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."
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: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
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.
Bullshit answer from TSA (Score:5, Informative)
See: http://roguesci.org/chemlab/energetics/acetone_peroxide.html [roguesci.org]
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?
Re:Liquids and a /. car analogy. (Score:3, Informative)
40% will burn, when preheated (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:What about the rest of the world? (Score:3, Informative)
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 you take them off, as the nail also set of the detectors.
FWIW I fly in and out of CDG 3 - 4 times monthly.
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
Re:Mountain moving. (Score:2, Informative)
If the TSA wanted to change, they should look at their screening process to keep from hiring monkeys like this guy.
Re:Mountain moving. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No win situation (Score:3, Informative)
(extra points for wearing an Afro wig, and mincing about like Richard Simmons once you drop the trench coat.)
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: