

We have these magical, electric information boxes that- through some sort of witch craft- can contain a database of 400k names and search them almost instantly.

The TSA’s kind of in a no-win situation. On one hand, they are rightly being criticized for some asinine policy in reaction to one event, but on the other hand, if they do nothing, they’d be criticized too. I see lots of people attacking the policy but not many suggesting what else would be an appropriate response.

I haven’t flown since 9/11 and I won’t while they keep up this nonsense. They can do without my money.

Making sure your screeners don’t cock up and 1: let someone on the no fly list or whatever on the plane (or if he’s just on the double check list, double check him) or 2: don’t let people bring bomb parts on a plane.

Like I said, they always find my fucking lipgloss, so I’m sure they could find the bomb parts.

What’s the point of a watch list if it apparently isn’t to compare names against people attempting to fly?

And which of you do you pull off the shoe detail to do this, thereby holding up the line further? And are you absolutely certain that the database has everything spelled correctly? Maybe your guy, whose name is “Mohammed” on his ticket and ID has been incorrectly listed in the watch list as “Muhammad” or “Mohamet” or “Mohammad,” how do you know for sure which is correct*–do you have a terriss out there or not? And what if, OMG, they’re flying under an assumed name, with a fake passport!!! ONOZ! Point is, the fucking watch lists are completely USELESS. Both from an ideological AND a practical standpoint.
*Given that the average American can’t seem to figure out lose/loose, they’re/there/their and two/too/to, let alone figuring out how to spell “tongue,” we’re already barking in the dark to assume most TSA agents are actually capable of noting differences in the spelling of any name, let alone those considered to be “furrin” names.

Bingo. Raher than the US investing in utterly pointless All Passenger screening, the US should redirect resources to intelligence, including massive investment in foreign language experts and grass roots intelligence. Sadly it appears that almost a decade, the US prefers flying around and bomging rather than the hard work it needs to do. Pity, really as that was done well in Europe c. 50s.

It looks like – no guarantee – that these new rules are for flights originating outside the U.S. going to a destination inside the U.S. :

I realize I’m hanging a lot on one word, so we’ll see if this is the case. I’m flying on Tuesday, so I’ll get to personally experience whatever changes they’ve made.

Ah fer fucks sake. We are protecting ourselves against attacks that failed, that would never have worked in 50 years. Richard Reid trying to detonate his shoe, this Nigerien trying to fry his gonads, the “binary chemical bomb” team…

This is just security theater, designed to placate the scared idiots in America who believe that wily muslim terrorists are everywhere, and will magically appear to kill them and theirs unless we are ever vigilant. Sort of like McCarthy and the Communists in the 1950s, except with even less credibility.

Doing nothing would have been a more appropriate response: it still doesn’t do anything useful, but at least it wouldn’t make travelling worse again.