It’d be interesting if the FAA has done anything to prevent a signalled bomb detonation. With all the wireless technology available (and very very small, that, for instance can fit on the end of my HP PDA) it would be rather simple to have a wireless (for instance) router tied into a bomb for controlled detonation in a piece of luggage. Heck, you might be able to do it from the ground!
Well, I’m glad we (although to a lesser extent in Canada) are wasting all this money just so a few of you can feel better about flying.
Hey Boomstick, with all the “security” in place, would it even be possible for you to file a flight plan all the way to Jamaica? Or would you have to (no pun intended) fly through hoops?
Here is a rather basic comparison, they are actually discussing the block busters that you can see on CNN. http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_Explosives,,00.html
FWIW, 1.25 pounds of c4 to a blockbuster…or 5 sticks of butter. Though c4 is denser than butter and a good comparison is something like the old grey molding plasticine clay we used to play with pre-playdo.
No, the restrictions are irrelevant. If a private group takes government money it no longer has full authority over how it conducts itself. It cannot violate civil liberties if it benefits from our tax dollars. Or, rather, that’s how it should be.
Right. That’s reality. And I’m saying that it’s corrupt.
Actually, I don’t want the TSA to exist at all. And there’s no reason why airline workers shouldn’t be able to unionize.
Again, I’m calling it corruption. It’s nothing short of absurd for a company to be supported by my tax dollars, much less use that money to implement measures that I strongly oppose.
Of course I am doing everything in my power to change it. But that isn’t much, especially with a presidential election where I have to vote for the lesser of two evils if I am to have any influence at all.
And this is the Pit. We have a right to bitch here regardless of what we do or don’t do. And right now we’re bitching at the TSA, not you.
[QUOTE=Happy Scrappy Hero Pup**World Eater: ** Am I safer now than I was before the attacks? I honestly don’t know. And neither do you. But I’m willing to put up with a bit of inconvenience because I believe my government is at least TRYING. That doesn’t make me a fool.[/QUOTE]
It’s precisely what makes you a fool. They’re stripping away our rights one “inconvenience” at a time, wake the fuck up.
Reminds you of that old Ben Franklin quote, doesn’t it, World Eater?
I, for one welcome our boobie grabbing overlords 
Truer words have never been spoken.
Fair enough. But it seems to me that absent a reason for Ms. Kingston to expect the search to take the form that it did, it is not particularly valid to characterize her as a whinging* “look-at-me-I’m-a-victim” troublemaker who wants to back out of contracts that she freely entered into.
*Are we still using “whinging” around here? I haven’t been getting all of my memos. I suspect Radagast the Brown of – wait a minute; I’m drifting into “Secret Diaries” land. I’ll stop now.
World Eater: who the hell are you to tell me to “wake the fuck up?” Nobody’s stripped away any of my rights. And do you think that the government isn’t trying? What do you think they’re doing then?
And all you Franklin-quoters: I have not sacrificed liberty for security, nor do I wish to. Who the fuck are you to look down your nose at me because I don’t believe that my own wants supersede the needs of the rest of the traveling community?
The idea behind this republic is that not only do we have rights, we have obligations to go along with those rights. And part of that obligation is to do what we can to ensure the safety of our fellow citizens. I don’t have a problem being searched as part of that obligation.
Nobody assaulted this woman. Nobody attacked this woman. She needs to get the fuck over herself. As do plenty of people here.
Just ONCE, I would love to see someone get as up in arms about the duty of citizens to a nation, rather than the other way around.
The whole point of some of our posts is that we AREN’T arguing, merely stating the current existing “rules”. You know, the ones on the back of your ticket, or on the little cheaptickets.com rules and regs page and so on?
I had written a post in reply to another poster’s joking that the boob search didn’t seem to bother me (I know you were kidding!), but it got eaten by my server. Grrr.
I think what people are missing here is that what some of us is saying is NOT “oh, it’s okay, they can do whatever they want to us blahblahblah etc etc”. MY take is not that the whole boob search, (not to mention the MUCH more annoying and painful to me, with my injured leg taking off of shoes etc) isn’t annoying, IT IS. It’s that it isn’t some “GASP, I’ve been SOOOOOOOOOOOOO threatened and violated” BFD like the stupid lady in the OP made it out to be.
I fly a lot. And because our company does projects where we have to buy and then fly, we’re always geting chosen for these random and thorough searches. (The very nice and professional security ladies at Anchorage International told me that a ticket bought very close to flight time automatically gets chosen for a “random”).
So far, though annoying, and a huge pain in the butt timewise, and having to put your shoes back on, pack your laptop and digital camera back away nonsense, I have not found any of the procedures to be of SUCH a need for the melodramatic, over the top protestations of invasion of personal rights and privacy, as I see whined about here and other places IRL.
What HSHP me, and a few others are saying is NOT “oh, we agree with those procedures, and think that they should even be made worse”, but “hey, they are there and YOU the flyer agree to them at the purchase of the ticket, AT THE GATE is the wrong place to take a stand”!!! As well as a lesser “so, what procedures WoUlD be 100% effective? what WOULD you have them do? Nothing?” But that’s more of a side argument to the main one.
Stating what exists, and what is, is NOT equivelant to supporting it. And that is what HSHP and others have been doing. And HSHP made sure he MADE that disclaimer in his very first post. That of "this isn’t something I am in complete agreement with, I’m just stating the facts as they exist now.
But, then come along all the detractors and start arguing with him as if he IS touting tougher and more ridiculous security rules.
So, in short, my post and others aren’t “arguments” at all, mere statements of what IS at the current time. And yeah, this is the pit, bitch, whine, rail against all the stupidity, I"m in ALL agreement about how sucky the current measures are.
But regarding the OP, the facts are, the lady bought the ticket KNOWING the risks (so to speak), of what kinds of searches and security measures she might be subjected to.
She was in the wrong first of all to act like her breasts were the sacred Virgin Mary’s holy vessels and to throw such a ridiculous hissy fit(as others have said, I’d like to know the WHOLE story from both sides), I mean, crying and sobbing? Just how much did she PAY for those puppies anyway? Second to think that the rules didn’t apply to her, and third, to stage her protest AFTER having already agreed to the terms by purchasing the ticket.
It is my belief that privacy and dignity about my person are essential to my liberty, including the right not to be touched all over my body by a total stranger who makes $8 an hour working for the TSA when I am not accused of any crime nor have I been arrested.
The misguided belief that this somehow makes the plane ‘safer’ is just that, misguided. It’s an unnecessary and unwanted physical intrusion into my dignity and my privacy by an industry that is publicly funded and government run (the TSA), and it is in my opinion a governmental abuse of authority.
It’s intrusive, and unwelcome, much like the entire TSA.
catsix, I don’t mean to single you out, but your post has stated succinctly what others are saying, so I will respond to it in a similarly succinct and punny manner.
Tough titties. Deal with it or do something about it.
And yeah, WHAT this entails isn’t spelled out in every single possible combination of what the security measures are, but there is a section, at least last time I bought one on cheaptickets, or AlaskaAir, that states something along the lines of “compliance with safety rules and regs”.
Of course, I admit it’s entirely possible that the lady in the OP had never ever flown before, and was totally unaware of the stupidities involved in the security line. But anyone who’s flown at all, or has spoken to others who’ve flown, has to not listen at all to be unaware of the sorts of things the security line subjects travelers to.
Well, then she should have read the agreement before she bought the ticket.
CanvasShoes, I think you and I are on the same page here.
My obligation is not to cowtow to a bunch of wimpering chickenshits. Stastically we have a better chance of being struck by lightening then going KaBoom. People seem to forget that a great many things are out of our control, shit happens, and we die. Now before you lay into me about with some silly shit that I advocate eliminating security, get real. I say we go back to things we’re pre 9/11, and leave it at that.
People get frisked at concerts also. Folks who own the buildings and pay the band are attempting to make sure no pot, booze or guns get in.
There are so many cicumstance in life over which we have no control and in which our "privacy and dignity about our person’s essential to our liberty’ are violoated.
InCLUDing being touched all over (PUH lease, the actual procedure is less invasive than riding a city bus or the subway for crying out loud). People are treated unfairly and as criminals every day in this country. Take for instance (sorry don’t seque off into a hijack here), the way men are still treated re: child support and divorce.
Telemarketers. Talk about all SORTS of invasion of privacy…Sheesh, they steal our time and we don’t even GET anything for it. I can think of so many examples of this " privacy and dignity about my person are essential to my liberty" being violated out in real life without ever setting foot near an airport.
So acting as if the security measues are going to in WorldEater’s silly exaggeration “They’re stripping away our rights one “inconvenience” at a time” somehow forever change life into some 1984 Dystopia or something is goofy.
And, once again, since when is traveling by air a “right”? I stand by my opinion that it’s a PRODUCT, and as such, as with many other things you buy, it comes with all the standard buyer bewares (whether partially subsidized by the government or not, and as a worker of a company contracted to the government, I laugh at the “they have to do what the government wants if they take their money”…ummm NOT :D).
My thoughts exactly.
I’m well aware of the present situation and I specifically pointed out to HSHP that “we’re bitching at the TSA, not you.”
However, HSHP does seem to be supporting the TSA policies:
I also don’t understand why HSHP keeps telling us to write our congressional representative, etc. We know damn well what we have to do in order to try to change the rules. We are also commenting on the TSA as we see it. I have not flamed him nor insulted him in any way; I have no idea why he persists in telling us not to complain about this. The Pit is the forum for complaints.
Traveling by air is not a right, but the government should not be subsidizing the companies and it certainly should not be subsidizing the companies without them having to respect our civil liberties. I don’t care what the airline does if it’s wholly private, but as soon as it takes government money, it loses those rights. That’s how it SHOULD be. I know what the current laws ARE, you don’t have to tell me.
Clear?
It seems to me AGAIN that the validity of this
hinges on being able to establish DEFINITIVELY (as opposed to “so to speak”) the validity of this
Would you care to do the honors?
The procedures for crossing international borders in a private airplane have not changed significantly. Where would you like to go? I could file to anywhere in the world there is civilian aviation permitted. I can go anywhere I can afford to fly to. And there’s the catch - there’s always cost to flying. How much can you afford?
Thing is, if I was going to, say, Europe I’d take the airlines - they can transport me faster and cheaper than I can do so myself. I mean, Toronto to Jamiaca will take a couple days. I can’t afford to rent a 500 mph airplane. Sure, I could fly the Atlantic solo - but boy howdy that would be quite a trip to plan and do in the airplanes I fly.
Toronto, however, is quite practical. If ever I fly myself up that way I’ll let my fellow Dopers know, maybe a few of us can have lunch or something.
Well, I guess my answer to that is “what WOULD you people have the airlines do to make things as safe and comfortable as possible for ALL passengers”? I’m not all that concerned about terrorists, but as far as I am concerned, making sure that folks aren’t bringing on guns, knives and explosives (wasn’t there a shoebomb guy who was just an American? Not a terrorist?), not to mention their own booze (oh yay, I LUUUUUV having to deal with drunks), stuff like that. And once again, I AGREE that the current crap they’re doing is way too annoying.
For HSHP, me and others to say we support security is NOT the same as saying we think that there isn’t room for much improvement.
I can’t speak for him, but as I see his posts, he’s not saying that to get people to quit complaining in the PIT, but in complaint about those who wait until they’re at the GATE and so on before lodging their protests.
The subsidies have nothing to do with the government requiring, or not requiring security measures. After all, WE don’t frisk our customers, and WE are subsidized by the government. The government would have required this from the airlines after 9/11 whether or not they’d helped bail the airlines out.
And the airlines aren’t currently violating our civil liberties, have they gone into our houses without permission? Have they gone ANYWHERE without our permission? Nope. You declare that you “know what the laws are”, but you are NOT required to fly, just to comply with the requirements of flying. And when you buy the ticket, and step up to the security line, you are giving your permission.
And once again, the above does NOT equal I think this is all fine and dandy. I just don’t see it as the horrifying slide into 1984ism that so many others do.