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TSA Changes Screening Based on Blog Suggestion
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."
No.
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.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
regular drinking alcohol (i.e. 40-45% by volume) will not ignite if you put a match to it. It requires pre-heating an strong flame source to get it to burn. (Try making a molotov cocktail with room temp vodka, a rag and a match and you won't get very far).
/. analogy of cars is required here - you *cannot* prevent a car being stolen (or aeroplane being blown up), the more you secure you make it , the more tempting a target it becomes to high-end thieves(committed, organised terrorists). But that doesn't mean that locking the doors and setting the alarm (x-rays and searches) is a bad idea......
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
echo $SIGNATURE
Unfortunately this practice of having all the electronics out has now spread to the rest of the world, as I posted a month or so ago (http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=400884&cid=21845314). Even if the TSA changes its practices, it won't make much difference for anyone travelling outside the US, unless those authorities choose to copy the TSA in this.
The "binary explosive" plot involved TATP, triacetone triperoxide. Synthesis of AP requires time, ventilation, and an ice bath. The precipitate is NOT a liquid, it is a crystaline organic peroxide.
See: http://roguesci.org/chemlab/energetics/acetone_peroxide.html
www.isoHunt.com
Oh come on. Surely they have an operational manual? When they create policy or decide what needs searching, surely they would communicate this back to head office. If the electronic devices they were looking for were so dangerous, why weren't they notifying the main organization as to their concerns?
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?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
yes. have tried it. am a chemist. you can get 40% alcohol to burn but it takes a little heating and a good ignition flame. It's not a great candidate for a molotov cocktail.
echo $SIGNATURE
As the other poster noted, you have to preheat the alcohol. I make "cafe brule" for special occasions, which is basically coffee mixed with brandy, orange extract, and sugar. In order to ignite the brandy, which is standard 80 proof (40%), you heat it in a saucepan for a few minutes. After that, taking a match to it creates a nice blue (and extremely hot) flame, that's actually quite difficult to put out (it takes more than walking by). It's quite impressive when done in the dark, especially when you stir it, and remove a still-flaming spoon from the mixture!
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
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
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
You need to rent Around The World In 80 Days - not the fictional movie(s), the A&E documentary with Michael Palin.
/.: How about allowing <s> tags? It would bring the ^W joke somewhat closer to the 21st century.
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
I agree. Some of the TSA really are exactly as you say. I had one stupid fucker angrily point his finger at me and yell "YOU come when I SAY you come". This after I thought he had motioned me to come throught the metal detector. I guess he was gesturing to some other loser behind me. Then he had to stand there and glare at me for a moment. I thought that if I had said anything, it would have been cavity search time.
If the TSA wanted to change, they should look at their screening process to keep from hiring monkeys like this guy.
I have found that everyone who works at Atlanta is an ass. I hate that airport almost as much as I hate Delta.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
You could try just wearing a "nude suit". You know, one of those skin-colored spandex leotards. You get the same basic effect, but you can't technically be arrested, since you *are* dressed.
(extra points for wearing an Afro wig, and mincing about like Richard Simmons once you drop the trench coat.)
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
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:
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman