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TSA Says Screening Drinks Purchased Inside Airport Terminal Is Nothing New
First time accepted submitter lcam writes in with a story about a video that has started a new round of condemnation against the TSA over the testing of drinks. "The video, posted on YouTube on Monday and featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams Tuesday night, has already garnered almost 125,000 hits and nearly 900 comments from angry travelers. It shows two TSA officers swabbing bottles of water, a carton of coconut water and a cup of coffee, among other liquids. 'Now remember that this is inside the terminal, well beyond the security check and purchased inside the terminal ... just people waiting to get on the plane,' YouTube user danno02 says in the video's description. 'My wife and son came back from a coffee shop just around the corner, then we were approached. I asked them what they were doing. One of the TSA ladies said that they were checking for explosive chemicals (as we are drinking them).' The TSA insisted Tuesday that its policy of checking liquids beyond the security gate has been in place for five years now. TSA agents will randomly patrol the gates using a test strip and dropper containing a non-toxic solution, it said."
What about the explosive diaerara you get from eating the junk they have in the terminal?
Why not use this "technology" to resume allowing people to carry liquids >3oz in carry-ons?
Perhaps limit the number of such bottles to save time but if they can swab drinks bought in the security zone, they can swab our drinks while we wait to be nakey-scanned...
Fuck the TSA
Is the strip and solution really non-toxic? Will TSA provide independent test lab results to prove it? (unlike the poorly tested backscatter x-ray machines)?
If they have a reliable test to determine if a liquid is hazardous or not, then how about letting me bring liquids through the checkpoints?
TSA security theater story of the day:
On a recent flight from IAD, just before the flight started boarding, the gate agent announced "Please have your ID available for inspection, TSA will be conduction random ID checks and baggage searches upon boarding". And sure enough, as we boarded, there was a TSA guy with his magic flashlight, randomly checking ID's for validity, and farther into the jetway was a pair of TSA agents randomly searching luggage.
What's the point of a random check if it's announced when passengers can choose not to participate? If I were a bad guy with a fake ID or something bad in my luggage, I'd go home and try again a different day with a different fake ID.
I was an American teenager in the 1970s. Back then, people made fun of the Soviet Union. One of the most popular jokes referred to a Soviet citizen's internal passport, which apparently they were supposed to carry even when going from city to city. And of course there were all the stories about the KGB.
Fast forward to now. The TSA is becoming more and more intrusive into all aspects of our lives. They are even trying to worm their way into searching you on city buses and trains. Also Congress has, on more than one occasion, entertained proposals that would require US citizens to carry what amounts to an internal passport.
Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down that wall... and we thought we won the Cold War. But I guess Breshnev and company are having the last laugh.
#DeleteChrome
If you are going to check something at a checkpoint then it makes sense to stochastically sample with secondary checks to test your error rate. Apparently the TSA believe that there is a reason to limit the liquids through airport checkpoints and screen those liquids that they do allow through. Irrespective of if this is itself a rational position, if you believe that it is then it is also rational to check randomly sample liquids after the checkpoint.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
The real reason for this is to make you, the idiot public, feel safe by having some random person in a uniform approach you and proceed to do something vaguely scientific-looking while assuring you that you're very safe here. See, you're safe because we're doing this thing of dubious value, but we're dressed in uniforms that command authority.
If you want to see this first hand, dress up in a suit, wear an official-looking nametag (it needs to have a BIG official-looking gold seal on it) covered in laminate, and then walk around a commercial building telling people what to do. Tell them men's room is closed and everyone has to use the women's (or vice versa). Stand in front of an elevator and tell people it's out of order (even as people exit from right behind you). Now, take it to Troll Level 99 by getting a couple of your friends involved in it: Come up with something completely outrageous (claim you're an USDA food inspector and need to look at anyone carrying a sandwich while in front of a cafe), and make sure your friends agree to do whatever you're doing. Then demand the same of other random people. Take a bite out of their sandwich and then tell them it's "acceptable" and let them go. You can have one of your friends object, at which point you eat the entire sandwich and treaten to write them a citation for interfering in official inspector business.
You'd be surprised just how far you can take it. I mean, you can basically rob someone of everything they own, and as long as other people are complicit to allow it, they'll just fold in like a deck of cards. No. I really mean it. But don't do it since it's unethical. But they do, they really do. :(
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How do you know it's a TSA agent dripping a strange liquid into your drink and not a crazy guy dripping a slow acting poison or virus that won't be noticed until hours later after hundreds of people come down with a strange affliction all across the country?
Even if you demand to see ID first (is the TSA agent obligated to show ID upon request?), how many people know what a TSA badge is really supposed to look like?
I've had a sneaking suspicion that the TSA is a stealth jobs program for the otherwise unemployable. It's not so much the intrusive searches and so on as the STUPIDITY of their measures (how are four small bottles of liquid different from one large bottle?). As a game I stand in line at the checkpoints daydreaming about all the ways I could sneak things through—ideas that I won't share because it appears that terrorists are generally, thank goodness, even dumber than the gatekeepers. Many critics have already dissected their policies, e.g., http://www.schneier.com/ It's just too easy.
Terrorism is a very serious problem that can get people killed. So is the TSA.
I read a comment on one of the other sites carrying this story that the test itself was of minor interest to the TSA - instead the goal is to talk to more passengers in order to gain "human intelligence." To these cynical ears, that sounds like exactly the kind of half-baked plan the TSA would come up with. Somebody thought it would be a clever way for their "behaviour profilers" to have an excuse to "profile" people without obviously creeping them out.
My personal experience is that I've flown once in the last 8 years, and the one time I did fly one of those TSA guys tried to talk me up while I was in line. It was uber-creepy - I spent the next hour trying to figure out if the guy was just naturally creepy or if he been trying "profile" me. Either way I did my best to say as little as possible to the guy and just get on past the checkpoint as quickly as possible. Talking up someone while you both wait a minute or two for the "test strip" to change color is probably going to be less obviously creepy. Still assinine and utterly ineffective, but less creepy.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I really hate to defend the TSA but there is a legitimate infiltration vector that this does address - that employees beyond the checkpoint can being in substances and transfer them to passengers.
Now, I do not defend their approach - that the passengers are the ones that get interfered with. The TSA should be working behind the scenes so that dangerous materials never get brought in by employees. Someone could slip some C4 onto a palette which gets passed along to the cashier then to the traveler. Then at another store picks up the detonator, then assembles it all on the plane.
I have no idea what security there is on getting stuff into airports, I figure it's got to be nearly impossible to adequately screen everything. .
And another thing is that you wouldn't put C4 into coffee, you'd put it on the bottom of the cup in that little area created by the seam. Of course, a coffee cup is the last place. You could just cram it in a hollowed out book. You'd fit way more.
So the other give away here is that they are after a liquid threat, and we already know there are no liquid threats capable of being produced in mid-air, or on the ground without raising a lot of suspicion. It'd have to be pre-packaged.
Someone somewhere must have gotten some intel about this vector.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
At Ontario airport over a year ago. We were lined up ready to board, and two fossils with a cart came up to us and then waited for the line to actually start to board the plane to start pulling people out to screen them. They used some kind of test strip and held it over my open bottle of water (I had drunk half of it while they watched), stuck it in a machine, and then a few seconds later, moved on to the next guy.
They didn't bother to check my backpack, where I had two other bottles of water I had bought from the same shop.
Actually, I've been wondering if the whole "no drinks through security" rule was made at the request of the airport merchants who charge three dollars for a $0.30 bottle of water....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I would say, "hell no you're not putting that shit in my drink!" and chug it really quick!
Can we sue the TSA for putting us in harms way? I am sick and tired of them making me stand in line, next to a barrel full of suspected explosives.
Someday, people will come to realize that there was one single change after 9/11 that effectively eliminated the possibility that hijackers could use our planes to fly into targets - they put locks on the cockpit doors.
Everything else is a charade. The TSA was created and is funded specifically to allow politicians to brag that they "created jobs", even if those jobs are completely worthless and nothing more than "security theater". It's a federal work program, nothing more. You might as well named it the "Ditch Digging Administration" and put the same low income, low skill workers in fields digging ditches and filling them back in. At least that would have some tangible benefit and stop causing so many people the nuisance.
In fact, the privacy invasions, delays, and "no fly lists" put in place by the TSA have caused significantly more deaths than happends on 9/11 - because people avoid the airports more and drive... getting into highway accidents.
AFAICT the only thing all of these "security measures" do is get people used to the idea that they're subjects, not citizens and that the security forces can do whatever they want whenever they want to anybody they feel like. By the time most people realize we're turning into a police state it will be too late.
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Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Seriously.
If they are going to spot check the liquids, just do it before I purchase said liquid. That's kind of a nice deal, given it actually has some impact on my safety. Random checks after the purchase has a really shitty end game:
1. Liquid found to be benign: "Sorry for bothering you, and trust us the chemicals used for testing are no big deal." Right. Feeling good about that one. NOT!
2. Liquid found to be dubious: "I'm afraid we need to conficate your coffee miss..." She asks, "Well, what about that guy over there, who got one too?" Yeah, that's ugly. Do they go and get his to put up a brave face, eventually just taking all the coffee? Or is it just a lie, or menacing behavior to get her to just shut down? And if she asks, "But you guys certified them for sale inside the terminal right?" Their reply? LOL!!!
3. Liquid found to be dangerous: See dubious, but for a lawsuit. +1 for pain and suffering on all sides. Might as well just start handing out good drugs to prevent the headaches that are going to happen. Here in Oregon, somebody might just strip over it! State law permits nudity as a legit protest. Hello 10 O'Clock news!
There are times when I seriously wonder whether or not anyone actually thinks about these things on more than a basic level.
Of course, the vendors would throw a fit! They need to make the money, so fuck us, right? Right.
Blogging because I can...
3 dollars? Damn its cheap where you fly the airport i fly out of for work 2-3 times a week charges 4 for a 20 oz bottle of water and 4.75 for a bottle of coke. Now if you go to the bar and get a fountain drink (in a glass you cant take with) its 3.05.
I travel back and forth from Japan pretty regularly. They have a special machine that they take the drink pop it in a holder and within seconds throws the green light or the 'Abunai' Red alert signal. Its been there for years. Kinda cool that I can buy my tea from outside the security zone and bring it right now.
Swabbing? LOL..
There's no Freedom like UFP-dom
So they're admitting the security theater at the checkpoint is ineffective? And more theater is needed?
Liberty plz.
I say, "Give me liberty or give me death." Well, we're all out of liberty, so now it's just a matter of time...
If you dislike the TSA, please expend the small amount of time and calories to:
1) reduce your airline flights as much as possible and notify an airline in writing ("I estimate that I've avoided spending $1800 this year alone on plane tickets, and have instead spent about $2100 and more time on other forms of travel, in order to avoid the TSA treatment.")
2) write to a congressperson to complain
3) always POLITELY request to be hand searched rather than scanned, and try to POLITELY take up as much as their time as you can
4) try to carry many completely innocent items which they must remove or scan -- things like a bottle of coke, etc.
This takes many, many of us doing it to have the desired effect.
Well, that's one way to build up a DNA database. Didn't the spooks recruit a doctor to get Bin Laden DNA under the guise of vaccinations?
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis