TSA Changes Screening Based on Blog Suggestion 279
hhavensteincw writes "Less than a week after it launched a new blog aimed at gathering suggestions from air travelers to improve airport security processes, the Transportation Security Administration changed a practice where some screeners were requiring passengers to remove all electronics, including Blackberries, iPods, and cords from carry-on luggage. Seems the TSA didn't know this was going on, and after the question was raised on its blog, it clamped down on the practice. The TSA also provided a detailed description of their reasoning behind the liquids policy. We discussed the opening of the blog last week."
Didn't know? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Didn't know? (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is the level of coordination to protect U.S. citizens from being blown up, then I think that there's a big problem with this agency.
Imagine it. They found out about this from a blog. They don't appear to do regular reviews of field offices (else they'd have known about this practice). What else is slipping through the net? Terrorists?
What a monumental and sterling example of bureaucratic incompetence.
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Re:Didn't know? (Score:4, Informative)
I flew quite a bit back then, and on one trip went through security at at least three airports. Each of them had different "shoe rules", and at one I was pulled aside for additional screening because I did not remove my shoes. I argued with the supervisor, but of course nothing came of it. Two weeks later I flew again and actually had the TSA printout with me when I went through the same airport. Did not matter. Argued again with the supervisor.
So I emailed the TSA about my encounters and they sent me back a generic email saying that each airport had the ability to pretty much do whatever in the world they felt like doing.
Part of the response:
Re:Didn't know? (Score:5, Informative)
Just remember: head office didn't know that they considered these things to be dangerous. Let's say, for a second, that the devices were a danger. Why would only a few local offices checking them and not everyone?
Make you feel any safer, knowing that they are too disorganized to communicate concerns about what they felt were risks?
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If the devices were dangerous "small things" that "make it under the radar", why the heck weren't they communicating their concerns to someone?
For that matter, if the main office believes that this is not a threat, then how did the local offices come to believe that there was a risk caused by these devices?
Re:Didn't know? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I can't work out whether you are defending them or damning them. That really is a most confusing post.
Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
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What is this strange substance? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What is this strange substance? (Score:5, Funny)
They read Slashdot?
Re:What is this strange substance? (Score:4, Funny)
Which is why they think that only a terrorist would carry them in his luggage.
Liquids (Score:2, Insightful)
What always gets me is the fact I cannot take 100ml of a liquid from outside the airport but I can buy a few Molotov cocktails worth of alcohol in duty free before I get on the plane. Fair enough I might not be able to take the plane down but I could certainly do a lot of damage to the plane and passengers.
Maybe the screeners were right to make people remove electronic goods? Surely I could string together several iPod/laptop batteries to make an effective Taser? Look at all the reports of exploding/ignit
Re:Liquids and a /. car analogy. (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, stronger alcohols (80-90%) will ignite. And for that reason you'll have a tough job taking them on board a plane (and this goes back way before 9/11). You could possibly try and use aftershave / perfume, but the overpowering smell would probably alert people before you get a chance to make a molotov cocktail.
There simply is no way of covering every single eventuality and still ensuring an economically viable transport system. The whole point in airline security is to prevent some of the obvious risks.
The
Re:Liquids and a /. car analogy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you spend over 15 minutes in front of the door fumbling with the multiple locks and alarms, you call in locksmith twice a month to let you in, and you got arrested twice for attempt to get inside your own car.
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Getting a new car would in this context would mean moving to a different country.
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Those represent two very differnt types of dangers - someone armed with a knife would be a lot easier for passengers and flight crews to subdue, even with makeshift weapons such as pens, laptops, and fire extinguishers etc. Given today's climate I doubt passengers would be passive anymore in the face of such a threat - witness what happened to the guy who tried to
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So, what's the point of banning me from bringing a bottle of mineral water? Currently it seems that the point is to improve profits for the in-zone shops by ensuring a form of monopoly there, and that's it.
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Re:Liquids and a /. car analogy. (Score:5, Funny)
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Apparently, one guy in Germany followed your advice and almost ended up with a Darwin Award after downing a 1 liter bottle of vodka.
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40% will burn, when preheated (Score:5, Informative)
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Perhaps I'm just a sick, sick man.
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The given reasons (August 2006 Heathrow plot) for the liquids restrictions are bullshit. The real reasons are highly classified.
Re:Liquids (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Liquids (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MacGyver? (Score:4, Funny)
No win situation (Score:2)
Re:No win situation (Score:5, Informative)
What reasonable suggestions come by, TSA will implement it.
Unless TSA wants to be scrapped completely(being a creation of Bush), they will continue to work with passengers.
TSA does not know everything that goes on in each airport. Its management by exception. they set broad guidelines for safety and leave it at that.
Airport TSA contractors then try to fulfill those outlines, and use whatever means necessary to achieve it.
If it involves strip-searching lindsay each time, so be it is the attitude of contractors. And TSA itself pays them based on the non-incidents they have. So if a contractor was pretty lax and allowed Reid to blow up something, then TSA would not only cut them out of the gracy train, but also blacklist them, thus making sure the contractor stays in line.
Pretty much every government office works that way.
The good point is TSA is taking suggestions seriously enough to warrant direct interruption in contractor jobs to make sure passengers are not complaining.
To what extent this direct intervention would go on, is the question. It will stop when someone gets through security and then TSA comes down hard on even clothes (So the nudist flight company has a field day), or berefit of any incidents, we may even go back to the 1999 era slowly.
Re:No win situation (Score:4, Funny)
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(extra points for wearing an Afro wig, and mincing about like Richard Simmons once you drop the trench coat.)
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FInally I am standing in line, barefoot, really short shorts and a tank top. My small backpack and sandles where going through the machine.
The guy looked at my ticket and start to motion for me to step said and I said.
I going to keep wearing less and less until I am naked or the stop searching me."
He covered his motion and just asked by to continue and have a nice day."
After which I went into t
I don't see it as a suggestion board (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, the passengers can alert the TSA to practices that don't seem right and its up to the TSA to find out why. Like the part about removing electronics and such from bags. It simply wasn't policy. Yet the TSA as a whole cannot know what every airport out of the ordinary unless there is some easy to access place to get that information. Its even better that it comes from someone other than their own people. I bet the local screene
Re:I don't see it as a suggestion board (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No win situation (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are European and don't want to visit the States occasionally, or if you're American and don't want to visit Europe, then I would suggest that you need to expand your world view.
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Re:No win situation (Score:4, Informative)
While regularly scheduled passenger service is not available, there are places you can go to seek passenger accommodations aboard cargo vessels. It's not The Love Boat, but it didn't look nearly as uncomfortable as steerage^Wcoach on a passenger plane.
Note to
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What, you don't think they have 6000 year old rock formations in Europe?
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And for me, I think Vegas would be a bad idea because I'm one for the gambler's ruin. For example when I play poker, if I've not played for a while I just keep betting/raising, rather than folding even when I know my chances
RTFS (Score:5, Insightful)
No policies were changed as a result of blog comments.
What *did* happen was that a few bloggers indicated that TSA employees were searching bags in a manner that is prohibited by the TSA's own rules.
Given just how much organizations like the TSA love rules and procedures, the fact that they clamped down isn't a surprise at all. Although it's a big step for the TSA to actually be accountable to its own rules, we still have a long way to come.
If I walk into Safeway/Kroger/Food Lion, and tell the manager that one of their cashiers is stealing money out of the register, there's no doubt that he'll respond immediately. If I walk in and tell the manager that his store is dirty, and that prices are too high, I doubt I'll receive any sympathy.
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Of course. My response would be "You want us to do MORE work, and then LOWER our prices? Sure. And we'll change the name of our store to NoprofitFairytaleLand."
Your complaints have to be reasonable in ord
little woosh. Not a WOOSH, just a woosh. (Score:2)
What about the rest of the world? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about the rest of the world? (Score:5, Informative)
No it didn't. Except for the laptop, which you had to take out of its bag and put into the xray tunnel in a separate tray for years now I never had to take out any electronics out of my bag, or coat (iPod, 2 cell phones, power adapter, cables, whathaveyou...). I also never had to take off my shoes or other such shit.
This involved a minimum of 80 inter-European flight segments in the last couple of years, involving the airports of Düsseldorf, Prague, Zurich, Amsterdam and Vienna. All pretty sophisticated, modern airports.
I can imagine though that different rules are applied on flights from Europe to the US.
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Well, I can attest to the fact that I have had to remove belt, shoes and all electronics on various occasions, and in all cases it was happening to everyone in the queue. With the exception of flights through Paris CDG and flights to the UK (where they seem to like shoes off, probably because the shoe-bomber was on a flight from the UK) these were all flights outside of or going to or from Europe, not internal.
Internal flights in Europe do seem to be different. I only had to take my laptop out at Gatwick,
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CDG is a huge airport [look at it on GE] - in various stages of upgrades, etc.
Your mileage definitely varies depending on your sector of the airport, with D probably being the worst, and the one you came through.
The other areas are surprisingly intuiative.
In regards to shoes and belts: you can opt to leave your belt on, but more often than not, the clasp sets off the detectors.
Shoes are a mixed policy depending on the type of shoe. If it's got a heel, normally yo
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Yes, I noticed there was a lot of building work and whatnot going on. I went through 2E and 2B. 2E was quite nice once inside, getting in was the problem :)
I do remember going through one of the (now older) areas of CDG before the expansion and it was as you say intuitive, so it probably is just the ongoing work in the new buildings.
With shoes and belts, I think it's like with the TSA, security controllers with semi-independent policies. My shoes don't have any metal and don't set off the detectors, but
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Without being too assumptive, I've come across the same problems: the first time I lined up without a ticket, I got the same story.
You politely tell them that your ticket is electronic, and it's not necessary, and they let you through.
A lot of NonEU'ers seem to have a lot of problems in CDG - I saw no less than 3 yanks getting chewed out by airline/checkin staff yesterday.
I guess the thing to realise with the french is that they're super s
Bullshit answer from TSA (Score:5, Informative)
See: http://roguesci.org/chemlab/energetics/acetone_peroxide.html [roguesci.org]
Undue cynicism? (Score:2)
Clearly, you're quite knowledgeable regarding the complexity of making a bomb. But that complexity, from what I can gather, is precisely the point (according to the TSA blog post) of restricting the liquids in secure areas of airport terminals.
From the post in question:
Take two bottles onto the plane? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the argument went something along the lines of:
Q: Why can't we take more than 100ml of liquid on board?
A: Because its possible you might mix up a binary liquid explosive on the plane!
Q: So why can't several people work together and each bring 100ml of binary explosive makin's?
A: Because you need the other people to carry the ice bath, liquid nitrogen, bunsen burner, pipette, magnetic stirrer, thermostatically controlled heater, fume cupboard and all the other lab gear you need to successfully mix up a binary liquid explosive; so making them carry the ingredients in several 100ml bottles is going to be the last straw that makes them abandon their dastardly plan!
Q: But they could all bring on small quantities pre-mixed explosives?
A: No, because liquid explosives are too unstable to carry pre-mixed.
Q: So you're confirming that its nigh-on impossible to blow up a plane with liquid explosive?
A: (mumbles) - we've found several bad 'uns manufacturing TATP.
Q: Correction - you found pieces of several people who attempted to make TATP in the comfort of their own homes - oh, PS, TATP isn't a liquid.
A: Oh look - butterfly!
Re:Take two bottles onto the plane? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what they are saying is that with top of the line equipment, even their experts had a tough job of it. I'm not sure how this helps their argument at all.
Problem is with hijacking, not bombing. (Score:5, Insightful)
If hijacking is the real threat, then the cockpit is what needs to be secured. Have it lock automatically prior to boarding, and have it unlock automatically after the plane is emptied. If terrorists can't get to the cockpit, then they cannot take over a craft.
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Don't forget SAM's (Score:2)
The true threat with aircraft security is hijacking. A hijacker can take over an aircraft and use the plane as a missile. As someone pointed out earlier, if the goal was to just kill people, terrorists could just blow up prior to reaching the security check point or suicide bomb a crowd somewhere else. There are plenty of places to just blow up that would kill more people that can fit on a plane.
Don't forget SAM's. For some reason, & you may call me crazy, but I can't imagine that it would be terribly difficult for an organized crime network to get hold of some SAM's. Despite the country's efforts for trying to make me feel safe (through some idiotic thinking that fearmongering will make us 'feel safer'), if the russian mafia wanted a SAM in the United States, they could get it; if they happen to be in a populated area (e.g. New York, Chicago), they could launch it from one of a number of pa
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creating a widespread fear of flying would be something that would benefit a terrorist
Creating a widespread fear of going to the movies, riding on trains/buses, visiting shopping malls, sending your kids to school or going to sporting events would also benefit a terrorist.
Should we break out the gestapo and start making people take off their shoes to do any of the above mentioned activities? Where does it end? I'm more afraid of my own Government at this point then I am of any terrorists. The worse thing a terrorist can do to me is take away my life. My own Government seems to be wor
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Airline travel made amusing (Score:5, Interesting)
Long story short, I got really fed up with the way they handled my carry on, and insist on going through my personal belongings. I fly out of a local airport, and I KNOW that they know me (they see me once a week) and I know them. One day when I had time to spare, I went to the airport early on, and had sweet revenge. I had a laptop in my carry on... along with 3 rather vigorous vibrators, rigged to turn on at full speed when they opened the bag. Inside the bag I also had a homosexual porno magazine, along with a few tubes of personal lubricant, condoms, and latex gloves. Apparently dildo vibrators do not show up in that exact shape on the X-Ray machine, but the motors, wires and controllers, along with the batteries, sure do.
Security: "Can we open your bag?"
Me: "As if I have an option?"
Security: "Sir, this is security. We must open your bag for security purposes."
Me: "Like I said, I don't have a choice now do I. Just make sure you put it all back in place."
The following expression of the officer, along with his mixed reactions as to what to do next, were pure Kodak moments. I really, really would have paid good money to get a copy of the surveillance camera video!! He first tried to close it and just return it to me, then he realized that he better check it out since he was the one that said it had to be done. I think he took about 0.8 seconds of a "thorough" inspection, then closed the bag. However, that wouldn't turn the dildos off, and they were still buzzing away, quite audibly. I gave him the "turn them off. All of them." look, and he fumbled again attempting to get all 3 turned off. Next Monday I fly out again. I can't wait to see what they'll do this time.
Re:Airline travel made amusing (Score:5, Funny)
Ask you for a date?
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Liquids: BS (Score:4, Informative)
Was this a real threat? Yes, there was a very serious plot to blow up planes using liquid explosives in bombs that would have worked to bring down aircraft.
And this is utter horseshit. If someone walked onto a plane with a water bottle filled with nitroglycerin, it would blow up when they tossed it through the XRay machine. So, they would have to make the explosives on the plane, and one of my best friends is a professional chemist and she said "Bullshit". You'd have to hole yourself up in the bathroom for a very long time with a magnetic stirring plate, a very precise dropper, dry ice, and a number of other bottles cups and things, and then in a very programmatic manner make the stuff, all while heaving and bucking on a jet liner and being exposed to some very nasty orders and chemicals. In short: it won't happen and isn't gong to happen and the threats about it are pure bullshit.
The TSA is just there to make people think the gov't is doing something about terrorism, and to keep people afraid. In fact, it's all bullshit, and a way to funnel huge sums of money into the military/industrial complex and keep the nightmare train rolling down the rails to an oblivion as it is headed directly off a cliff.
RS
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If your goal is to take down an airplane, why are you limiting yourself to explosives? Just because that's what everyone else has used before?
The oz limit reduces your options and your effectiveness.
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Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Kudos to the TSA to spend the time and resources to do something like this. It blows my mind that, in my opinion, a government agency did something practical for once.
The TSA has NO policies (Score:2)
On liquids (Score:4, Insightful)
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Ban pens (Score:2)
Previously Covered on Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
A Salient Presumption (Score:2)
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You missed the point. The whole idea is to limit the amount of liquids that could potentially be explosive or mixed together to be explosives because they CANNOT or DO NOT actually test for actual explosives. What other reason could there be?
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Re:Mountain moving. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mountain moving. (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is one of the reasons I left Illinois.
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Maybe in a lot of cases is has as much to do with the attitude of the person being screened as the screener.
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What's stupid is treating an expired ID as being a lack of ID. If your face matches the face on the ID, the government knew who you were at one time. It's not like they just suddenly forget about your driving record if you fail to renew your license, so they shouldn't forget who you are for identification purposes, either. There are no words for how dumb that policy is.
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If the TSA wanted to change, they should look at their screening process to keep from
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This after I thought he had motioned me to come throught the metal detector.
Same thing happened to me at Houston Hobby airport the other day. Big fat TSA woman motioned me through the metal detector by holding her paw out sideways and moving her fingers, while jabbering with her TSA buddy in the next line so I walked through - until she barked "Don't come through. That's why I have my hand up. It means stop."
Well excuse the shit outta me. It's not my fault you're too lazy to hold your hand UP in the universal sign for stop. Why she was moving her fingers, I'll never know. But ther
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I've flown to Langley (VA), Atlanta, Huntsville (AL), LAX, Nashville, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Sioux Falls (SD) and Omaha quite a few times over the past few years, and the good experiences far outweigh the bad.
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Then, just as you go through security, the customs people insist that you take the laptop out of the
What beef do you have with Jews and Baptists? (Score:2)
Re:Right..I'm going to get the Internet banned!!!! (Score:2)