Slashdot Mirror
British Airways Chief Slams US Security Requests
Ponca City writes "Reflecting a growing frustration among airport and airline owners with the steady build-up of rules covering everything from footwear to liquids, Martin Broughton, chairman of British Airways, has launched a scathing attack on the 'completely redundant' airport checks requested by the TSA and urged the UK to stop 'kowtowing' to American demands for ever more security. Speaking at the annual conference of the UK Airport Operators Association, Broughton lambasted the TSA for demanding that foreign airports increase checks on US-bound planes, while not applying those regulations to their own domestic services. 'America does not do internally a lot of the things they demand that we do,' says Broughton. 'We shouldn't stand for that. We should say, "We'll only do things which we consider to be essential and that you Americans also consider essential.''' For example, Broughton noted that cutting-edge technology recently installed at airports can scan laptops inside hand luggage for explosives but despite this breakthrough the British government still demands computers be examined separately. 'It's just completely ridiculous,' says Broughton."
Finally, a voice with power pointing out the obvious.
Will anyone get on the bandwagon, will it go any further?
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Brave thing to say from where he's sitting. This is going to cost him money, friends and influence. I mean, just saying that all that US Security isn't necessary. Imagine what someone will be saying next.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Countries like the UK and Israel have experience with terrorism, and they've developed reasonably sane ways of handling it. Just to be clear, I'm not praising the fact that they stole land from the Irish and the Palestinians -- but at least they don't act like total idiots when someone sets off a bomb. The US, on the other hand, responded to 9/11 by running around like a chicken with its head cut off. We shot ourselves in the foot in ways that were far worse than any of the damage done by the 9/11 hijackers, including two wars and an all-out assault on our own civil liberties. Compared to that kind of national self-mutilation, I can't really take it too seriously when I'm not allowed to bring a full-size shampoo bottle on an airplane -- but it certainly is an example of the same idiocy, just on a smaller scale.
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It's an insult to perfectly secure modern foreign airports that the US requires these ridiculous redundant security checks. Just last week I flew from Shanghai (China) to Seoul (Korea) and then to Seattle. When we got to Seoul we disembarked the plane in a secure area, went to the transfer area (still secure) and had to go through screening all over again. This seems silly; any transfer from any flight inside of the US doesn't require this step as long as you are still in a secured area. Does this mean the TSA doesn't think Korea can secure their airport? That seems like an insult.
But to make matters worse, there was a *separate* security check after we got our ticket checked but before we entered the Jetway to the plane to Seattle. But it wasn't so much a security check as it was a line of checkers making people open bags (where they dug around a bit, but not a lot) and each checker asked if we had any lighters. When asked about the two extra levels of security checks, the answer was always "US Flight."
a) Why is there a security check in a secured area?
b) What is the point of the *second* security check before you get on the plane that doesn't really accomplish anything anyways?
I don't get it; it's insulting to other countries and costs way too much money. And I'm convinced we are paying for it with US tax dollars.
A single proper security check is be sufficient. Then, you're either in a secured area or you aren't. Maybe there are a handful of airports in the world that can't guarantee security of their "secured area," but the shiny modern airport in Seoul (Incheon) is not one of them (especially considering it also serves as a military airport!)
Redundant is an understatement. A few days ago I took a direct flight from Ireland to the US. I was required to stop and hand over my passport eight times! As a US citizen I've felt more welcome entering the former USSR than my own country.
It's an insult to perfectly secure modern foreign airports that the US requires these ridiculous redundant security checks. Just last week I flew from Shanghai (China) to Seoul (Korea) and then to Seattle. When we got to Seoul we disembarked the plane in a secure area, went to the transfer area (still secure) and had to go through screening all over again. Does this mean the TSA doesn't think Korea can secure their airport? That seems like an insult.
If I understand you correctly, you weren't screened in Seoul, you were screened in China. Now I'm not commenting on the efficacy of the 'security theater' that's performed to get people on airplanes, but I think the US stance there is most certainly going to be that we don't trust the security check in China. And the point there is that the terrorists we're trying to prevent will look for the softest point in the security. If they can daisy chain flights together to start in a place with nearly non-existent security and end up in the US, they will.
As to the check at the jetway after getting checked in the secure area, that does seem excessive. Seems like a lack of trust in what you could do in the airport to acquire weapons from...vendors?
In the US, political donors define the problems, define what tools can be used to solve the problems
there, fixed that for ya
The US doesn't just pay for it with tax dollars, it also pays for it in tourism and business.
Cavity searches are a notoriously unpopular way to begin a vacation.
Shampoo is mostly water (as in more than any other single ingredient) . The first ingredient on virtually every bottle of shampoo I have ever seen is "Aqua", which is water.
Granted that it often does contain a whole lot of other ingredients, but certainly enough that it should set off the water detector.
The idea should be that anything that has enough water that it is almost certainly not a bomb making chemical can be immidately ruled safe, letting them examine the others more closely.
Of course high water content does not not rule out the possibility of being a weapon. Saturated solutions of HCL for example are still like 60% water, and yet could easily eat through the aluminum skin of an airplane, or do severe harm to a person.
But nobody's ever tried to hijack an airplane with that yet (as far as I know), so security ignores the possibility.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
... under the previous administration, the TSA actually asked multiple high-volume airports to set aside certain gates for US-bound flights, reclassify those areas as sovereign US-soil (!!!), and allow the US to post armed US TSA officers there (!!!!!). That was rebuffed, ranging from the Germans refusing outright, Canadians politely offering an additional Mountie, to the Japanese asking for more time to 'study' the issue. The arrogance of the US authorities to make the request in the first place is only eclipsed by the current treatment of foreigners coming to the US (online $$$ VISA, photographs and fingerprints on arrival, etc.) - to what end? Thanks to this lovely attitude, multiple nations have started to retaliate against US citizens by charging them reciprocal rates and also treating foreigners like criminals. Well, great, it's the little people as usual getting the short end of the stick when the elephants start dancing.
I wish more folk in the transportation business - consumers as well as providers would start speaking up more about the very costs of security theater versus the benefits. AFAIK, the TSA has yet to nab a single potential terrorist prior to them doing something naughty on the plane. Similarly, FAA red teams continue to enjoy great success penetrating US airports at will while over 300 TSA employees have been fired for being caught stealing passenger items (makes you wonder how many weren't caught, but I digress). The TSA continues to throw technological solutions at a very complex problem in a completely reactionary manner instead of being honest and admitting that stopping all crime in the air is inherently impossible.
Bruce Schneier has written at length about this, noting that the best way to ensure that only the folk who are supposed to be on the plane is to check them for security, ID, and ticket validity at the gate, just before they get on the plane. Having big choke points at the entry to airports only ensures one thing: a big fat target for terrorists. Worse, the current push for backscatter and microwave machines significantly reduces throughput since the TSA has not allocated any additional floor space or parallel paths into the airport to accommodate the 5x slower scan rate of a backscatter machine vs. a magnetometer. And, should you be silly enough to opt out of a machine scan and ask for a manual pat-down, you can expect the TSA staff to retaliate. In my case, my carry-on luggage was subjected to a comprehensive search even though the pat-down did not uncover anything suspicious (TSA headquarters later stated that this should not have been done)
Bottom line is, some common-sense approaches like upgrading cockpit doors were good ideas. But until Congress and the president grow a backbone and stop the madness, the TSA will continue to grow and whatever privacy and convenience passengers used to enjoy simply will continue to evaporate. It's a pity considering how much fun travel can be. But who am I kidding? There is simply too much money in the business of providing 'security' these days, too many fiscal interests that would be hurt.
Are you kidding?? Your blaming TSA for a bad airline experience???? how about blaming the fucking terrorist who have made it necessary to do this.Oh you must have forgotten about all the 1000,s of people who have been murdered flying into skyscrapers and other things. You people amaze me
No, YOU amaze ME. You probably think hijacking was invented in 2001. By Arabs.
Go back and find an old comedy TV show from the 1970s and see if it doesn't turn up a few "Take me to Havana" hijacker jokes.
The difference between then and now was that the earlier hijackers were playing by rules that said "we won't hurt you (mostly) if you don't hurt us". The 2001 hijackers changed the rules. They succeeded 3 times, because we thought the old rules still applied. By the time the 4th flight was aimed, the passengers knew better and demonstrated that they weren't willing to go along anymore.
We already knew that suicide flights were a possibility. A similar plot in the Phillippines had been quashed under Clinton's watch. We should have quietly beefed up the air marshal count and been ready for them. That would have been a lot more effective than waiting until the worst had happened and then making everyone go through a lot of silly meaningless rituals.
I gave up my childhood illusions about the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave after that. It seemed that no sacrifice of liberty was too great if it gave the illusion that we'd be "safe". We were never safe. We'll never BE safe. We can be vigilant, but a plane full of alert passengers is a better bet for catching the next hare-brained attack than a bunch of countermeasures against attacks that didn't work anyway. And a lot less humiliating.
Personally, I get extra watchful when I'm on a plane seated next to someone who's dressed like a black man. You never know what those crazy people might do.
Land of the Cowards, Home of the Slaves. You vill please to present your Papers!
how about blaming the fucking terrorist who have made it necessary to do this
The point, which you have spectacularly missed, is that The Terrorists(tm) haven't made it necessary to do this; other countries, such as the UK and Israel, which have been dealing with rather determined and persistent terrorists far longer than the US has, have managed to come up with security measures that are both effective and unobtrusive. The IRA has never, AFAIK, hijacked an airliner, and it's been decades since the PLO managed to do so -- and both of these organizations in their heyday were every bit as fanatical and a hell of a lot more organized than al-Qaeda ever dreamed of being. Do you really think they wouldn't have pulled the equivalent of 9/11 on London or Tel Aviv if they could have? And yet flying through British and Israeli airports is much easier and more pleasant than flying through American airports.
Blaming terrorism for stupid airport security is like blaming crime for police brutality. The people screwing up in this case aren't the people we're supposedly being protected from, but the people supposedly doing the protecting. And inevitably, it makes the actual job of preventing horrifying acts of violence -- like the deaths of "all the 1000,s of people who have been murdered flying into skyscrapers and other things" -- a hell of a lot harder, and greatly increases the chances of such events in the future.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
As a very frequent traveller all over the world, I can not agree more with the BA boss. The whole US imposed security mess is inconsitent, abusive and humiliating. I normally get around it by being docile and act like the sheep I'm supposed to be - but when something goes wrong all hell breaks lose. My story is about being "picked out" for an additional check (the infamous SSSS boarding pass). The TSA officer at Raleigh NC airport picked me out in the line before the x-ray scan and told me to step aside for a pat-down. I told him I'd accidentially left my boarding pass on the x-ray belt and just wanted to grab it before it got sucked into oblivion. That resulted in a "SIR, YOU ARE DISREGARDING MY INSTRUCTIONS - STEP THIS WAY OR I WILL ARREST YOU!!!". What a great way to treat people - especially those from foreign countries who are the greatest US supporters in the war on terrorism (in my case Australia). TSA officers (of all people) should understand that sometimes the people in the security line are jet-lagged, tired and not completely focussed. Especially after an 18 hour transit. Maybe I should also mention the insitence from US immigration on finger-printing my 18 month old child in 2004. Thankfully they have since given up on that stupid idea. To all my US friends: Try travelling to New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium or any other country with a sensible democratic government and reasonable security and immigration checks. You will be surprised at the way that you are treated like a human and not a terrorist by default.
Meus subcriptio est nocens Latin quoniam bardus populus reputo is sanus callidus
Assuming that:
1) Such a device cannot be fooled. Human ingenuity seems to be underestimated.
2) The "explosives" are actually in an "explosive" configuration during this scan.
3) There are no other means of causing havoc on a plane -- acids, poisons, bio-weapons.. but I guess if only all passengers are killed and the plane survives it doesn't really "count", after all there was no monetary loss.