Letters to the Editor
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Ripped from the headlines
I just finished this column, go to CNN.COM and am immediately greeted by this headline:
Traveler: TSA made me remove nipple rings
The mind boggles at the possibilities...
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Dry ice
Does the TSA confiscate dry ice? I hear flushing dry ice down an airplane toilet can almost bring down a DC-8.
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When pilots carry guns
When pilots can carry guns in the cockpit what is the point of searching them and taking away their knives and forks.
The is a word for this: Dumbforkery. You can guess at the origin.
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Protesting the TSA rules
As someone who is on airplanes at least twice a month I share your frustration with the inanity of the security rules and the lack of any imperative for TSA to improve the situation. And I, too, have fantasized about ways to subvert the system and about raising a holy stink about how stupid it all is. I keep reminding myself that these poor sods don't make policy they just enforce it, that it isn't their fault its the fault of their political masters, but still I want to make enough of a ruckus that those masters hear the tale.
But...
They have me over a barrel, and they know it. When I'm at the airport plodding through security I'm not doing it for my amusement or as a form of political theater. I'm trying to live my life despite the impediments they throw in my path. I'm there because I need to get to somewhere else, and I know that if I act other than the compliant and cowed citizen I likely won't satisfy that need. Immediate pressing needs first; long-term and managable frustrations later.
I presume most people are in similar straits. If we want to fix this mess it will have to come from somewhere other than a security-line rebellion. Sad but true.
-apl
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Huzzah!
Right on Patrick, as usual. Said everything I think, everytime I go through security.
Now how about that scary "clear" system, which is just a scam piled on our inept bureaucracy?
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George Carlin's take on this...people like to feel safer
George Carlin had an eerily prescient routine on airport security in a 1999 HBO special (called "You're all diseased") where he discussed the uselessness of airport security. His conclusion was that it's simply a matter of making people feel safer, not that it had any real use.
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British security *much* better than ours.
In 1990, leaving Heathrow, the agent asked for my passport, and then asked my occupation. I was a stereo salesman at the time, and said so. His response: "All right, then--what's a DAT machine?" I gave a quick description of a digital audio tape player and he let me go in less than a minute. Still think that was one of the best security checks I've ever had.
Three years ago, again leaving Heathrow, my wife and I were pilled out of the detector line (and the Brits consistently get longer lines through faster than any American airport I've been to) and asked if we'd submit to a new screening device. We were scanned by a 3-D device that required us to stand in a slightly extended pose. We were in and out in about 15 seconds.
I'll take British (and New Zealand) security checks any day over TSA.
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Democrats getting rid of TSA? If only....
It's a nice thought, and it's not unreasonable to expect that policies would be revised, albeit slowly, incrementally. (And if we need our friends across the Atlantic to make the first moves and show us the way, so be it.) However, I'm unsure if public sentiment is strong enough to inspire anything drastic.
Not a chance, and not because of lack of public sentiment, either. Most TSA employees are Democrats, and now represent the single most powerful group of government employees at least in terms of numbers. Airports are among the few places where can opportunities for semi-skilled service work are still expanding — and the TSA is the sole reason.
Dismantling that infrastructure would be courting disaster for any politician, especially a Democratic one, who tried it — at least without first finding a jobs program for all those poor bastards for whom sifting through your stuff with latex gloves is the best work they've had in years.
So even if you had a well-organized lobby against stupid airport security, with money and charismatic leaders and viral Youtube videos and page space in the New York Times and so on, the political calculus would still nail you.
At least until the recession ends, which... yeah. Good luck.
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It's all for show. And profit.
I'm trying to remember, has airport security, either the TSA or whoever their predecessors were, ever stopped a would-be hijacker? Maybe I'm having trouble remembering, but it sure doesn't seem like there were any such incidents.
It's no wonder airport security is seen as a dog and pony show designed to placate the peons who worry that the next terrorist is... right behind you! Oh and confiscating our bottled water doesn't exactly hurt the airport merchants.
It's been said before, but it's worth saying again--the real way to prevent incidents on airplanes is to let the FBI and other law enforcement agencies do their job. If potential terrorists have made it as far as the security checkpoint, then it's already too late.
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Speaking of Security - Nipple Rings are VERBOTEN!
I just saw this about a woman and her dangerous nipple rings. Airport security is like Monty Python.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/27/ap/national/main3976131.shtml?source=search_story
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You never did deal with the gun issue
Not that I didn't enjoy the anti-liquid ban rant (I always enjoy those), but I was looking forward to your take on the "gun in cockpit" issue. Personally, I hate it. If there is a hijacking, I don't want my pilot rushing out of the cockpit to blow the hijackers head(s) off with his Smith and Wesson (or whatever they use). I want the pilot, who is presumably securely locked behind an unbreachable door, flying the plane while the passengers and flight attendants deal with the disturbance. In fact, the single person I least want to be dealing one on one with a hijacker is the pilot. Given what happened on 9/11, I would think that the TSA would think that it was a very bad idea for pilots to be leaving the cockpit when a plane was being hijacked, and it is pretty obvious that if a pilot has to shoot hijackers who are rushing the cockpit then things have gone way too far. If the TSA hasn't thought to ensure that all planes have unbreachable cockpit doors, then this might be a good time to stop trying to figure out ways to make passengers miserable and take some time to remedy that situation.