TSA Screeners Can't Detect Weapons (and They Never Could) (arstechnica.com) 349
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: TSA screeners' ability to detect weapons in luggage is "pitiful," according to classified reports on the security administration's ongoing story of failure and fear. "In looking at the number of times people got through with guns or bombs in these covert testing exercises it really was pathetic. When I say that I mean pitiful," said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), speaking Tuesday during a House Oversight hearing concerning classified reports (PDF) from federal watchdogs (PDF). "Just thinking about the breaches there, it's horrific," he added. A leaked classified report this summer found that as much as 95 percent of contraband, like weapons and explosives, got through during clandestine testings. Lynch's comments were in response to the classified report's findings.
Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:4, Insightful)
... giving you the feeling that your government cares and reacted to 9/11 and other threats is.
Peter.
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Informative)
Yup. As Bruce Schneir refers to it, "security theater".
Note that the weapons the hijackers allegedly used were ILLEGAL TO CARRY ON PLANES before then, and they got them on in other ways.
mark
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Security Theater is nothing more than the Wizard of Oz. The problem is, nobody learned that lesson, in spite of nearly universal knowledge of that movie's pivotal scene.
The problem is, the security theater only makes it more difficult, and now we're finding out it actually doesn't make it all much more difficult.
IMHO the chances of hijacking a plane became much less likely to be successful after 9/11, because they broke the cardinal rule of hijacking, and turned the plane into a weapon. People on planes already know they are dead if a hijacker takes over, and will respond accordingly.
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Informative)
The TSA has not stopped ANY attempts at bombing or hijacking airliners since 9/11. Various other methods have, but the TSA has been singularly useless.
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Insightful)
As I have pointed out here before I have accidentally brought banned items through security without any real effort in concealing them, they were left in coat pockets, and the TSA never once found them. Yet every time I bring my camera through I get to play 20 questions with the otherwise unemployable.
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:4, Interesting)
As I have pointed out here before I have accidentally brought banned items through security without any real effort in concealing them, they were left in coat pockets, and the TSA never once found them. Yet every time I bring my camera through I get to play 20 questions with the otherwise unemployable.
It's funny that you use that example because the last time I flew they pulled me aside to explain the extra camera battery that was literally right next to a pocket knife that they didn't notice. After being grilled (bumblingly questioned, really) for five minutes, they finally accepted my explanation for the battery, put it back next to the knife and let me go.
On the way back, they didn't seem to notice either the knife or the battery.
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, .22 casings would make sense. Think of the nailgun used to put a nail in concrete, not your typical wood nailgun.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ram... [homedepot.com]
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats me too, last time I flew was in Sept 2004. In 2005, I turned down a pretty good job that I'd actually gotten a tentative offer on. The job entailed about 25% travel, and after much thought, I told them, "Thanks but no thanks...". The manager I'd have been working for told me they were having trouble filling the position, as I was the 3rd offer they'd made where the potential employee turned them down because of the travel... Really glad I turned them down as I found a MUCH better job about a month later with ZERO need to interface with the TSA....
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Insightful)
This, and also the fact that they reinforced and lock the cockpit doors from now on.
The TSA has not stopped ANY attempts at bombing or hijacking airliners since 9/11. Various other methods have, but the TSA has been singularly useless.
Reinforced cockpit doors do sod all. Even without a reinforced cockpit door the crew could have kept them out of the cockpit if they wanted to using a co-pilots foot .
What has made us tons safer after 9-11 is that now there would be reasonable quantity of the passengers who would challenge the hijackers, as recently shown on a French train. Previously most air hijackings were about taking hostages and using them to plead for some worthless chum of yours to be released, as soon as it became clear that the hijackers were never interested in your survival or their own it made trying to subdue them the safest option, no matter how dangerous that seemed.
If you wanted to fly a plane into a building now you would have to steal an empty one first.
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:4, Informative)
Which also is a major contributing factor to a certain airline suicide crash in Europe. [nytimes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Security Theater is nothing more than the Wizard of Oz. The problem is, nobody learned that lesson, in spite of nearly universal knowledge of that movie's pivotal scene.
The problem is, the security theater only makes it more difficult, and now we're finding out it actually doesn't make it all much more difficult.
IMHO the chances of hijacking a plane became much less likely to be successful after 9/11, because they broke the cardinal rule of hijacking, and turned the plane into a weapon. People on planes already know they are dead if a hijacker takes over, and will respond accordingly.
Zardoz as a film is often panned, but the point that Zed realized the nature of Zardoz and started taking action to learn the real truth behind the floating head seems to be where we're at now with the TSA.
Re: (Score:2)
People on planes already know they are dead if a hijacker takes over, and will respond accordingly.
How will people respond accordingly if it's illegal to carry a gun into a flight? Is there an officer in each flight?
Guns not needed for security (Score:5, Interesting)
How will people respond accordingly if it's illegal to carry a gun into a flight?
Newsflash. There are ways of dealing with Bad Guys other than shooting them. It doesn't even matter if the Bad Guys are armed themselves if the number of passengers is greater than the number of bullets. Anyone trying to hijack a plane today will get beaten down almost immediately by the passengers. No point in sitting quietly if you think you are going to die anyway.
Is there an officer in each flight?
Not relevant. Nobody is going to wait for the police. Anyone starts some shit on a plan now and half the passengers will curb stomp them and tie them up until the plane can land.
Re: (Score:3)
In fact, this has already happened on numerous occasions; sometimes with the passengers actually beating the would-be 9/11-ers to death. [businessinsider.com]
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Insightful)
The government knows damn well that the TSA is security theater -- someone just forgot to tell this particular elected official.
Security theater can be great as a deterrent, but once everybody starts shouting about how it's not real, then its deterrent effect is decreased. So we can either tell people to shut up about it, or eliminate the facade, but increased security isn't an option, for two reasons:
1) Nobody can be vigilant against mostly non-existent threats for hours and days and years on end, except the most paranoid, OCD people, who aren't hireable anyway. That's why bouncers are effective -- people are constantly trying to sneak in, and bouncers know they're going to catch people. Most other security guards know they'll never, ever catch anyone, because nobody ever tries, and their attention suffers as a result. It's not that they don't want to do their job; it's that the reality of their job is incredibly tedious. It becomes about going through the motions most of the time, and maybe making an effort every so often.
2) Real security takes time, and that pisses people off. Maybe not in the immediate wake of a catastrophic security failure, but days or weeks later, it will. Patience will run thin. Moreover, the biggest advantage of flying is convenience -- it's fast. Once that convenience goes away, its popularity will decline.
Honestly, it doesn't matter though. Security has diminishing returns, like anything else, and no target can be fully protected. We can't, even collectively, control all of the variables. And when the risks are infinitesimal to begin with, then taking steps to lower them even more is usually a wasted effort. Better to focus on having procedures in place to handle things when the worst case happens.
Re: (Score:3)
People were really, really pissed when 9/11 happened and I responded with, "Yeah, that sucks. So?" Seriously? What are we going to do about it?
You know what? It's a shitty world. I accept that I, you, my family, or my friends may die - in very violent ways. I've seen a few deaths from violent trauma, in person. It sucks. You know what? So what? I'm not cold. I'm not lacking in empathy. I just don't think it's such a big deal that means we need to restructure our lives, reduce our rights, and live in perpetu
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Note that the weapons the hijackers allegedly used were ILLEGAL TO CARRY ON PLANES before then, and they got them on in other ways."
Are you sure about that? I was able to bring my pocket knife through security before 9/11 as long as the blade was just a few inches.
Wikipedia confirms this as well:
"Box cutters and similar small knives were allowed onboard aircraft at the time."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Once I was returning from a prolonged trip overseas and boarded the plane with a box cutter in my carry on. I only discovered it after getting home and unpacking. But I did get stopped by the Japanese for having a spoon and chopsticks.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure about that?
This.
I've carried a Leatherman tool on myself aboard flights before 9/11 (on 9/9/01 actually).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
It's not uncommon for me to find a magazine, fully loaded, in a backpack or something - even my laptop bag. I have way too many and they tend to get left and forgotten because I prefer to not keep a round in the chamber and not even to have a magazine in the firearm for a good portion of the time. I'm not always in a position where I can wear my firearm(s) and I'd much rather that it require effort (loading, cocking, removing safety) before it can be used. A bullet, by itself, is pretty harmless most of the
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:4, Interesting)
Before 9/11 I had a service call. Took an 18 inch mechanics toolbox as carry one. Appologiezed for forgetting to remove a box cutter in screening and mentioned for them to take it as it would be easly replaced. They let me keep it but was more concerned with the screwdrivers at the time. I assuered them it would be kept under the seat and remain closed for the trip. They let me keep the box cutter.
Post 911 is more difficult to travel with tools.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Note that the weapons the hijackers allegedly used were ILLEGAL TO CARRY ON PLANES before then, and they got them on in other ways.
Actually, it was legal to carry small knives at that time, no one would have thought that a box cutter would have been used to hijack a plane, it was more that the common wisdom was to not fight the hijackers and everyone would live.
Re: (Score:2)
... giving you the feeling that your government cares and reacted to 9/11 and other threats is.
Peter.
You're forgetting the other purpose of TSA...to give old ex-Nortel salespeople and other unemployables an alternative to having to ask, "Would you like fries with that?"
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and (Score:2)
Yes, but never forget the lucrative windfall that assholes like Micheal Chertoff gained through all this kabuki horseshit.
Not to mention all this security conditions the easily-led public to not bother questioning the need for Endless War (TM), which is also a very, very lucrative business for those that created it.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that's why I wish people would stop publicizing their failures. After the initial reports came out a while back the security lines got noticeably slower. If they are ineffective, then fine, but if you tell everyone they are ineffective then "something must be done" and it just makes things worse. I'm comfortable with risk, but I'm not comfortable wasting hours of my life at the airport.
Re:Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's never going to go back to the way it was. Too many people make too much money from the new way. No politician is ever going to get rid of the TSA; whenever the next attack happens, they'll get blamed.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, I don't always start reading a comment from the subject line either ;-)
Re: Detecting weapons is NOT the purpose of TSA... (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, I don't always start reading a comment from the subject line either ;-)
Putting half of the first sentence of your post in the subject line should be a capital offense. If you oppose the death penalty for religious or moral reasons, then you should mod them down instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"On the other, I'd hate to give inept dummy terrorists the idea that they should give this stuff a try since we're catching so little."
Only then a change will occur. The terrorists could send 20 guys since 19 of them will be able to board the plane.
Re: (Score:2)
Having the information out there is better. (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other, I'd hate to give inept dummy terrorists the idea that they should give this stuff a try since we're catching so little.
Having the information out there is better.
The effectiveness of a terrorist attack is proportional to how much people believe they are protected from a terrorist attack. In other words, the attack effect is amplified by the idea that the attack is impossible or unlikely to be successful.
One of the reasons for using a commercial jetliner, rather than simply using the money, which these groups has in abundance, and buying or leasing business jets, and filling them with explosives, and then using those to crash into the targets instead was obviously to prove that the screening at airports was not enough to keep the public safe from such attacks.
How much worse would the public overreaction to a subsequent attack, if the public had the perception that the security theater was in fact actually security, and terrorists were able to penetrate it anyway? How much more would the public be unlikely and unwilling to trust government reassurances that they are protected from terrorists?
I can think of about 15 ways to crash the U.S. economy, and I can thing of at least 9 ways to crash the economy of the Western world, and I can think of about 11 more ways to crash things using domino attacks vs. European only targets, or a specific nexus or set of nexuses that don't look like they'd need protecting.
It's pretty obvious that the attacks were not intended to crash the economy.
In fact, if you think about it some more, the fact that there have not been subsequent large scale attacks... the terrorists must feel that they have achieved the goals they intended to achieve through them: massive losses of civil liberties, civil unrest relative to that, and so on.
Security theater in the form of the TSA -- the inability to take bottled water not purchased at the on the other side of the security checkpoint aboard a plane, the inability to see friends and family off at the gate at departure, or greet them at arrival -- merely serves to rearm the weapon of a public perception of security where none actually exists.
Once again: Having the information out there is better.
And yet..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it will go the other way and will be a huge call for more strict rules and procedures. Sigh.....
Re:And yet..... (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing happened ...
because the "shoe bomber" and the "underwear bomber" were stopped by alert passengers.
Re:And yet..... (Score:4, Insightful)
The passengers on the 4th plane on 9/11 are the first. Planes are done. Crews and Passengers were taught to cooperate with hijackers. That's all over. To stop 9/11 all that would have been required is a declaration not to cooperate with terrorists.
Re: (Score:3)
So, let's allow passengers with concealed weapons permits to carry on board.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We'd often demil C4 by slapping it on the berm wall of the burning pit and light it.
Re: (Score:3)
>> Save a few tax dollars?
No, we need federal rent-a-cops grabbing people's junk to demonstrate "what your tax dollars are paying for." When tax dollars silently disappear into the banks of the well-connected, the ranks of the Tea Party (on the right) and Bernie supporters (on the left) tend to swell.
Re: (Score:3)
The way they seem to treat those water bottles at the checkpoint, is proof positive that they didn't even consider them dangerous for a millisecond. Seriously, they just toss them in a bin next to the X-Ray machine.
Oh, and with the shoes, its also obvious they don't consider those potentially dangerous either. If they did, then why do they exempt anyone under or over certain ages from the rule?
Basically, they make the process as annoying as possible, with specific exceptions for anything that's resulted i
Re: (Score:2)
The way they seem to treat those water bottles at the checkpoint, is proof positive that they didn't even consider them dangerous for a millisecond. Seriously, they just toss them in a bin next to the X-Ray machine.
I see I am not the only one who has wondered about that. Get a bunch of attackers on a busy day to pitch some 20 oz. bottles filled with explosives in the trash at a few checkpoints and then a while later have someone pitch one in to set them all off. On another side note is the huge line the TSA manages to create, get some asshole who has one of those tool large to actually carry on, carry on bags that too many people have and fill that thing with explosives and detonate it in the security line.
Re: (Score:3)
Its been done, and it doesn't even have to be in the security checkpoint line. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Are the Bangladeshians related to the Kardashians?
Re: (Score:3)
I'm actually old enough to remember when metal detectors and baggage screen were made mandatory in 1972. It made a HUGE difference; by 1970 or so major hijackings had become a multiple times/year event (check out Wikipedia's list [wikipedia.org]). It took almost a decade but by the 80s hijackers successfully boarding at US airports became a rare event.
We need to think in terms of two things:
(a) marginal utility; and
(b) patching specific vulnerabilities as they are exposed.
The thing is baggage screening, metal detectors a
Anecdotal evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anecdotal evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Prior to 9/11, past hijackings were primarily of the "Take this plane to Havana!" type. People believed that if they complied, they' go home safely. 9/11 changed that forever. When you have no expectation that the plane is going anywhere but into the side of a building, you're not going to sit still and wait for it to happen, pen knife or no penknife. And the handful of incidents since have proven that completely. The passengers will tear a hijacker limb from limb with their bare hands if they have to.
Re:Anecdotal evidence (Score:4, Funny)
I don't fly very often, and as such I don't think about things like the fact that I carry a pocket knife ... all the time ... including every time I go through the airport security circus ... including those retarded back scatter machines that apparently suck so much they can't detect a pocket knife with a 2 inch blade. 2 inches is pretty short (ask your wife) but certainly something they should have detected.
The TSA and airport security is a joke.
Planes haven't been used effectively as a weapon again because as you say, we'll fucking kill anyone that tries even at the cost of our own lives because the alternative may be not only does the plane crash, but so do 5000 other people not on the plane ...
And also ... their really aren't that many nut jobs out there that are truly willing to kill themselves. I'd bet you a good chunk of change that only the pilots during 9/11 even knew it was a suicide mission if we really knew what was going on.
Re: (Score:2)
And also ... their really aren't that many nut jobs out there that are truly willing to kill themselves. I'd bet you a good chunk of change that only the pilots during 9/11 even knew it was a suicide mission if we really knew what was going on.
But sadly, there are; the religious fanaticism is so strong among many islamic based terrorists that they have done this already many, many, times, in the mideast and abroad. And IIRC, the documentaries on 9-11, some of the hijackers didn't know it was a suicide mission until late in the game, but I think they all knew before boarding the planes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
As documented here, http://www.dailykos.com/story/... [dailykos.com]
found this as well, so their still doing it... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08... [nytimes.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Eh, they let me travel from Washington DC to Rhode Island with a screwdriver. On the way back to Washington DC they found and confiscated it though. So I guess we know who they really care about.
Reminds me of the comedian sketch.... "Anyone here from Rhode Island?" *crickets* "Fuck 'em!"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
When every passenger makes the assumption they are going to die anyway if they don't take out the highjacker, pretty much every passenger is going to attempt to jump the highjacker and take him out.
No, a good many will think it better that someone else risk their life. Or are unsure of whether enough others will join to make it more than a futile suicide against a more fit and better armed opponent.
Re: (Score:2)
And if Flight 93 had the reinforced locked cockpit doors that are now standard, it likely wouldn't have crashed either.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We've already had one example in Flight 93.
And even more examples of people not storming the bad guys.
You can't rely on the public. Or screeners. Or air marshals. You can't protect everyone from everyone, all the time, or trust that threats you don't even know what are can be neutralized.
The only reliable defences against terrorism are to (a) not go out of your way to piss off people so much that they want to kill your civilians to get your attention, (b) don't present such big fat targets, and (c) don't act terrified and make knee-jerk reactions
Re: (Score:2)
post 9/11, a knife would not be an effective weapon for highjacking a plane.
Even a gun wouldn't help a hijacker now, unless you can get into the cockpit.
Re: (Score:2)
I've always figured the belt I wear could be used pretty effectively to disable an attacker with a knife or anything similar, if it came to it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
My sister watched the supervisor run her backpack through the xray 3 times before the screener notice the pen knife in it
I was on a flight last month and forgot that I had my toilet bag in my carry on (deodorant aerosols are banned).
We get to the xray and the security monkey notices the can in the xray, grabs the bag next to mine by mistake and holds that guy up searching his bag for a non-existent item while I walk off laughing. I walked far enough away to merge into the crowd and observed the confused looks as they came up empty handed, but re-xrayed his bag a few times just in case.
Airport security is a joke and needs to
That's good to know (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's good to know (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
95% of Contraband... (Score:5, Informative)
Look, I hate the TSA as much as (if not more than) the next guy, but can we be clear about the numbers?
95% of contraband, which **includes, but is not limited to** weapons got through.
What percentage of weapons, then?
They might just be terrible at detecting forbidden fruits and vegetables.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
And Kinder Eggs.
Webster's called... (Score:2, Funny)
"In looking at the number of times people got through with guns or bombs in these covert testing exercises it really was pathetic. When I say that I mean pitiful," said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.)... "Just thinking about the breaches there, it's horrific,"
News at 11: Rep. Stephen Lynch owns a Thesaurus.
Oh god this ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I've never tried to bring a weapon on a plane ... but I've had one screener flag my suitcase in the security line, only to have another screener ask me "what did he see in your suitcase to flag you?", followed by me saying "if I knew that I wouldn't have put it in that suitcase".
Then I asked if he'd show me the xray and I'd try to tell him what it was, he said I wasn't allowed. OK sir, shall I just stare at you as you demonstrate you have no idea of your own job? Or can I go now?
And, on several occasions I've realized my laptop bag still had toothpaste, a Tide stick, and mouthwash in it -- and nobody noticed.
TSA are inept, expensive, and annoying. And I very much doubt they can provably demonstrate they've ever actually stopped anything from happening.
Re: (Score:3)
I also remember them missing a multitool several times, before noticing it, when I - a soldier in uniform - was flying back to Iraq, after having forgotten it was in my bag from when I flew home for leave.
Certainly we do want there to be some security screening, but the level the TSA goes to is ridiculou
Re: (Score:3)
Certainly we do want there to be some security screening,
Do we? I never get screened going on the bus or train, what is different?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I went through the screening, and they were taking a LONG time. They kept running my bag through the xray machine for some reason. So I went over to the two operators and asked what was wrong, so they showed me the xray pic on the screen and asked what 'that' was. I looked up and laughed, "That's the ceramic dragon!". One of the screeners eyes lit up and she pointed an
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm ... so the endlessly bad security just helps people understand what they'd need to do to defeat security, while just pretending to not have endlessly bad security?
Basically those of us who follow the rules just provide training for people to bypass security?
That's absurd.
Re: (Score:2)
horrific? (Score:3)
Given that US planes aren't exploding every day, this seems anything but horrific. In fact, it seems like excellent news, because it suggests that the screening is probably not needed (unless you believe that only terrorists are deterred by it).
Who's Surprised By This? (Score:5, Insightful)
Number of people surprised that the TSA is completely ineffective: 0.
Not coincidentally, that's also the number of terrorists that the TSA has caught.
They have saved us from the scourge of water bottles and decent sized toothpaste tubes, though.
But they find my tuning fork (Score:2)
...every time.
Re: (Score:2)
How many times did it take you before you learned to put it into your stowed luggage?
The TSA boondoggle needs to be terminated (Score:4, Insightful)
Since their inception the TSA has been repeatedly proven to be almost completely ineffective at prevention, yet there has been no US planes hijacked or blown up since their inception anyway.
This alone proves that any benefit to the TSA's existence is entirely imaginary because the threat is not real.
The TSA were originally created as a perhaps understandable but nevertheless paranoid and ill-informed kneejerk overreaction to 9/11. We need to simply fix that mistake now.
There is clearly no rational reason for the TSA to continue to exist, especially since they cost the taxpayer 7.9 Billion USD every year that could be spent elsewhere solving problems that actually exist.
Re: (Score:2)
Too late. The terrorists already won.
America stopped being the land of the free and became the nanny state of the paranoid, and not enough people care to change it
Re: (Score:2)
The stopped my weapon (Score:2)
I had a tiny Gerber Dime [gerbergear.com] multi-tool in the bottom of my backpack -- it had been there for 6 months and at least a dozen flights (including 2 international flights) until finally a screener in Las Vegas found it. It's truly a tiny tool, the blade must be no longer than 3 or 4 cm, so I was surprised that they wanted to confiscate it. I asked him if I could use the larger Leatherman I saw in his discard bin and use it to break off the blade on my tool (the scissors, which were just as long and almost as sharp
How do they miss the guns? (Score:2)
Do they hide the weapons in a special way in those tests?
Because if I forget the smallest metal thing on me, the detector starts screaming. Weapons are usually relatively big metal objects, how can they miss them?
Re: (Score:2)
Weapons are usually relatively big metal objects, how can they miss them?
I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Seriously, it's not that hard to imagine how weapons of all kinds could get though security. Think social engineering, think of things that bypass the process... Use the rules to get around the screening process. It's not that hard if you think about what's happening and what tools TSA uses and stop looking at the think like a sheep.
Re:How do they miss the guns? (Score:4, Interesting)
For the body scanner, put it on your sides. The plane of the scanner field only rotates across your front and back; it will miss anything directly on your sides. Wear slightly loose clothes and you can strap a weapon (or other object) a number of places outside the areas that the scanner "sees". Upper arms near your elbows (well out to the sides in "scanner pose"), sides of your torso unless you're super skinny, outsides of your legs if it doesn't show through your pants, insides of your legs (especially near the ankle) if you keep your feet a little wider than you should, etc.
For the baggage X-ray, just put "safe" stuff around the prohibited item. Tablet computers are great here; for some reason they're considered safe despite usually having plenty of metals, including potentially-dangerous lithium, in their chassis. Laptop power bricks and external hard drives are pretty hard to scan through; I've seen what they look like on the screens. Small items like pens, mint tins, coins, keys, flashdrives, jewelry, and so on can clutter the X-ray image and conceal stuff behind them, directly or by simply breaking up the outline sufficiently. A bag of toiletries containing a bunch of sub-3-oz tubes of this and that is *supposed* to be run through separately, but I've never once had a problem leaving it in my bag and I fly over a dozen times a year.
It's embarrassingly easy to get shit past those morons. Sometimes I do it by accident, like forgetting a pocketknife or bottle of soda. If it's not on the outer part of the bag, they usually miss it.
They find some things though (Score:2)
They might miss guns... but damn if they don't spot a slightly oversized deodorant spray, too much toothpaste or a bottle of water.
But naturally (Score:2)
This won't lead to what it should, namely the destruction and disassembly of the TSA, but instead will lead to even more intrusive "security"...
Re: (Score:2)
Mod up the most insightful post of the day - bravo!
The TSA ... (Score:2)
Only keeps honest people honest. They are designed to provide the APPEARANCE of security, not actual security.
If the TSA was about real security, I can assure you they would operate differently and your TSA screening would start the instant you purchased your ticket. They'd be doing background checks on EVERYBODY, full searches of you, your baggage, both using X-Rays, magnetometers, and blue gloves going everywhere you can imagine on everybody entering the secure areas. Plus, they'd do this to mechanics,
I thought it was obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
The purpose of federalizing airport security was to create more union members to funnel federal tax dollars to the Democrats.
https://www.opensecrets.org/pa... [opensecrets.org]
Looks like I was right.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)