…and probably frequent flier status. I can check 3 bags gratis through United.
Pshaw to the lot of you. Try being vaguely Middle Eastern looking (I have to freakin’ shave my goatee before I fly, just to reduce the chance I’ll be “randomly” searched to 92%), appearing to be between 18-30, and having a passport stamped in six Middle Eastern states.
Now pretend you’re asthmatic and have to carry a small yet fearsome-looking pressurized inhaler if you go somewhere with really dry air (like, I don’t know, an aircraft cabin).
I’d start bringing my own lube to airports just to make the searches go faster, but they wouldn’t let me take it onto the plane anyway.
The part I don’t understand is: what magical property does a Hefty/Ziplock bag possess which makes otherwise deadly fluid into a harmless “personal item”?
Totally stealing this.
My personal favorite was flying out of La Guardia after last christmas. Now, granted, I had a bunch of christmas presents with me, some of which are odd shapes. So, the guy opens up my bag, starts pointing at stuff. Our conversation is as follows:
Him: What’s this?
Me: That’s a backgammon set.
Him: What’s this?
Me: That’s a jewelry box.
Him: What’s this?
Me: That’s a bottle opener.
Him: What’s this?
Me: That’s a set of books.
Honest to god, he asked the last one in all seriousness. It was a boxed set of the Chronicles of Narnia. Clearly labeled. Not wrapped in any way. The spines of the books even faced him. It looked like 7 books. Not anything else. I mean, seriously…
Pardon my French, but I’ve had it up to here being “felt-up” by whatever a-hole is in charge. Guess my biggest fuck-up (which McCain, in his clueless way confirmed) is that I am Spanish and so I have to have my testicles felt-up by some huge guy while the "puff machine’ allows some other a-hole to tear brand new Nike sneakers in search for explosives. No doubt that I was flying in from Madrid played a part .
Fuck it. I’ll have my son come to see me instead. After all why should I spend any more money in a country that treats me like shit…
Because I don’t want to wait half an hour or more for a small bag of clothes and toiletries for an overnight trip to make it through baggage claim?
TSA is an example of bureaucracy gone horribly, horribly wrong. I question whether anyone who actually knows diddily about security has had any significant input to their methods. Their screening methodology, processing flow, employee screening, oversight, and training are all notably subpar. To be fair, effective security is really a difficult thing to do; if you make it too permissive things slip through; if you make it too restrictive the people involved tend to start using or making loopholes just to get their work done. TSA has managed, however, to accomplish the feat of making the system highly restrictive without actually achieving any qualitative increase in security.
The lapses that led to the attacks on September 11th, 2001 were obvious and blatant security holes, and the only real surprise is that it took someone so long to exploit them. Eliminating that low hanging fruit was a pretty easy exercise, and even that became a bureaucratic charlie foxtrot. The Transportation Security Agency is pure theater, all foam and no beer.
Stranger
I need to keep with me everything those grabby gorillas in the back may decide is worth stealing.
Yeah, if you want respect you should wear this one instead.
What airport was it where your t-shirt was deemed offensive? I need to know if I should put my “Nine out of ten apes don’t want to be descended from you either” t-shirt on the no-fly list, along with my original Houston Colt 45s shirt and the one that says “My idea of gun control is a steady hand”.
I am somewhat reluctant to say where it was, for fear of further undeserved abuse being heaped upon the south, and one of my favorite cities in the world.
However, the truth shall set me free and all. It was Nashville.
::orders shirt for next trip::
I need to hear more about this exploding water, please. No particular reason.
Actually, this is about the only part of the whole nonsense that I understand. Standardization means predictability, which means the standard can be worked around (don’t look at me–I’m not a terrorist). So, keeping the requirements at each airport different actually makes things harder for Terry"I hate your freedom" McTerrorist. That said, I am not sure if the TSA actually is aware of that since it seems to be run by a relative of Brownie of FEMA fame or they stumbled on this serendipitously.
O’Hare has some benches just outside of the security conveyor belts. I don’t recall what Logan had. They’ve got real pretty ribbony-thingies to corral peeps now. All this is an improvement over 2001 and 2002. I was in Providence RI airport the summer of 2002 and it looked like the very bowels of hell–lines everywhere, nowhere to put people waiting, no accommodation for handicapped or small kids etc.
This is a very good idea and people actually make their living doing this. I confess I am surprised that more stuff like this isn’t done. As you say, all it takes is some observation and rearranging.
I think this why things suck so badly. Everyone is afraid to speak up and become marked. I know I keep my head down when I travel.
I agree.
The website isn’t always helpful, like the time I needed to bring a Nerf gun through in my carry-on bag.
The TSA website stated “Toy Weapons - if not realistic replicas” are allowed in carry-on bags. At SJC they confiscated it anyway because they said it looked “too realistic.”
Here it is. :rolleyes:
I think the baggage carry on problem should be given the proper credit for much of the trouble all because the airlines have a shitty system that loses to much stuff. The TSA should get on the airlines asses for losing luggage, and thus making for the heavy volume of carrion (carry on).
The point that they still have such a shitty set up for security checks is also very good. Get somebody that can actually do a flow analysis to do one, and get some degree of comfortable area set up. Maybe some chairs and a take a number system. They call you up when the line gets to a couple people deep and you only have to stand in the line for a few minutes. Think how less stressed and angry people would feel with just something like the above in place.
If you’re on any medication are you willing to leave it in a checked bag and hope that nothing happens to delay your flight until you need to take it? I have a CPAP and I’m not about to trust that to the baggage handlers; I’ve seen how they throw things on and off the planes.
Plus, as has been pointed out, most airlines are now charging to check even one bag, and the rates go up for each additional bag. Which is why the last time I flew my flight was delayed fifteen minutes just because of all the people who were trying to cram bags that could have held a body into the overhead compartments.
First of all, I trust the Israeli airport security about a bajillion times more than the TSA. But, to imply that they are somehow less invasive (which is how I’m reading this) is completely wrong. The TSA has never questioned me about what languages I speak, my religious observance, or my family history, like the Israeli airport people. They have never accosted my travelling companions, asking them what I am doing in the country.
I tried to take this stuff in stride because I know why they do it and it’s not personal (except in that I am blond, which apparently makes me extra-suspicious), but it was pretty damned humiliating, far more so than anything the TSA does.
Of course, Israeli citizens aren’t subject to the third-degree that foreigners are. And I guess I’m lucky because it never took me more than fifteen minutes to get through the little interrogation. One (non-Jewish; ironically, she was planning on converting Orthodox and was one of the most observant people I knew) girl I knew told me that the shortest interview she’d had with the Israeli Inquisition was 45 minutes.
Americans would freak the fuck out if the TSA started behaving like the airport security at Ben-Gurion. We’d probably be safer, but I can’t see Americans putting up with that for very long.
Not really, since an individual airport’s practices are trivially researchable. Also, to expand on the point made by Bruce Schneier in the article I linked to earlier, even if airports did have a completely random, unpublished list of things that were prohibited that changed on a day-to-day basis, it still wouldn’t meaningfully inhibit terrorists since there are no consequences to having most of these things - you’re just required to throw them away if they’re forbidden. So a terrorist can keep trying until he succeeds; he’s lost nothing but some nail scissors and a wasted flight.
The reason screening for genuinely dangerous items (such as guns) has a positive effect is that the cost of getting caught is great; thus even less than 100% screening can act as a deterrent. For obvious reasons, the same is not true of attempting to get on board with nail scissors or hair gel. So screening for those items has to be 100% effective if you want to prevent terrorists getting on. Making the items slightly random has no effect, because the screening is utterly useless in the first place.
To be fair, it does look exactly like a real nerf gun.
I guess I’m lucky. I’ve flown at least once a year since 2001. I’ve been in airports in Orlando, Tampa, Newark, Dallas, Denver, Dulles (wherever the heck that is), and I don’t remember if there was anywhere else at the moment.
In every single one, I’ve gotten through security tout suite, with the same rules.
[ul]
[li]Arrive at least an hour before my flight[/li][li]Photo ID and boarding pass ready[/li][li]Coat off and in a tub[/li][li]Shoes off and in a tub[/li][li]Laptop out of case, and in a tub on its own[/li][li]Laptop case goes through on its own[/li][li]No liquids above what is allowed[/li][li]No objects which in my most creative thoughts could I use to cut, stab, burn, or otherwise harm another person, short of bashing them over the head with the laptop case, or maybe giving them a wicked paper cut with my Terry Pratchett novel[/li][/ul]
I admit there might be some assholes in TSA who let the power go to their heads, and there are things like the artificial knee that blows some peoples’ tiny little minds, but am I the only one who finds it not to be such a grossly difficult thing to get through security expeditiously?
Contrary to my argumentative nature I try to do as well – though looking at my facial features it isn’t hard to tell that I’m royally PO’d. But I fear (seriously) that I won’t be able to hold back anymore and act-up, as have some of my most meek and regular US travelers friends upon the abuse (5 or 6 hours in an interrogation room) – including one one with an insulin deficiency. I mean I realize there’s no “winning” but the need to be a smartass/contrarian is simply getting beyond me at this point – fuck me that I mostly have to travel Statewide in order to get together with my son…as I said, I’m trying to turn that around although he, as a college student, doesn’t have half the flexibility in scheduling that I do.
And let’s not even get into the times my luggage has been ‘misplaced.’ Though I give both American and Spirit credit for taking responsibility and doing the best they could – I mean they still misplaced my bags but they paid for lodging for the time they got them to me. Still, pissed me off plenty to go shopping for stuff I had brought with me…and we’re talking, roughly, three times out of eight trips in the last two years or so.
I recently saw a funny scene in Frankfurt where a security guard was going through the handbag of a woman and pulled out a cucumber and was holding it in his hand and demanding an explanation. I could not understand what was being said and was trying to not be obvious about my interest but the exchange went on for a while and I finally had to leave the area. I have no idea if she was allowed to keep the cucumber or if it was deemed to be too dangerous.
America has lost billions in foreign tourism due to all this crap and this when the world has experienced a huge tourism boom AND when the dollar was so low it was worth crossing an ocean just to do your grocery shopping.
Since all this crap began I have avoided traveling to the US like the plague. When I have no other choice I fly non-American carriers.
If you think you have it bad, you have no idea what us foreigners have to endure. I have never been as mistreated and abused as I have by the American immigration authorities.
Recently a friend traveling on a diplomatic passport was also quite abused. They were telling her they thought it was a counterfeit passport etc. That is what happens when you have $5/hr employees questioning diplomats and CEOs.
When I am confronted by an asshole I mostly become passive-aggressive. I am in NO hurry. I would rather go s-l-o-w-l-y and keep my head than lose my temper. Regarding those behind me, I do not care. They are mostly Americans who could change this shit if they wanted. I have no say. If enough Americans complained things would change.
A pen, or pencil?