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Comments: 370 +- IT: TSA Opens Blog — You Can Finally Complain on Friday February 01 2008, @08:17PM
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ScuttleMonkey
on Friday February 01 2008, @08:17PM
from the wretched-hive-of-scum-and-villainy dept.
from the wretched-hive-of-scum-and-villainy dept.
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I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The TSA has opened their own blog. According to Ars Technica, it's beginning to attract complaints from people who are sick of removing their shoes and having to forfeit their drinks. 'The blog's first post has 131 comments so far, almost all of which fall into one of two categories: TSA employees who got the internal memo about the blog launch and dropped by to post positive things, and citizens who are really mad about the liquids screening policy.'"
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Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Comments (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why? You can say what you want (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
And, of course, water. I suggested that the simple solution is for the agent to request that you drink some of the water, and then the agent sniff the bottle. If anyone here knows of a colourless, odourless explosive you can safely drink, I'd like to be apprised of it. They posted my comment unedited.
Why don't you bother to check it out before making such an uninformed comment? Oh, right, this is /.
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Re:Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the idea of censorship...
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What is the purpose of drinking the water?
Anyone who is willing to blow themselves up on an airplane thinking they will receive 108 virgins is surely willing to suffer an hour worth of discomfort before the flight or a trip to vomit in the bathroom.
Fingers crossed (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, I'm guessing this restraint won't be evident.
Re:Fingers crossed (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact it is such a good thing, I can't believe they thought of it themselves.
Has this got anything to do with Bruce Schneier's interview [schneier.com] with the TSA head, Kip Hawley?
Regardless of what people think about the TSA, this move is to be applauded. I hope it expands even further into other areas of government.
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Re:Fingers crossed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fingers crossed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fingers crossed (Score:5, Insightful)
There are already plenty of high-level, high-profile, already-accepted-as-smart people saying how completely fucked up TSA is, and TSA isn't listening to them, so why would they listen to us no matter how polite we are? Maybe it would be a good thing for them to hear how much every man-in-the-street hates them too. A lot of things come down to popularity, and an unpopular agency might have some serious problems staying around. And what will gain more press: a blog with a few well-reasoned comments or one packed with vitriol? Remember, there has never been a story on the news that said "3 million people in enjoyed a nice quiet night at home yesterday." I would love to see a story on the 11:00 news that say "Agency posts blog; 99% of comments all say what assholes they are." That would just make more people aware of how fucked up TSA is and maybe eventually lead to some change.
So yeah, go ahead and post some choice Bruce Schneier quotes if you want. But if you don't want to do that, FLAME ON!
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Planes will NEVER be hijacked the same way as 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Planes will NEVER be hijacked the same way as 9 (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll go on record as saying that in the United States there will never, ever, be another successful hijacking. I don't know about you, but if I saw someone stand up and begin the hijacking "process", I'd start the "process" of eliminating the threat.
And I suspect I'd have many passengers coming over my back to assist in the effort.
Even the old ladies and 10 yr olds.
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Little do you realize... (Score:5, Funny)
(Anonymous for obvious reasons, I like flying)
Honeypot (Score:4, Funny)
Silly question from a foreigner (Score:3, Insightful)
In the same way that a local police chief can't decide what the state speed limit is (although he might decide how anally to enforce it), I can't believe that the head of the TSA has a lot of freedom when it comes to screening:
Richard Reid? Off come the shoes.
Alleged binary liquid plot? No bottled water onboard for you.
It seems (from a perspective from across the sea) entirely reactive, and a result of the current political climate. That's not to say that US airport security wasn't atrociously lax pre-2001, it was; but things aren't going to become any easier until something rather more dramatic occurs than an official in a government agency starting a blog.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Long story short (Score:5, Insightful)
If passengers wish secure flights, the airlines will provide security checks, different airlines might even offer different security levels to cater from the person in a rush to the paranoid.
What if someday, I went to the doorstep of a DHS officer and start requiring every one entering, including his friends and family to strip naked, out of security concern for him. What if, even worst, I decided to charge the service to him, by threatening to put him in jail if he doesn't pay for the service or comply with the security checks. Hey I'd be arrested.
The government is doing the exact same thing and guess what : they're just a bunch of people. They are not different from other people. Just because they're elected by a majority and have a nice nametag saying "Hi, I'm from the government" doesn't really give them super-moral powers. If a normal person is not allowed to do something, there's no reason people from the government should.
With a monopoly on law enforcement, it is natural that the quality of enforcement lowers and the price rises. I mean... if everyone is forced to buy your security services, you're going to charge for anything. Hey why not protect people from nail clippers in airplanes ! Good !
A fair offering by the TSA (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong Two Categories (Score:5, Funny)
1) TSA employees who got the internal memo about the blog launch and dropped by to post positive things, and citizens who are really mad about the liquids screening policy and
2) people about to added to the no-fly list.
Still not preventing effective hijack tools (Score:5, Interesting)
"The only thing you need to hijack a plane is a heart of stone and a baby (which almost every plane seems to have). You pick up the baby, and break a finger on the baby, and say either we're going where i want or I break another one. Guaranteed reroute of plane because no one likes hurt/screaming babies, and no baby screams more than one with a broken finger. No one can tackle and hogtie you because then you drop the baby."
How does bag screening, no liquids, shoe checks, etc. prevent that from happening?
Re:Still not preventing effective hijack tools (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately that probably fine with them, the more people they can keep from traveling the easier their job gets.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:4, Informative)
That doesn't make Heathrow's policies right, but anybody connecting through there is just as likely to say "those crazy Brits" as "those crazy Americans."
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Today, while waiting at a busy bus stop on my way home from work, a deranged looking black Muslim man wearing a large back pack came up, kneeled on the corner, and prayed. It made me realize two things: 1) being a Muslim in the US must be tough, because 2) everybody (including me, unfortunately) went OH SHIT when they saw this.
In retrospect, I was in no danger the entire time. But my perception of safety was ruined momentarily.
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, if you want to bring down a plane, it is vastly more effective to simply smuggle some mercury on board (doesn't take much). Make a fake battery (AA) and use a 3 volt lithium AA in place of the other battery, thus two AAs gives you three volts and proper operation of the device (cheap digicam, flashlight, vibrator, whatever). Once in flight, open the fake battery and hold the plane hostage.
Even more effective: grab a fire extinguisher while in flight. hit people with it, bash in the cockpit door with it.
Or decompress the plane by bashing out windows.
Or take Krav Maga (sp?) or some other suitable "hostile" martial art.
Or claim to have a bomb even though you don't (still will terrify the plane).
Or smuggle a gun in.
Or Smuggle a knife in.
Or use some JB weld, a magazine, and a metal spoon (need a handle after all) and make a knife.
Or rupture all those butane lighters you bought after security in the concourse and make a fuel air bomb in the lav.
Etc.
Etc.
Point is that there are a million ways to take down a plane, or terrorize a plane, what have you. Almost all of them are simpler than a binary explosive.
-nB
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But the falling dollar keeps 'em coming.
Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
It WAS safe and convenient. Now it's no safer, and something less than convenient. You think selling $3 bottles of water on the other side of security is preventing terrorism?
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1997 I travelled back from Japan, and brought with me a boxed Samurai sword (not sharpened). People wondered how i'd get it home. It rode in the overhead bin.
Last time I travelled through the US, I had to throw out 50ml of cough syrup.
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:4, Funny)
Personally I think they should do like they do with the seat cushions in case of a water landing.
In case of a terrorist highjacking your armrest converts into a blunt weapon. To use just raise it above your head and with a swift downward motion bash the highjacker in the head. Repeat as necessary.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Do nothing. Now that the rules of hijacking have changed just enjoying watching Americans tear the limbs off of any would-be hijackers.
2. Seal the cockpit.
Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Do nothing. Now that the rules of hijacking have changed just enjoying watching Americans tear the limbs off of any would-be hijackers.
2. Seal the cockpit.
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Informative)
It'd be nice to think that there was a golden age of air travel when nobody wanted to use aircraft as political weapons, but that only existed prior to the 1960s when air travel became affordable for the masses. There is NO period in time when airline travel was not subject to some kind of danger. Planes have always been targeted by hijackers and bombers because it's a strong political symbol that is guaranteed to generate news coverage.
For the record, metal detectors and security screening at airports started long before 9/11, and dangers to air travel started long before then as well.
In 1976, Cubana 455 [wikipedia.org], with 73 people on board, was brought down by a bomb.
In 1985, Air India Flight 182 [wikipedia.org], with 329 people on board, was brought down by a bomb.
In 1988, Pam-Am Flight 103 [wikipedia.org], with 259 people on board, was brought down by a bomb.
In 2000, Ahmed Ressam [wikipedia.org] pleaded guilty to trying to bomb Los Angeles International airport.
May I also remind you that, just in the year 1970, there were at least 13 attempted hijackings JUST TO CUBA [wikipedia.org]:
And, even after 9/11, idiots [wikipedia.org] have tried to bring down commercial aircraft with bombs. They just happen to have been royally incompetent.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It'd be nice to think that there was a golden age of air travel when nobody wanted to use aircraft as political weapons, but that only existed prior to the 1960s
Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:4, Insightful)
Deaths in autos? Part of your ho-hum morning traffic report.
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't do anything.
Air travel is one of the safest modes of transportation, and that was BEFORE all the new inconveniences. Nothing has changed. 9/11 didn't change that. And the new procedures and inconveniences won't stop it from happening again. The biggest and really only real improvement they've made is improving the security of the cockpit. (And -that- didn't inconvenience anybody.)
All this bullshit about terrorists sneaking a liquid onto a plane and blowing it up is bullshit. The 'terrorists' could just as easily detonate bombs and kill large amounts of people by setting of their bombs -at- the security checkpoints in the airport or getting into a ballgame, or anywhere else. Sir, liquids are banned...please remove your shoes. Sir? KA-BOOM!
And what are they going to do to stop that? Put security checkpoints before the security checkpoints??
What would I do to make america safer? I'd stop fixating on paranoid fear reactions, and spend my time improving relations with muslims, resolving our differences, helping their countries become prosperous, healing the rifts between us.
There will always be extremists. And people will always die. But I don't want to live in an isolated padded prison cell and forfeit all liberty for absolute safety.
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Madness! You'll never get anywhere with clear thinking!
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I have been rather saddened by all the rhetoric about "taking the tough decisions" thrown around casually by the likes of Bush and Blair post-9/11. The really tough decision would have been not to commit vast resources to fighting something that is a genuine but ultimately small threat, but to reserve them for other, realistically greater needs, and to stand up before the people the day after the attacks and give a single, simple speech saying that while the losses should be mourned we will never give in to terrorism by changing our way of life out of fear.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:4, Insightful)
You confuse dialogue with appeasement.
I didn't talk about appeasing Bin Laden. More critically (because Bin Laden is a small part of a larger problem, and has clearly been forgotten by the US) why do so many Muslims think he's a great guy? What can we do to stem the flow of new recruits? Maybe taking away their reasons for joining would help. If they have legitimate grievances, we should hear them and respond. It's not appeasement, it's smart strategy.
Al Qaeda only exist because people keep joining them. Stop the new recruits (and kill the current bozos) and the group will no longer exist. It's not about giving people whatever they want, but engaging in some diplomacy, the first step of which is a conversation.
Hence my comment on 'starting a dialogue.'
This isn't hard, but it requires standing up to the people who prefer to pick up a gun than pick up a telephone. Given the success in Afghanistan and Iraq, I think it's time we evaluated other options as well as the current "kill them all" one.
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
a. Because of all of the new security measures.
or
b. Because passengers know the rules have changed and are likely to dismember anyone attempting a hijack.
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Re:Haven't flown since before 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop going out of your way to piss off a large portion of the world's fanatics with your foreign policy.
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Re:Do you think they really care? (Score:4, Interesting)
Second, it's kind of silly for you to state that you've only flown ONCE in the past 6-7 years, and then proceed to make comments about the entire TSA. I, for instance, fly three or four times a year, including a couple international trips. My experience with the screeners has been generally positive. Usually they are quite cordial, though I have run into a few unfriendly ones. I've only been taken aside for extra screening once - and I'm an Arab with a beard.
Since 9/11, I've flown through CDG. The security there was rude and somewhat intimidating. Since 9/11, I've flown through ATL, Sea-Tac, JFK, a bunch of regional airports. The TSA folks at the smaller airports are actually quite nice people. I've seen a lot of improvement in their operation over the past few years as well in terms of getting people through quickly and clearly explaining what will be expected of people. I don't mind having to take off my shoes, and having to keep my liquids in a plastic bag helps me pack lighter. Make the best of it; it's not that bad.
I've been through Israeli security as well. You try being an Arab crossing that border when the IDF soldier at passport control is having a bad day, and you'll never complain about the TSA again!
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Re:Do you think they really care? (Score:5, Interesting)
The man who has flown three or four times a year mocks the man who's flown once in a few years. Nice.
I fly regularly - and when I mean regularly, I mean twice a week. I'm a consultant and I fly out every Monday and fly back every Thursday. Sometimes, I fly more.
And let me tell you that TSA is a bloody joke. The people who handle things look like the kind of people who wouldn't be able to get a minimum wage job at the local Walmart.
You don't mind having to take off your shoes or carrying liquids because - oh wait - you fly 3 or 4 times a year. When you have to fly every other day, it gets old. And oh yeah, the luggage handling is just wonderful. So, every damn time, I have to check in my luggage so that I can take my toiletries with me and risk losing my luggage to who-knows-where.
And oh, just today, I flew out of O'Hare. The idiots there wanted to know why I had two laptops. Because it's my damn job, and it's none of their business. But no, good luck explaining to them.
Take off my shoes? Wonderful. When you get an athlete's foot infection every two months, let me know how it goes.
And I am of east-Indian descent - good luck being a brown man and flying out twice or four times a week. Your probability of meeting those jerks (the "rude" and "intimidating" ones that you spoke of) just shot up. And guess what? I can tell you right now that at least half of TSA is full of arrogant, racist losers who shouldn't be allowed a job, let alone one handling security.
We've a system where you can't even transport a bottle of wine safely. The one time I tried checking in some wine, the wonderful TSA opened my bags, checked out the bottles of wine, didn't repack them the way they were packed and left a note saying that they were snooping around. And oh, I opened my luggage to find brilliant red wine all over my clothes. It's a wonderful feeling, let me tell you. What is this, stone age?
And guess what? Most of the people who travel regularly do so on business. And they do it often. After some time, it just gets old, annoying and plain ridiculous. That's because Israel faces *real* terrorist threats on a daily basis - not a once in a blue moon thing that's used as an excuse to have people do stupid things, and make a mockery of security in the name of safety.
Maybe you should try traveling a little more often and see what that does to your wonderful feeling of "make the best of it, it's not that bad."
(An irritated frequent flyer)
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