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.
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.