Daughter Singled Out Going Thru Airport Security

@Cycloptichorn,

Hence, the extra security measures.

@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

Hence, the extra security measures.

Useless measures, as they essentially amount to more of the same thing, without providing any additional security. What more, the measures actually induce a huge risk themselves, because the increased backlog of passengers standing in line at the airport is a gigantic target, one that would paralyze travel in America, and one for which we have no real defense.

Cycloptichorn

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

Hence, the extra security measures.

Like confiscating nail clippers. My favorite ones, too!!! I wonder what happens to all that stuff.

1 Reply

@Irishk,

Quote:

Like confiscating nail clippers. My favorite ones, too!!! I wonder what happens to all that stuff.

Quote:

If you've flown since Sept. 11, you too have probably noticed that once-innocent items like hat pins, tweezers and nail clippers are being promptly snatched from your carry-on bags for fear that they could be used as weapons.

The bad news is, there is probably no hope of getting the items back. Security and airline sources say in most cases items confiscated at airports are destroyed at the end of the day.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=87510&page=1

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@wandeljw,

That don't work, unfortunately. My 8 year old was tested for explosives, while my husband smuggled on board liquids in his carryon.

I think that was point being made by teen bringing in knives and material to assemble a gun.

The extra security measures did not capture the knives or gun material or my husband's liquids. But they did prevent my daughter from making a bomb.

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So I do have a question -

Did her feet dragging cause the alarm? She thinks so.

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@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

That don't work, unfortunately. My 8 year old was tested for explosives, while my husband smuggled on board liquids in his carryon.

I think that was point being made by teen bringing in knives and material to assemble a gun.

The extra security measures did not capture the knives or gun material or my husband's liquids. But they did prevent my daughter from making a bomb.

Security will never be absolute. That is why so many different measures are tried out and evaluated.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Based on all of the test threats that the TSA fails, I'd have to agree with Cyclo that it's about putting on a show for the public than it is about keeping people safe.

They put bomb components and water bottles in a suitcase... the TSA agents confiscated the water bottles.

Some tester regularly passes through security with a weapon, and even got through the new scanner with it.

In-flight security is handled by passengers, now.

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

I honestly don't have an issue with it - it just seems useless. It doesn't seem a productive measure. To me, it would make more sense to test everyone this way rather than random measures. Statistically it is so unlikely they would catch some one with how random this is. Now granted unless they find a quicker way to test everyone, it isn't fesible.

But having a dog trained to sniff explosives would be quicker - assuming he is able to sniff without going to each separate individual, but near to the security line. We all go through the xray machine - which is pretty quick, but randomly checking an individual because they are the hundredth individual only gives a 100-1 shot. Odds are you will let that one individual slip through.

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@snood,

Quote:

It was a side of Cyclops I don't believe I knew about - the part of him that felt the need to call everyone who these measures makes to feel safe, "stupid".

What synonym would you have felt comfortable with, Snood?

airheaded, birdbrained, bonehead, boneheaded, brain-dead, brainless, bubbleheaded, chuckleheaded, dense, dim, dim-witted, doltish, dopey (also dopy), dorky [slang], dull, dumb, dunderheaded, empty-headed, fatuous, gormless [chiefly British], half-witted, knuckleheaded, lamebrain (or lamebrained), lunkheaded, mindless, oafish, obtuse, opaque, pinheaded, senseless, simple, slow, slow-witted, soft, softheaded, thick, thickheaded, thick-witted, unintelligent, unsmart, vacuous, weak-minded, witless

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@DrewDad,

Funny - I wrote about this on different thread - I was sitting next to some one on the plane that was acting suspiciously. Almost went to the flight attendents with my concern. Thank goodness I didn't - instead I engaged this individual in conversation to find he kept reaching into his bag and was nervous because he had his cat with him.

Still just in case, I kept my eye on him. Yep all 110 pounds of me was going take this dude down if he tried anything. I had it all planned in my head.

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

Quote:

Didn't all the hijackers on 09-11-2001 pass through normal airport security checkpoints?

Yeah, but that doesn't count, JW, 'cause they had passes from Dick Cheney. Smile

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@JTT,

Give me a break JTT - I'm seriously interested to hear what people would put instead of or in place of...or as Dadpad said...would you just have people walk onto the plane as they used to be able to?

Let's hear a solution from all you cynical experts- you can all tell us what isn't working - tell us what would work - foolproof. I'd love to hear it.

Honestly, whenever I walk onto an airplane, I'm more afraid of turbulence than terrorists - but let's put it this way - if we DIDN'T have to go through these security measures- I'd pretty much bet my life that more nutcases would shoot up planes instead of post offices, malls and synagogues.
Why not? Much more dramatic way for them to go.

And you can't - because no one can - say what hasn't happened because of these security measures. There's no way to measure that.

Maybe, just because of the deterrence factor - they in fact- HAVE saved lives.
Maybe people don't try **** they would have otherwise because they don't think they will get away with it.

But yeah - let us boneheads over here hear some solutions - I'm so sick of all the whining. Ya'll are just SO much smarter - prove it!!

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@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

Still just in case, I kept my eye on him. Yep all 110 pounds of me was going take this dude down if he tried anything. I had it all planned in my head.

Well, previous doctrine for passengers was to sit tight and wait for rescue. That isn't going to happen anymore.

1 Reply

@aidan,

aidan wrote:

Let's hear a solution from all you cynical experts- you can all tell us what isn't working - tell us what would work - foolproof. I'd love to hear it.

Of course there isn't a foolproof method. I (and perhaps, we) skeptics just don't like to see: a) people's rights trampled on in the name of security and b) money wasted that could be going toward something more useful.

aidan wrote:

if we DIDN'T have to go through these security measures- I'd pretty much bet my life that more nutcases would shoot up planes instead of post offices, malls and synagogues.

Strawman. Nobody is suggesting that there be NO security. Just that the security that is in place is as much for show as it is for actually stopping terrorists.

aidan wrote:

And you can't - because no one can - say what hasn't happened because of these security measures. There's no way to measure that.

So don't claim that they work, either, because there's no way to measure that.

IMO, the TSA is as much a federal jobs program as anything else.

1 Reply

@aidan,

Quote:

And you can't - because no one can - say what hasn't happened because of these security measures. There's no way to measure that.

Maybe, just because of the deterrence factor - they in fact- HAVE saved lives.
Maybe people don't try **** they would have otherwise because they don't think they will get away with it.

There certainly is a metric for measuring, Aidan. The government never misses an opportunity to spread far and wide how they have saved the people from some huge terrorist threat. Look at what constitutes "huge" for the government; phony trumped up charges and "facts".

Remember when the media, with the aid of the government told us about these huge underground complexes that binLaden and his gang had in the mountains of Afghanistan. They had Popular Science type diagrams showing an intricate and, frankly, out of this world scenario, but it was all swallowed, hook, line and sinker.

Remember Colin Powell at the UN?

As has been mentioned, why wait until you get to security before you make your point? If these were actually threats, if this "war on terror" actually had an enemy, multiple airports, multiple gatherings of people, multiple infrastructure would have already been hit.

Why would this vast network of cunning terrorists have sent incompetent boobs into each and every situation where there has been a "bust"?

But no, people just keep telling each other, "it's a dangerous world out there what with all these terrorists", and all of a sudden all the governments plans make complete sense.

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@DrewDad,

A) Whose rights get trampled on? Can you name someone whose rights have gotten trampled on? Does this happen on a daily basis, hourly, monthly - what?
It's ten minutes out of a person's life. They have to take off their shoes and they might get their toe nail clippers confiscated. So ******* what?!

B) How would you spend the money more usefully?
I'm sincerely curious to hear. Honestly.

What's wrong with the federal government creating jobs for people?
Would you rather have them on welfare?

Truthfully - I don't want to get on a plane with people who haven't gone through a metal detector and might have weapons in their carry-on bag. I really don't.
I get pulled out and patted down all the time because I'm white and middle-class and I guarantee they have to meet their quotas for my type too - so what?
Too many trigger-happy and gun-loving nuts out there these days.

And these arrogant, 'Don't tell me what to do, I'm above this **** Americans who display their better than everyone else attitudes' looking down their noses at the poor working schlubs are precisely the ones who make us the target for terrorists and their hatred of all things American in the first place.

I'm American - and I can't even stand to watch it or be associated with it.

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@aidan,

Quote:

at the poor working schlubs

I think that you've answered your own question, Aidan. Are "poor working schlubs" in charge of NASA, the CDC-Atlanta and other similar organizations?

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@JTT,

I don't know - but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who look at other people who are trying to make an honest living as best they can, as not being worthy of respect.

I haven't answered my own question at all. My question was/is/ and will remain:

How would anyone else better spend the money to improve the system?

I understand that there are many, many complaints and criticisms about what is happening. I want to know what those who are complaining and criticising would do differently and more efficiently, productively and less intrusively.

I also want to know whose rights have been trampled on. Because I'm a pretty observant person - and I don't see anything particularly horrible happening in these security checks.
Maybe people are too sensitive.
What rights have been trampled? Mine never have- so I'm trying to understand what the major, big, horrible deal is. I honestly don't get it.

1 Reply

@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

I honestly don't have an issue with it - it just seems useless. It doesn't seem a productive measure. To me, it would make more sense to test everyone this way rather than random measures. Statistically it is so unlikely they would catch some one with how random this is. Now granted unless they find a quicker way to test everyone, it isn't fesible.

But having a dog trained to sniff explosives would be quicker - assuming he is able to sniff without going to each separate individual, but near to the security line. We all go through the xray machine - which is pretty quick, but randomly checking an individual because they are the hundredth individual only gives a 100-1 shot. Odds are you will let that one individual slip through.

When our daughter was a baby, my wife went on a trip to China with her in a stroller. I did not go on that trip. My wife later told me that a security guard with a dog checked passengers. The dog briefly sniffed my daughter in her stroller. I asked my wife if Annie's diaper was full. My wife said, "Yes, but the dog did not say anything." (My wife was born in China and does not understand my sense of humor. She thought I was asking a serious question.)

1 Reply

Daughter Singled Out Going Thru Airport Security

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