It serves the purpose of removing liability for security from airlines, which is the major reason why it was created. It also serves the purpose of getting people used to progressively more intrusive government inspection during routine situations.
> and it seems that no entity is able to stop or dismantle it.
There are entities that are able to, but they don't want to, because they like what it does.
1) A fucking racket.
2) Totally worth it!
https://www.schneier.com/news/archives/2008/11/the_things_he...
My wife was also wearing my son in a wrap at the time and just walked through a metal detector, no searching pockets or taking off the wrap or anything like that. Anyone trying to sneak contraband through could just carry it through with the baby knowing it won't be searched and then just leave after exchanging the contraband past security and walk out. You could easily sneak 10lbs worth of contraband through so long as it wouldn't set off the metal detector.
Unfortunately, the UK doesn’t have the same simple exemption for contact lens solution bottles, so they seized it while I was transiting.
There’s bit of irony from seizing something that anyone can fly in with.
But one time I was trying to bring a fish, and had a next to impossible time trying to get them to agree that water was a "life sustaining liquid" as defined by their exemptions on the 3oz rule wrt to fish.
Just because the FDA requires raw-milk cheeses to have aged for at least 60 days in order to be sold in the USA, that doesn't mean you can't bring some in with you and consume it.
A pretty good summary and a bonus foreshadowing of this article.
I have had a pretty good experience with the new scanners. I have global entry/Precheck and one remaining headache with the old scanners was remembering to take my double walked flask out and show the TSA that it was empty by removing the cap. The new scanners can see that it’s empty from inside my bag, which is very handy.
An entire new line of single use toiletry products was invented to meet this regulation.
The much more likely scenario is that the politcians, who sometimes have ownership interest in the companies that get government contracts, want to be able to sell new equipment. This is also supported by the constant equipment updates we see at TSA lines.
> The much more likely scenario is...
Why do you phrase this as an either or situation? "My conspiracy is more likely than your conspiracy" as if there can't be more than one conspiracy.
Just like you have for instance "telefonino" as the diminutive of "telefono" in Italian, literally "small telephone". And in German you add -chen or -lein to words to create the diminutive, so "Hund" becomes "Hündchen" (adding an umlaut as well, if applicable).
Generally I think it's very common for a lot of languages to add a cutesy suffix to the base word, in order to create the diminutive.
There was a terrorist plot to do this, which was caught by the security services, and then despite the terrorists being caught the liquids ban was put into place forever more to stop future attacks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_...
It sounds like you're arguing that this regulation is not necessary any more because that particular plot was foiled. I find that line of reasoning odd, given that the 2006 attack was the last in a string of plots using liquid explosives to target airliners. The type of group which carried out attacks like this still exists, with similar goals.
Given that it's reasonably effective at deterring a technique which has actually been used (the Japan test run in the 90s) and which has been attempted multiple times, I think it's possibly the least objectionable regulation. It doesn't address all modes of attack (obviously), and it's very debatable whether the likelihood of attack makes the invasiveness of the countermeasure acceptable, but unlike body scanners it's at least effective at deterring the specific modality it's aimed at.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_...
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=563298...
Our screening is worthless
"Whoa.. whatever you just did, do it again."
or
"Can I have her give me the pat down instead?"
And you can really irritate them if you say the little spiel along with them. It rattles them.
Instead, write your congresscritters. Nearly all of them fly every week, so they feel your pain.
We really shouldn't tolerate people like that though, should we? If you don't respect TSA agents, it's your duty to remind them of that. Our ability to change the TSA through the democratic process has been on the wane for years now, but we can still force change by making it hard for the TSA to hire. If they have to double their salaries because being a TSA agent makes you a figure of mockery, they might fondle people a bit less.
As for how they take it out on the people behind me, that's their decision. They're adults, not dogs, their behavior is their responsibility, not mine.
If you really want to make a statement, stop flying and stop paying money into the TSA.
It's certainly unoptimal that we'd ever have to be rude to people to change things for the better, but we don't actually live in a wholly civil society, evidenced by the fact that my genitals get groped every time I book a flight.
>or you're an ordinary person of color, not sure which.
Yeah, and that's fine, right? We shouldn't go out of our way to tell the TSA that's not acceptable or anything /s
This is a non-argument. Flying is a part of modern life. For a large percentage of the population, refusing to fly would lose them their job, as would refusing to use a mobile phone or insisting on being paid with cash.
It is self evident to any rational person that it is acceptable to attempt to change a system rather than opting out of it if one sees a problem with that system.
>This is a really shitty attitude to have towards your fellow human beings. Do you also shame people working at McDonalds for enabling their rich corporate overlords? Do you hate gas station attendants for contributing to global warming?
I don't see the connection to McDonalds employees. Please explain how McDonalds employees are like TSA workers.
They're unaccountable, ineffective, and completely useless. It's a modern day Work Project.
It's likely that had it detected metal it would have made a different sound / colour. What you heard was probably the RNG landing on "check them for explosives".
It appears that most people on HN feel that TSA regulations are pointless theater and should be weakened or eliminated, while the FAA is to be blamed for not exercising their regulatory power strongly enough (especially in light of the 737 MAX).
Both agencies seem to follow a similar methodology: when there's an incident, analyze the cause and enact regulations that would have prevented it, building up a system leads to fewer incidents over time. And they seem to have led to similar results -- over the past decade, there has been only one passenger fatality on commercial flights within the US due to accidents, and zero due to hijackings/bombings.
Why the difference in opinion? Is it that TSA regulations are personally annoying to travelers while FAA regulations are mostly invisible to passengers?
Because that's not actually the case? Only a small part of the FAA's activities is post hoc incident analysis. They do quite a bit of scientific studies, certification, licensing etc. And in fact the most recent outrage against the FAA has been the feeling that they have bene derelict in their duties in regards to the 737-MAX by adopting the problematic self-regulatory approach used by, say, the Department of Agriculture.
By contrast, the TSA (which is much smaller than the FAA and has, for all intents and purposes, only one responsibility) on has never demonstrated competency, clearly awards contracts based on cronyism (the millimeter wave system have no science supporting them), engage in absurd scope creep (checking bags on some train or bus stations, pretending to be law enforcement) and reducing security from where it was before the agency was created (e.g. "TSA locks" which have permitted an increase in theft from bags) etc.
Not at all the same.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/exclusive-undercover-dhs-test...
people as an individual also don't deal with fears rationally. This is exploited by those in power (or whoever that can) to further their own agenda - whether it's greed or control or whatever.
There are literally thousands of other things at which it exce.
How many millions were killed by government in the 20th century? WW1, WWII, concentration camps, gulags, Mao's great leap forward, Vietnam, and the list goes on. War has been a constant for most of the 21st century.
There is a strong argument that much of the above would not have been feasible without large centralized states.
Precluding that was small states engaged in constant warfare. Note that I'm not saying that centralized states are necessarily the solution, but that the US Federal Government has been successful in its objective of preventing further World Wars and that itself is a huge achievement.
"Pinker devotes some 10 pages (pp. 228-238) to this case, and the central information is condensed in a single graph (p. 230) depicting the “rate of death in conflicts in greater Europe, 1400-2000.” If anything, however, this graph demonstrates the opposite of Pinker’s progress thesis. What it shows is that the longest period of (relative) peacefulness and low levels of violence were the almost 200 years from 1400 until the very end of the 16th century. Yet this period falls precisely within the longer period of the European Middle Ages (and marks its end), and the Middle Ages, as I have argued before, are a prime example of a State-less social order. (Interestingly, Pinker concurs with this assessment of medieval Europe as State-less, but he then fails to see that this assessment implies, according to his own data, an empirical refutation of his thesis.)
And it gets worse for Pinker’s case. According to the same graph, the following historical period, from the late 16th century on to the present, is characterized by three huge spikes in the level of violence. The first spike, from the late 16th century until the Westphalian Peace in 1648, is largely associated with the 30-Years-War; the second, from the late 18th century until 1815 and somewhat less steep than the first, is associated with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; and the third and greatest spike, from 1914-1945, is associated with the 20th century’s two World Wars. As well, for all intermediate periods, the level of violence remained well above that of medieval times and this level was only reached again, three centuries later, during the period from 1815-1914, and again during the post-WW II era. All in all, then, the record for post-medieval Europe in terms of violence appears rather depressive. And yet, the entire period, from the late 16th century until today, is the era of States, which Pinker considers the driving forces of a “civilizing process.” "
https://mises.org/wire/libertarian-quest-grand-historical-na... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTWrFTFxGbk
Gang wars are much tinier than state wars.