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TSA Decides Against Allowing Small Knives On Aircraft
New submitter lemur3 writes "After multiple months of discussing possible changes to the prohibited items list, the Transportation Security Administration in the United States has determined that it is best to go ahead without any changes to the list of items passengers may have in their carry-on baggage when traveling by air. Under the proposed change (discussed previously on Slashdot) pocket knives and other items, such as hockey sticks and ski poles, would have been allowed."
I've carried a pocket knife since my dad bought me one for my 8th birthday, not having that weight in that pocket doesn't feel right. Since this foolishness started I've lost at least six to the TSA, since I tend to catch flights too early to be properly awake.. Going on vacation again in a couple of weeks, and I'll probably lose another either on the way there or the way back.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
people knew there was a secret society of "spork" wielding master assassins........
Besides the horrible service and the conditions (ie personal space mostly) on aircraft today, they continue with these absurd bans on common items. I never leave home without a knife, many times a SAK, other times a Spyderco or Queen. To me that would be like leaving home without pants. You just don't think about it, you just do it. When I do need to fly I'm very much aware that I'm without my knife or even the P-38 I keep on my keychain (I'm sure they would figure out how to take that away as well).
If they allowed knives back on, and any kind of terrorist attack occurred with knives, then someone would be held responsible for that decision, no matter how wise it seemed at the time. If they disallow knives, people will kick and scream, but won't actually change their flying behavior much, and everyone's job will be safe.
I am officially gone from
Instead of making folks discard completely non-threatening items, TSA should look into *actual* security.
The airport should have a series of series of checkpoints. Every vehicle that pulls onto the property goes past a guard that asks you how your day is going (screen #1). At the ticket counter, a friendly agent asks if you are enjoying the weather (screen #2). Drop off your bags, some other random, friendly question (screen #3). Lastly, at the x-ray / metal detector / body scanner, the attending agent looks you in the eye and chats with you again (screen #4). Every station should be manned by trained security personel empowered to flag you for greater scrutiny. Add to that randomized patrols and searches.
The staged checkpoints also reduce the likelihood of an attacker targeting that massive line to get through security. (In the TSA system, no one waiting in that line has been through any prior screen.)
Stagger the checks and ensure redundancy. It's not cheap, it would require TSA to hire/pay much better than they do now, but it would get you better security. Banning Swiss Army Knives and hockey sticks doesn't make anyone safer.
I don't carry knives, don't even like them. I use spears.
"Sir please remove your arms and legs, you can't take them on the plane"
crazy dynamite monkey
Obama recently stated that the War on Terror was over, since we killed Al-Qaeda's .leaders, and that the terrorist threat was over. Since the TSA, and Homeland Security, are designed to protect us from terrorists, are they needed any more?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Well, hockey sticks and the other stuff should be fine. Actually small knives would be, too.
Prior to 9/11, the policy for a skyjacking was sit tight and wait for ransom demands, or to fly some idiot to Cuba.
That morning it changed forever. Passengers will revolt. Pilots will bounce people around in the cabin. Threats to kill people will correctly go unheeded and the cockpit door will stay closed. Even flights with insufficient other passengers still won't lose control.
So...so what about small knives and X-acto box cutters? Such a takeover will never work again.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
why do restaurants after security at Chicago O'Hare give customers metal knives, while restaurants at DFW do not?
And in the past, I have been given a metal knife when flying in first class (obviously, first class passengers cannot be terrorists!)
Do TSA rules ban equipment to sharpen metal dinner knives? I doubt it.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Every station should be manned by trained security personel empowered to flag you for greater scrutiny.
The TSA seems to love spending money on everything but actually training their personnel to be properly security-conscious and informed. Having some of the lowest entry requirements relative to pay scale of any job in the country doesn't help either.
What you are describing is exactly what you get when you fly out of Ben Gurion. However, in spite of the success of the Israeli approach to airport security, it may not scale to the huge flight volumes of, say, Atlanta or LAX, and regrettably the TSA wants the same approach at all airports.
I agree, but what we have now is both a sham and an inconvenience. Real security isn't an absolute, and it's the inverse of convenience.
Security theater at its finest. The reason why there hasn't been 9/11 part II is not because of the TSA, instead its been because prior to 9/11 whenever an airplane was hijacked, the standard procedure was to keep a low profile, wait until your plane landed and the hijacker to make their demands and try not to piss off the hijacker, then the feds will storm the plane and light up the hijacker in a hail of bullets and so long as you kept a low profile you'd make it out alive. Today though, everyone associates hijacking with 9/11 and so people are going to be much more willing to fight when they think that their alternative isn't landing in Cuba but instead running into a skyscraper.
Instead, all the TSA has done is make ordinary passengers feel like criminals, damage the profitability of airlines and generally make it a pain to fly in US airspace.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
How many terrorists have the Israelis caught at airports?
I don't mean that as a rhetorical question, but I don't remember them doing so any time in the last couple of decades.
It's the "Disney" approach. If you go to Disney, they break up the long lines with spaces, corridors, and choke points. Disney does this so it doesn't appear you are in a crazy long line for teacups. But it would work for security too.
Then you insert various detectors along the moving sidewalks and other places in the airport where "single file" lines naturally occur. The biggest thing is to have lots of "helper" agents in the middle looking with eyeballs.
The problem is that our airports were built like shopping malls, intended to be a destination to pickup/ drop off people and have dinner, etc. they have few "compartments" to their designs for the passenger spaces.
Archie had this figured out in 1974 or so. A classic from American TV history.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLjNJI54GMM
There have bene high-profile busts like the Hindawi affair, and after that, the rigorous screening in place does a pretty good job of discouraging anyone from attacking flights to/from Israel.
I forgot to mention that screening on flights to Israel has also succeeded in preventing the boarding of actists who, though they would not attack the plane, would cause damage once they've landed in Israel. That is, the screening is also designed to stop activists who, though they themselves refrain from engaging in violence, want to go to the West Bank to agitate for violent Palestinian resistance.
... again.
The pathetic pansies won this round...
There goes my knife. And my pen. And my glasses. And my belt. And my teeth. And my finger- and toenails. It's been said many, many times, but sooner or later perhaps the TSA will realize that people are potential security risks and ban everyone altogether.
On a less ranting and more constructive note, when were small knives banned? I recall back in the day of airport security small knives with blades less than, oh, I don't know, six inches? were allowed.
The pilot radios the nearest airport, lands, and the SWAT team takes over?
It's OK for the government to take away your freedom. Because you got a vote. Slashdot commenters say so.
If the government weren't oppressing you, then some corporation running the airlines might enact a reasonable policy instead, without consulting you at all. This way, you got a vote. See how great that worked out? You all remember voting for the TSA, right?
What worries the stewardess is the out-if-control passenger with a knife.
The flight crew may be safe behind their armored door.
But she is out there, utterly exposed --- and you are wedged in your seat five rows back and in no position to help her.
The TSA weaved and bobbed around answering the question of how many casualties it was prepared to accept in an incident like this --- and that in the end was fatal.
I didn't just invent this model, it's used at Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv.
The checkpoint screens take a few seconds each, they aren't reading you a long prepared statement and checking to see if you respond yes or no. They are looking you in the eye and asking you about your day; they are trained to pick up on your reaction and filter through lots of people quickly. This doesn't move the line outside the airport, as you suggest, it divides the crowds into smaller pools of potential victims and creates "rings" of security. If a terrorist detonates a bomb in the outermost ring, they will likely take out themselves, the security officer and maybe the vehicles immediately adjacent. Worst case, 10-15 people MAX. If the same terrorist makes it to the security line on a holiday weekend, how many people are within the blast radius? I think 10-15 would be a minimum.
As I said in response to the comment above, I'm more of the opinion that the risk/reward equation for a terrorist attack on an airport has shifted and the September 11th attacks would be very difficult to replicate. The passengers on three of those planes assumed (like we all did) that hijackers just wanted money, or to make a speech and that smartest move was to let the authorities deal with it. No one will make that mistake again.
Today's terrorists (homegrown or otherwise) want to maximise casualties, and leave the speeches to be found after the fact. The best way to handle this is to screen and isolate, or to accept that such attacks represent such a statistical minority of deaths from violent crime and spend our security money elsewhere.
This is just greed by the government to collect all those little items. They're like pack rats.
I have a leatherman that is *awesome*. It's one of those tools you'd love to have with you 24/7 because it's so versatile. But, I wouldn't trust myself to get into the habit of carrying it around and risk the danger of taking it through some checkpoint and getting arrested for attempted terrorism.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
What are the chances that a plane carrying 100 terrorists gets off the ground? Because that would be the number needed to hijack a plane carrying 200 total passengers.
You may end up with a bunch of dead passengers, but you will end up with 100 dead terrorists too.
And since there would never be a full plane half full of terrorists, we don't have to worry about it.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Instead of making folks discard completely non-threatening items, TSA should look into *actual* security.
The airport should have a series of series of checkpoints. Every vehicle that pulls onto the property goes past a guard that asks you how your day is going (screen #1). At the ticket counter, a friendly agent asks if you are enjoying the weather (screen #2). Drop off your bags, some other random, friendly question (screen #3). Lastly, at the x-ray / metal detector / body scanner, the attending agent looks you in the eye and chats with you again (screen #4). Every station should be manned by trained security personel empowered to flag you for greater scrutiny.
The terrorists can just pop a couple of Xanax before they go through - suppress their emotional response.
No sig today...
So what happens when the body of the plane is taken over and the pilot is told that if he doesn't let the hijackers into the cabin they'll kill every passanger slowly and in the most possibly painful manner?
How is that worse than flying it into a building full of people?
No sig today...
How many terrorists have the Israelis caught at airports?
I don't mean that as a rhetorical question, but I don't remember them doing so any time in the last couple of decades.
They sat an air-marshal next to the shoe bomber because they didn't like the look of him. Nothing happened on that flight.
No sig today...
Anti-anxiety meds work very well against somebody "looking you in the eye".
No sig today...
Another TSA reminder that the "terrorist won" or I should say the opportunistic fear mongering traitors and the bureaucracies, and traitorous policies they implemented won. Every time I'm reminded of these pseudo Nazi pricks stripping and frisking my 70 year old mother and fucking up her luggage as they rifled it while on one of their "show my ass because I have authority" power trips, I have to edit what I say lest I end up in Gitmo. Imagine that, being afraid to say what you really think in America.
Take the Red Pill.
The whole point of this was to deflect attention from the gate rape and the porno scanners. The TSA is a government agency, and it will never voluntarily back down from any of the stupid and pointless bullshit they impose on the traveling public.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't mean that as a rhetorical question, but I don't remember them doing so any time in the last couple of decades.
Sometimes rocks actually repel tigers. In this case a terrorist makes a dry run and determines that he won't be able to smuggle anything dangerous. So he directs his efforts elsewhere.
Similarly, if the border wall is 100 feet tall, painted, and has no scratches on it, it doesn't mean that the wall serves no purpose. One doesn't need to try to climb such a wall to understand that it's impossible for 99.99% of the population.
If I'm checking some luggage, its a non-issue*. But if I'm traveling light and could have made the trip with carry-on alone, now I've got to check a piece of luggage regardless.
*Except for the TSA weasels that will be opening my checked luggage to swipe my Leatherman.
Have gnu, will travel.
That is one video I am not watching.
This is a very widely understood phenomenon. In countries where terrorism is actually a problem, terrorists bomb the checkpoints because of the lines. Security thus staggers the checkpoints and streamlines procedures in order to prevent any kind of lines from forming. This means that terrorists can't kill more than a few people regardless of the size of any bomb they might be carrying.
Here in the USA, these procedures are not used and checkpoints are not bombed because, as all sane people know, terrorism is not a problem in this country.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Do a few barrel rolls while reporting the incident and getting clearance for the neaqrest airport?
We go through this on every TSA related post: Israel has one or two (depending on how you define it) International airports. It's the size of New Jersey. They explicitly do racial profiling.
The Israeli experience isn't germane to the US.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Instead of making folks discard completely non-threatening items, TSA should look into *actual* security.
That is exactly what the TSA proposed (not necessarily the details you suggest, but the general concept). And a bunch of politicians and industry lobby groups complained loudly. The TSA had real expertise and data on their side, and the politicians had visceral concerns about how this was "obviously" bad. As usual, visceral concerns won.
then all the fine folks at tsa organization head need to find other high paying jobs.
simple.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Why?
Not only does that have just as many holes as today's current TSA Sieve has, but why? What are you trying to prevent?
Should we also screen people who enter malls, school, theatres, post offices, stadiums, personal cars, boats, trains, and perhaps screens as you cross streets?
Well that's the old problem with rare events and statistics.
But considering that Israel suffers from suicide bombings on an almost weekly base until only a few years ago, hardly anything happend behind those checkpoints.
So instead of using the number of caught terrorists as a measure for airport security, I'd suggest using the ratio between attacks foiled by airport security to the number of attacks happening outside airport security.
bickerdyke
The biggest thing is to have lots of "helper" agents in the middle looking with eyeballs. The problem is that our airports were built like shopping malls, intended to be a destination to pickup/ drop off people and have dinner, etc. they have few "compartments" to their designs for the passenger spaces.
The main problem is that the people who build that security system rather had a administrative/military background instead of a system engineering / security background.
Anyone who ever designed a pice of software knows that backdors ALWAYS DECREASE the security. And that if you pile up enough unconvinient security measures (TSA) that need to rely on backdoors (signing up for TSA pre, "TSA approved" locks that are DESIGNED to be easily opend without the proper key) to be useable, you're doing something completly wrong.
Sometimes I really wonder who designed that stuff. They obviously didn't have the big picture in mind and obviously never thought of the impact and consequences. Like a really small example: Shoe scanning. For the sake of the argument I'll asume that it is in some way usefull. But no one ever thought of how you're supposed to put your shoes back on (or off before the scan) while holding your coat, cabin luggage, clear bag with toothpaste, and your laptop removed from your cabin luggage.
A bench or a footrest behind the x-ray machine would be a simple measure to ease most of the stress at that checkpoint. Or returning your stuff on a tray/table/conveyor belt compartment where you can re-pack it without holding up the line.
Or perhaps just not man the x-ray scanner with complete no-brainers!
Last time I flew out of PHL, the guy in front of me in the line was walking on crutches. I would have expected an approach along the lines of "would you please sit over here while we scan your crutches" or "May I assist you through the metal detector while we scan your crutches seperatly". What I heard was "Do you need these?" What answer did he expect? "No I just wear them to pick up girls. Here's your sign."
bickerdyke
Instead of making folks discard completely non-threatening items, TSA should look into *actual* security.
Or airlines should make checking baggage quicker, cheaper and more secure, so people don't have to bring their pocket knives and hockey sticks into the cabin.
Instead, the policy seems to be to charge extra for checked luggage (and try to deny any liability for losing/damaging/pilfering it) and fail to enforce even their already-generous carry-on limits. Then they act all surprised and flustered when everybody tries to get on the plane with a big f-off wheelie bag or two and, by the time 3/4 of the passengers have boarded, all the overhead bins are full and they're begging people to check luggage at the plane door. So, my small shoulder bag with my laptop and other valuables ends up halfway across the cabin from me (so much for security) or crammed under the seat in front using up most of my 10 angstroms of cattle-class legroom.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
When travelling in the US I actually got my bag pulled because I had a candle, I'm not joking a candle! It was considered a hazard. I argued the TSA guard for a while and got it back, then I had my cigar lighter taken because it used compress gas. After pointing out that a lighter is a lighter and if a cigarette smoker can carry lighters I was finally allowed to check it, of course the can of butane was FINE, in my check luggage, didn't ask why. My cigar cutter, which is sharp as hell, was allowed on no problems. I got in trouble for having a chip bag in my carry on, with no reason given :S, I don't really understand how the list of acceptable items works. A cigar cutter that could easily hurt someone is fine but a candle and chip bag aren't? Now I can understand the lighter issue but I think to make it fair all lighters, compressed or not should be taken away.
They were not going to ALLOW any blade that locks. Note box cutters lock. If you have ever used a knife, a locking mechanism is what makes a knife safe to use. A knife without a locking blade is almost always more dangerous to the wielder than the foe. Only thing a non-locking knife is good for is cutting apples.
the pilot then will hit the autopilot disable button and decide to explore the performance envelope of the airframe and then get on the radio
"This is Flight ????? calling the Tower
Go ahead Flight
I need to declare an emergency i had to handle a code 612 so i need to be met by EMS on landing.
Understood Code 612 current status?
Half my passengers and most of my crew were in seatbelts but everything in the cabin went flying. I need to have six persons picked up by the marshalls
"
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
My wife went on a cruise and was flying home. She had bought a "spa pack" of lotions and such things and forgot to put it in her checked bag.
TSA agent told her she had to surrender that spa pack or miss her flight, so she surrendered it. Then she was told she had missed her flight anyway and she asked for it back so she could ship it home. TSA agent refused to give it back. I met her at the airport with a replacement "spa pack" from a local store to make her feel better.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I flew out of Chicago Midway to LAX about a month after 9/11.
The food area of the airport had plastic forks, plastic spoons....but plastic knives were not allowed. Insanity.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I was in an airport with a souvenir I got over vacation. I accidentally forgot I placed it in my bag and tried to go through security. Why is it that my proximity to the gate suddenly stripped me of my rights? A police officer came to "contain" the situation, although he didn't do much because I wasn't making a fuss. Why wasn't I ever asked to just walk away with all my belongings? I was at the airport 2 hours before my flight was scheduled to depart, that is plenty of time to go back to the front desk and check my bag. Why is it that I was stripped of my rights to my belongings and denied the ability to take what I came with and leave. Granted I attempted to go through security with an item, so my name was put on an ever growing list of potential terrorists. Fine. But why don't they change fucked up policies like these before allowing knives on a plane? Most airports even have built in shipping offices, I could have just mailed the souvenir to my home address, but I was never given the chance.
Why is it you didn't stand up for your rights? If you let them be taken from you, then you didn't really value them very much.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Where the hell are you supposed to stow hockey sticks? The overhead bins aren’t long enough, and it’s been decades since I’ve seen a full-length closet in the cabin Maybe they still have one for first class? And if you have ski poles you almost certainly have skis, which you have to check, so what’s the point of bringing the poles with you?
You would not to loose you that little extra income...