I always go pat down. I prefer to understand the scope of the privacy violation also I think it’s good to have a physical reminder of the ways our privacy is invaded.
I keep getting “randomly” selected for explosives testing.
Don’t the body scanners allow them to see you in the nude? I thought I read an article about this years ago.
To be fair they’ll get so underfunded they won’t work properly.
TSA never did work properly. Testers were able to get weapons and explosives through tsa 95% of the time. TSA is purely security theater.
Any chance you’d know what would improve things?
Any chance? Why, are you thinking we’ve tried everything? or anything at all?
I’ll assume good intent for a minute that your question is an honest one.
Lets start with people having rights in airports. Maybe you miss your plane if you assert those rights but tsa agents with a few days of training should not wield the absolute authority they wield. They are trained little better than rent a cops and their authority should be commensurate with that. They should be accountable for the experience they provide to the public. They should accept feedback, on a curve of course, and the bad TSA personnel should be fired. They need to be accountable for some level of professionalism when interacting with the public.
TSA should be trained in deescalation skills. Police should as well. This absolutist thuggery cops and tsa agents like to leverage should not be permitted in a civilized society, and there should be real avenues for the public to cite abuse. If we are honest with ourselves, there arent even handed ways to cite and act on abuse, and thats a reflection of abject effing failure of law enforcement and tsa’s leadership. Yes, there are bad travelers, but theres bad authority figures as well, and the thoroughly planned lack of oversight shows that pretty amply. Where is the accountability with these little tyrants?
From there lets talk about their budget. Its bloated. They have ai programs for detecting threats that are completely unproven. Their equipment deployments are expensive and poorly managed. They should be given barebones security guard level funding because thats exactly what they are. Lets not pretend these are crime fighting heros. They are overpaid mallcops.
Cargo containers are not thoroughly searched-- we trust senders to be honest about whats in them. TSA’s budget bloat can be redirected to beef up cargo security.
There are redundancies and inadequacies in the current process. Why not have some new process flows for bag scanning? Bag scanning is a chokepoint for people that should be distributed. The airport layout should optimize for this. Its not.
Why has TSA allowed Clear and other companies to sell a nicer version for the rich, that literally closes the walkway to allow their clients to saunter through the queue in a privelaged manner? That should never have been allowed. My time is not theirs to sell. That needs to be ended and the people who approved it fired.
Why am I not allowed to say anything that a TSA agent doesnt like? This is America, and free speech applies even in airports. They have taken this “terrorism” to an absurd degree and they need adult supervision. There should be no such thing as “contempt of TSA agent” that ejects you from your flight. I can consent to security, but I do not consent to mallcops being empowered to cancel my travel on their whim if they are having a bad day and feel bad about their life choices. I dont care if they dont like my tone or a joke of mine. Does it threaten anyone? No. Unless they find something like a bomb or a gun in my bag, they should mind their own effing business and leave us all alone. And if I ask a question, I should have an expectation that they will answer professionally.
This was really cool of you to write out, must have taken a while. Thank you…I haven’t been in an airport in a long while, let alone an American one.
I love the tsa. Where else can I find out if I’m a terrorist. I go through life not knowing, uncertain
Former DHS security systems designers here.
If you want to complain about body scanners, complain about the security theater, lack of privacy, or back-scratching of security industry lobbyists.
Complaining about non-ionizing radiation is RFK-level conspiracy bullshit.
Didn’t the original full body scanners used at airports use backscatter X-rays, which are ionizing radiation ?
I believe these were mostly replaced by millimeter-wave scanners, and are not used anymore (even banned in some countries) but a lot of the initial pushback and debate surrounding the scanners when they were first introduced was about potential health risks of repeated X-ray exposure from those scanners, and so the idea of ionizing radiation exposure persists to this day in many people’s minds.
That’s true but the dose is incredibly low, about 0.03–0.1 μSv per scan. This is the equivalent to a couple minutes of background exposure or eating a banana. A flight new york to LA is 40μSv.
That radiation isn’t going to harm you, let’s not get on that dumb train.
It’s still degrading. Stand on this platform for no reason other than fucking spread your legs and raise your hands like the worthless criminal you are while we x-ray and photograph you, asshole.
You made a mistake at the end there, it should be “photograph your asshole”
So we are just going to ignore the fact that there is literally no way to see if a person is trying to sneak something to the plane without x-ray or inspection?
Just for the record, we are removing our shoes during the inspection because of the Richard Reid incident.
We are removing laptop from the baggage because some people tried (and even succeed) to sneak the explosive devices in them.
We are being x-raed because of hundreds of people tried to sneak different things and substances in their internals.
So yes, I believe that every person MUST be treated as a criminal in Airport, because one person is enought to take hundreds of lives.
Just a regular old metal detector is all that’s required. It’s 1980s tech which doesn’t require a 9-11 era bs jobs program to go with it.
What happens when someone opens up full auto or suicide vests that 3,000 person densely packed line?
This is about security for the .1% and their property. Not us.
It is true, that the chance of being the victim of a terrorist attack is very low (especially on the plane), but there is a problem:
IF terrorists are already ON the plane and their plan is to take it down, the death rate (if the attack is successful) will likely be 100%, because there is no way out of the plane that is crashing from 30,000 feet. Average plane can carry 200-300 people.
Now let’s look at history examples of the situation you are describing:
- 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting
- Weapon: Glock 21
- Victims number: 90 people in the line
- Outcome: 3 deaths (including the perpetrator), 5 injured
- 1974 Los Angeles International Airport bombing
- Weapon: Bomb
- Victims: around 50 in the lobby
- Outcome: 3 deaths, 36 injured
- 1975 LaGuardia Airport bombing
- Weapon: Bomb
- Victims: Unknown
- Outcome: 11 deaths, 74 injured
- 2019 Naval Air Station Pensacola shooting
- Weapon: Glock 45
- Victims: Unknown
- Outcome: 4 deaths (including the perpetrator), 8 injured
I could list more examples, but the point is that death rate during terrorist attack in the airport is significantly lower than on the plane, but that .1% you mentioned will always (or at least in most cases) end in hundreds of deaths, and the actual number of dead people (the count by souls) globally will not stay the same with the percentage rate (still that 0.1%) when the number of planes in the air increases year by year. What I am trying to say, is that we MUST improve security in airports to keep the number of dead souls on the same level. And yes, it will include x-ray (which btw will not have a harmful affect on you, because the X-ray machine’s run time and radiation is so low that you’re more likely to get radiation sickness from your cell phone than from a scan.)
I think we’re talking about different .1%s
Ok, please explain what you actually meant. I may have misunderstood something in your comment.
That the security changes after 9/11 weren’t intended to reduce civilian casualties but to limit the ability to kill or maim elected officials and members of the oligarchy or damage federal property and corporate architecture.
If isis employed the same level of planning on an attack on the security line they would likely make 9/11 numbers. That’s without the investment of tickets of flight schools etc.
And that’s not even considering simultaneous attacks at different airports.
- 2002 Los Angeles International Airport shooting
I vote that TSA just stands outside your house and puts you through that every day you choose to go outside. The rest of the world would be a safer place.
I think they should come inside for a surprise inspection, just to keep you on your toes.
Bedtime patrol will check up on you…to make sure you haven’t been moistening yourselves with any unauthorized substances.
All bottles lager than 100ml will be confiscated.
Itd be easier for everyone if we instead brought all the people to a central place, some big building or walled camp where they could live and be searched constantly.
They made me stand there for a second and hold my hands out, it was the worst experience of my life. I don’t even feel human anymore. I finally know how the Uighur people must feel.
If we all chose the free TSA massage we could probably get rid of the radiation treatment
There’s no way anyone could tell if a person got the so-called “radiation treatment” or not. Not even if one could analyse every single atom in the human body, because there are no changes due to that process.
I dont have to come in with a rock hard dick, but they have to touch it.
Ain’t gay if it’s tsa
Meanwhile, whatever no name corp has a fully loaded container of whatever material in the cargo hold under the aircraft that probably wasn’t scanned, screened or checked because the airport, airline and loading companies all work on a system of trust in order to ship and load everything as fast as possible.
Ah, classic David Dees.
I got stuck on “mole-station” for far too long before I figured it all out…
Or, if you’re disabled, you get both
And it has Derek Smalls in the backgroung waiting for his turn.
Absolutely brilliant.
