Slashdot Mirror
Taking Sense Away: Confessions of a Former TSA Screener
OverTheGeicoE writes "TSA gets discussed on Slashdot from time to time, usually negatively. Have you ever wondered about the TSA screeners' perspective? Taking Sense Away is a blog, allegedly written by a former TSA screener, offering insider perspectives on TSA topics. For example, there's the Insider's TSA Dictionary, whose entries are frequently about the code screeners use to discuss attractive female passengers (like 'Code Red,' 'Fanny Pack,' and 'Hotel Bravo'). Another posting explains what goes on in private screening rooms, which the author claims is nothing compared to screener conduct in backscatter image operator rooms. Apparently what happens in the IO room stays in the IO room. Today's posting covers how TSA employees feel about working for 'a despised agency'. For many the answer is that they hate working for 'the laughing stock of America's security apparatus,' try to hide that they work for TSA, and want to transfer almost anywhere else ASAP."
I'm pleased to hear that at least some of the people working for the TSA are ashamed. They should be.
One wonders what would happen if an ad-hoc, "name and shame" reputation network were to identify TSA agents everywhere they went. It's easy to imagine the near-universal environment of hate stares, extreme rudeness and occasional violence from victims of the TSA's Orwellian tactics putting direct pressure on TSA employees themselves to drastically reform their arrogant policies.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
for the TSA. It's the only job he's ever been able to hold down.
He's stupid and lazy, but at least he's arrogant. Almost killed my cousin, his wife, by convincing her that chiropractic should replace her insulin.
He's fiercely proud of the TSA.
This space available.
They're great against lions too. When is the last time you've heard of a lion attack at a terminal?
We're wasting over $8,000,000,000 per year on them when we could be spending it on other things. That's 42% of NASA's current budget. Add it up over 11 years, that's a boatload of cash.
Can we please be a bit rational and think of the children?
Please?
For as much as the technolibertarian parts of the geek community loves to rage against the TSA, they're not actually that unpopular with the general public. There's some good poll data on this.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Can we please be a bit rational and think of the children?
He is, he noted that the TSA is 42% of NASA's budget. With that kind of increased funding we could send the children into space!
After all, in space no-one can hear you scream.
Because the evidence, say, from Japan, that an almost complete prohibition of firearms will make the murder rate very low. Even if you look at say, germany and the UK, who have much higher violent crime rates than the US, their murder rate is much lower.
There should be a TSA, it should try and prevent dangerous shit from getting on aircraft, trains, airports etc. It's not that there shouldn't be a TSA, it's that the TSA as implemented is unlikely to efficiently accomplish any of the broad goals it has.
You're right that stopping the occasional mass shooting is extremely hard. That's actually the wrong target for the US, the real target for the US should be handguns and work from there. Despite the occasional mass shooting the US averages about 40 murders a day, whereas the equivalent rate in the EU would be more like 10.
... America wakes up to the fact that measures like intrusive TSA screenings are all about keeping the ordinary American scared of "bad guys", and not about improving security tangibly. There are many countries around the world that don't have the equivalent of the "TSA", yet manage to get through year after year without a major incident. Americans, however, are not supposed to wake up, ever. That's what you get when a handful of ill intentioned lobbyists and gatekeepers control virtually the entire media, most large corporations, and a lot of the government decisions and lawmaking in a country.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
While I understand that people have to feed their families and need a job, the people working at the TSA employees get no sympathy from me. Yes, you have every right to hate your job and still do it. But if you are in a "service" industry (or more generally, where you interact with a large number of people), you shouldn't do a shitty job just because you hate it. Most TSA people seem to try the experience unpleasant for passengers. And with a myriad of changing rules, they don't seem to grasp that people will make mistakes. Even a slight deviation from routine gets you the "deluxe" treatment (like the woman carrying a bottle with breast milk being held up for hours).
Case in point - I got a belt that has an buckle that can be removed because I got tired of pulling my belt on and off each time I flew. And I have been through the all types of scanners without a problem in most airports. But one day a new type of scanner seems to have a problem with just the belt "blocking" the view. So rather than just make me remove the whole belt and pass through, they need to do a pat-down that takes much longer. BTW, what happens if my trousers fall down because I need to keep my hands on my head while being scanned? Do I need to register on some type of list somewhere?
No matter how bad a day a waiter is having, he shouldn't spit on food. And TSA employees should treat people like people, not like a piece of meat on a slaughter line.
I believe it's a coping mechanism. See, people love power, but they hate responsibility. So life is mostly a game of musical chairs / random shuffling of the deck in the attempt to better your position -> does your new job have more power, and less responsibility? Then you win. Does it have less power and more responsibility? Then you lose.
By crying out to their government to 'make those things we don't like' illegal, they place the future responsibility for any failures firmly on their government's back. We all know that the government can't be everywhere, at all times, but that doesn't prevent some people for blaming it for not being so. So, in this case, the power to be f*cking idiots is retained by the people, while the responsibility for their actions is left to their government. A wonderful recipe full of fail.
Think of it as being a war between individual responsibility versus group responsibility. In the former, all power is retained by the individual, but also all responsibility. In the latter, well...how many people here have worked on group projects before? How many would do so again? The point being, in any group, some members will work harder, others will slack. The person representing the group may have more power than others, or less so; responsibility for group actions may be placed on the whole group, or just one person. Being in a group means, typically, giving up some of your power, but, as I pointed out earlier, can be considered a win if more responsibility is offloaded onto others than the power lost.
Of course, modern society, as you have seen, can be a little insane here. There are people out there, earning $7 / hour, on whom all the responsibility for a business is placed, while there are some earning $100,000 / hour, with no responsibility save getting dressed in the morning.
That and, for some odd reason, a fair portion of the human race seems completely unaware that inside each of them is a MacGuyver, that, when pressed into a corner, occasionally pops out to do 'uncertain' things. 'Tis easier to wash a cat than convince a creative human not to strike back at their aggressors, real or imagined.
I am John Hurt.
"TSA gets discussed on Slashdot from time to time, ALWAYS negatively..."
Ftfy. The TSA is always discussed negatively here -- and rightfully so. Take the entire body of evidence as to TSA's effectiveness and procedures, then toss in a million or so anecdotes about TSA's harassment & sheer stupidity, and no wonder they are so looked down on.
Yet another anecdote: in August, I was told I'd have to go through a backscatter or be patted down. I _politely_ said no, I'll opt for the patdown. The fifty-something TSA rent-a-cop (Keystone Kop?), in a half-assed attempt at condescension, "explained" to me that "this machine is not harmful, it uses millimeter wave technology that is the same technology in your cell phone -- it's just as safe as your cell phone." I resisted calling him a dumb fuck, and I _politely_ said that I'll opt for the patdown. He became aggressive and persisted with his bullshit reasoning, and I _politely_ said based on what I've read, I'll opt for the patdown. The dumb fuck yelled at me "WELL EVERYTHING YOU READ IS WRONG!" I know, I know, whilst in the presence of a TSA rent-a-cop I was wrong to say that I actually read. So there you have it, slashdotters, I have solid evidence that everything we've read --and I suppose written-- is WRONG. That fascist fuck will be head of TSA some day. And the patdown is a memory I will always cherish!
Guess who's avoiding airports and instead driving from CO to PA this holiday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others This is what the US is working to. I hope making tsa employees miserable will push things back the other way. We use to make fun of communists and their "show me your papers" paranoia.
I would say that is basic statistics.
Eg, the rate of vehicular related deaths among 3rd world, uncontacted jungle villages is amazingly low. It doesn't mean they are safer drivers, it means nobody drives, so nobody dies while driving.
It's like saying there is no disease, and no starvation on mars. Of course there isn't, nobody lives there. It doesn't mean mars is a utopian paradise.
Rather than looking myopically at "gun related deaths", you should look at overall "deaths by violent crime".
The percentage of those deaths via firearms is a function of availability. The rate of deaths overall by violent crimes is what you are really looking for.
But it doesn't sound as sensational when you say "sure, your chances of being killed in a violent crime are 3x higher, but your chances of being shot are nearly nonexistent!", instead of "almost nobody gets shot here!"
The question to ask is not "do less people get shot", the question to ask is "is there less overall violent crime?"
(This is especially important whe you consider that part of the ascribed deterrent effect [if it exists], is the implication that violent criminals will themselves be more likely to BE shot. As such, if said violent criminals *are* being shot, they will contribute to the "gun related deaths" statistic.)
[citation required] DC has gun laws but a high homicide rate. North Dakota has few laws but a low one. I know Mexico has strict laws that simply don't work.
The reasonable question I would ask is "What is the complete impact of stricter gun laws on crime." You then need to decide what mix of gun deaths, crime, cost, laws and civil liberties you want to go with. Just saying gun death rate reduction is the only acceptable goal is not a reasonable way to consider the whole question.
historically, the Founding Fathers put the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution so that if the government was not taking care of the people they could rise up like the American Colonists did against the British.
Because the evidence, say, from Japan, is that an almost complete prohibition of firearms and a very low murder rate are not mutually exclusive.
FTFY.
Or did Japan used to have a high murder rate until they took away the guns?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Maybe it's just that the people in states with high levels of general crime/gangs/drug culture are the ones demanding the right to own guns...it's not surprising there are more murders in those states.
correlation != causation
No sig today...
Japan also has a suicide rate 2-3x times higher than the US. It's a different culture, if you gave everyone in the US a katana I doubt we'd have a seppuku epidemic.
A big part of our high murder rate is the drug war. You can try and take away everything besides rocks and pointy sticks (and fail miserably) but the drug dealers will keep killing each other. Nothing besides complete legalization is going to end it.
What does NASA use the other 58% of their budget on?
Hookers and Black Jack, or so I've heard.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Your argument is predicated on the notion that someone would travel from the great state of Texas to a retarded backwater like New York.
Enjoy your small sodas.
Carthago delenda est!
[citation required] DC has gun laws but a high homicide rate. North Dakota has few laws but a low one.
Or, same population size living in vastly different population densities.
D.C.: Population: 617,996, Area: 68.3 sq mi
North Dakota: Population: 683,932, Area: 70,703 sq mi
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
That and, for some odd reason, a fair portion of the human race seems completely unaware that inside each of them is a MacGuyver, that, when pressed into a corner, occasionally pops out to do 'uncertain' things. 'Tis easier to wash a cat than convince a creative human not to strike back at their aggressors, real or imagined.
Aha, someone finally argued it (not that I read every possible post). Pistols are a weapon of convenience, and a fairly low collateral one at that. If those were not available, some would use bows, crossbows, throwing knives, shivs, multitools, or just a carefully thrown rock. However, they might also use chlorine gas, fuel air explosives, difficult to extinguish incendiaries, anthrax, or other weapons with even less precision.
Blaming an act on the tool chosen is laziness, and the one thing humans have gotten VERY good at over the centuries is learning what things can kill eachother quickly or brutally. Looking at my desk, I think a stickynote is the only thing that I can not determine how to use as a debilitating/deadly weapon, and that's probably a lapse in imagination more than a trait of the stickynote.
That's true.
Aside from peoples' rants on here about not being 'free health care in the US for mental problems'....if the person has any sanity left, they do NOT want to seek mental health.
Talk about a serious blot on your record. It can keep you out of many jobs that you might need. Forget a security clearance....but even shy of that, likely hits you on insurance rates, if you can get a loan, etc.
Even if you get better, or it was something temporary....if you ever had to be treated for mental health issues, that shit will follow you around for the rest of your life, just like being branded a sex offender will do.
Except the damages and discrimination will be a little more covert.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yes, look at Switzerland. Where those weapons are in the hands of a well-regulated militia (sound familiar?) as a substitute for a standing army, whose members receive extensive training in weapon safety, and understand that those weapons are for national defense, not to kill whomever they find personally threatening.
One: it's a meaningless question. It's not the gun deaths that matter; it's the total deaths. If you reduce guns deaths by 2,000 but knife deaths rise by 2,000, you haven't gained anything.
Two: It's not true. Jamaica has much tougher gun control than the US. It also has a gun death rate almost five times the US's.
There's your answer.
Japan also has a mafia so powerful it has influence over the government, and while we were telling the English king to go fuck himself, they were living in feudal aristocracy that was utterly submissive and caste-ridden. Even for the supposedly macho samurai, it was considered a point of honor to die like a little bitch for your lord, and to fail him required suicide. They were also the only people allowed to carry weapons and they could and did murder peasants with impunity. (I guess when your lord could ass-rape you if he wanted, you tend to take it out on the little people. Come to think of it, the Spartans did the same kind of shit, and they were big on ass-rape too.)
So, does Japan not have a lot of murders because they lack guns, or do they lack murders (and guns) because they've always been a docile, subservient people, violent only when allowed to be in the service of their betters?
The founders believed that the citizenry had to be able to protect themselves against their own government. I don't think they would care whether that was done with stone axes and primitive bows and arrows are with x-ray lasers and particle beams. They would certainly believe that if the government had it the citizenry should be able to have it too.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Rather than looking myopically at "gun related deaths", you should look at overall "deaths by violent crime".
I'm sorry, but intelligence has no place in a debate about gun control.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
And keep in mind that the readily available firearms at the time were single-shot muzzleload rifles.
And keep in mind that muzzleloaders were the only firearms available to the government too. I will give up my assault rifle when the government gives up theirs.
The reasonable question I would ask is "What is the complete impact of stricter gun laws on crime."
Glad to oblige! Here's a scientific study done by the Australian government to determine the result of the crackdown on firearms possession post-Port Arthur massacre. It's got numbers in it, and the statistical determination is all well laid out for you.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704353/
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
This blog is well written and funny. I've been laughing at my desk for a good 15 minutes now, I plan to finish this thing off before I head home.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
According to wikipedia, the rate of homicide in the US is 4.2/100k people and the rate of gun related homicide is 3.7/100k people. Therefor, 89%ish of US homicides are gun related homicides.
Contrast this with the UK, which has 1.2/100k homicides and 0.04/100k gun related homicides, or 3.3% of homicides are gun related.
Another way to look at this would be to consider the guns per gun related homicide numbers. In the US, there are approximated 89k guns per 100k people, giving a guns per gun-homicide ratio of 24k guns per gun-homicide. Serbia, the #2 country for guns per capita has approximately 58k guns per 100k people, giving them a guns per gun-homicide rate of 93k guns per gun-homicide.
Clearly, in the states we're all about shooting each other, even in comparison to other nations with (roughly, since no one can claim truly similar) similar rates of gun ownership. Put another way, in the US, we have more gun related homicides per capita (by a factor of 4 almost) than most developed countries have in TOTAL homicides.
Full disclosure: I fully suspect that if guns were outlawed here in the US, we would see an alarming rise in knife related crime. I personally think that everyone here is so willing to kill each other because we have so little vacation time. Damned Protestant work ethic!
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
Fidel Castro overthrew Batista with only a small group of armed men. They were able to accomplish that because there were mass defections from the pro-Batista military.
I have no doubt that a sufficiently well prepared group could overthrow the US government. People have this idea that you need F-16s and bombers. You don't. The US government is unlikely to drop bombs on its own cities and towns or even drive tanks through the city streets. Most of the combat would be guys with rifles against guys with rifles. Whoever had more guys with guns would probably win.
But all of this is beside the point. Overthrowing the government was not the only reason the Founders wanted a well-armed citizenry or citizen-soldiers like the MInutemen. It is to defend ourselves and preserve our freedom for any reason at all. It might be a government that has gone full-1984 or it might be a particular branch of the government enforcing some new law. It could be some circumstance that neither of us could even imagine at the moment. The details don't matter because the principle is the same. Self-defense with whatever the standard weapons are at the time is a basic human right. Only a government afraid of its own citizens would try to deny that right.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Honestly, according to the statistics if we could just stop black males (and somewhat hispanic males, black females, and white males) from getting murdered so much then we'd be pretty close to first world European country homicide rates.
We still wouldn't touch them on firearm-related homicides but that would look somewhat better.
Sources:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Its also important to extrapolate out the number of gun related homocides that can't be (grossly) lumped in with "self defense" (this is not an endorsement, btw) situations.
Eg, crook with crowbar breaks into house, homeowner shoots and kills him. The crook is a gun related homocide statistic.
If overall violent crime is high, and firearm ownership is high, barring a social taboo, the number of persons being shot will also be comparably high. (If for no other reason, violent criminals are being shot.)
If anything, the guns per homocide value having such a wide spread is fairly indicative that gun ownership/availability is not the primary controlling variable.
Not saying the USA and our criminal statistics are in any way "a good thing", just that gun ownership and availability is only a contributing factor to the larger problem, which is overall greater criminality.
Eg, "sensible people" + guns == only slight change in shootings.
"Violent criminally minded people" (like americans) + guns == exagerated change in shootings.
Curbing violent behaviors would be the primary variable to influence for the greatest reduction in homocides, including gun related.
Imagine if traffic cops were allowed to write the traffic laws.
That's where we are with the TSA. We need to separate threat assessment from implementation, or else the people who want to build their budgets and bureaucratic empires will "identify" hijacking dangers from nutrias and demand $250K each to buy magic anti-nutria rocks from companies that pay them "consulting" fees.
I just think it's awesome that Bruce Schneier got a nod in the TSA dictionary:
Bruce Schneiered: (V, ints) When a passenger uses logic in order to confound and perplex an officer into submission. Ex: “A TSA officer took my Swiss army knife, but let my scissors go. I then asked him wouldn’t it be more dangerous if I were to make my scissors into two blades, or to go into the bathroom on the secure side and sharpen my grandmother’s walking stick with one of the scissor blades into a terror spear. Then after I pointed out that all of our bodies contain a lot more than 3.4 ounces of liquids, the TSA guy got all pissed and asked me if I wanted to fly today. I totally Schneirered his ass.”
TSA has done checkpoints and searches in Amtrak stations too, such as this one. It's just not as prevalent (yet?).
Because the number weren't quite so easy to get - gun ownership is divided up by Northern Ireland, England & Wales and the Scotland whereas crime isn't. Done very quickly, so there could be some errors:
Northern Ireland: 21.9 guns/100
England & Wales: 6.2 guns/100
Scotland: 5.5 guns/100
Populations:
NI: 1,810,900
E&W: 53,013,000
S: 5,295,000
Total number of guns in the UK: c.3,974,618
Total population of the UK: c.60,118,900 (actual number is about 63 million, so I'm missing some people somehow)
So we get 6.62k about guns /100k
Finally, we get from this that the UK has about 165 guns per gun homicide, so basically we need almost 7 times as many guns to create a gun homicide than the US.
Maybe you guys should try using sarcasm and witty put downs instead of killing each other when you get grumpy. </sarcasm>