If I had the money and time to spare, I'd create a group who's job it would be to just buy random travel to random places and do nothing but screw with the TSA. We're talking millionaire levels here. I'd buy people tickets, walk them through how to jam the entire process start to finish (quoting the constitution works exceedingly well if the stories I'm reading mean anything), and hire lawyers to deal with fighting the inevitable legal challenges.
Call me childish, but I would like nothing better to but to make this system such a cost drain that it's dropped. Once airlines have to start rebooking people due to flights being missed by many, many paying passengers, en masse, the corporate pressure that makes the government wheels turn will do the rest.
Most people put up with this fucktardery only because they have somewhere to be and don't want to miss their flight. And the security theater actors know this.
You might get more schadenfreude that way, but it'd be much more effective to spend that money on lobbyists and organization that worked on changing the law.
but it'd be much more effective to spend that money on lobbyists
Maybe, maybe not.
Lobbying is very expensive, I suspect some times it would be cheaper to lobby, other times it would be cheaper to sabotage the system.
Which is cheaper could depend on many things, like is anyone lobbying against you, vs. is the system designed in such a way that it could potentially adjust itself to defends itself or not.
Let's suppose that it is easy to buy a legislator. The problem here is that there's also lots of money being used to sway legislators towards increased security, so you'll be in a bidding war.
I wonder how effective something like Kick Starter would be if it was applied to lobbyists? I mean, at some point it was supposed to be that whoever got elected represented the people. But now it is obvious that the elected just represent who ever gave them the largest amount of money. Could crowd Funding compete with big Co. and wealthy individuals?
Yes, the idealist in me wants to believe the system can be changed. But I am getting close to 30 and I haven't bought any new Bad Religion CD/MP3 since I was 22 to fuel the idealist in me.
But realistically, politicians want the largest amount of money over time - crowdsourcing couldn't affors to pay off a politician every year. Not to mention, they'd likely just ignore the crowd sourced payoffs - there's money, and then there's money + power.
Are you sure? What if the crowdsourced money is divided up front, and payed to the politician in yearly chunks, maybe with an appointed trustee able to cancel the payments?
Not sure what you mean by money + power.
What about non-profit organizations with charters to change legislation? Instead of raising funds to lobby, you raise funds to form an endowment. The proceeds from the endowment are used for lobbying until such time as the legislative goal is achieved.
One the goal is achieved the funds can be distributed to another cause, redirected towards another goal, or kept as is with the goal and preventing future legislation from erasing the gains.
Instead of contributing to one politician perhaps we should be contributing to an army of lobbying pools that match our desired policy outcomes?
Most people put up with this fucktardery only because they have somewhere to be and don't want to miss their flight.
I wish this were true, but it isn't. I know a number of people who genuinely believe that the TSA procedures are necessary to make sure a terrorist is not going to blow up the plane they are boarding.
How do you propose one come up with valid statistical data on something which is inherently an opinion? Need every single bloody point be scientifically rigorous?
It was a sweeping generalization but fair in context of that persons social network. I also have friends and relatives who believe the same about the TSA.
Usually I'm all for citing, but your persistance in this argument is inconsequential.
If you don't or can't be bothered to do that then you should shut your pie hole.
I'm guessing that it's comments like this ("shut your pie hole") that are creating the sense that the quality of discussion at this site is in decline (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396747)
> I'm told that polling people can be done accurately and scientifically.
And you believe that?
The way you phrase your poll often determines the answers; the only "accurate" and "scientific" thing you learn is how people answer the questions the way you phrased them.
One of Kahneman's and Tversky's work asked Medical Doctors how they would react in a situation (From memory, can't find the reference right now)
There is a pandemic. With no treatment, everyone will die soon. You have the resources to produce a perfect cure for just 1/4 of the population, or a cure that works with probability 25%, but you can make enough of it for the entire population (expected number of people saved is the same).
Now, half the doctors are asked to decide between:
.... a treatment that deterministically saves 25% of the population from the epidemic, and a treatment that probabilistically saves 25% of the population from the epidemic.
The other half were asked to decide between:
.... a treatment that would let 75% of the population die from the epidemic (deterministically), and one that would probabilistically let 75% of the population die.
The whole test was built so that on average, there's no "right" choice. You just get to choose whether or not you want to determine who lives - but either way, 25% will live, 75% will die.
No, if people were rational (and doctors are supposed to be rational with respect to treatment policy), the way the question is phrased should not make a difference - but it made all the difference.
(K&T have many similar examples, and so does Dan Ariely in "Predictably Irrational").
Now, if the TSA phrases the questions, you can be certain the poll would indicate 95% of the people support the TSAs procedures. If Schneier did, the results would be very different.
Scientifically and accurately portraying the fact that most polls shouldn't be trusted because the person doing them has an agenda.
> > I'm told that polling people can be done accurately and scientifically.
> And you believe that?
Yes.
What you have done is cited people who have shown polling can be done incorrectly. This is not a surprise.
Polling can be done in a correct way and will produce valid results. It costs money, and not everyone _wants_ a poll that is accurate but there you go.
I opt out everysingletime and as a Developer Evangelist, I travel quite a bit.. upwards of 30 flights so far this year. It's to the point when I travel with other people, I explicitly tell them to go through lines separate from me and don't associate with or acknowledge me.
Almost every time through, there are no more than 1-2 other people opting out at the same time. And usually prior to my opt out, there aren't any at all.
It appears that "most people put up with this fucktardery" because they don't know/care otherwise.. none even question it.
I document my experiences via Twitter using the #fuTSA tag if you'd like to follow along. ;)
Some of us with medical implants don't have a choice. Straight to the pat-down for me.
I opt out by not flying any more. Can get just about anywhere I want to in one day of driving (with the convenience of my own impromptu schedule, take as much as I want, and have a car when I get there).
Am surprised 4A suits haven't been filed en masse. Would be great for rights restoration if some lawyer could whip up a "filing suit over right X violations without a lawyer" guidebook, keeping it simple & cheap and leveraging sheer numbers in doing so (rather than trying to concoct the perfect case, just overwhelm the system with enough conflicting verdicts that the Supreme Court has to resolve it, with enough range in cases that nuanced narrow verdicts are impossible).
The TSA would probably arrest you andyour collaborators for obstructing the law or inciting fear or something. Either way you wouldn't be able to operate for long before something happened.
Yeah, unfortunately this would be one of those civil disobediance acts that would get lumped in with yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre. You'll probably lose on the grounds that your behavior presents a "clear and present danger to the United States". Seeing as there are plenty of idiots that believe in the security theatre, that is how your behavior would likely be interpreted.
I don't know. Going in the out door in any major airport is a huge expense. Talking someone into doing that for a few hundred dollars does not seem that difficult, or traceable.
I am all for it, but you are just frustrating the ground staff. High level decision people will not be affected by this, and those are the ones you really want to go after. Maybe getting their names put on the extra-hassle list.
The "ground staff" need to get real jobs. No matter how hard up for work I am, I will not sacrifice my morals and common sense by working for an organization as pointless and invading as the TSA.
Given other common things I've seen filtered, I wouldn't be surprised. I don't think the intent is to sensor as much as it is to keep the news a little more focussed. Still, I wish there was a bit a transparency with a viewable list of what is and isn't filtered.
Turn on showdead in your profile and you can see what is being killed.
But even that isn't the whole picture - for example this thread has over 100 points and has magically disappeared from the front page in only a few hours while topics with far fewer points stick around. So there must be an invisible gravity switch.
At least one of his colleagues claims to have had their luggage tampered with as well, so this might have been done in conjunction with someone tipping off the TSA about planted items.
The line was drawn some 225 years ago: 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.
It's not about drawing the line, it's about holding an uncooperative government to it. They're willing to go so far as shoot you if you don't let them cross that line and examine your coffee; you're not willing to pursue similar means to hold them to that line.
Some states are considered to lie completely within a "constitution-free zone": Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.
Well, by the ACLU. They describe what they mean in the fact sheet linked from the page that was provided:
The border, however, has always been an exception. There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply. For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.”
But what is “the border”? According to the government, it is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />United States.
(I left the XML error in there just for the lulz.)
You can disagree with their analysis, but it's pretty clear that their position is that normal 4th amendment rules are being superseded merely because of a rather wide proximity to the border.
A metal detector that has a 99% chance of stopping guns -- meaning some slip by -- would be awesome.
It's a classic problem in computer security that, if it actually works, people say "why do I need security since there are no incidents?"
Metal detectors, even if not completely perfect, stop people from bringing serious weaponry onto airplanes because people don't bother bringing serious weaponry in the first place. The chances of getting caught are too high. People who simply don't bother will never show up in your direct measurements of the effectiveness of the metal detector.
The same thing that happened to the failed war on drugs after 4 decades. It will carry on.
As for your other question, it will keep getting bigger budgets, because "mission creep". What do you think this, and those cases where they went to subway and bus stops was? They are testing the waters to see how the people are reacting to them expanding their scope. If no one says anything or the outrage is not big enough, they'll most likely propose the Government to allow them to set-up check-ins in other places as well, and of course increase their budget.
You don't TSA for that, metal detectors and security checks existed before TSA. Of course, beforehand there weren't kids trying to smuggle guns on. end sarcasm
So either people got more violent after 9/11 and therefore brought more weapons, or people were always bringing guns onto planes. I’d bet on the latter, and yet how many terror attacks occurred? Hmmm…
Uh... there have been a number of terrorists-on-a-plane incidents in the past 11 years, even if you restrict your search to incidents where Americans were at risk.
"In the entire decade or so of airport security since the attacks on September 11th 2001, the TSA has not foiled a single terrorist plot or caught a single terrorist. Its own “Top 10 Good Catches of 2011″ does not have a single terrorist on the list."
* American Airlines Flight 63 The "shoe bomb", a failed al-Qaeda PETN bombing attempt in December 2001.
* China Northern Flight 6136, a 2002 flight brought down by a passenger who had purchased life insurance, who set a fire in flight with gasoline
* 2004 Russian aircraft bombings Islamist terrorist attacks on two domestic Russian passenger aircraft flying from Moscow. The bombs were triggered by two female Chechen suicide bombers. Shamil Salmanovich Basayev militant leader of the Chechen terrorist movement claimed credit.
* 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot al-Queda terrorist plot to detonate liquid explosives carried on board at least 10 airliners travelling from the United Kingdom to the United States and Canada. It followed the same general plan as the Bojinka plot.
* Northwest Airlines Flight 253, the target of a failed al-Qaeda PETN bombing attempt in December 2009
* 2010 cargo plane bomb plot, failed al-Qaeda PETN bombing attempt on two planes in October 2010
ETA: I want to note that my issue is only that you stated a factual incorrectness: that no terror attacks have occurred involving airplanes in the past 11 years. You can denigrate the TSA all you want; just do it based on factually correct statements.
> We have no idea if they miss any guns, 1) nor if the guns they stopped were going to be used on the plane.
2) But TSA will point to the 20 or so guns they fund each week as evidence of effectiveness.
2) suggests 1) is not the case. If the TSA knew or even suspected the guns were going to be used on the plane, wouldn't they point that out alongside the "number of guns confiscated per week" number? There seem to be a lot of dogs not barking.
As long as there are people making money off it it, it'll just keep expanding. Probably not to our homes, but expect to see the TSA with naked body scanners at sports arenas, train and subway stations, shopping malls, office buildings...
Articles like this just make me so mad that the TSA can just be bullies and do such ridiculous things.
Does anyone know the current state of the TSA, as far as upcoming funding, plans, or improvement goes? Is it Homeland Security making these things mandatory or what?
I just constantly hear insane stories like this and never hear any good coming from the TSA. How do we change this? Or is that even an option?
I dislike the TSA as much as the next guy but some of their employees are good people. My father-in-law commutes weekly from Austin. Once he left his laptop at the screening and remembered it the next day. He called and they had it waiting for him when he flew back through a couple of days later.
This is obviously true, and ultimately meaningless. All organizations are composed of people, and I guarantee you that within even the most 'evil' organization is quite a few 'good people'. It doesn't make the organization any less 'evil'.
It's not surprising this is at Columbus. I've had top-tier frequent flyer status for the past 5 years and Columbus is the worst airport in the country in terms of violation of your civil rights. The problem isn't the security checkpoint, it's stuff like this nonsense - they regularly do additional screening at the gate or as people are getting onto the planes themselves. There's no way this is constitutional, even in light of past rulings favorable to the TSA. I can't think of any other airport either in the US or abroad that has taken things to the extreme they have in Columbus. Perhaps the state of Ohio has forgotten what happened at Kent State? Must be something in the water.
Or it could be a funding thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt Columbus is one of the major airports in the US. However, I suspect that the more 'work' they do and people they employ, the more money they are given to operate in that airport.
"While TSA agents lack the authority to arrest or detain anyone, passengers cannot refuse screening once they have proceeded beyond the screening checkpoint entrance."
How does that work? You can't just waive your rights. I wonder what would happen if you said no. They may not let you on your flight but if you just landed and buying coffee there's noting they can do if you refuse.
The law as I understand it is, the 4th Amendment doesn't apply at and beyond the security checkpoint. You could be arrested (by police) for saying no. And of course you'll end up on the no-fly list and have to move to another country if you want to fly again. Not that I'm supporting any of this.
I think we should refuse to acknowledge their authority. Obviously, when REAL law enforcement comes, you recognize theirs. When the TSA tries to touch you, you press assault charges.
The TSA is certainly going way beyond logic with this, but honestly, passengers need to start speaking up (specifically I'm referencing the placidity of the people having their drinks checked in the video).
Realize that while they may have a badge and a fun little uniform, these agents are people just like you and I. Sadly, in most cases, they're of a lesser intelligence too (yes that's mean and discriminatory but it's true). When something is wrong, call it out. Otherwise this sort of absurdity will continue to get worse. Civil liberties are more important than your meeting.
Nothing, and that's fine. America has been voting itself into a police state for at least the last 30 years, arguably even since the start of the Cold War. Enjoy it, you've have earned it.
Here's the thing: this affects non-citizens too who have had no part in the voting process, particularly tourists and business travelers who have to endure this absurdity. These ridiculous practices spread to other countries too; it's a global issue.
> Here's the thing: this affects non-citizens too who have had no part in the voting process, particularly tourists and business travelers who have to endure this absurdity.
Sure, but when they're traveling in/through the US, they're subject to US law, and that can't change.
> These ridiculous practices spread to other countries too; it's a global issue.
Well, yes, if you want to talk about the US exporting its law and enforcing it outside its jurisdiction, infringing on other countries' sovereignty, there are plenty of examples of this practice - the TSA debacle is unfortunately barely a blip on that radar.
While managing a hostel in South American I met people from all over the world with horror stories about security and customs while simply transiting through the US for a matter of hours.
Hundreds and hundreds of travelers told me they would happily spent $1k extra on flights next time simply to avoid the United States. They don't want to go there ever again.
The numbers don't reflect this though. Just looking at the first quarter of each year from 2006 to 2012 (inclusive), there have been more inbound arrivals in 2012 than there have in any previous years.
2012: 14,195,321 [1]
2011: 12,839,980 [2]
2010: 12,635,880 [3]
2009: 9,762,932 [4]
2008: 11,388,763 [5]
2007: 9,871,406 [6]
2006: 9,045,854 [7]
Quite simply, people aren't voting with their feet. In fact, any declines in people flying into the US seem to trend with the general economic climate.
The reason I picked the first quarter is because we already have the first quarter's data for 2012 and I couldn't be bothered to deal with the second quarter because this is only a quick glance at the data. :-)
I'm afraid I don't have time to. Perhaps this is an analysis you'd like to do though.
I will admit I haven't separated the entries by land/air/sea, as I didn't have that data readily available. The general trend still holds even excluding Canadians and Mexicans who may be more disposed to cross a land border. On the surface it just doesn't appear as though people are so turned off by the TSA that they're refusing to fly to the US.
It's quite amazing what people will tolerate in order to travel to and from the US. America's borders are sadly the most unfriendly I've encountered to date.
There are two regularly scheduled flights between Latin America and Asia. Yes, only two, unless you count a connection between Sao Paulo and Qatar.
They run between Mexico City and Toyko and between Mexico city and Shanghai, with a fueling stop one way in Tijuana. The flights are operated by Aeromexico.
There are many, many airlines that want to sell you a connecting flight between Asia and Latin America through LAX or SFO. The two flights that don't pass through the USA charge a $5-600 average premium over the flights that connect in the USA for the cheapest tickets.
So that's what avoiding the USA customs and TSA procedures is worth in the market: $5-600, round trip.
> But the TSA says the practice isn’t new — it’s been going on since 2007 — and is part of random screening techniques designed to catch liquid explosives that might slip through initial screening.
Wow, who are these people trying to convince? A random sampling make absolutely no sense here. To have a 95% chance of catching the offending substance, you'd have to "randomly screen" 95% of passengers.
And that's assuming that the screening technique would actually catch a determined individual, which it won't, because he's a terrorist and he's thought things through.
>And that's assuming that the screening technique would actually catch a determined individual, which it won't, because he's a terrorist and he's thought things through.
This is the real head scratcher. Say someone did get an explosive liquid through the initial security screening. Why would they then be drinking it later while waiting for their flight?
This is just the tip of the iceberg - for some time now, many international flights inbound to the U.S. have had a secondary screening of your carry-on bags at the gate. They won't let you take any liquids into the gate (beyond the 3 oz bottles) and go through your bags. They had this last month when I traveled from HKG to SFO. Other international flights not going to the U.S. did not have this screening. I think I remember an at-gate screening at Frankfurt as well, but my memory is fuzzy.
I just flew out of FRA to the states last month and they don't screen at the gate (or just before) anymore. But they have reconfigured terminal 1 so that all US-bound flights leave through section "Z", which used to be section "A". Everyone leaving through Z (since it's non EU/Schengen) gets a heavier screen than domestic flights leaving out of the other gates.
That(screening at the gate) has been going on forever though and most people (international travelers) are used to it by now. Most international flights to the US will have additional security screening for liquids/whatever since most destinations don't require the whole liquids/take shoes off/turn on your laptop crap.
Not saying it's right, just that it's been going on forever.
If I encountered this (I usually fly up to six times a month) I would simply not buy the supposedly-offending food item at that airport ever again. If enough people do this, the businesses there will be less able to pay their expensive airport concession fees, and complain to the airport, or just close up shop. The airport has a lot more leverage with the Thousands Standing Around than I do.
> While TSA agents lack the authority to arrest or detain anyone, passengers cannot refuse screening once they have proceeded beyond the screening checkpoint entrance.
What does this mean, then - will they just throw you out if you refuse? Or will they illegally detain you? My bet is on the latter.
We are all living in a heightened sense of fear. It was apparent as I was waiting to board a plane over the Labor day weekend, one of the airline representative came over on the mic and said: "Calling Mr..Err Hmm..I rather not say this passenger name aloud, so I will spell it out..Will Mr. G..U...N please come forward? "
TSA can't arrest or detain, but they can call the police. I'm quite sure you'd be detained. I don't know on what grounds an arrest could be made, so you're probably right that you'd be removed from the premises after some holding period.
Call me childish, but I would like nothing better to but to make this system such a cost drain that it's dropped. Once airlines have to start rebooking people due to flights being missed by many, many paying passengers, en masse, the corporate pressure that makes the government wheels turn will do the rest.
Most people put up with this fucktardery only because they have somewhere to be and don't want to miss their flight. And the security theater actors know this.