TSA is the number one reason why I don't fly and drive instead. From my POV most of the world's industries have progressed positively, but not air travel. I took a train a couple of years ago and it was a beautiful example of old merging with new. Walking through an antique of a train station, iPhone in hand, with my digital ticket ready to board; so easy and pleasant.
At that point I realized that air travel is by far the worst traveling experience money can pay for.
If an alternative airport wanted to do things a little different, such as "fly at your own risk" "no lifeguard on duty", aka no TSA b.s., I'd happily take the "at your own risk" option rather than the TSA controlled situation we're subjected to currently.
I walk up to the security checkpoint checkpoint, where I show the agent my phone. They see my boarding pass with the green checkmark and send me to the empty TSA Pre line.
I walk through the metal detector with no adjustments to my attire.
I am at the gate in 5 minutes.
I like how trains basically let you show up last minute, and a 3 hour train ride actually means a 3 hour train ride, compared to airport, checkpoints and boarding time, possibly waiting on the runway, and air time.
But you really just need to upgrade your travel accommodations to make your airport experience more seamless.
That costs money. Many people take the train or a shuttle or lean on a friend.
>I walk up to the security checkpoint checkpoint, where I show the agent my phone. They see my boarding pass with the green checkmark and send me to the empty TSA Pre line. I walk through the metal detector with no adjustments to my attire.
You paid for that TSA PreCheck privilege which, while not in the grand scheme a large amount, is technically something.
It's also beside the point. TSA PreCheck is the result of a careful plan:
1. Make everyone undergo an intrusive, invasive, and time-consuming process that provides little to no additional security.
2. Allow people to pay for the privilege of not going through that procedure.
3. Profit!
I don't do PreCheck because buying your rights is not something we should be able or have to do. It's a perversion that leaves us happy to pay for something that was commonplace until 9/10/01.
> I don't do PreCheck because buying your rights is not something we should be able or have to do.
The standard answer is that airplane travel, just as being able to drive on public roads is not a right. Founding fathers apparently failed in their inability to predict we'd be able to amazingly fly through the air one day. So it is not in the Constitution. Therefore please step right into the Rapeyscan machine if you want to make it to your job interview, or to see your family across country.
It seems to claim a right to travel unimpeded you'd have to walk, on public land, or ride a horse or bicycle. Basically what you might have done 200 years ago.
Found fathers did a fine job, by not enumerating rights and giving them to the people.
But ignore that for the moment. TSA's mandate is "Protect the nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce." TSA's mandate is not limited to the airports.
So no, the TSA doesn't believe you have a right to travel unimpeded (even if by walking or riding a horse or a bicycle)
> Founding fathers apparently failed in their inability to predict we'd be able to amazingly fly through the air one day.
I think a traditional interpretation of the constitution is that unenumerated rights are reserved for the people, so this shouldn't be an issue, as designed. In reality, we can't even seem to maintain the rights that are explicitly reserved for the people (cough4th amendmentcough).
The Department of Homeland Security (of which the TSA is a part of) has a budget and its priorities are set in Congress. There is no "profit" motive here.
The US is throwing money at this problem, and money that only creates inconveniences for us.
There is definitely a personal profit motive for the people involved, i.e. promotions and raises, having more reports (huge in the government sector), not to mention to crony pork handed out to companies providing the xray/detection and other equipment.
The 2nd US Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act is the founder of a lobbying front for the the manufacturers of the body scanners.
Over a long enough time frame, all bureaucracies become institutions whose only goal is the continued growth and accumulation of resources ( to be used for the continued growth of the bureaucracy itself), not for the original purpose of the bureaucracy.
Yup. Be it government or business, no difference there. Of course, in both cases a cleanup is possible- and occasionally happens. But then you need a proper market for business or a working democracy for government and those are frequently missing.
The easiest way for the government to acquire biometrics on every citizen is to make non pre-check so painful that people willingly go the pre-check route. What's next? Don't want to wait 5 hours at the DMV for a license? Just let us inject this little tracking chip in your neck.
> I like how trains basically let you show up last minute, and a 3 hour train ride actually means a 3 hour train ride, compared to airport, checkpoints and boarding time, possibly waiting on the runway, and air time.
Trains have their delays, too, such as long waits on passing sidings to clear the way for freight trains. Much of Amtrak's routes (72% by mileage) are on freight company owned rails that Amtrak pays for access to.
The freight companies gives their own trains priority over Amtrak. They are supposed to give Amtrak priority, but there is little effort spend on enforcement.
I've seen a couple sites say that Amtrak has priority only when on time, and others that say it doesn't matter whether or not they are on time. None of the former that I've seen have provided a cite for the on time claim, though.
49 USC 24308 (c) says:
"Preference Over Freight Transportation. - Except in an emergency, intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation provided by or for Amtrak has preference over freight transportation in using a rail line, junction, or crossing unless the Board orders otherwise under this subsection. A rail carrier affected by this subsection may apply to the Board for relief. If the Board, after an opportunity for a hearing under section 553 of title 5, decides that preference for intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation materially will lessen the quality of freight transportation provided to shippers, the Board shall establish the rights of the carrier and Amtrak on reasonable terms."
I was flying with my wife, and we did a controlled experiment, since the Pre line and regular line both looked daunting. We got on different lines at the same time. We both took about 45 minutes to get through, but the Pre line was actually a bit slower.
I flew last November, from Trondheim (Norway) to Amsterdam, round trip. Both times I had to take my shoes off. But the rest of the screening process is much quicker, and the lines aren't as long. I even got extra searching when I arrived back home and it was quicker than the waits in the US - and that dude went through all of my stuff. I happily travel lightly, but still not bad at all.
Heathrow's FAQ: "Do I need to remove my shoes at security? Only if you’re asked. Some passengers will be asked to remove shoes in order for them to be x-rayed."
Gatwick's FAQ: "You may be asked to remove your shoes and belt before going through the security archway."
Instead of paying to get my rights back, I make a point of calling the TSA's bluff. I always refuse the pornoscanner and wait for the in-person pat down. If more people did this, the system would collapse, because - last time I shuffled through some back-of-the-envelope calculations, anyway - even the TSA's monstrously bloated budget comes nowhere close to the cost of hiring enough screeners to pat everyone down individually.
Of course they'd just change their already-arbitrary rules and force us all through the X-ray machines anyway, if we started refusing to use them en masse; but that'd create its own kind of legal push-back, and hopefully something good would come of the resulting mess. In any case, I'm not putting up with their nonsense while there is some means left I can use to resist it.
And I always fly in a kilt, regimental-style. TSA training has improved over the years, but the handful of times I managed to utterly flummox a TSA screener, suddenly confronted with a man wearing a "skirt," went a long way toward making me feel better about the humiliation of the whole exercise.
Besides, "anti-TSA" is painting with too broad a brush. Air Marshals are part of the TSA, as are a myriad of other useful agencies.
Its really just the pre-screen and invasive checks that need to stop. I think we all can agree that a dedicated force of Air Marshals is a good idea, right? As is the "intelligence" unit who is looking for active threats vs Airports.
It's only been since 2005 when the TSA was reorganized under the TSA as part of the Department of Homeland Security. Before that, the Air Marshals were part of Immigration and Customs, if I'm not mistaken.
I do the same, but some airlines don't participate in TSA Precheck (like Frontier), and it's not uncommon for the Precheck lanes to occasionally get shut down, especially later in the evening. It's also possible to randomly NOT get Precheck, even though you're flying with a participating airline and you are in the program.
On top of that, I've seen a number of recent reports from people who said that the Precheck lanes were randomly shut down at peak travel times, forcing Precheck members to get stuck in the regular lines with everybody else. Others report that large numbers of non-Precheck people are getting randomly sent through that lane, dramatically slowing things down and causing wait times of 30-60+ minutes.
Precheck is great, but even those of us who have a relatively privileged flying experience need to stay involved and aware about the monster that is the TSA.
Can someone explain this - occasionally the TSA will put people who are not pre check into the pre check line. Sometime s they will randomly select people to use the precheck line and sometimes they do this to expedite long lines. So if they can selectively flout their own rules why have them in the first place? Isn't security an all or nothing proposition?
Oh wow and each of those things are a premium service that costs money. There are many people who can not afford those, oh but tough crap to them right? How about all the people not in the same income bracket as you? I guess that's their fault in your opinion? That is just elitist.
Premium services often cost a little more money, it's a trade off between money and time.
There's nothing stopping people flying if they can't afford the PreCheck, it's just a little longer.
Anyway the regular line actually gets shorter when more people use the PreCheck line.
Disclaimer: I'm a frequent traveller to the USA but I'm a UK citizen so I cannot use PreCheck.
I should be TSA Pre the first time I went through their procedure and so should everyone else. Rather than going through the arduous process and paying money for it, what's different from your screening from the one that people go through daily?
TSA Pre is not what it used to be. It used to offer two advantages: Less-invasive screening, and mostly frequent fliers in the line. Over the past year or so, the second advantage has evaporated in many large airports I've traveled through. The airlines seem to be handing out Pre chits like candy now, and the Pre line is full of little kids, baby strollers, and people who have never been on an airplane before. It still saves time, just not as much as in the early days.
I always thought being a natural born citizen with no criminal record, with all the rights and privileges afforded therefore, would count as a "Pre-Check."
Because it abstracts security to something that can be done in the weeks before your flight, instead of vetting a person in the hour and a half beforehand.
Most travelers are repeat travelers. Exactly what vetting is being done for Pre that can't be done once in person that sticks with the person for 1-2 years and is renewable in a similar way as Pre?
Sorry for the slow response. Just found this comment.
The first and most obvious response is that tsa-pre requires your fingerprints, and tsa does not. That obviously leads to an amount of pre-vetting that is never capable of being done in tsa.
In addition to this, I'd compare tsa to a blacklist and tsa-pre to a whitelist. Perhaps if your estranged ex-wife's crazy uncle goes to the same bar as a known terrorist suspect then tsa would prefer you go through the additional screening (and thus deny you to tsa-pre). However, the connection to the uncle is only made once you apply to tsa-pre (as its a whitelist), and thus more vetting is done.
> iPhone in hand, with my digital ticket ready to board; so easy and pleasant.
Most airlines provide the same digital boarding passes, I often travel with my pass added to Apple Wallet.
> If an alternative airport wanted to do things a little different, such as "fly at your own risk" "no lifeguard on duty", aka no TSA b.s., I'd happily take the "at your own risk" option rather than the TSA controlled situation we're subjected to currently.
The problem here is that it's not just "your own risk" if that plane is directed at a populated area.
Directed by whom? There is no conceivable threat that would make a pilot agree to fly their plane into a building, and reinforced cockpit doors make it implausible to enter the cockpit without damaging the airplane past the point of flying - and passengers wouldn't stand for it anyway.
It's a crap comparison, anyway - the TSA is better at finding toys than they are at finding bombs and weapons. Dogs and x-ray detectors could do just as well, and "alternative airports" could choose to have those.
A term I have coined: "TSA Radius" -- the distance below which you would rather drive than fly. For me this is currently about 600 miles, but may increase with the news about spectacularly long security lines.
Sounds like there's a fascinating differential equation in there somewhere. The TSA uses as much money as possible and provides as little service as it can get away with because it has essentially zero accountability.
The wait times and hassle increase until its easier just to drive so people fly less, reducing wait time, allowing the TSA to do even less brining wait times back up...
The whole system balances at some convergence point. A really sucky convergence point.
> If an alternative airport wanted to do things a little different, such as "fly at your own risk" "no lifeguard on duty", aka no TSA b.s ...
... that airport and flights emanating from it would be perfectly safe! Why? Because, like everyone, terrorists, too, would love this airport so much, they wouldn't want to do anything to prevent it from operating.
I like the idea of an "at your own risk" option, but it'll never happen. Since 9/11, a large part of the purpose of airport security is to protect uninvolved people on the ground (or at least in tall buildings), not just passengers. We can certainly debate whether that's necessary or useful (I'd argue that we could do far less than we currently do), but I don't think you'll ever get the public to agree to allowing airline flights with no security screening, even if you can convince everyone to take a libertarian approach to it.
I think you may be right. However, you'd have to convince the public (or at least Congress) before you could have "security free" flights even with secure cockpits.
Flight 11 was crashed 30 minutes after hijacking, 175 20 minutes, 77 about 45 minutes, and 93 about 35 minutes later. Even if you tighten the loop between a hijacking and getting a fighter jet in the air to counter it, it will still take you about 15 minutes at best to do it.
Then you're left with the problem of figuring out which one of the contacts on your military radar doesn't have a transponder. Go to a map like <https://flightaware.com/live/> and observe the Ohio/Pennsylvania airspace in the middle of the day. You have 15 minutes to figure out the hijacked flight, guess its flight path, and then order fighters to intercept it and shoot it down.
Quite frankly, if a plane gets hijacked in the Northeast, there is no way you can get a military jet to shoot it down in time.
> To protect those on the ground, part of the option could be acknowledging that the military can take out your plane if it's hijacked.
Destroying an aircraft over potentially populated areas can be useful to shift who and how many people are at risk when it hits the ground, but its not really (even if you can reliably destroy it when you need to, which -- absent a highly-reliable remote destruct device built into the plane [0], is hard to guarantee) a great way to "protect those on the ground". Because the wreckage is going to hit somewhere, and you don't really have precision control of that.
I agree, but if some people are going to cause a disproportionate need for them, then those people should pay for it more than the rest.
Really, though, that was more of a glib remark. The more salient point IMO is the fact that the military is far from guaranteed to succeed in bringing down a hijacked airliner before it hits its target, or without killing other people on the ground.
I assume you didn't take Amtrak? My last straw with them was arriving at my destination nearly 24 hours late, after two separate breakdowns, and an accident involving a car at a crossing.
When I was a kid there was no security. My Mom and Dad would make us put on a tie to go get somebody at the airport.
And if you could afford it, they called you part of "the jet set." I bet this - where more people can use air travel - is better. It's just not special any more. UX is a secondary consideration.
We have "at your own risk" airtravel in the form of private and chartered flights.
There aren't enough people ready and willing to take that risk to make it a competitive business model for airlines. They are a business that only works at massive scale due to extreme competition on price.
It's regulations in large part that draw the line between chartered flights and heavily regulated common carrier flights preventing better air travel from growing.
The problem is that it's not "at your own risk," it's "at your own risk and the risk of anything that might happen to be underneath you at any point on the journey, or within range of your fuel tanks."
Not that I'm a fan of the TSA by any stretch, but that's a pretty grievous misunderstanding of the root issue.
1. GA is not limited to the rich. Once you're at about the median US income (or 1/3 of what an SV developer makes, give or take), it is within reach. Slightly more than that and it's starts approaching "affordable," especially as a hobby and not a means of transportation.
2. Money buys you things. By definition people with more money will not be burdened by the same things as those with less.
> Money buys you things. By definition people with more money will not be burdened by the same things as those with less.
The commons are a superset of things provisioned by government, and we expect that the commons will be relatively unburdened and available equally to rich and poor.
Being unburdened by hunger and stress about paying rent is one thing; being unburdened by preferential treatment by the state is another.
Best estimate I can find, her flight cost her work about $20,000 round-trip.
I think we're upper-middle-class-ish, but there's no way we could justify chartering a jet for a family vacation if it costs as much as a car (a smaller jet might "only" be around $12,000 for the same trip AFAICT).
I know the poster specifically mentioned a jet but GA in general is absolutely within reach. With a license it costs maybe $150/hr to fly a Cessna 172 (and you're usually only billed for time the engine's actually running).
Can a Cessna 172 take me and my wife and child across the country to New York? Is parking a plane there free?
"Especially as a hobby" has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. Horseback riding is also affordable as a hobby, but nobody's bringing it up in a thread about the TSA because it has just as much relevance.
It can range anywhere from $6,000 to $15,000 (at the extremely high end) to get your PPL. Ramp fees vary.. Usually free if you buy 10 gallons of gas while you're there, otherwise $5-$15 per day.
Can a Cessna 172 get you to New York? Sure, if you have the time. It'll be a long and monotonous flight though.
Now, with all of that said, your point still stands. GA flying is a hobby and almost always more expensive than hopping on an airline.
That's not really a good comparison. You might as well say driving is within reach for most people.
You can drive at 70MPH. Windspeed doesn't impact you. The Cesna will cruise at ~140MPH. Windspeed might delay your arrival to the point that it's much faster to drive for shorter trips though. The jet will do 530MPH.
Maybe the Cesna makes sense if there's no reasonably direct route by freeway. Or you're island hopping. It seems like a fairly small window where chartering a Cesna makes sense though (IMO). You can't transport a family of 4 with luggage. It'll be more expensive than the (commercial, not private) Jet, and take about 4 times longer. For every 1-1/2 hours of Jet travel, you'll have to refuel the Cesna as well. And if you though economy class on a commercial Jet was uncomfortable you're in for a rude awakening as well. ;-)
Private jets are typically much smaller and have a correspondingly lower potential for mayhem. Yes, there's overlap, there are small airliners and some big private jets, but overall the risk is different, so there's no reason to expect the security measures to be the same.
The Falcon 2000 she flew on this morning is about 1/3 the weight and fuel load of the SWA 737 she might have otherwise.
I'm not sure what's unreasonable about the comparison. If the TSA were actually necessary, it would seem like a huge gap in security to allow just anyone with the cash to charter a few private jets around the country.
And that 737 is in turn about 1/3rd the weight and fuel load of the 767s that crashed into the World Trade Center. That's about a factor of 10 difference in kinetic and chemical energy from that Falcon 2000. If 9/11 had been carried out with Falcon 2000s we'd be talking about good the repairs look and how you can barely tell where the holes were on the WTC towers.
I'm not calling the comparison unreasonable, I'm simply saying that the two are not the same, so it's perfectly reasonable for the security to be different too.
I'll take "Common Carriers" for $400 , Alex. Just holding GenAv to common carrier standards for a sense of a level playing field seems silly to me. Worse is still worse.
In my opinion, the TSA is basically a very expensive jobs program rather than an actual security organization. This is a big part of why it's going to be hard to get rid of now. According to Wikipedia, the TSA employs over 55,000 people, many of whom would probably have difficulty getting a similar level job if we reverted to a more sane security screening program. Anything that kills thousands of government jobs is hard to get through Congress, even if it's unpopular with the public.
The TSA is a jobs program with a bit of "throw government contracts to your buddies" mixed in. Same with the military to an extent.
A TSA Screener job is about the closest we'll get to Basic Income: stand around in an airport occasionally groping people for $13-18/hr, plus awesome Federal benefits. Qualifications: essentially none.
Based on my numerous but infrequent interactions with front-line TSA staff, the qualifications seem to include "passing familiarity with the English language" and "a confusing mix of hostility and apathy."
> The TSA is a jobs program with a bit of "throw government contracts to your buddies" mixed in.
The TSA is not a jobs program, especially for screening, etc.; those jobs directly replaced private sector jobs. The function was nationalized to move potential liability from the airlines (who contracted with the organizations operating airports, who contracted with private security firms) when they complained about the potential liability for security failure in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
I didn't read the sources in depth, but it looks like the TSA is bigger than the jobs it replaced:
> TSA is a major part of DHS, having a workforce of about 62,000 people. TSA became a large organization very quickly after 2001, when it replaced 16,500 private airport screeners with more than 40,000 federal screeners.
Sure, but the increased security requirements and the nationalization in the TSA were two different things that were done together; the former could have been done separately -- permanently increased security requirements were adopted after the hijacking sprees of the 1960s and 1970s, and again -- along with some additional temporary measures that were later lifted -- at the beginning of the 1990s justified by perceived threat from Iraq in the run-up to and during the 1991 Iraq War; those were politically likely to be done after a major successful terrorist attack in the US whether or not the functional was nationalized. And, as the ones which went previously, it would have created more security jobs.
The nationalization of the function in the TSA, though, had nothing to do with jobs, and everything to do with liability.
Sure it is. Do you remember post 9/11. Nobody traveled by air. The Airlines were all talking about having to declare bankruptcy. Then the government stepped in. If nothing else, the government helped subsidize and protect the airline industry (in the case of the TSA, in only a "relatively" small way) by paying for jobs that airports and airlines used to pay for. So the government paid for security so that the airlines and airports didn't have too. The liability argument is a farce that was taken care of almost immediately afterwards, and regardless, it's still a jobs program. If you kill two birds with one stone, all the better. So if the TSA is not a jobs program, I don't know what is.
I live in a small city with a small airport. One day, while waiting for my departure plane to arrive, TSA kicked everyone out of the secure gate and back into the insecure terminal, because the plane would not arrive for another half hour and they didn't want to keep watching us in a room with barely 50 seats. Then we had to go through security again once every single passenger had arrived.
The point is that security is fear-motivated. 99% doesn't matter if it isn't 100%, even if logic and probability puts that 1% insecurity in a .001% chance of actually happening. So if you let the 1% slip through and something happens, well, who wants to take the blame?
I wonder how autonomous driving will affect shorter flight commutes. I'll probably never take a car from Philadelphia to LA, but I might prefer to travel by car from Philadelphia to Chicago if I know that I can sleep throughout the car ride (as well as leave whenever is most convenient). When you take into account driving to the airport, checking bags, security, flight delays, baggage claim, and rental cars/driving to your hotel, a 12 hour drive doesn't look nearly as bad, especially when you could leave at 10 PM and wake up at 10 AM arriving at your destination. And it's way less stress compared to the hassle of TSA and flights.
This is already happening for me when I travel between SF and LA. There's a bunch of bus routes that offer WiFi and operate through the night.
Why would I fly when I could get on a bus at midnight and then wake up in LA at 7AM? When flying, sometimes my time spent in security is literally longer than my time in air. And that's not even taking cost into account, you can do $40-50 round trip on Greyhound vs. ~$140 for a flight.
Seat width, leg room, baggage limits, noise levels, air temperature, Internet connectivity(cell data vs airplane wifi) and the fact that you're exposed to numerous strangers at risk to your health are all factors that make an individual autonomous car more attractive than an airplane. Airlines will need to do a lot of adapting if they don't want to lose the market for shorter distance travel.
Also once you have fully autonomous with no human oversight vehicles there is no reason they even have to look like a car internally any more, it could be a single bed next to a sit up chair and a table, you could sleep properly while you drive along or sit and work, that would sound pretty pleasant, work for a few hours while it drives, pull over for something to eat then get your head down and wake up at your destination.
Airlines are already marginal for shorter-distances. SJ to LA is (imo) right at the cusp of being worth it. ~5 hours to drive, maybe SLIGHTLY less door-to-door on an airline. Any aircraft delay throws the whole thing off. Add parking at the airport + last mile travel on arrival and financially it only makes sense if the company pays.
I wonder why so many people immediately jump to thinking about a car as an alternative to short distance air travel. Would people in the US never even consider a fast train system as a good option between Philadelphia and Chicago? (If it were built, of course. But self-driving cars need to be built too. But I guess they're easier; I'm just dreaming)
Cost to construct high speed rail is not insignificant. There is not sufficient demand for it given the established interstate highways and air travel industry.
Cars are more flexible for more people. Trains travel to and from fixed points on fixed schedules.
For some reason people get all romantic about the idea of train travel but in the 21st century USA it's not going to happen.
Likely because the TSA issue is something they expect to see infecting the train transport system if it existed and that the car is figuratively and literally a symbol of freedom and the ability to escape the rules of others in the American culture. (Source: I live here.)
Interesting. To me the car is the least free method of transport. I feel like I'm in jail. There are thousands of rules, stay between the lines, listen to all the signs, careful to not hit children, it's so much more stressful than smoking a joint, sitting in a train and reading a book (my preferred way to get around).
Those East-West train routes don't really have any pent up demand at the moment. http://www.america2050.org/pdf/Where-HSR-Works-Best.pdf. You can see those "islands" between which you would either need to have complete coverage between them like a spider web, or you'd need to travel from philly to DC or NY then over to Chicago. Now, take yourself a self-driving bus over to a large rail hub.....
In the US, rail freight is king. Passenger rail only has priority to the extent that the trains can run on schedule. And they do not run on schedule.
Express service between Philly and Chicago would probably require new, dedicated, above-grade track, and would not be competitive with any of airline, automobile, or bus travel for decades. Existing passenger trains in the US (other than the Acela) just can't get from A to B fast enough--or even just arriving at a predictable time!--to be worth the fare.
It is definitely easier to build a self-driving car than fix passenger rail in the US, probably by two orders of magnitude.
Is Philadelphia to Chicago short distance? It is the equivalent of Paris to Rome.
We have a very robust infrastructure for cars already in place, and it is pretty dynamic. The infrastructure for trains would have to be built and is a lot more static.
In the US cars are also associated with autonomy and independence. The train can take me from Philly to Chicago and I'm on it's schedule, but with a car I'm on my schedule and I can detour to Cincinnati or Detroit. In the US the needs of the individual for the most part trump the need of the masses.
It's easier to imagine that engineers might someday come up with a practical robot chauffeur than to imagine that US federal politics will ever un-bork itself to the extent that reintroducing usable passenger train service might become possible. It's just that much of a mess.
It's easy to say that TSA sucks (it does), but it's hard to propose a workable alternative. Well alternative 1, stop making us take off our shoes and taking out our laptops, its clear from pre-check that it's not really necessary.
You need some security. That was clear before 9-11. Airports had security and it was pretty similar to how TSA does it right now. You put your bags on an Xray machine, show your ID, and walk through a metal detector.
I'd suggest keeping the government in charge of what procedures to use, but then using private contracts to actually manage the airport security.
The real problem with TSA isn't that it is intrusive. It's that is terrible mismanaged and has no incentive to improve the experience.
Although apparently airports can opt out of the TSA.
> You need some security. That was clear before 9-11.
No, it was not clear then, and it is not clear now. There are two salient facts:
1. When tested, the TSA misses 90% or so of the weapons people try to smuggle past them
2. Notwithstanding #1, there have been zero successful terrorist attack on aircraft in the U.S. since 9-11.
So it is far from clear that there is actually a problem that needs to be solved (other than people freaking out about an insignificant risk, which is a real problem).
> 2. Notwithstanding #1, there have been zero successful terrorist attack on aircraft in the U.S. since 9-11.
How much is due to the TSA, as opposed to civilian and military intelligence work at home and abroad and simple measures such as having air marshals and preventing any access to the cockpit during flight?
I think it's pretty clear that it's because there are actually very few terrorists in most of the world, and certainly very few of them in the U.S. The fact of the matter is that a terrorist attack is trivial to conduct, especially if you're willing to die for the cause. There are just a ridiculous number of soft targets out there. It's simply not possible to secure them all. The only reasonable explanation (AFAICT) for why NYC doesn't look like Baghdad, with car bombs going off on a regular basis, is that the number of actual terrorists in the U.S. is indistinguishable from zero.
>> 2. Notwithstanding #1, there have been zero successful terrorist attack on aircraft in the U.S. since 9-11.
>How much is due to the TSA
I would say a large part of it is because a 9/11 style attack just wouldn't work anymore. 9/11 worked only because the passengers were thinking "hijacking", where there was some chance to live.
Once the passengers understand the consequences (as with United 93), they will fight back.
That totally changes the risk/reward profile for terrorists. Your chances of taking down the plane are lower, and your chances of aiming it at a high value target are almost nil.
I'd argue the 2nd part has more to do with passengers simply paying attention. The underwear bomber and shoe bomber were both caught by fellow passengers (iirc), not by the TSA or the CIA/NSA/FBI/Military.
I'd be interested to see how they got the 95% failure rate. If the TSA was sneaking in actual bombs that could bring down airplanes, that is a horrific. But if they were testing someone bringing in a nail clipper with a 1 inch blade tucked into it, a plastic gun, a disassembled "bomb" with no explosive residue, etc, then it's not that bad.
The fact that there have been attempts to blow up airplanes, and they all involved using explosives designed to get around TSA procedure suggests it works or terrorists think it works. The shoe bomber had to put a tiny bomb into his shoe without electronics. The underwear bomber had to build a crude bomb on board the plane.
If there was no security, they'd walk on with a prebuilt bomb and take out a flight.
In the 60's and 70's there was a goldenage of hijacking airplanes. If you could just walk onto a plane with a gun, people would do it again.
Maybe you think that risk is low enough per flight to not matter. Objectively it's still less risky than driving to the airport. But like you allude to, the people aren't going to buy that argument. "Just accept that al Qaeda or Isis will bring down a 747 or two each year, it's still safer than a roadtrip" will get you punted out of office in record time.
> If you could just walk onto a plane with a gun, people would do it again.
No, they wouldn't. In the 70's the unwritten rule was: you hijack the plane, land it, make your demands, get your TV time, and then you surrender (or get away) but no one gets hurt. It is only because of that unwritten rule that you could get away with it because everyone assumed that the best route to survival was to cooperate with the hijacker.
All that changed on 9-11. Cooperating is no longer seen as a viable option, and so if you try to hijack a plane you can expect the passengers and crew to put up a fight. At best you can bring down the plane. But you won't get your TV time, which is what most hajackers really want.
Actually, you don't even need to look at the track record on airplanes. The TSA, by making everyone stand in line, is creating a nice soft target just outside the security zone. Any terrorist who wanted to make the headlines would set off a bomb in the TSA line at O'Hare. It would be trivial. The fact that no one has tried it is more evidence that our fear of terrorism is a vastly bigger problem than actual terrorism.
We're 2 steps further along than the passengers and crew resisting. Cockpit doors are reinforced and locked and wider adoption of a 2 person rule for the cockpit.
(Apparently the FAA adopted the 2 person rule along with locking the door. Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 made it clear to other jurisdictions that it was a good idea)
There have been a couple hijackings in recent years. I think trying to get cockpit access is probably impossible, but you could still take hostages and demand the pilots fly somewhere.
>Any terrorist who wanted to make the headlines would set off a bomb in the TSA line at O'Hare. It would be trivial.
Trivial, but less carnage than a full plane going down. Airplane bombings multiple the deaths by 10X.
Terrorists hijacked an airplane in Brussels? That's news to me. What I heard was that they blew up the waiting area at the airport, which any terrorist could easily do any time anywhere in the world. The fact that this is still such a rare occurrence is further evidence that ordinary run-of-the-mill terrorism [1] is not the serious problem it is being made out to be.
[1] Terrorists getting their hands on a nuke is a different matter.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Admini... "In July 2007, the Times Union of Albany, New York reported that TSA screeners at Albany International Airport failed multiple covert security tests conducted by the TSA. Among them was a failure to detect a fake bomb."
I wasn't very clear, but what is a fake bomb? some timer taped to a couple circuits like clockboy and with no explosive residue? Or a real bomb with the detonator removed but with a fake detonator?
How realistic the bomb was would radically change the test.
> How realistic the bomb was would radically change the test.
Not really - the screening is done by looking at x-ray images of bags on a conveyor belt. The visual representation of a 'bomb' on the agent's screen would not change one iota if a pipe bomb didn't contain a real detonator.
Detecting the presence or absence of a real detonator would require much more sophisticated techniques, equipment, and personnel than are in use at tsa checkpoints
A fake bomb is a real explosive with safe, inert detonators. You need the real stuff, or the bomb-sniffer dogs and gas chromatographs won't be able to help.
If there was no security, you could walk into a movie theater with a prebuilt bomb and take out a room full of people. Or walk into a school, or walk into a mall, or onto a train, or walk into... well you get the idea.
We have a few people do that with weapons, but no prebuilt bombs. Yet I can still walk into a theater with no security, but not board a plane.
You are more likely to die in a plane crash due to a maintenance issue than you are to a terrorist bomb.
The problem with the "there have been zero successful terrorist attack on aircraft in the U.S. since 9-11." statement is they use that for their advantage. They say that because of them this is a fact. Ugh.
Not quite a statistical fluke. The 9-11 hijackers took advantage of the fact that they could count on the passengers and crew to cooperate because they would assume that this hijacking was like all the others before and cooperation provided the best odds of survival. But the 9-11 hijackers defected (in the sense of the prisoner's dilemma). As a result, no one will ever cooperate with a hijacker again, and as a result of that, no remotely sane person will ever attempt to hijack an airplane again.
> "no remotely sane person". Sane probably isn't the right word. I'd argue the hijackers were indeed sane by definition. They were more so misguided than insane.
I don't really want to quibble over whether or not the 9-11 hijackers were sane. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. The point is that no sane person can fail to realize that you can do a 9-11 style attack exactly once. It will never work again as long as people remember what happened that day, TSA or no TSA.
Back when there was little to no airport security at all, hijackings were far more common than they are now. In the late 60s and early 70s, hijackings ran in the dozens per year. I see no evidence that TSA-style pat-downs and shoe removal and liquid bans are necessary, but it does appear to be useful to have some minimal level of screening so that a crazy person doesn't just toss an AK-47 in his bag and take it on the plane.
If your argument is that current airport security arrangements don't even prevent that, then why did attacks fall off so sharply once basic security was implemented?
I disagree with the premise that 9/11 ended the hijacking threat. It ended the threat with basic security in place, because 40 unarmed passengers versus four hijackers armed with box cutters means the hijackers lose. Let the hijackers bring semiautomatic guns and that equation changes radically.
Passengers under a hijacking still don't expect to survive by cooperating, so the cost of cooperation is still effectively infinite high.
Guns still run out of bullets, and are somewhat difficult to wield in a close-quarters situation - it's not a magic first-person shooter. The cost becomes higher than fighting someone with a box cutter, but still lower than evaporating into mist.
I think you could hijack a plane if you just demand the pilot takes you somewhere rather than trying to get cockpit access. Making a move for the cockpit will cause everyone to rush you. But if you just take prisoners and demand that the pilot flies to Venezuela, I'm fairly sure it would work.
Maybe. But I don't think anyone argued for eliminating security altogether; pre-9/11 security prevented guns from being on airplanes as well as the TSA for $7b less per year. Bringing security back to post-1970's/pre-9-11 levels doesn't seem like it would cost us anything except a really shitty Basic Income program.
My comment is in reply to a comment that says exactly that you don't need any security at all. It quotes "You need some security" and replies with "No, it was not clear then, and it is not clear now."
If you think we need some security but only at pre-9/11 levels, then you and I are on the same page there.
I think we are on the same page, then, I think I misunderstood what you were saying. Carry on! (But only one carry on, everything else must be checked.)
How about recognizing that 9/11 was a troll, and we fell for it? The attackers hated the U.S.'s idea of freedom, but they were too powerless to take away our freedom. So they figured out a clever way to make us take away our own freedom ourselves. And yep, we did exactly that.
We honor U.S. military who defend our freedom with their lives. They value freedom more than personal safety, and we respect them for doing that. So why does the rest of our society pick the opposite and humiliate ourselves daily by choosing personal safety over freedom? Why have millions of us agreed to walk around in socks at airports just because some jerk tried to scare us 15 years ago?
A "workable alternative" would be what the Flight 93 people did: beat the living daylights out of people who act up. That approach has worked for tens of thousands of years. Yeah, sometimes you'll get killed, but most of the time you won't, just like our honored military. But most important you'll stop being trolled.
> How about recognizing that 9/11 was a troll, and we fell for it? The attackers hated the U.S.'s idea of freedom, but they were too powerless to take away our freedom. So they figured out a clever way to make us take away our own freedom ourselves. And yep, we did exactly that.
They didn't attack us because they "hate our freedom". Sure, they don't like western lifestyles or values, but that's not the primary reason we're enemies. Al-queda intends to establish a caliphate in the Muslim world, and part of that involves attacking allies of the countries that get in the way of that.
Please stop repeating this falsehood. The TSA is horrible for our freedom and completely ineffective at protecting our safety, but we can't evaluate how to deal with these issues if we subscribe to a flawed model of why terrorism is.
That's good feedback. I don't understand the dynamics of the Middle East well enough, and as a fallback, it's easier to think in us-vs.-them dichotomies.
All those problems you mention are real, but they're not the main problem. The real problem with the TSA is that it's explicitly unconstitutional, since the 4th amendment explicitly prohibits search and seizure without a warrant.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
This does not at all describe the operation of the TSA's search and seizure. Notably, the statute's language makes no allowance for implicit consent based on location or attempting to use some private transportation system. A sensible compromise is to privatize airline security, since the constitution does not prohibit Delta employees from searching and seizing without a warrant.
> In Davis and its progeny, we have established a general reasonableness test for airport screenings. “An airport screening search is reasonable if: (1) it is no more extensive or intensive than necessary, in light of current technology, to detect weapons or explosives; (2) it is confined in good faith to that purpose; and (3) passengers may avoid the search by electing not to fly.” Torbet, 298 F.3d at 1089 (citation omitted); see also Davis, 482 F.2d at 913; Pulido-Baquerizo, 800 F.2d at 901. (U.S. v. Marquez, 9th Cir. 2005)
You definitely don't have to agree with the correctness of this line of cases; you should just be aware that the courts have looked at the question and have a theory they've been pursuing for about four decades about why totally suspicionless searches are "reasonable" and hence constitutional in this context. A tricky thing about the fourth amendment text is that it talks about what the requirements are to get a warrant, but doesn't explicitly say whether searches without a warrant are exactly the same as "unreasonable" searches. Courts have interpreted this for a long time to suggest that some kinds of searches without a warrant are nonetheless "reasonable", although Davis was a pretty enormous expansion; I wouldn't be surprised if searches pursuant to it are an absolute majority of all the searches performed by the government!
These precedents are interesting, thanks for bringing them up.
This gives me an idea for a constituency that might have standing to challenge Davis: Active-duty members of the military flying commercial, on orders, to remote locations accessible solely by air, who explicitly cannot "...avoid the search by electing not to fly" by orders of the same government that is searching them.
I don't know that it's there, but it would be eminently possible to assign to the act of buying a ticket agreement to be subject to these rigors. Indeed, I'm guessing it is true, but just haven't looked it up.
"Persons, houses and effects" is domain-dependent and cannot be made absolute.
Airport security was tested in the Supreme Court back in the 70s when it was new. Due largely to the fact that it reduced hijackings to almost nil, the court ruled that it was a reasonable exception.
That said, my personal opinion leans closer to your position.
Yes, by employees of the organization operating that airplane. Notably, the constitution does not prohibit search and seizure performed by airline employees who are unaffiliated with the government.
I am not convinced you need more security for aircraft than a bus. As long as there is a solid wall between pilots and passengers, the worst a passenger could do would be to take down an aircraft which is much harder than you might assume.
Please don't give them ideas. I like relaxed train rides and would hate having to go through the intrusive time waste and annoyance anytime I step foot on a train station. I don't like flying because there are so many annoyances these days. The money grab is another problem. I cannot bring fluids through security but I can buy as many bottles of liquor and alcoholised fluids as I want before boarding. I'm surprised nobody sued to change that.
There's enough stuff sold after the security check which can be used for mixtures one could cause problems with. There's food, liquor, batteries, electronics, smokes, lighters, watches, power outlets, and many other things after the security check. You can even buy clothes there.
If I didn't know the outcome would be more restrictions, I'd love for an investigative journalist to go through there with an expert and have them build a chaos device of some sort just with elements bought after the security check. If somebody did this on media, it wouldn't help fix the theater, we would only get more restrictions, although I hope that wouldn't be the case.
>As long as there is a solid wall between pilots and passengers, the worst a passenger could do would be to take down an aircraft which is much harder than you might assume.
This is a pretty bad worst case scenario! That really only prevents a kamikaze scenario. Most terrorism against airplanes has been either blowing it up or hijacking for hostages.
Blowing up an airplane is a solved problem. It's been done many times.
Workable alternative: Get rid of TSA, remove the screening process. Done. We will be as safe in the air as we are today. Just as many "terrorists" will get on the plane as get on today.
The real problem with TSA is it doesn't actually solve the problem, and it costs money and time. There is no point to it, so get rid of it. The nation will save more money and time, and in the long run more lives.
The shoe bomb attempt, the liquid attempt, underwear attempt, all happened AFTER the TSA checkpoint, in the aircraft. All the new measures were applied as a reaction--after the fact.
The TSA didn't prevent those terrorist attacks--the people on the plain, luck/ineptitude did.
The article is exactly right about what needs to be done, and who needs to do it: the airports themselves. No chance any elected official is going to scale back the TSA's screening creep at this point.
The political risks of looking "soft on terrorism" are just too high. Imagine being a politician responsible for a TSA rollback, and then, by dumb luck, a terrorist attack succeeds a short while later. There may be zero correlation, but do you think the media will care? Do you think the public will care? Do you think your political opposition will care? Ha. Your career would be over in a heartbeat. And if your opponents really felt like twisting the knife, they might drum up hearings and lawsuits against you. So call me cynical, but I just don't see any lawmaker or policy wonk sticking his or her neck out anytime soon.
This is why it's in the hands of airports to push for any particular change. They're not running for office.
Good things can't happen without government sanction, and bad things can only happen when there is not enough government oversight (or through nefarious conspiracies). This is the narrative structure we call news today.
>This is why it's in the hands of airports to push for any particular change. They're not running for office.
They rely on federal funding for new infrastructure, which brings more air traffic, which brings more gate fees, which results in more money for those running the airport.
Totally fair, but any threat of fund withholding there is far less direct.
It also seems unlikely. If the feds withhold infrastructural funding out of spite for X, Y, or Z airports, they will cause a lot of collateral economic damage. Commercial airline passengers are just one of the many types of traffic that airports service every day. There's also stuff like FedEx, UPS, DHL, and all of the companies who rely on them for shipping, fulfillment, and logistics. That rabbit hole runs deep.
The article completely misses the point of the TSA. It is not meant to actually make air travel safer. It is there for exactly two reasons:
1) Provide our dear politicians the satisfaction that they "Did something" - Security theater is very useful during election times (Tough on Crime et al)
2)Provide a convenient excuse to expand the govt. ability to dictate yet another aspect of people's normal lives. The govt. now has another tool to harass "undesirables" - simply put their name on a "No fly", "No Train" , "No $SomeOtherThing" list and have their TSA buddies enforce it.
Or have the "undesirables" be pulled aside for Random screenings every single time [1].
Technically the TSA is there to protect the nation's transportation system. I've complained to my representatives and I'm told it is there to make us safe.
Sure they may be there to APPEAR to make us safe, and there maybe ulterior motives. But you still have to attack the reason they claim
What's crazy is that the article doesn't even mention the effective lost lives in the sheer number of hours people waste by getting to the airport so early.
If you assume 75 years x 365 days x 24 hours, that's 657,000 hours in a fairly typical life. Millions of travelers waiting an hour or more each = a lot of "lives" wasted standing in line.
I'm not American and haven't been there for a long time so forgive my ignorance. TSA is an agency of DHS so I believed that its presence in airports was mandated by the government. Can airports really replace it with anybody they like? If this is the case, why they didn't do it before? Only because TSA is for free and airports have to pay private security companies?
Airports can replace the TSA with private contracts. SFO farmed security out to a company called Covenant. They still have to follow TSA policies and aren't necessarily an improvement from a passenger standpoint. I.e., you're still getting yelled at by otherwise-unemployable nitwits on a power trip.
I've actually found the SFO private contractors to be fantastic. I once left my laptop at the security scanner, and they shipped it to me next day (at my expense) where I urgently needed my laptop the following day--it was boxed and packaged nicely and sent to FedEx for me for free. I just had to send them a PDF label. They simply verified serial number. They had a great lost and found tracking system and called me "customer."
The other time I brought some Chinese takeout that had a lot of liquid in it. The scanner said for future reference try to order drier dishes (I brought a papaya with soup embedded in the cavity), but she was going to look the other way and winked at me and told me to enjoy dinner.
Never had to wait long either (but I have TSA Precheck) and don't recall being barked at... I did have to wait quite a bit in the official TSA Precheck line in EWR though (those were DHS employees) and dealt with a slew of surly employees...
If we are going to have to have TSA, I'd rather have the private contractors run it than the TSA. No Stockholm syndrome; just thought they offered a better experience for the same thing than the TSA.
Oh really? That's depressing. I fly out of SFO all the time, and it's the only airport where I've had to wait in security for more than about 15 minutes.
There's still an option for airports to hire private companies which are overseen in some respects by TSA. I think only two or three airports are doing it; notably at SFO the screening is performed by Covenant Aviation Security (CAS), not TSA.
I saw in a different thread some back of the napkin math that he number of people-hours wasted by the TSA adds up to something like 500 lifetimes each year.
Terrorists would seriously have to step up their game to kill more than 500 people each year in the US, especially with passengers no longer operating under the "hijack just means a free trip to Cuba" assumption and actually fighting back.
This is something that I wish more people would understand. Yes TSA costs money, in the billions (but that is peanuts to the government)
BUT what does standing in line cost the workforce? A lot of travellers are business travellers and they end up working less on the days they travel because of TSA.
Waiting in line has a cost involved, and it is a tremendous one.
And what about the cost to the airlines for missed flights?
In the world we live in there is one surefire way to get rid of the TSA: Stop flying.
Sad to say but money is a big motivator, and until the airlines get the message that we don't want to deal with this shit, they aren't going to really push for actual change.
I don't understand your point about money. Airline costs are the lowest they've ever been, and like the other comment said, from business/first revenue airlines are making plenty of money.
I also don't really see a reason to stop flying. There's nothing wrong with flying itself--if we simply fix the issue with the TSA it'll be as good as it ever was. And it looks like it finally might change, based on what people are saying and articles like these.
I pledge not to fly again unless there is a medical or family reason to do so, until the TSA is no longer at the airports I need to use.
No more vacations, no more business trips... that pledge (if made by enough people) would hit airlines in their pocketbook rather quickly, and the TSA would be show the exit.
Boycotts won’t help because not enough people ever participate. If any airline starts to suffer, it will be bought out by another airline.
And if by chance a significant number of people did stop flying, the TSA would just expand into whatever people are using (train stations; bus stops; or heck, maybe the TSA starts building their own “checkpoints” on highways — you know, to ensure “transportation security”).
Competition can also be a good motivator. If you want to fix the TSA, cut their responsibilities in half at a particular airport and assign the other half to some startup that offers the same services. Then you come up with a few common-sense ways to measure how good they’re doing, and you pit them against each other. May the most efficient, cost-effective and customer-satisfying organization win.
The consultants and business class - who fly regularly, provide the bulk of airline revenue, and get work done on the plane and in the terminal - would not give up flying for the sake of ideology. But if their cars can drive them while they focus on work, well...
SEATAC in Seattle and the Port Authority in New and New Jersey have threatened to privatize TSA duties as well. The question is can they? What's to stop them? Why is it taking so long?
How was this agency not looking at actually travel data that they failed to hire more staff as the number of air travelers increased? This was over a two year period. The idiot in charge of the TSA said they anticipated more people would sign up for TSA prescreen. At some point in the last two years they couldn't see that this trend wasn't transpiring?
This same idiot said they he was asking congress for more money for overtime for TSA employees. Great, make the same miserable people work even longer hours. That sounds like a great solution.
He also made a statement to the effect that their "mandate is to keep America safe' yet he seems to not grasp that if we can't get on the plane it doesn't much matter.
They also seem to blame part of the increased wait on the tragedy in Belgium but do you mean to tell me that not one person in this agency could see that the departure halls's were a huge a blind spot?
I imagine that lawmakers in Washington don't have to wait in the long lines like the rest of us? That's generally how the broken stuff in the US stays broken b/c lawmakers aren't exposed to it. This is true of healthcare as well. Congress has indemnity health plans which is why they have no idea how bad it is for the rest of us.
That wouldn't surprise me, lets hope that this is the final straw and we a mass privatizing of of security in airports as a result.
You would expect that an agency tasked with the security of citizens might be a data-driven organization so the fact that this current shortage of staff while there's an increase in the flying population is just inexcusable.
It is so frustrating to see a lot of the “solutions” being proposed by the administration: wanting to hire more screeners, blaming passengers for bringing too many pesky bottles of water and pocket knives, etc. They are missing the obvious solution that should be at the top of the list, right in front of their faces: we must REMOVE “safeguards” to speed things up.
The probability that a bottle of water or anything that looks like water will cause an airline disaster is effectively ZERO. It is not a risk, and not even slightly concerning, period. This is not worth checking even once, even at random, much less millions of times a day.
And pocket knives? They SERVE FOOD WITH KNIVES on planes. They literally give you a knife in first class. If it was someone’s goal to obtain a knife on board, they would not need to bring it through security. And frankly, one could argue that knives are the opposite of risky: a few passengers with knives to defend themselves may very well be able to prevent a handful of hijackers from doing anything. Either way, I am strongly on the side of “teach people to band together and defend themselves”, not “cower and be fearful of everything”.
And don’t even get me started on having to take off shoes. It is frankly sad that we have been so fixated on ONE piece of clothing, for years and years and years, as a reaction to ONE passenger out of millions who couldn’t even carry out his “threat” successfully.
Besides, the entire concept of “prohibited items” does not eliminate risk. There are human beings who are powerful enough and skilled enough to cause serious damage or death all by themselves. They don’t need “prohibited items”, they simply are deadly. A group of passengers that knows how to band together and fight back can subdue anyone, even a passenger that is deadly all by himself.
The TSA is obviously a complete clusterfuck, but it is offering us an important lesson:
Despite everyone hating it, including Big Business, it persists and will likely continue to exist until the U.S. Government collapses. It is nearly impossible to ratchet back a government program dedicated to "security", among other sacred words.
Look at the solutions being offered: add more workers, more bomb dogs, etc.
The system cannot fix itself. Perhaps the system does not want to fix itself.
> The system cannot fix itself. Perhaps the system does not want to fix itself.
Absolutely! The horrible truth is that there is nothing to fix when you make hundreds of millions of dollars off of scared public. If you don't believe me, ask Chertoff.
Racial profiling (with "threat level" stickers!) and intrusive questions which become really extended and aggressive if they don't like the way you're answering?
Think the USA sounds more appealing, and I'm a white, obviously non-Muslim Brit.
Love that they're quoting bruce schneier in defense. I think he was just being fair-minded because he doesn't want to appear smug. This is a guy who walked through the screening with a 'beer belly' (beer smuggling device for stadiums) full of gasoline and then blogged about it.
I've had TSA agents look through my wallet, and on a separate flight look through playing cards one by one. I was also let through with no screening once by accident.
I've seen them yell at passengers, drift off, sit around talking with long lines waiting, and every other conceivable offense. Most are fine but there are a lot of exceptions.
They contribute nothing, and I for one fly less frequently because of them.
As to pre-check: at Atlanta that doesn't always get you a short line or fast security wait time.
I also have stopped flying altogether due to invasion of privacy and feeling like cattle PLUS now that there are long lines, the chance of tempers flaring is real. Just witness the violence and hatred in the streets of America these days and watch how the police are unable to control riots...YES RIOTS...we no longer have protesters...protests are now riots. Airport crowding combined with invasion of privacy, impatience & anger = disaster waiting to happen. TSA is the terrorist here.
In my personal experience what slows it all down the most is the actual people flying. Every time I fly I see countless people wearing tons of metal/jewelry/belts/whatever that they have to take off, often not till they are told to do so, the laptap is tucked far away until last moment. They still carry all sorts of lotions and liquids on for some unknown reason. When they then exit the scan they clog up the line by standing right there trying to put everything back on or away.
Don't blame the victims. You might as well say it's their fault because they didn't memorize the Gettysburg Address prior to arriving at the airport. What does reciting the Gettysburg Address have to do with airline security? About as much as making someone take out their nose and navel rings in the security line, and confiscating their hand lotion.
Oh I think the TSA is in inefficient and somewhat laughable, but I don't consider someone a victim who is not prepared to get on a plane and wastes everyone time. I consider that just rude. If someone gets their lotion confiscated, I consider them part of the problem that slows everyone down.
Edit to include I also think the TSA is making things slower on "purpose" but that's a whole other topic.
Prepared to get on a plane is, in my view, to be dressed appropriately for a public venue, carrying an appropriate size and quantity of hand-carried baggage, with a paid ticket, complete travel itinerary, and valid airline boarding pass.
It is not the traveler's concern whether the TSA finds it more burdensome to screen someone wearing polished, straight-laced oxfords than someone wearing slipshod flip-flops. The traveler is not wasting anybody's time. The TSA that cannot process an unprepared, ignorant, yet cooperative traveler as quickly or as easily as a million-mile air travel expert is actually the party wasting everybody's time.
Imagine for a moment that someone sets out to intentionally slow down the screening queue. Whose fault is it if he is easily able to do so? The people that established the operating procedures for the screening are responsible. On a highway, the slow car is passed, using a different lane. On a computer, the processor hog may be interrupted so that other processes and threads may still execute. Unfortunately, as you suspect, the TSA has a motive for keeping the lines slow. Slow lines may lead to bigger budgets, as they complain about being "resource constrained".
Perhaps you are making it more convenient for yourself by transferring your irritation to those who are not able to retaliate against your visible annoyance, by abusing their authority to perform additional unnecessary screenings the instant you reach the head of the queue? Stop blaming the victims!
Both are responsible because they both took actions that caused delays,and I was not speaking of any bias the TSA have when taking people out of line etc and doing things also that may increase lag.
I have no irritation with passengers wasting everyones time in line, I expect many people to be inconsiderate of others, that is human nature. I also note how many pass the blame onto others instead of realizing there are things they can do to help their fellow passengers, but they don't, to me it says a lot about that person.
I place blame of the slowdown on anything that causes the slowdown, including inconsiderate people and inept TSA policy and people.
> When they then exit the scan they clog up the line by standing right there trying to put everything back on or away
Um, excuse me? If I've just been made to disassemble my person and be less secure, you can damn well bet I am going to take my time reassembling myself and making sure I have everything back in its rightful place before proceeding. I'd recommend everybody do the same, even if that means holding your ground if the goons start trying to assault you into moving forward.
Why would someone bring things they would have to disassemble then reassemble? (medical condition etc aside), when they know they are going to have to fly ? that is inconsiderate IMO
To each there own, I just know they are part of the problem.
You are supposed to take your liquids out, your laptop out. Remove your coat, your belt, your shoes.
I don't do much of that, yet I still need to collect my belongings and my shoes... You know "reassemble yourself" OP didn't mean take apart and rebuild something
How do we get rid of it, though? I get that it's terrible, and I've heard all these arguments countless times. How do you actually take action, though?
Create a new, different jobs program that will hire all the ex-TSA workers AND show how keeping it around will only cost money and negatively impact the economy (both local and national), so politicians won't have an incentive to keep it alive.
The difference between the US and other countries is not that we're stupider. It's that the slightly smarter/more powerful people are much better at manipulating the stupidity of masses, and much more greedy, than other countries. That's why we leveraged fear and pushed hard so that you have to bend over for the TSA every flight.
My question is, what does the US look like without the TSA, and can we ever get there?
I have long looked for an answer outside of security theater as to why the ban on liquids continues. If anyone has an answer, I'd appreciate hearing it.
If you go through a screening line and a liquid is found, the liquid is not tested. It is not handled carefully. It is not thoroughly inspected. It is tossed in the closest garbage can.
If the liquid really did pose a danger, wouldn't it be handled more carefully?
I think the (ostensible) reason is similar to this, from the link:
> As security expert Bruce Schneier likes to note, such screenings don't have to be perfect; they just have to be good enough to make terrorists change their plans: "No terrorist is going to base his plot on getting a gun through airport security if there's a decent chance of getting caught, because the consequences of getting caught are too great."
That is, the act of confiscating the liquids almost ensures that the liquids are already harmless. But if they didn't confiscate the liquid, it (supposedly) might not be harmless. It's a bit like Newcomb's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox
Not defending the rule at all, and I'm no chemist, but I always assumed it was because someone could bring on base chemicals in various containers and mix them into a finished and dangerous concoction on the plane... and they determined that < 3oz per container was enough mitigation?
Those who say that the TSA is just a jobs program are missing the point. The TSA is a constant reminder of government presence and the security state, it's effectiveness at security or a jobs program is a minor concern compared to its value as a symbol. And of course, its growing, spreading its presence to highways, rail, and other forms of public transit.
Air travel should be the same as motor vehicle travel. The only reason there aren't small air taxi companies that offer regional trips for affordable prices is because government has been involved in airplanes since day 1, and it is illegal for private pilots to charge.
TSA is not a very important issue, but politicians love to discuss about this kind of issues where they can show their talent without hurting their sponsors. It is a good way to distract public from the more important issues (economy, unemployment, privacy, ...).
I hate security, though I hate the discomfort of air travel even more. In fact, I just got back to the US from Europe, and the cold that struck 12h after I left lasted 7-10 days (and I rarely get sick!)
That said, am I the only one who doesn't have these long security waits? I typically show up at the airport ~1h before boarding is to begin, and am often at my gate 50min before boarding begins.
I typically fly out of SFO, and I do admit, several journeys ago, I was actually IN LINE at security for 30 minutes which seemed absurdly painful and I was actually starting to sweat being late for boarding. Of course, at SFO they had TONS of extra machinery, they just didn't bother staffing it.
As much as I HATE taking off my watch, fitbit, ring, car keys, wallet, belt, shoes, phone, then the scramble to take my laptop out of my bag as soon as I get room on the table (it becomes a high pressure situation to do the laptop thing as by the time you get to the table you have roughly 8 seconds before you're holding people up!).. the actual lines are quite tolerable.
I typically fly SFO, SEA, SAN, SJC, and fly cross country at least once or twice a year. I just got back from Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Munich airports, and again, no problems. I've fairly recently been to Auckland, Queenstown, Reykjavik, Heathrow, Florence, Paris as well.
There's no doubt most other countries do a better job than the US; the automated machinery for dealing with your possessions to be xrayed (they hold your bin until it's empty and then automatically return it to the beginning of the line!) and the switching between 10-15 security lines so that you're never behind more than a few people was a revelation.
But the actual time in security is rarely all that bad inside or outside the US.
You've gotten lucky.
Recently I got to the airport early (unusual for me) a 2 hour wait in line later, we missed our flight (by about 15 minutes) As we were getting placed on the next flight the agent said lately 2 hours wasn't long enough. I flew out of the same airport about a month later, and an hour earlier in the day and had no issues.
Doesn't mean there isn't an issue with TSA. Why should we have to wait at all? Why should we be treated like criminals?
I've found it really depends on the checkpoint-to-gate ratio of the airport.
ATL is the absolute worst. There are three checkpoints for the entire domestic side of the airport, two of which are often closed. Wait times are normally 45 minutes in the normal lines. There are 3 checkpoints for about 150 gates.
FLL, OTOH, is one of my favorites. This is because the terminals don't have a central entrance, so there's a security checkpoint per 15-ish gates and some checkpoints actually serve fewer than 10 gates.
The abnormally long waits are a recent thing. Earlier this year, there were warnings that it would be bad this summer as peak travel season begins, and now that it's here, the horrific wait times have become a reality at many airports around the country.
Even a month or so ago, things were reasonable. Now, the biggest airports are recommending getting to the airport 3 hours early.
At that point I realized that air travel is by far the worst traveling experience money can pay for.
If an alternative airport wanted to do things a little different, such as "fly at your own risk" "no lifeguard on duty", aka no TSA b.s., I'd happily take the "at your own risk" option rather than the TSA controlled situation we're subjected to currently.