Understanding American Airport Security Following 9/11 (2019)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tsa-airport-security-theater-guide/

28 45 3 years ago

ed_westin• 3 years ago

This website uses 400MB+ of disk space for cookies, site data and cache for a single visit.

callalex3• 3 years ago

My visit on the lates Mobile Safari reports 2.7MB of storage usage, for what it’s worth. Although I have very strict content blocking policies.

Edit: 3.4MB when I remove the filters

workfromspace2• 3 years ago

It doesn't even load the page for me. Here's cached version: https://archive.is/tYRVg

voakbasda• 3 years ago

I stopped flying in 2003 as a direct result of the TSA. I used to fly everywhere with a mandolin, as it would fit into the overhead compartments and allowed me to participate in the music scene at my destination.

After the security theater was in full swing, I got stopped at a security checkpoint and was told that I could not take my spare set of strings onto the plane, because they might be used as a garrote.

Knowing that I hadn’t changed them for a while, I asked whether it would be okay for me to sit there and change them. They agreed. So I took 15 minutes and put the new strings on my mandolin. That appeased them, and I continued on my long journey home.

So, the strings were still allowed through… on my instrument. Where I could have removed them and fashioned a garrote just as easily as when they were new in the bag.

The terrorists won. I never flew again.

Clamchop• 3 years ago

The kind of stand I and many others I'm sure would like to take but I, like most people I imagine, fly to do important things in the limited time I have, for which air travel is one hell of a luxury that makes it possible at all. Family, friends, personally significant trips. I don't fly for business but I figure that's a very important reason for many.

They have most of us bent over a barrel. No free market to be seen here.

Unless you count fuckhead rent seekers like Clear exploiting that the line to queue for security is technically in the airport's purview. Clear and the airports that participate are offensive.

midoridensha• 3 years ago

I, like most people I imagine, fly to do important things in the limited time I have, for which air travel is one hell of a luxury that makes it possible at all. Family, friends, personally significant trips.

If I didn't fly, I'd have to take a ship to visit my family, and that would probably take weeks and cost a fortune. I guess if you never leave the US, this kind of stand makes sense, but when you live on different continents it's not practical at all.

NoZebra120vClip3• 3 years ago

The difference was not the location of the strings. To the TSA, the difference was your expertise in being able to change them on the spot. You proved that you are a mandolin player, and not merely an assassin who is carrying one as a cover story (but you could be both.)

It's for this reason, supposedly, that we're asked to boot our laptops and so forth. Do we have a mundane or nefarious purpose?

barsonme• 3 years ago

Yet I can’t drink part of my water bottle to prove that it’s not an explosive.

saurik• 3 years ago

I think the idea is that if you just take a mandolin through security you wouldn't have been stopped in the first place, even though it has metal strings as a component that are trivially removed (much more difficult to put back on, but you don't need to do that step).

lostlogin• 3 years ago

You have an awful lot of faith in the TSA.

Isn’t a belt, a shoelace or any one of a thousand other things also a garrotte?

krisoft• 3 years ago

It's for this reason, supposedly, that we're asked to boot our laptops and so forth.

Not at all.

The TSA got credible information from intelligence agencies that there is a group who has the plan to manufacture bombs which are disguised as laptops. They would be manufactured such that they appear normal to the commonly used screening technologies. This is what we know. From here on it is speculation.

The easiest way to accomplish this is by replacing the battery of a laptop with explosives. You wouldn't want to have a mix of real battery and explosive though because that would be very hard to hide seamlessly on a scanner. So the theory is that these laptops would not function, and when being turned on they would appear to be out of battery.

So no. Being able to boot your laptop does not prove that you are not an "assassin". It proves that it has functioning batteries inside.

Besides how silly that is? I wager that we could teach mandolin stringing and laptop booting to anyone in an hour tops. Attacker or not. In fact anyone who can chew gum and walk at the same time can probably string a mandolin in 15 minutes (not to the exacting expectations of a real mandolin player, but to appear competent enough to a screening person.)

ThePowerOfFuet• 3 years ago

While this sounds great, it's bullshit and we both know it.

callalex3• 3 years ago

Shoelaces are allowed, without proving that I am a skilled shoe player. So the rest is just bullshit make-works projects.

cromka• 3 years ago

A typical case of Security through obscurity, just making an illusion of safety that anyone willing can workaround.

pjc504• 3 years ago

For me, it was when COVID was killing about three airliners worth of Americans a day but enforcing the water bottle rules (used in 0 attacks for a total of 0 fatalities) was far more important than anything to do with COVID.

iforgotpassword• 3 years ago

The Germanwings incident. I don't know how many lives were saved by locking the pilots in since 9/11, but I sure know how many were taken....

nikanj• 3 years ago

Enforcing the water bottle rule sells a lot of beverages at the airport, with a nice margin because the customers have no options

AdamN2• 3 years ago

Liquid explosives have been used in multiple attacks, one of which was almost successful (but not in the end). The rationale for banning larger quantities of liquid are rational and done in response to a specific incident:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...

callalex3• 3 years ago

Speaking of instruments and the TSA, the first few times I flew with a brass instrument I accidentally forgot to remove my [over-the-limit] ounces of lubricant with explosive vapors, as well as the large blade I use for cutting strings and other instrument maintenance. After that I started doing it on purpose just to prove to myself that if I wanted to become a terrorist it would take less than zero effort to just hide everything in a French Horn. It’s such a pathetic joke, and you’re right that the Taliban won.

magicalhippo2• 3 years ago

Some years ago I was flying home from a large European airport. Unbeknownst to me there had been a bomb threat, so the security check was turned up to 11.

The queue for the security check was enormous, thousands of people packed in a snaking queue filling up the place.

I've never been so scared flying as I stood in line looking at the doors to the parking lot, with nothing but people between.

pjc504• 3 years ago

It's important to remember that bombs are only ever dangerous on planes, and nobody would ever think of detonating a bomb in a packed security queue.

Panzer04• 3 years ago

The kind of bombs an amateur can put together will probably do a lot less damage in an airport queue than on a 777. Seriously damage an airliner and like as not you can kill everyone on board, whereas the same bomb in even a busy public space will probably only kill a few dozen people at best (body blocking, etc).

Strictly talking from the perspective of inflicting maximal harm - That need not be the goal of a would-be bomber.

GuB-42• 3 years ago

Places that take terrorism threats seriously have multiple checkpoints spread out everywhere for that reason.

Not only large queues are an ideal spot to bomb if the goal is to make a lot of victims, but not having a well defined location for security checks makes it more difficult for terrorists to plan around.

workfromspace2• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/tYRVg

chrismcb3• 3 years ago

Isn't it time to disband the TSA? So the security theater? "... no more intrusive or intensive than necessary..." I would say waiting on lines for hours, even being required to show up hours before is more intrusive than necessary.

Understanding American Airport Security Following 9/11 (2019)

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