

Wil Wheaton on the TSA's grab n grope - portentint
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2011/04/i-dont-feel-safe-i-feel-violated-humiliated-and-angry.html

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ck2
Only 90 days since xmas, everyone forgot about this already eh?

But wait 'til you experience it at the train or bus station, because that's
already happening - the mainstream news just isn't covering it. Fondling is
also now being done when you enter some courthouses now, the TSA set the
standard and they immediately took advantage of that.

There were congressional hearings on this too, all aired for the public to see
how concerned they were - absolutely nothing changed, in fact they only
ordered more equipment despite being told not to by Congress.

What happened to their promised new review of the radiation from the scanners
since they admitted they got it wrong? Or is that going to take a year to
produce a "report".

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joebadmo
Can't get to the article (work) but I'm kind of on the fence about the issue.

On the one hand, this is probably security theater and the TSA is pretty
incompetent and possibly vile.

On the other hand, people should really get over themselves. It's a fucking
patdown. Deal with it. Or don't fly. This actually seems like one of the few
security measures that has a chance of working (better than throwing out water
bottles, anyway).

Thing is: there's probably no way to actually be secure without violating your
privacy or making you feel bad.

I think the real problem is people whining. We have to deal with all of these
"security" measures because of people whining about their (totally
disproportionate) fear of terrorism. Now the same people are whining about the
security measures.

I think the correct answer is empowerment. True airplane security is in the
hands of the passengers and crew.

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asharp
The problem is that you can't actually be secure. This applies in all real
situations. You can, however, be secure enough (ie. you achieve your security
goals), with some thought and planning. There is a difference though.

What is expected when you go through airport security is that you will be
"secure", ie. absolutely secure. The problem is that this is impossible. There
are a myriad of ways that a person can cause untold mayhem in what is arguably
one of the safest modern forms of long distance travel. Due to this
impossibility, you see the authorities forever imposing tighter and tighter
safeguards without any real improvement to safety.

What is done, however, is "secure enough", ie. it achieves the required
security objectives (chance of serious injury/death is negligible, chance of
being able to hijack a plane is negligible, etc.).

This then leads to a problem when "secure enough" is not "completely secure"
in a way that didn't lead to a failure in a security objective. Then you have
political pressure to "tighten up security", with no actual need, thus you
have what can only be termed "make work" programs that look reasonable but do
basically nothing for security.

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logic
Interesting choice of headline.

