DO YOU THINK THIS WOMAN DESERVED A PAT DOWN?

I've just been on a whole heap of flights and I didn't notice a major difference between US security and that in airports in any other country (except customs in Singapore who were sitting down having a little nap and didn't appear to notice us.)

Oh...I had to take my shoes off in EVERY US airport, while most in other countries for some reason my running shoes were exempt...(which I don't get because I'd have thought I could hollow them out and fit much more nasty stuff in them than one can in ordinary shoes.)

Which bits of the security drill are theatre? I have heard you say the liquids stuff is theatre...but haven't one or two folk at least managed to set themselves on fire that way? Not something I really want in an aircraft!

The full body scan thing isn't just in the US is it?

TSA chief defends much-criticized security measure
By Associated Press
Friday, November 19, 2010 - Added 6 hours ago


E-mail Print (4) Comments Text size Share Buzz up!WASHINGTON — The head of the Transportation Security Administration says the close-quarter body inspections causing a furor among some passengers and pilots are unavoidable in a time of terrorist threats.

John Pistole tells CBS’s "The Early Show" he understands public distaste for more intense security procedures, particulary hand pat-downs. He called it a "challenge" for federal authorities and airport screeners.

But Pistole said the attempted bombing of a U.S. bound plane last Christmas and the effort to ship packages with bombs to this country on cargo planes more recently makes tougher security necessary. He said Friday, "The bottom line is, we’re trying to see that everybody can be assured with high confidence that everybody else on that flight can be properly screened."
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My personal feeling about this is, if I were put in the position of either going through the machine or a pat-down I would instantly strip to the buff and if they put their hands on me I would pee on them. Of course I would get arrested and probably be charged with indecent exposure.

Wonder if some enterprising TSA sells the baby pictures.

The isolationist position. Cease trading with them. No fly zones. Island America. Exporters and importers shot on sight.

I don't want to be on a flight that took the measures necessary to prevent people from setting themselves on fire. I face much greater risks every day on the streets than I do from those exotic dangers and don't want the hassle, especially when I think it's pointless.

The main fear of the liquids, as I understand it, is a binary bomb made from common household materials. But even under ideal conditions they'd be hard pressed to do much damage to the plane with the particular mixture they were concerned about, and there are easier ways to get that many people killed.

But the bottom line is that it is ALL security theater. The main thing keeping people safe from terrorists is the short supply of idiots willing to give up their lives (to martyrdom or imprisonment). There are already plenty of places where a terrorist can blow up a couple hundred people with a lot more ease than in an airplane and the only difference an airplane poses, other than exotic danger that we like to fear more than quotidian danger, is that the airplane can be used as a missile.

Ok, so like it has already been said here, seal the cockpit. Just doing that makes it as attractive a target as the TSA security line itself (you can easily kill a planeload of people by detonating yourself in one of those big lines at some US airports), except for the fact that people are stupid and killing them in an airplane makes the rest of them much more fearful than killing them on the ground, which then makes it a more romantic target.

But quite frankly, I'd be fine flying without having my fellow passengers screened only visually and not even having metal detectors. The marketplace for people willing to give their lives to take down a plane is such that I am taking greater risks with my life daily than I would in such a scenario and the security theater isn't changing the odds much, if I were willing to give my life to take down a plane I bet the procedures would not stop me. What is saving my fellow man is my love of my own life, not the TSA.

Right on, man. None of it makes us any safer at all.

I like how in the article above, the TSA honcho sez that the recent underwear bomber and the packages supposedly sent to America to blow up call for 'increased security measures.' What a crock of ****. The backscatter devices wouldn't even have DETECTED the underwear bomb, according to their own tests on them, and there's no reason passenger screening should go up based on cargo.

Cycloptichorn

Hmm...the lines created by security measures for all kinds of things, not just airplanes, do, indeed, present an obvious target.

I was thinking that in the line-up for the Louvre. Though I guess the security hopes to protect the art, not the patrons.

I agree with you about the ordinary life risks, but, I'd rather not add greatly to them by flying. (I am already doing that now, though, by flying a LOT in very small planes...and I gather I was lucky not to have engines explode and such in all the A380's I was in.) I am not personally greatly fussed by security procedures...they're kind of a drag to me but way less of a drag than the actual long haul flights themselves are. If the x-ray thingy is frying me I am not happy, but the odd pat down doesn't seem much of a drama.

And terrorists DO seem kind of prone to get their rocks off by pulling off stuff like downing planes.

Maybe our general slight anxiety about being a long way up and being totally without control makes us both more hysterical about risks when flying, and more drawn to aircraft than security queues when planning terror attacks?

Jesus, you can be dumb, Spendi. I said stop meddling, stop committing war crimes, stop illegal CIA incursions, stop with the torture, rape and murder of innocents.

Though I guess that detecting unusual packages being transported by passengers may lead to a few silly folk who don't send the stuff by parcel being caught?

I dunno. I am still trying to figure out why the can of tuna and beans I had lying forgotten (an un-eaten work lunch) in the darkest depths of my handbag was gleefully detected and confiscated at Adelaide Airport on my way overseas!

Perhaps it was seen as a potential weapon?

That's the spread of idiocy, Dlowan. Happening right in front of our eyes.

If I didn't have to fly home to see my parents, I'd never get on an airplane anymore. You get treated like a criminal from the moment you step into the airport, degraded, your basic civil rights ignored (because you somehow 'gave them up' when you bought a ticket, as if that's possible) all so a bunch of idiots can feel slightly safer about flying.

Whole thing pisses me off, as if you couldn't tell...

Cycloptichorn

They've been singularly poor at doing so, haven't they, Deb?

Probably CIA plants with sugar or kool-aid in their pants/shoes, all designed to keep the "land of the brave" fraidy cats cowering and demanding that the government spend more of their money to line the pockets of their friends.

Hmmm...I don't feel degraded...though I do find the attitude of US officials ruder than most I have experienced.

However, I don't know why so many are especially picking on the US for inconvenience caused by security....Heathrow, for instance, is the worst for making you wait I have ever encountered, followed by Adelaide, of all places!

And the people doing security in Berlin, just for a hop over the channel to London, were way more intrusive than I found the US folk to be. Mind you, you can argue with them in Berlin without feeling like they are going to beat the **** out of you!! The nonsense in the US when some poor person had a toe over the red line you have to wait behind for the Immigration folk to call you over was like bullying in primary school, or Monty Python. But that's attitude more than anything.

Yeah, this is what I mean, really - the attitude is everything.

I shouldn't be treated like a threat until there's some evidence that I am one, but everything about the US system does that right off the bat. The attitude of the officers is that your rights don't matter and you don't have a right to complain. It's ridiculous. A lot of it comes from the fact that we substitute a whole LOT of poorly trained and lower-intelligence people for the fewer, highly-trained operatives we should be using.

This is what we SHOULD be doing -

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/11/tsa-john-tyner-sane-airport-security-system

Cycloptichorn

My mother, vaunted Sunday School teacher, all-american flag wavin', God lovin', Bush-votin'-fer, down home country woman and proud Republican, called two days ago to instruct me not to allow the US government to "touch my junk." She promised to bail me out. This is eulogy material if she dies before me.

The TSA have waaaaaaay too much power. And the public is a bunch of paranoids.

I saw Mr Pistole interviewed on Fox News by a black guy who was "in for Bill O'Reilly". He basically said that if he's in charge you do it his way or bugger off. Which is fair enough. He will be the one getting toasted if a plane is downed.

Have you no W.C. Fields types you could appoint?

btw- how do you put up with Fox News? It's diabolical.

Jesus, you can be superficial JTT.

CBS News said that 1.6 million Americans were flying on this holiday week. That leaves 299.4 million not flying. They said that 46 million Americans fly every years. That leaves 255 million not flying.

How much of their money are you flyers spending so you can indulge your whims? I suppose editorial comment in media is composed by regular flyers. It is a status symbol I presume.

Maybe the TSA is trying to build up political pressure to get profiling agreed. That will test your adherence to the Constitution.

It probably is attitude. They're always very nice to me - the guys in Texas even gave my elderly mother a hug and told us to 'Stay sweet'.

I'm not paranoid - and I understand these people have a job to do and I don't treat them like I think they're gonna be intrusive idiots or 'rude American's from the get - go.
That's probably why they don't treat me like a piece of 'junk'.

They don't treat me like a piece of junk either but they are taking away our freedom and right to privacy with lame justifications to safety.

What makes me wonder about logic is that Americans, so touchy about their right to bears arms, readily give up their freedom for illusory safety.

I'd better take the risk to be killed in a terrorist plane crash than go through this imaginary safety controls.

Btw, I'm using Houston intternational airport as my main entry in the US, as border officers there are the most friendly officers I met in the US.

Yeah - it's lame justification until someone brings a plane down - not saying that that's a given - it's not. If I thought it was, I'd not want to fly and I honestly never give it a second thought.

But the fact that it has happened means that it could happen and if it does happen, the people who will be screaming the loudest are the whiners and complainers who are screaming the loudest now.

You just can't please some people.

It's a catch-22. These poor people who are trying to keep everyone happy and safe can never win.

As far as Texas airports go - those Texan guys are charmers.
They got my mom to stand up and frisked her as gently and politely as I've ever seen it done. I don't have a bad word to say about any of them.