Ohh, she’s got a nice rack…sorry ma’am please step over here.
Wipe big q-tip on stuff and put in the machine.
Force elderly/infirm flyers to leave chair, expose colostomy bags, etc.
Apparently they’re the luggage packing critics now, too :rolleyes:
Yeah, medical equipment. Like my gag “hypodermic needle” pen.
So in your rush to defend TSA agents you shit upon the poor, oppressed mall cops? That’s just sad.
This is just my guess, but I don’t think it is random.
I fly a lot (26 flights in the last 8 weeks), and have never received a pat-down. People that do tend to have left something in their pocket from my observation.
Pending my Global Entry interview next week, I hope to never go through “normal” security ever again.
Well, I have a good illustration of the incompentence of TSA from last night’s flight. I was going through the security checkpoint at a major hub, and despite the relatively short line the crowd was getting bunched up at the scanners because of delays at luggage scanner. I saw a ditty bag or makeup bag which had apparently fallen off the conveyor and was semi-concealed up at the opening to the scanner. I pointed this out to three different ‘agents’, including one who as literally four feet away from the bag, and they all basically shrugged. Now, while I’m pretty sure it was just an incautiously packed bag that fell off the belt, and someone is going to be missing their sundries when they get home, it also would have been a good way to plant an explosive, incindiary, or nerve gas device in the place where would have the greatest potential for harm, walk cleanly through security, and then turn around and walk out the exit without being detected. And yet, not only were any of these so-called ‘security screeners’ the least bit interested in this unidentified baggage not associated with any passenger, they were also paying virtually no attention to the passenger behavior whatsoever! I’ve seen people walking through security nervous, stoned, or sufficiently intoxicated that it would have been prudent for public safety to make at least the same cursory evaluation that a police officer would do with someone walking on the street in the same condition, and yet the TSA personnel were utterly heedless.
TSA is doing aboslutely nothing to ensure public safety or security against a concerted terrorist attack, and by being a transparent excuse are actively inhibiting actual effective measures to identify and deal with potential threats.
Stranger
much is being made here about the security theater aspect of airport searches. And in my opinion these comments are correct.
While it is apparent that airport screening isn’t much use in catching prohibited objects or maintaining the actual safety of airline passengers, remember that polls have shown that a majority (around 55% in 2012) of the passengers approve of the security procedures. Before TSA makes any changes to the existing procedures they have to consider a) can they make security better and b) will any changes make the situation worse? Up until this summer, what they are doing seemed to work in the sense that it made a majority of the customers happy. I haven’t heard of any options that can actually make security better at the screening line.
TSA tried the ever popular tactic of trained personnel mixing with the passengers and observing for telltale signs of terroristic intent. In practice it didn’t work, primarily because it does nothing to convince the nervous passengers that they will be safe on the airplane-which is one of the main goals of the screening.
Who, pray tell, is “happy” with TSA screening processes?
Just because some segment of the public is duped into thinking it is effective means of security is no more a valid argument for continuing than the rationale that we should invade yet another country in the Central Asia, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia under the pretense that by doing so we’ll somehow be more secure. Horseshit, by any other name, would smell no more sweet.
Stranger
well, apparently about 530 congressmen are happy with it.
Unfortunately.
My guess is that the 55% approval rating mentioned in post 46 is probably true: if you poll a couple thousand random people and ask if they want Obama to disband America’s largest terrorist-fighting organization, you’ll get 55% saying "NO , we need it desperately.
And most of those 55% are people who never fly.