I miss the days when the TSA just stood around doing nothing

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20022526-5…

Now it's getting ridiculous. I did not think they could make travel more odious, but now they have.

TSA screener: a perfect job for perverts and child molesters now.

 

Yeah, I posted something similar recently. I empathize with people, but you simply can never win. People don't like to be frisked, they don't like to wait, they don't like lines, on and on. The problem is they also cannot accept the risks associated with lax security.

I think these machines are overkill, but I also think they are an effort to eliminate the time it takes to go through things and remove the frisking that people obviously don't like. Airports need a certain level of security and I suppose we are maybe a little to strict at this point.

 
Best Response

When you have to choose between getting strip searched electronically, or physically groped, I think we have gone overboard.

They can apply this same rationale to any other public place. Ballgames, trains, buses, malls, etc.

I am one of the canaries in the coal mine because I have a consultant and have to travel more than the average person.

I feel that I take the same risk of terrorist attack if I step aboard a bus. But somehow, because it's a plane, it's different? This is the "implied consent" doctrine of the Supreme Court -- taken to its most ridiculous extremes.

But OK, what do we do? A modest proposal:

  1. Any passenger gets to request the gender of his frisker. Female passengers should not be the only ones who are free to request a female screener.

  2. All TSA employees must have 8.5 x 11 images of their Rapiscan body searches pinned to their bodies where it is visible to all. You get to see our goodies, we get to see yours.

  3. All TSA employees must submit to a mutual groping by the customer if asked. What's gravy for the goose is gravy for the gander.

  4. All TSA employees must post Rapiscan images of their children and parents publicly.

  5. The Rapiscan images of Michael Chertoff and Janet Napolitano should be posted in every TSA booth. Also, Janet Napolitano must be subject to a manual search every morning in line with what is prescribed in a standard TSA stop. If she wants something less invasive, we all get something less invasive. If she wants something more invasive, we get that. Her kids and grandkids get frisked too of course.

If you are not in the traveling professions, COUNT YOURSELF LUCKY. I have personally witnessed the degradation of air travel from a delight to a terror to a farce to an outrage over the past 10 years.

 

I think airplanes are a pretty standard target. If you blew up a bus you take out maybe 50 people. Plus you need a lot of explosives. Crashing a plane doesn't take much and you kill a lot more people. More bang for your buck. Besides, the explosion isn't want kills people, it is the crash.

The scan wouldn't be an issue if a computer program could read the image and process it. Much more efficient than a person and it would eliminate a lot of the issues. Why not combine the rape scan with a metal detector. I am sure an algorithm could be created that would identify any object or shaped item or something. Maybe then a human would get involved.

Life would be real simple if we just implemented Israeli type security. The problem is we would have so many lawsuits.

Everyone wants to hate on the TSA, but I blame all of us. We piss and moan about security, but go ape shit whenever something happens. We want security, but no intrusion.

 

Also, Israeli security professionals are ex-intelligence or ex-military. Our TSA guys are warmed-over security contractors hiring from the minimum-wage labor pool with new badges and worse attitudes. During grad school days, my Austrian colleague visited Technion, who looked out of place in Israel. They asked her what was her business. To give a talk. Ok, give me the talk right now. She pulls out the PP, and presents. Five minutes later, another security officer. Give me the talk again. Want to make sure it's consistent. Gives the talk. Only then does she leave the terminal. Brilliant.

Bus or plane, my point was more that one day, we can expect to see these rapiscans at bus depots, train stations, even mall entrances. Probably as soon as we see our first suicide bombing in such a place. Let's mark this post. This is something, with or without a suicide attack, that we should expect to see within the next five years. I will cover any bet against the appearance of a rapiscan in a non-airport setting.

Everyone does indeed want to hate on the TSA, but the desire definitely goes up parabolically with hours traveled per year. But to be exact, I think the people who gripe about security lapses are not the ones who gripe about privacy invasions. The former are the soccer mom types who shit their panties everytime some abstract scary thing threatens their little kiddies. The latter are guys like me who like to takes their chances and don't like people getting into our personal space and our private business.

That aside: I can start another horror thread from my colleagues' experiences with getting sexually assaulted (women) or having their jewelry, laptops, engagement rings stolen. Really, I'd rather let off steam here than end up like that Tyner guy who's getting threatened with a $10,000 civil suit by the TSA for noncooperation.

 

OK, last insomniac post of the night.

I am not one for schmaltzy patriotism, but I think the Constitution is the best fucking document ever created by the mind of Man, next to Newton's Principia.

And the rights given to us by the Constitution are inalienable, meaning that they cannot be separated from us even if we "consent."

Apparently you need to flunk Civics 101 to get any job at any level at the TSA these days.

AngerTron off. Good night folks.

 
Anthony .:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Napolitano

This woman is horrible. Only a fascist Republican could of appointed her. Oh wait . . .

Haha, nice. She really is an idiot. They claim that the scanners are working because the got images of someone with a pocket knife and another with a syringe. That's most definitely worth the millions for the machines and the time wasted getting naked pics of people.

Also, I hate to be mean, but can't we find someone better-looking than her. I puke every time I see her face, or imagine her naked.

 
jonnyseed:
Anthony .:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Napolitano

This woman is horrible. Only a fascist Republican could of appointed her. Oh wait . . .

Haha, nice. She really is an idiot. They claim that the scanners are working because the got images of someone with a pocket knife and another with a syringe. That's most definitely worth the millions for the machines and the time wasted getting naked pics of people.

Also, I hate to be mean, but can't we find someone better-looking than her. I puke every time I see her face, or imagine her naked.

first... WHY? Horrible image to have in your head.

Second... this shit is such a waste of money. We could find the knife/syringe with the regular metal detectors.

 

it's not republican bullshit, as evidenced by the fact that it's continued to happen long after we had democrat majorities in congress and a democrat president. it's bullshit stemming from the fear generated by 9/11, and it's inevitable.

look at the camps for japanese-american citizens during world war 2. look at mccarthyism. don't be surprised when you see examples illustrating the same principle during your lifetime, in this case with the TSA. eventually, the fear will fade, people will forget, things will go back to normal, and we'll wonder how we could have ever done such things to people's rights and have been so barbaric. then another catastrophe will happen, and the cycle will repeat.

 
peacerenity:
it's not republican bullshit, as evidenced by the fact that it's continued to happen long after we had democrat majorities in congress and a democrat president. it's bullshit stemming from the fear generated by 9/11, and it's inevitable.

I think the best way to describe this is 'a person is smart but people are dumb.'

When you get the populace whipped into a mass hysterical frenzy, you always end up with things happening that are completely ridiculous to the average person on the street. The most telling aspect of this whole situation is that Janet 'Big Sis' Napolitano refused to go through a body scanner herself but expects the rest of us to be ok with it...

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 

The TSA is an ongoing national embarrassment.

It has never even come close to stopping a terrorist, and there is no evidence that it or any of these fancy mini-Chernobyls will ever do so. It is ridiculous security theatre, and I have to agree with Goldberg that the most dangerous part of an airport is the security line. Anthony, lest you forget, terrorism isn't about how many people you kill, it is about how much terror you inspire. Taking down planes has been done - making people scared to check in would be much more effective than blowing up one more airplane.

I agree with the praise of Israeli security, but good as they are, the credit for El Al's safety belongs more with Mossad than the airport police, and in the US it is much more so - all credit for preventing terrorism belongs with intelligence agencies, and the passengers on the planes who have prevented the last few incidents.

I haven't been in the US since they started rolling out these electronic versions of Michael David Barrett, but I have no intention of ever going through one in my life, considering that I view cancer as something the US government should NOT be actively promoting. If one of the schmucks working at the TSA wants to feel me up, I'll let him, for the simple reason that the Israelis do it too. That doesn't make it effective though - I'd be much happier if they were willing to do a cavity search, but the fact that they aren't confirms this farce for what it is. The issue is, the people it is meant to placate, the suburban moms who vote how cable news tells them to, will take their children to grandma's for Thanksgiving, and when they realize that their little Jimmy is now being treated as a terror threat, their abnormal and irrational fear of paedophilia will overwhelm their abnormal and irrational fear of terrorism.

 

The worst part of the John Tyner video recordings is that they were suspicious that he may have an incendiary device, so they wanted him to go BACK to the crowded security screening area to go through it again.

This really shows how idiotic they are. You'd think that they'd want to have him as far away from those people as they could. Either this shows they are incompetent when it comes to understanding what security really is, or they are merely obsessed with the theater of having everyone pass through this line. I don't know why this isn't more of a talking point.

 

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