I mean just let me wear my fucking belt. I can deal with a lot of indignity, but holding my fucking pants up in line is just insult to injury when you're passing me through mothingfucking millimeter wave.
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I hate the TSA, and I strongly suspect they are largely a mirage, but I don't agree that this indicates they are admitting it's a mirage. It's almost never the purpose of any kind of inspection to have 100% coverage, just to shift the balance of probabilities as far as necessary until it's a deterrent. They could be shrugging and giving up in the face of a large number of people to process, but they could also just be making a well-informed trade-off.
DON'T SAY BOMB!
The handful of times I have flown in the past two years, all the airports I've been at no longer require you to take out electronics or your toiletries bag.
I'm old enough to remember flying before all that bullshit and we literally just pulled up to the plane on the tarmac and got on. You could arrive like ten minutes before takeoff. RETVRN
I’ve forgotten a combination OC/CN spray (aka peppermace) in the bottom of a bag and been waved through. Complete clown shoes.
I used to work last mile logistics in a big city with an international airport. I lived there until my twenties and flew in and out many times before and after the TSA. I've seen the backend, where they have the robot explosive sniffer, and only witnessed them use it for one package I dropped off. It's all theatre.
A former congressman owned a stake in the company that made the scanners. That's why you go through scanners.
Michael Chertoff. Second secretary of the dept of Homeland security. Talk about a conflict of interest.
Shortly after the whole high-security thing started there was a UK military officer who had been in charge of counterterrorism somewhere like Belfast, who was an expert in homemade bombs. He said the whole three-ounces of liquid thing was complete bullshit. He knew the specific ingredients they were saying people could potentially mix to make explosives in an airplane restroom, and he said no, these substances would absolutely not blow up a plane or blow a hole in a plane. They had to be combined slowly and carefully, almost drop by drop, in a temperature-controlled vessel, or they would react too fast, creating a violent splash that would merely give the would-be terrorist serious chemical burns.
Damn that must be nice.
Passing through the New Orleans airport last time I went to visit my mom, I showed up 3 hours early to my flight and didn't even exit the security check line until an hour after my flight had already left. I was fucking livid. It took them four hours to pass maybe ~300 people through the check lines.
What did make me feel a little better though was going back to the ticket kiosks to complain about it and try to get a different flight, and like four other ticket takers within earshot of us heard me and all chimed in like "maaaan, FUCK New Orleans TSA" apparently they're demonstrably one of the worst in the continental US.
I mean one can argue that since nobody could foresee that security wouldn't be there for the flight nobody could plan around it.
"If we don't know what we are doing, the enemy certainly can't anticipate our future actions."
The job of the TSA is not to provide security. Their job is to provide the illusion of security. They are basically living tranquilizers for the public.
Well, it doesn't work. I feel inconvenienced, not safer. I know if someone really wants to hijack or blow up the plane, they'll find a way.
They regularly fail audits and miss tons of guns.
Years ago I had a short inter-country flight in the EU.
Forgot that I still had my swiss army knife in my jacket. Noticed before the scanners. Thought "fuck. oh well, worst case I'll leave it here".
The people at the scanners didn't say a word.
On the way back, I remembered the knife again. Again on front of the scanners.
This time they noticed.
"is that a pocket knife in the jacket?" "uh, damn. yes"
Guy checks out the knife. Hands it back to me "next time put it in the suitcase".
I put it into my jacket and get on the plane.
When we land, I grab my stuff, including the jacket from the overhead compartment.
Sometime taps me on my shoulder, I turn around and see a steward hand me my knife, grinning. It fell out of my jacket when I grabbed it
Meanwhile, I get my dong dapped up every time I go through.
that's called an Alabama Handshake
They can't resist the dong
It's not even ginormous or nothin'
Madness.
I've had this happen a few times. It's such a relief when shit is jammed back to the walls. They did it at O'hare once, shit was crazy in there and they're all like, "just gtfo, don't blow anything up" everyone came stomping through the metal detectors. Not sure if it was related, but they had just sent sniffy dogs through the lines so maybe they planned it? I mean, I don't think the dogs can smell a knife, but I am not a dog, so I don't know for certain.
Happened to me at Ohare in May. They stopped the whole line for 10 minutes when they set it up.
They brought out portable, battery operated Milwaukee tools fans and a sniffing dog. They made people walk 2 at a time, through a glass walled walkway for about 50 ft and a tsa guy walked a dog behind you. Once you go through the tsa ID check the told us to leave shoes on and electronics in our bags. They still sent the bags through the X-ray though.
My brother in law flew out of St. Louis and described the exact same thing a week later. Weird.
I don’t think the dogs can smell a knife,
perhaps an explosive knife!
but I am not a dog
I mean it's the internet, you could be deceiving us...
If 0.01% of people are nefarious, and they check 99.9% of the time, that’s still 1/10,000,000 chance a nefarious person gets through.
As long as they don’t do this often, doing that once probably has near zero impact on security.
(Please don’t pick apart the assumptions that nefarious people always get found by screening, or that the TSA works, that’s not the point I’m making — just trying to say a one off unpredictable dropping of guard doesn’t hugely benefit nefarious actors)
Regardless of the assumption of how many people are nefarious or how actually effective TSA is, your point stands.
If they screen normally 99% of the time, then the occasional relaxing of the checks just means that the effectiveness has gone from X to 0.99*X.
TSA is security theater, but this isn't the evidence of that.
I recently traveled through Europe, the Middle East and Australia. In the bottom of my carry-on bag I forgot about a 1 l plastic water bottle that was about 3/4 full. None of the security scans in Australia, Malaysia, Doha, or Montreal said anything about it. For the first two airports, I also had two 500 mL water bottles in side pockets. Again, no issues.
I once left full sized tailoring scissors in my carry-on backpack by accident. I only noticed at the hotel. I have no Idea how they missed them on the x-ray, they are huge, like 8" blade huge.
I forgot I had a hunting knife in my bag. Yes very stupid, I know.
I got pulled over by airport security and when they asked me to open up the pocket. I found a water bottle on top of my knife and showed that to them and they said it was fine. I didn't realize the knife was there until I got home and unpacked.
I got stopped regarding a bottle of water I'd forgotten about. I just apologised,, drank it, and passed through security.
Not seeing any European airports but last time I flew within Europe they were cool with bringing water aboard. Also the shoes thing is something of the past if you fly within Europe.
Bringing liquids onto the plane is fine, but it’s (supposed to be) an issue with bringing liquids through security, since it could be something like gasoline or some other hazardous liquid. If you fill your bottle with water or buy a drink inside the secure area, it has theoretically already been vetted and is safe to take onboard (though I bet there’s really a bunch of security theatre happening there, too).
Security when flying within europe can really differ from airport to airport though. I've had times they made a big deal out of everything including dogs sniffing everone all the way to my bag just went through a scanner but nobody watched the screen.
my bag just went through a scanner but nobody watched the screen.
Sometimes these systems are autonomous, if something's off an alarm is raised.
That's what nearly all the intrusion tests and studies have indicated. A big GOP created "make work" program of security theater.
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11687014/tsa-against-airport-security
A big GOP created "make work" program of security theater.
Less of a "make work" program and more of subsidy to keep the privatized airlines afloat.
Not sure how many people here remember the times immediately after 9/11, but a significant portion of the population were basically refusing to fly again for quite a while afterwards. Airlines were scrambling to get people to fly again and there were talks going around about them either going under or being socialized.
The TSA was basically a program meant to get scared Americans back on planes so airlines could maintain enough profitability to remain privately owned.
So it's a multi-layer fuck you to the people, then.
Yep, especially when you realize that it’s basically a poor people punishment cause people with private jets don’t get the same treatment