I flew yesterday and in the plane realized I had some water from my daughter in the backpack. It was scanned and missed of course. And why wouldn't they miss it, it's a waste of time anyway. But at least they harassed a 3-year old to stand in a certain way to get scanned and fail at it. Unrelated, but I've come to believe it's a form of social welfare. So much policing for nothing, not just airports, wars on drugs etc. without it most of the people doing it would be unemployed.
> Transportation Security Administration screeners allowed banned weapons and mock explosives through airport security checkpoints 95 percent of the time, according to the agency's own undercover testing.
edit: I was a bit harsh, I don't have any real issue with the people doing it an it's probably untrue that most would be unemployed. What I really meant was that I find it strange that social programs are often questioned, but spending hundreds of billions on something not really necessary and creating jobs for it isn't.
Its a jobs program for the unemployable. That and political pork. The TSA is a complete failure at every level and is laughably bad at everything but draining money from the taxpayer and stepping on citizens rights. We should go back to metal detectors staffed by airport provided staff and scan checked bags for bombs (which is something that actually kind of works).
Go find an average cop, a CO, and a TSA employee. The CO is somewhere between a violent felon and the cop (and is technically probably both). The TSA employee is closer to a DMV employee than a cop. The border/customs agents are cops and they act like it.
To become a cop in the U.S in most places , there is already a low bar for entry. All one needs is a high school diploma (or ged) , no felony conviction and about 3 months training.
> Its a jobs program for the unemployable. That and political pork.
This.
A simple look at the profiles of known attackers would reveal it's completely futile to screen literal 0-risk travelers.
Getting people to fear and believe that "everyone could be a menace" is a slippery slope and a slap at the core of our legal system (innocent until proven otherwise).
After 9/11 the air industry needed to convince people it was safe to fly, and what better way to do that than to establish performative safety on the government's tab.
I had to throw away my nice Leatherman Micra (because of the tiny blade) at an airport because I forgot it was in my carry on, only to sit at a restaurant next to the gate and be given a full size serrated steak knife with my meal...
The same thing happened to me with my Leatherman Micra. I have come to the conclusion that most airport security measures are props designed to make us believe that we are safer.
I’ve been there too. Forgetting to take it off my keychain.
For those not familiar it’s a keychain multi-tool. Mine had scissors. But it also has a really short blade. It’s sharp but really small. No worse than knitting needles..
I usually carry on my slr camera and lenses. And they poke through my bag. One time they detected something. So the tsa agent is asking me about something metal and T shaped. But they won’t let me near my bag. It was a portable microphone. I remember the agent checking my bag holding it up to the scanner persons and yelling, “it’s a microphone”
Same here. The TSA brand of paranoia assumes you could seriously injure or kill someone with an implement that small. Sigh... Tiny brains, stupid rules.
I have a colleague who travels frequently to perform installations of equipment at client sites. Every time he travels internationally he buys a new copy of his preferred screwdriver kit and takes it as carry-on through one of the busiest airports in the US. Every time he flies home, he has to throw the out when the foreign airport doesn't let it through.
...if you have time, if there is a shipping center in the airport, if it's open, and if the cost of materials and shipping is worth the $35 Leatherman...Might even be the same cost to check it vs ship it at that point.
The first I went through TSA with an avalanche probe and collapsible shovel, they didn't stop me, so I thought it was allowed. On the way back they did and I had to rush check it
My only experience here was outside of the US, but once when screening found a pair of scissors in my carry on I did this. They gave me a lanyard to let me use the crew line to get back to the front of screening so it didn't take much time.
I made the same mistake but in the US, TSA has a machine they direct you to where you can mail yourself the item with, which I did but it took like two weeks to arrive.
Yup. It's baffling how quickly the mask and travel check measures were dropped, even at a time when COVID was causing multiple airliners worth of deaths per day, while the totally pointless liquid bans remain.
The liquid bomb threat really is the thing that conspiracy theorists would love: it's a totally made up possible threat by the Big State that hasn't been seen in the wild and is used to justify inconveniencing millions of people for no good reason. And yet it's just not talked about.
> The liquid bomb threat really is the thing that conspiracy theorists would love: it's a totally made up possible threat by the Big State that hasn't been seen in the wild
Incorrect. Betwee 2006 and 2010, seven people were convicted in the uk for conspiring to attack passenger airplanes with liquid explosives (acetone peroxide according to wikipedia).
Still not "in the wild"; they were arrested in the planning stages, and there is no evidence that at any point they successfully produced TATP let alone getting any of their components through security or whether it would have worked on a plane.
That was one group, thirteen years ago, and since then everyone is limited to 100ml? Forever?
> You can easily blow up an airplane with a liter of the right liquid
Yeah... The thing is that you can't. Not easily.
You can't do much with a liter of some liquid that won't happen by chance on the way to the airport. And you can't change the liquid a lot while on the plane. You can barely fit seated there.
My understanding is that there is some form of reasoning behind the 100mL limitation. Sufficiently easy to procure liquids can blow up a plan when they are in a container bigger than 100mL (300mL, 1L, I don’t know what the findings were).
Now, what I do know is that pouring liquids together in a largers plastic bag is very easy, you can do that inside a backpack. I had to do this multiple times due to leaky milk bottles, leaky shampoo bottles, etc. The plastic bag simply has to be strong enough to stay in form while filling up.
Hence my point that this 100mL limitation is useless (from a volume limitation point of view), and I assume (not an expert on explosives) that if there was a limitation at 100mL, there must be something dangerous enough above this volume. Hence the overall regulation is useless.
Where does the popular idea that you can simply mix things into explosives come from?
You can't make a strong explosive in a portable plastic bag. If you get the chemistry right, you will just burn yourself and maybe your neighbor. You won't even lose fingers, that requires better conditions. AFAIK, that's exactly what happened to the original liquid bomber, that was caught after he burned himself mixing things on the bathroom. In much more stable conditions than a bag, but still not nearly stable enough.
The guy that tried to carry solid explosives on his underwear was also caught only after he burned himself, because that's also not a practical way to carry them. As did the guy that tried to carry them on his shoes.
There are some very robust reasons why all those plots are doomed to failure, but those are the ones the US focus on (and basically impose on the rest of the world), while there are many perfectly viable vulnerabilities to exploit that nobody wants to close because they would impose more restrictions on the passengers. And that nobody is exploiting because it requires knowing what to do, and people that know what to do aren't normally prone to killing random strangers.
“We can't breathe in business class. Somebody's got mace or something.”
“Nobody knows who stabbed who, and we can't even get up to business class right now 'cause nobody can breathe.”
- Betty Ong, Flight 11
Not necessarily explosive, but tactical chemical attacks have been a known capability for a while, and part of anti-terrorist training long before 2001. Something truly sophisticated from a superpower state would likely escape detection, (and therefore likely implicate such a state,) but the Tokyo Sarin attack by a cult in 1995 involved big bags of liquid.
(This isn’t a justification of any particular security search, just pointing out that liquid agents are not a non-existent threat.)
Thanks to the TSA holding the power, at the very least in the "Well if you have a dispute with my ruling just step to the side and I'll get my manager, hope they wander over before your flight leaves..." way, I have in fact had TSA agents take away my stick deodorant before.
I had never really thought of that, but the ability to make you miss a flight is an amazingly strong coercive power relative to the stakes.
The x-ray scanners usually have bold signs on them instructing you how to opt out. But if you do, they act as slowly as possible to ensure you never do it again.
There are non-liquid chemical attacks that could be facilitated from something like anthrax to powdered pepper spray. Disallowing liquids does nothing to stop those
they can harass you for non-liquids too. I honestly don't even know anymore I've had so many random things confiscated. My favorite was a wine bottle opener which got me into trouble after many years of flying in my bag... in France facepalm
"The illusion of safety has a positive psychological benefit, therefore we should be obstructive, suspicious and procedural" - or something
The fact that this works with so many people makes me warier of them than anyone it purports to protect me against. I don't feel safe being harassed by scowling officials in faux-important uniform.
It can be both - security theatre and jobs program for otherwise unemployable people (good security requires highly skilled labour but security theatre doesn’t).
Security theatre is a different thing. That’s when you perform a pointless ritual to convey the feeling of security. People coming up with onerous new rules and restriction just to remind you who’s in charge is something else.
> That’s when you perform a pointless ritual to convey the feeling of security.
That's exactly what going through the security checkpoint at the airport is. A pointless ritual to convey the feeling of security.
Yes, arbitrary liquid thresholds and similar rules are more about giving airport security tools to remind travelers "who is charge", but it's all part of security theater at a more meta level.
I always viewed the continual cycle of changing the rules which usually coincides with some negative publicity be it an attempt or attack or investigation… as a form of being seen to do something for the sake of having to do something in response to the recent event, as just another layer of the security theatre. Like the production of a whole season of shows by a live theatre group is just as much a layer above the repetition of the performance each night and no less part of making the “theatre” happen than each individual performance is.
Right, but to their defense, there have not been 9/11 attacks or anything remotely similar since 9/11... so either it was all fake anyways or the security theater also deters potential low IQ attackers?
My snark aside, you’re missing a totally other reasonable explanation. Prior to 9/11 hijackings were relatively safe affairs. They would land and negotiate for money / demands and release passengers unharmed. So sitting passively was the safest approach, Post 9/11 the cockpit is completely locked down (regulatory requirement for flights to/from US) and passengers know that any hijacking might be a suicide attacker and thus won’t sit passively. See underwear and shoe bombers as examples where bomb materials got through security but passengers subdued the attacker. That’s why US Marshals stopped flying. Attacks are too rare to warrant meaningful useful security on even a small fraction of flights.
Now arguably those were international flights into the US. You could argue that security was lax abroad but generally TSA regulations and technical requirements apply to security screenings for inbound flights so there’s not any particular reason to believe that the TSA would have done a better job.
The biggest thing that stopped 9/11 attacks since 9/11 was locks on cockpit doors.
The second biggest thing that stopped them since 9/11 is passenger awareness that they could just... Not let a few assholes with boxcutters fly a plane into a building.
After 9/11 people are not going to let hijackers run the plane. They may hurt you in retaking the plane, but if they fly it into a building you'll be dead for sure.
There were dozens of terror attacks against air travel in the 80s and 90s. The global post-9/11 "security theater" did make flying in the developing world much safer.
To be fair there's been a lot less hijackings in the 2000s and 2010s compared with previous decades - although as the decline started in the 90's - its not likely to be solely due to increased security.
It has to do with several things, among them you have:
- the end of the cold war, with the clear hegemony of the US which halted state-sponsored terrorism from unaligned-but-socialist-minded countries (especially Libya)
- targeted assassination of terrorist leaders and infrastructures (no more training summer camps) no matter the country they are in (mostly through drones nowadays), leading to a progressive reduction in sophistication in terror attacks committed, and the rise of lone wolfs instead of structured terrorist commandos.
Grammatically, 1.5 donut is wrong and 1.5 donuts is correct. So, in this case "1.66~ dozens" (because 20 / 12 = 1.66~) is pedantically correct.
(...But logically and intuitively everything I just said is extremely stupid because by that logic 12.01 counts as "dozens" and that's ridiculous, so your complaint is absolutely correct and I agree with you 100%)
Wasn't that a contributing factor to UA93 being "unsuccessful"? The passengers had gotten word of the other three flights, and stopped being quite as compliant (though "compliant" is obviously not the full story for the other three flights).
> Shortly after reaching cruise altitude and while the captain was out of the cockpit, Lubitz locked the cockpit door and initiated a controlled descent that continued until the aircraft hit a mountainside.
You aren’t supposed to let a pilot be alone in the cockpit and they violated protocol when this happened. 2 authorized personnel should be in the cockpit at all times but German airlines dropped the rule.
I'm not an expert, but the Wikipedia article sounds like this protocol was implemented after the Germanwings crash:
> In response to the incident and the circumstances of the co-pilot's involvement, aviation authorities in some countries implemented new regulations that require the presence of two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times. Three days after the incident, the European Aviation Safety Agency issued a temporary recommendation for airlines to ensure that at least two crew members—including at least one pilot—were in the cockpit for the entire duration of the flight. Several airlines announced that they had already adopted similar policies voluntarily. But by 2016, the EASA stopped recommending the two-person rule, instead advising airlines to perform a risk assessment and decide for themselves whether to implement it. Germanwings and other German airlines dropped the procedure in 2017.
I guess the underlying assumption is that the regular medical tests that pilots are subjected to should keep pilots capable of mass murder-suicide out of a cockpit. Indeed, Lubitz had been declared "unfit for work" by a doctor, but apparently the doctor trusted Lubitz himself to pass this on to his employer, because "medical secrecy requirements prevented his physician from making this information available to Germanwings".
No, what allowed that was them not requiring two people to be on the flight deck. That’s insane to me (and doesn’t happen in the US which customarily has a two person rule, which I believe is defined in Part 121, but still trying to find it).
The end of 9/11 happening again occured right in the middle of 9/11, with UAL 93.
Passengers figure out it's not a hijacking they might survive, and that you're going to crash the plane into a valuable target. Then, having nothing to lose, they revolt and ruin your plan.
So that particular type of plan isn't going to work again. Passengers no longer assume "hijacking I might survive".
This is a meme that gets repeated often, always with no source. I bet you heard this from someone repeating it exactly in this same context too, complaining about security theater.
Not everything in life (in fact, almost nothing) can be “proved” by a “source”. Human emergent behavior can be observed and reported on in this way, perhaps.
But questions like “why aren’t more people sacrificing their lives to hijack or destroy airplanes for the last 20 years” are not answerable by “sources”.
Do you have some reason to think a different posture towards hijackers and better security around cockpits didn’t have a strong effect on would-be hijackers’ willingness to give their lives to a violent political statement?
It may be a sample size of one and whatnot, but as a European, the best security experience I've had has been in the US (LAX), by far.
In my neck of the woods, I have to take out basically everything from my carry-on. Laptop, camera, lenses, you name it, they want it out. Phone, keys, ditto. They usually ask for the belt to come out, too, and sometimes even the shoes. And this is even for internal flights.
LAX, by contrast, aside a circus number with some dogs sniffing people, was AOK. Everything stayed in the bag, the line moved constantly.
San Salvador (SAL/MSLP) was probably the most obnoxious, with a double security configuration for US-bound flights. Basically had to pass through security in Lima, then again at SAL, and due to the config, it meant you couldn't get food in the main SAL terminal and wait at your gate - you had to eat it before entering the "US Zone" and then hope you weren't thirsty again. Also, everything electronic out of the bag, dump fluids, etc.
Heathrow wasn't great. Long lines for security. Also, they had some buggy facial recognition system that couldn't match me (at the gate) to a photo taken a few hours earlier in the security line. And the gate agent was completely clueless about what to do next. They eventually let me board anyways. Not sure what they were trying to accomplish - I had already passed through security, the final face check was at the gate during boarding.
Reykjavik was fine, no different than a US hub. Same for Rome and Lima.
Inverness and Edinburgh had typical checks, but the airports are so small and uncrowded that it's pretty stress-free. The only "problem" I've had a both is the ticket agents tend to show up moments before boarding begins (first flight of day), which gets my anxiety up some - I like to be at the gate relaxing well in advance.
Even at airports where you have to take things out, there are ways of making it work. Big, clear signs in multiple languages/with pictures showing what you have to do, lots of "work surfaces" to reorganise your bag without blocking the queue behind you, staff that are there to help not just to bark at you, etc.
> lots of "work surfaces" to reorganise your bag without blocking the queue behind you
Yeah, this is what I've actually never seen in Europe. They mostly just expect you to pack everything back up quickly and tend to be annoyed if it takes some time. Which it usually does because I have to collect my belongings from several trays, some of which may have gone to additional checks, so they don't all come back together.
I'd say Heathrow (at least T3) is pretty good at this. Lots of space before security, and then afterwards there's tables to put stuff back in your bag.
This is the reason I opt to pay for TSA PreCheck (in the US, obviously). Not because it saves hassle (though it certainly does that), but because it pretty effectively filters out first timers.
at Munich airport, at one of terminals they have new devices. You have to leave everything inside. Laptop, water etc.
You just have to remove items from your pockets, belt.
So much faster.
My worst experience was in UK, multiple times, at Manchester airport. So much drama there.
It's been chaotic at Manchester Airport ever since they re-opened after COVID. I'm pretty sure I read there's a lack of staff and they're struggling to hire enough new people.
The last few times I've been I bought fast pass to skip the ridiculous queues at security.
Manchester airport is weird and frankly discriminatory. There's two security areas, and one has all the middle eastern airlines and in my experience the staff are way more short with customers in that security area than the other.
It’s common for airports to allow liquids for babies/toddlers. Just take them out of the bag and put them in a padded box normally. No 100ml limit either- have taken regular water bottles through too (for milk formula).
Various airports have different rules.
Dubai was quite lax, you don’t have to take anything out of bags. Maybe they have the new scanners already.
Singapore was more strict, and they do the security check just before the gate which I hated because things like soft drinks etc purchased in duty free had to be consumed before going through (but again, no problem with baby liquids).
Ugh, don't remind me of Singapore. Transferring after a flight from London, I see a water bottle refill fountain, which I use. We're running late, so I head straight to the gate...and then have to immediately dispose of my newly filled 2L water bottle.
I've never known another airport to have this security setup, and as a massive transit hub, I really can't make sense of why they chose to put it at that point - but then again, what of airport security actually makes sense when subjected to reasonable logic?
I think the approach was to disperse the security screening to gates so that you don't have to process them all before they even enter the departure area.
But to your point, it’s terrible. They basically screen you, then you sit in glass enclosed area, with no toilets and you cant bring liquids in, but there are water fountains.
So if you have to use the bathroom you have to leave, then go through security again. Or if there is a gate change, you have to go through security again.
It creates more problems than it solves.
Terminal 4 does it the normal way with screening before you reach the departure area. They also have scanners where you can leave your laptop in your bag.
One benefit of distributed checks is that they are more predictable: doesn't matter how busy or not the rest of the airport is, your queue length doesn't change. TXL had that setup (independent security for a pair of gates each) for the older areas and leaving from those terminals was really fast and reliable. Sure, duty-free was tiny then (since also only for a pair of gates), but that never really mattered to me.
I guess for a hub like Singapore it might also make it easier to adjust checks done for different destinations?
I think the reason is, like you said, it is a transit hub.
So passenger flying out of Singapore can mix with people in transit. Therefore, putting the scanner before boarding prevent a possible terrorist attack when someone smuggle in explosive or what not from Singapore or from transit flight.
In Dubai, which is a massive transit hub, they do the security check upon arrival, before you enter the departures area. They still do some lighter spot checks at the gates, but liquids allowed.
Heathrow as a major transit hub also doesn’t do security checks at the gate, rather it’s when you enter airside. Far better.
Singapore and KL airports are the odd ones out. I suspect because they were built before the security rules required better separation of departing and arriving passengers, and retrofitting the added security paths made less sense financially than just doing checks at every gate.
Kinda like needing to enter your password again to change your account settings if you're already logged in. (I don't necessarily think all these rules are good and just, but if they were, it would make sense to have some redundancy.)
This is not how it works in most of the world. Usually you don't have to go through security when you transit, only when you arrive at the airport. The only time when I had a second security screening during transit was in the US.
Depends maybe on the airport but flying out of San Diego, they pulled a bag of breast milk from my girlfriends bag and tested the liquid inside. They allowed the larger size through but still did scrutinize the actual liquid.
I don't think we should be equating TSA with DEA and ATF. The latter two are practically military divisions operating domestically, the wars on drugs are unwinnable nebulous things by design to maintain these standing armies ripe for domestic abuse. TSA however does seem to be a security theater jobs program...
The war on drugs is as winnable as the war on murder or the war on petty theft. Just because it doesn't go away doesn't mean you failed at enforcing it.
War on drugs is just a shitty political campaign slogan everyone fell for. It's a fantastic one from the perspective of the politician, because they'd never be held accountable for 'losing' it during their tenure.
The war on drugs is unwinnable because, in general, human beings want to take drugs. Or want to have the freedom to take drugs. Most people don't want to murder or steal.
100,000 dead annually from using would like to have a word. 70k of those are fentanyl by the way. Victimless though right? All those people could quit any time they want, right?
People do it to themselves. It's not like people don't know what hard drugs do to human body. They willingly start taking them. It ultimately is their own choice. Same can be said about alcoholism, btw, yet that is perfectly legal.
Somehow, it's mostly accepted that making it harder to intentionally kill oneself is not the right way to stop people from committing suicide. Yet at the same time, we still consider this total war on drugs the correct approach to preventing people from killing themselves with drug abuse. The sibling comment is right.
> Constraining supply of highly addictive drugs isn't an important factor to you? At all?
Isn't, at all. Something not being easily available makes it more attractive and makes people more curious about it. Such is human psychology.
Prohibition of anything for which there's demand does not work. It can't work. In general, laws only work when the majority of the society is on board with them. If the only people who are willing to enforce a law are police officers, then such a law only works when there's a police officer nearby.
> Alcohol is legal, how does it follow that there should be more iterations of addictive substances that do more damage to the fabric of society?
Again, if there's demand, there will be supply, regardless of legality. And since there will be supply of addictive substances either way, it makes sense to legalize them. The legalization will remove the criminal element from the cost, making it significantly cheaper, and would also ensure high quality/purity. I see no downsides here.
>Something not being easily available makes it more attractive and makes people more curious about it. Such is human psychology.
Can you cite a period when drug enforcement was more successful causing increased consumption?
>Again, if there's demand, there will be supply, regardless of legality. And since there will be supply of addictive substances either way, it makes sense to legalize them. The legalization will remove the criminal element from the cost, making it significantly cheaper, and would also ensure high quality/purity.
What do you think of the results in places that have attempted various versions of this? SF, Denver, parts of Canada, they all meet a similar result. Do you think the British were the good guys in the Opium Wars?
Do you think it's possible that drugs prevent the things on that list from happening? Drugs are more frequently causal of those things than a symptom.
It's more common to find people who start addictions from a financially stable position where they have some discretional income. Rarely do people begin addictions where they have to decide between food or a drug they're not addicted to.
How many dead annually from inactive lifestyles or overeating? Those are all choices that people make that affect them — nobody should be forced to live in a virtuous bubble just because it might extend their life a few years. That's all totally different from choosing to harm another human being.
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but to your point in another comment, I have some sympathy to setting an 'addiction bar' and prohibiting drugs above that bar. Of course, the biggest issue with all these discussions is that, by any objective measure of harm/addiction, alcohol ranks right up there alongside heroin, meth, etc.
But all of this is a tangent to the 'war on drugs' which doesn't even begin to address the issue sensibly.
The vast majority of drug victims are really the victims of war on drugs - that’s what makes clean, safe drugs unavailable and forces people to use dangerous replacements.
From the very beginning the American war on drugs was motivated by racism. It’s just another state-organized genocide in disguise.
I was very tired and left large bottle of water, some toiletries over 100ml, my laptop and Nintendo Switch inside my bag and it went through the X-ray scanner at SFO just fine, never once got looked at.
> Transportation Security Administration screeners allowed banned weapons and mock explosives through airport security checkpoints 95 percent of the time, according to the agency's own undercover testing.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/us-airport-scree...
edit: I was a bit harsh, I don't have any real issue with the people doing it an it's probably untrue that most would be unemployed. What I really meant was that I find it strange that social programs are often questioned, but spending hundreds of billions on something not really necessary and creating jobs for it isn't.