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The TSA is something that shouldn’t exist in its current form. They very often fail their audit checks and normalize invading your privacy to an extreme degree like body scanners and pat downs. If water bottles are considered potentially explosive then why dump them on a bin next to a line of people where they can go off? This is low grade security theater that inconveniences passengers at best.
It’s security theater through and through.
Apart from the obvious failings of these checks, think about what kind of damage a single backpack of explosives can do to a packed airport during holiday season. You can literally put a ton of explosives on one of those trolleys, roll it into the waiting area and kill 200 people easily. No security whatsoever involved.
Reality is, most security measures are designed to keep the illusion of control. Nothing more. Penetration testers show again and again that you can easily circumvent practically all barriers or measures.
The goal is not to stop the people in the queue being attacked, its to stop someone boarding a plane with the means to hijack it
Ah yes, it’s okay if we die, just don’t take the corporate infrastructure with you when you go…
They fail gloriously at at that too.
Whenever they get tested the red teams manage to smuggle in everything needed to hijiack a plane plus a kitchen sink.
The few times that terrorists tried to board planes, they made it through security and were caught by other passengers.
That’s what’s changed. Before, a hijacking meant a free trip to south America or Cuba. Now it means you’re likely to die if you don’t stop the hijackers. A planeful of pissed off passengers determined to live are gonna stop a would-be hijacker.
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Rigidly hierarchical control structures always carry the implicit assumption that those at the top are the good guys. (That is if they’re being sold as a way to ensure good)
The common trope about “if you don’t have anything to hide why have privacy?” is overturned by challenging that assumption. Sometimes the guys doing the surveillance turn bad and then it’s a worse situation than if there wasn’t total surveillance.
Yeah, and you don’t need the TSA for that. Just do as they already do: lock the cockpit.
Little known fact: many of the pilots behind those locked doors are armed as well.
The Flight Deck Officer program allows pilots to volunteer to become deputized Air Marshals. They receive training and are issued a badge and a gun.
Good guy with a gun, we’re not mentally ill at all !
So police officers are mentally ill? Interesting take.
Yes, they think they’re the good guys.
Police officers are mentally ill? Interesting take.
Also, we’re talking about pilots that you are already trusting with you’re life and the lives of hundreds of people with you. If they were mentally ill they could just crash the plane and kill you.
These guys are genuinely invested in maintaining the safety of human lives.
They should continue focusing on that instead of gun politics and their farcical contrived scenarios to have guns on a civil plane.
Well, conceivably those in the cockpit could be manipulated through other threats. Either threats to crash the plane, or threats to hurt the people in the back.
Part of their training includes risk assessment that teaches them to sacrifice individuals if it is in favor of maintaining control of the plane.
They flat out train them to shoot through a hostage someone is holding. That one person’s life isn’t worth sacrificing the lives of hundreds of others on board as well is casualties on the ground.
They had to do something about the plague of people hijacking planes with bottles of water.
IIRC water happens to appear similarly to a lot of explosives on the metric they use for what the composition of items in the scanner is.
Improvements are being made though so soon we may be allowed to take water through unrestricted:
Why Airport Security Suddenly Got Better (13:01) https://youtu.be/nyG8XAmtYeQ?si=RTjA8GRuZaMIJs9d
I’ll drown him! I swear to god I’ll drown him!
It’s because all the shops inside want you to buy their shit.
The main reason why it exists is to provide jobs. The number of people who work at the TSA at every airport in every state…no representative wants to cut those jobs.
I fucking hate that this is a thing. “We can’t stop doing this useless and/or detrimental thing, look at all the work it makes for other people to do!!!” Absolutely bonkers that it’s just a standard political argument.
Same thing with medical insurance. It shouldn’t exist but it pays a lot of people’s salaries.
It shouldn’t exist? I’d like to see you pay for your medical expenses out of pocket.
P. S. No, I am not American.
I do pay for my medical expenses out of pocket, because I can’t keep insurance long enough to ensure consistent cate.
I’ll give an example. Back in 21 I signed up for medicaid because I was poor enough to qualify. I get an email from my psychiatrist’s office “We can no longer treat you at this office because of your new medicaid status. We are not allowed to treat people on medicaid.” I asked, and they’re not even allowed to treat me if I pay out of pocket.
This is a new medicaid rule. Now if you’re on medicaid you can only see medicaid-approved providers.
So I canceled my medicaid. And I continue to pay out of pocket.
I’ve tried using other government-assisted programs before, with disastrous results. I’ve been kicked off the rolls before, at random, and I’ve had to go through the crash involved in stopping my medication, because while these government programs are helpful, they’re also buggy as fuck and can’t be relied upon.
That’s why you want a national health care program funded by taxes (they call it health insurance, but it’s mandatory and based on income, so it’s a tax, really). Private insurance is still allowed, but everyone gets a baseline.
Sure, this system has got its share of problems, and they’re massive, but if you need care, you generally receive it regardless of your financial situation. Again, bureaucracy happens and there are waiting times etc. etc., but the idea that you may lose everything because you got sick is so alien to me I have no words.
The main reason that rule still exists is to sell overpriced water. Otherwise they could just ask you to drink some of it to prove it’s water.
you are allowed to take empty bottles with you, just saying
Some airports have no place to refill and have only hot water in the toilet sinks. It’s inhumane.
It’s basically the only type of jobs program that both sides of our broken government can agree on: petty nonsense that looks like it might do something useful, but really doesn’t, and only inconveniences the poors.
They treat people like cattle because they are protecting the airplanes and the airline’s liability, not the people onboard or in line to board.
If people think it’s unsafe people won’t pay up to fly.
According to the story I heard as to the origin of the “no liquids over X amount” rule, years ago there was a terrorist that tried to smuggle hydrogen peroxide and acetone - which can be used to rather easily synthesize triacetone triperoxide (TATP, a highly sensitive explosive) - onto a plane in plastic toiletry bottles. They got caught and foiled somehow, and then the TSA started restricting liquids on planes. This was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, if I recall correctly.
And I happen to know, from a reliable source, of someone who accidentally made TATP in a rotary evaporator in an academic lab. So it seems plausible.
Not that the rule is actually effective prevention against similar attacks, nor that the TSA even knows what the reason is behind what they do at this point, haha. I just thought it was an interesting story.
hydrogen peroxide and acetone
So there are worse cleaning chemicals to mix than bleach and vinegar
Big caveat
The final decision rests with the TSA officer on whether an item is allowed through the checkpoint.
Ah yes, the “rules only apply when I say they do” rule. Much legitimate.
It’s actually stated on the TSA website that frozen liquids are permitted. https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/ice
Notice the footnote on every TSA webpage that their officers can always change the rules on the spot if they feel like it. So it’s always a gamble.
The longer they discuss the less it is allowed.
Is there a reasoning for this? The whole liquid thing has to do something with explosives?
It’s because of a particular incident. Similar to what happened with the shoe bomber and why you have to take off your shoes. Things like this are why we can’t have nice things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot
