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TSA Opens Blog — You Can Finally Complain
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.'"
Wonder if they see who complains and put them on the list
This is what they'll do, at the most. They'll read the comments, take a few minor suggestions that are about as a substantive of a reform as a changing the paint on the wall from beige to white, and call it even. Then everyone in power will trumpet how the system works, the people were heard, and how America is still the greatest country on the face of the Earth.
In the end, we'll end up with an agency that can best be described as being filled primarily by the sort of people that routinely get rejected by local police agencies, affirmative action hires, etc.
I'll never forget the one time I've flown since 9-11. I was going to Italy from Dulles Airport in Virginia in 2005. The TSA personnel I saw were mostly obese people you know that got hired to fill a quota. The people they hired were clearly by and large not their on their ability to screen and secure the choke points in the airport. What I'll never forget was going to De Gaulle Airport and feeling like the French actually knew how to run security.
For the love of all that is holy. When French security is more intimidating and professional looking than your own, you know that you've made a mistake along the way that doesn't bode well.
Maybe they will explain on there why they murdered that mentally ill guy aboard the plane.
It could be. It shows them who is easily angered so they can place a couple of extra goons to watch them. Eventually, they will find someone angry enough to blow a plane up.
It might put off potential tourists from visiting the USA. It's probably not a big deal to most though (at home the tourists will laugh and say "they even made us remove our shoes, and throw away bottles of water! Crazy Americans!" before talking about something more interesting from their holiday. IME, anyway).
In July, 2001, I flew from Canada, through a connecting flight in Houston or Dallas, on the way to the Belize rainforest. I (and my fellow students) all had razor-sharp machetes either checked, or (in my case) in my carry-on. No joke. No one seemed to give a shit.
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.
Jeremy
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 Gee, how do you define safe? Is driving to work in a car "safe?" Because, you know, there are at least 100x less deaths per mile traveled via car than there are via airplane.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Red Fuming nitric acid and [cotton balls | Glycerin | coal tar ] qualifies, but because you eliminated the H2SO4 so it's be "binary" you'll have to do a bit of drying first. Cool thing is, *assuming* I could both procure and get through security with Red Nitric, then 3 x 1 Oz containers is vastly more than adequate, especially if I'm using a solid as my secondary so I can use all three bottles for nitric and sulphuric...
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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Thank you! I just can't believe how unimaginative some of the security policies are. Were they never juvenile delinquents? Wasn't an interest in a security career preceded by years of fascination with big bangs etc.? Obviously they never went to my high school.
Now, I'm a flaming peacenik, but even I can easily think of many ways to create havoc, based on simple observations and a little chemistry, and ok, a wasted youth. Take water:
A couple of hundred grams of cesium stashed inside legitimate metal objects could make it through security scanners. Just Add Water! Woah!! Anyone with a little chemistry knows that. Various posters mentioned glass bottles, hard liquor, dinner cutlery, etc. A determined maniac can use all kinds of materials.
The point is that real security relies on not having outright enemies, especially hopeless occupied peoples. Assymetric warfare, such as smuggling cesium into your complimentary drink, is impossible to win, because you have to assume guilt to screen for it, make every flight a customs experience, and even then good liars will get through. The fact that planes aren't dropping out of the skies and that you can still ride a bus tells me that there just aren't that many real terrorists in our midst, just a lot of pissed off people who might become terrorists if pushed too hard. Now, Israel and Iraq and Afghanistan, those are places where there are lots of terrorists. I wonder why?
Damn those pesky terrorists
The blade will not take a substantial edge, nor will it hold the edge you give it.
Sad reality of "blunt" Katanas is that they have no core.
tourist attraction only. (That I fell for in my younger days).
-nB
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I wrote this up, with the intention of putting it on the TSA blog comments. Then I realized that it was a Blogger based site, and could almost certainly be traced back to me even if I used the Anonymous option. Not wanting on the no-fly list, I chickened out and put it here:
Here's the reality: TSA security will have nothing to do with the next terrorist attack. The terrorists will either not attack airplanes, or they will take non-prohibited items through and turn them into weapons, or they will secrete them in body locations TSA will not search, or they will have them placed on the planes for them by ground crew.
No TSA employee will ever stop a terrorist attack. No TSA security measures will ever save a single life. You are small people, doing a small, unimportant job, and inside you are well aware that if your job was anywhere near as important as you pretend it is, you would never be considered qualified to do it.
So spare me the hystrionics, don't waste my time asking if I want my loved ones to be the first ones to die, quit pretending this is about anything but the pretense of security and the excercise of authority for its own sake.
I heard this from an ex-military guy.
"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?
stuff |
(pre-9/11 Americans took the high road. No torture. Beer and b00bies for everyone!)
That was the perception at home. It wasn't the reality abroad.
In contrary oddities, I have a Vietnam-era Army-issue combat knife that won't take an edge -- you can sharpen it all you like and it's still so blunt that if you tried to slash your wrists with it, you'd get blisters.
But even so, its blunt edge will slice through sheet metal like it's butter. I used it to open cans for years.
(It might be older than Vietnam, dunno... I found it laying in the gutter in 1966.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
1) Public condemnation of their extremists by community leaders without the simultaneous scapegoating of America and Israel in the same breath. There are poor people all over the world who had worse done to them (think Tibet and Darfur) and you don't see them blowing people up. Excusing terrorism is taramount to advocating it. In the few cases where non-Muslims have committed terrorist acts in the documented past their community has always cracked down on them severely. Tthey ended up in jail with a harsh sentence and children were educated to avoid such a behavior. We should expect no less of Islam.
2) Their community take active measures to educate their children that the Jihad interpretation of the Koran is wrong. What most people don't know is that some Muslims refuse to even consider that there is such a thing as interpretation of the Koran. I was once told by one that what is written in the Koran is the infallible word of God, "how can you interpret that?" Well, yes that's nice and all but then you're excusing mass-murder of non-Muslims. All other major religious are based on texts full of violence yet they *chose* to interpret it peacefully. Islam must do the same or they have no place in the world.
3) Islam must accept other religion's right to exist. Christians tried to mass-convert Jews and look where that got them. There is nothing wrong with the desire to convert people to your religion but Islam goes way beyond that, often advocating violence against anyone who does not convert and death to those who convert out of the religion.
4) Islam must accept criticism from inside and out. Last time I checked people were posting political cartoons about Jews, Christians and Hindus all over the world without any violent protests or death threats. Muslims must grow a sense of humor.
5) The silent majority speak up against extremists. I'm talking about people speaking out in mass rallies and campuses across the world. I've had Muslim friends who were very nice and polite, but the second you mention America or Israel they go ape-shit beyond the norm. It is one thing to criticize a country using the same standards you'd apply to anyone else. It is another thing altogether to apply double-standards to countries you don't like. I'll give you a simple example: Israel withdrew all civilians and military personnel from Gaza in 2005. The Egyptian-Gaza border has been under Egyptian control since June 2007 when Hamas staged a violent coup against Fatah (another Palestinian group). Gaza has since then launches thousands upon thousands of missiles into neighboring Israeli towns. Children's day-cares, civilian schools and houses have all been hit yet whenever Israel hints at responding the world condemns it. Israel tries killing the people launching missiles, it got condemned. It then tried reducing imports into Gaza which pass through Israel, it got condemned. It then tried reducing the amount of electricity they provide Gaza because that same electricity was used to build missiles, it got condemned. What else can Israel do short of committing suicide? What other country in the world would be expected to provide both water and electricity to a terrorist state that was attacking it? Israel has been doing both for years now. You can be sure that if anyone launched missiles against any other country in the world they would be carpet-bombed within a week and no international condemnation would follow. If it's good enough for other countries, it should be good enough for America and Israel. When British trains are bombed it is "inexcusable" but when the same happens in Israel or America it's "understandable". With all due respect, terrorism is *never* understandable.
None of what I advocate above goes beyond what members of other religions are expected to and already do today. I look forward to a world where Islam coexists with others, but if they are unable to take that position then they leave us with no choice but war.