The Airport Security Grope
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And the scanner print outs should be publicly available, as well as videos of the groping...eh "pat downs".
Surely they wouldn't require the cattle to do something that they themselves would object to? Surely.
BTW filling out a complaint form is a complete waste of time...if you want to get attention, actually call your senator/representative.
One possible solution: extend TSA inspection authority to interstate RV travel.
Or maybe that was actually the reason, because people take tough-on-terrorism as more important than civil liberties?
Maybe the 10-1 figure is for outside money? It does seem that almost all the third-party, from-outside-Wisconsin groups doing ad buys in the election were doing anti-Feingold ad buys.
Public opinion is rarely coherent or rational. Most voters think Congress spends too much, but if you poll individual big-ticket spending items, almost all of them are popular. Similarly, I imagine many of the specific "security theater" measures wouldn't poll very well, but "more secure airports" is overwhelmingly popular, and that's the level of abstraction at which the TSA's mission is set.
And because they're insulated from political accountability, there's nothing travelers can do to push back.
But also say:
Any time some idiot manages to sneak a weapon onto an airplane, the TSA leadership gets attacked for it.
This seems to be a contradiction. They are accountable, but not for wasting time with useless security theater.
I recently was at a conference, and was pulling my old laptop from my bag. I joked to some people standing around that I use my old laptop in case the TSA decide they like it more than I do. One person looked at me seriously and said 'why would they do that'. I responded with 'well, it's not like anything they do makes any sense at all'. Most people laughed at my joke but that one person looked offended.
I'm guessing that person was the visible representative of a population who thinks the TSA is doing important work and actually improving things.
I don't know what the answer is. Everyone is painted into a corner by this : any politician that mentions disbanding the TSA is going to be slammed by opponents for being soft on terrorism. Soon enough the TSA employees will have a srong union and lobby against any changes and actually ask for more. The only way around would be an eventual change in technology that busts the old paradigm apart - like a new way of getting onto planes, or a whole new transport system. If you look at shipping, there are practices and laws which date back 400 years. I don't think all this cruft being attached to air travel is ever going away. Maybe with another big war when there is not enough resources or something. 'TSA abandoned for war effort' - that type of thing.
Warren Buffet doesn't work?
>any politician that mentions disbanding the TSA is going to be slammed by opponents for being soft on terrorism.
Has the TSA ever stopped even a single real threat? Ever? If they haven't [1] then how could disbanding them be seen as being soft on terrorism. Nothing they do appears to actually be related to terrorism.
[1] I can't remember anything. All the bombings I've heard about got past them. And I hope no one starts this nonsensical "oh they stop hundreds, we just never hear about because they're so good!" nonsense. These are clearly "bottom of the barrel" workers.
It doesn't matter what the TSA does - the fact is they were invented as a response to terrorism. Thus removing them would be an opportunity for an opposing politician to use the attack of 'being soft on terrorism'. I think the TSA should be abandoned - I shudder to think of the lost actual dollars in funding, as well as the lost productivity of millions of air travelers going through a couple of minutes of invasive screening.
As for 'prevention' - many western nations have been victims of Terrorism attacks since 2001 - including the UK and Spain. None of these countries have/use TSA style screening or restrictions. None have had an airline-based terror attack since. That should tell you about the need for the TSA.
...and their sons and daughters as well, of course.
I for one love travelling but hate flying. I see two options for people who enjoy international travel but don't want their privacy invaded by TSA.
1. Travel by boat. You can hitch a ride on a cargo ship to just about anywhere in the world: http://matadornetwork.com/notebook/how-to/how-to-travel-by-c... It's more expensive than flying and takes longer, so this is probably not an option for most people.
2. Depart from another country. I recently traveled to New Zealand, and when I flew home from the Auckland airport to San Francisco, I had to go through an extra security screening because it was a US-bound flight. I was left with the impression that airport security in the rest of the world is not as draconian unless one of the endpoints of the flight is in the USA. So I suspect if you can drive or take the train to Mexico or Canada, you can avoid an unnecessary invasion of privacy. Last year, I took an Amtrak train from Vancouver to Seattle, and the border crossing was a piece of cake.
Edit: Does anyone know how airport security in Mexico or Canada compares to the US?
Even with a pretty large knife in my luggage, what happened was that I had to go through the metal detector with shoes off, and then I had to wait for the police for 20 minutes. They were very polite and told me that there would be no problem if the knife wasn't a "locking" knife (no idea why that's a problem), but they just kept it and let me go.
However, I imagine I didn't look like the typical terrorist, with four bags bursting with clothes as hand luggage.
It seems safe to assume it's just the fact that you were planning to carry it on to a plane that made them unhappy.
EDIT: I now notice it was you that made that original comment, so I'll answer that: A knife that opens with little effort and then locks into place allows for one-handed arming and stabbing, without the risk that the blade will snap back and cut the user. It also enables a blade the length of the handle to be stored in space slightly more than the length of the handle itself. A blade of the length of your typical pocket is considered sufficient to easily cause fatal damage even when used by an untrained fighter. In many countries there are exceptions for knives that require two hands to open, or where the blade must be held in place during usage or where the blade is below some set total length. The UK has fairly strict restrictions on knives in general, so most of those exceptions do not apply.
Flick-knives have been illegal since forever (in fact since 1959 according to Wikipedia - responding to the threat of "teddy boys"!). Locking knives that open under gravity and lock are also illegal.
A guard nearby saw my body language and pulled me aside instantly. There was a table set up right next to the counter where they did an immediate search of my luggage, asked questions, where was I, etc etc. Nothing harsh, very polite, and I'm sure my reactions and body language were being watched the whole time. Afterward I was given my place back in line with a thanks.
That is how airport security should be. I know Israel takes it even 10 notches higher than this, and it seems to work just fine.
(I'm an American who's been all over Mexico on several trips, most recently three months ago)
"On this itinerary, you may be subject to these security checks: genitalia scan (arr: LAX) or grope (arr: LAX), liquid check (dep: SYD)."
Damn good idea, though.
When you think about it, it's a net losing situation for the USA, because they can't possibly force every single country every single day to keep up the standards. And without a blanket coverage on the standards, the cause is hopeless because any wrongdoer is just going to pick an international flight to do the business.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-...
I would imagine that if they did not adhere to this request, then they would be guilty of sexual discrimination. I can equally imagine the scene if 95% of male travellers claimed to be gay and demanded to be groped by a lady 'for American values'. I cannot imagine that there will be that many women willing to grope a man on command.
Other things to try: not washing for several days before the flight, telling the patting-down officer to be careful because you have lice, feigning injury from an aggressive pat-down and rolling around on the floor clutching your privates, like a soccer player who's been roughly tackled. Air travel has been turned into a fucking circus; let's go along with it and have some fun at the same time!
I suggest we all write our Congresscritters and explain this. I don't think protesting to the TSA, at any level, will accomplish anything at all.
No if you want to change this, you have to go after the TSA people, not with violence (as tempting as it is, and as deserving of it as they are) but by totally ostraciseing them: if you work in a shop, you don't serve them, if you are a doctor you don't treat them, if you used to have them over for lunch you don't invite them anymore, if their children goes to your children's school you don't talk to them, invite them for birthday celebrations, etc, etc.
Then maybe the TSA will learn that they too need other people and can't go around being assholes.
If you think being a dick to people whose entire lives have been shaped by a series of collective 'f* yous' form society, then you deserve whatever 'secondary screening' they elect to give you. You really do.
And if you genuinely believe that every job is a matter of choice, that people are free to quit if they're at all unaligned with their employer, then you've lived your entire life in an amazingly sheltered and privileged bubble. This makes the image of you (essentially) spitting on the much less fortunate even more appalling. All you're doing is making them even meaner and more defensive - something that's likely to make life harder for everyone else having to deal with them as screeners.
I'm not defending what the TSA is doing. It's clearly stupid and awful, and I strongly suspect it's a product of corrupt back-scatter purchasing deals made by craven congressmen in exchange for campaign money and mindless votes. But taking out your anger on the luckless human fodder that these people have insulated themselves with is galacticly uninformed. If this is honestly your approach, just stop.
What I'm really saying here is that a decent sense of situational awareness would indicate that being a jerk at the airport is too little too late. As in individual, you've already been socially isolated, so the effort is going to be exceedingly counterproductive, in that you're only going to prompt further hardening.
If you're one of the many many people for whom air travel is essential, you're going to find more effective routes to common cause long before you get to the departure gate.
I can't honestly say where they are. I suspect something will need to be created before any real leverage exists. I just know that if I were looking for a place to develop this, the least viable option would be by myself, at the gate, doing something that's far more likely to harm me and the people who are depending on me to get somewhere that the people who are practically looking for a fight.
That's exactly how nonviolent resistance is supposed to work. You have to amplify conflicts to the breaking point before they get resolved. That means making things uncomfortable for a lot of people.
Of course, I don't think it's going to be effective, for reasons similar to what you mention--most people who are affluent enough to care about this issue are pretty unlikely to socialize with the class of people the TSA recruits from anyway.
All of that having been said, your moral defense of these people is pretty questionable. "I'm just following orders and trying to make a living" isn't a moral defense for the actual human beings who are out there violating people's bodily privacy. I'm sympathetic to your argument, but quite frankly it leads in a pretty terrifying direction that's directly counter to what the Western world collectively agreed on after the Second World War. More worryingly, it gives governments an incentive to use these people for their dirty work, secure in the knowledge that the actual decision makers are remote enough, and the people doing the dirty work are poor enough, that neither group will face any resistance.
People like you get to sit on the high horse and point out how you're morally superior to everyone. Meanwhile it's the unreasonable who keep on changing the world.
EDIT: Further, these jobs didn't exist at all not so long ago. You can't claim the people doing them now are somehow "trapped" there. What the hell were they doing before?
The idea is that the agents will grow to hate their jobs and then quit, and to make it harder, much, much harder for the TSA to hire people.
Since being a TSA employee is job which you choose to get, and one from which you can quit at anytime, this seems fair.
The rank and file TSA agent who yells "take your shoes off" when you are in the line, looks at the metal detector when you walk through and checks your bags when they see something unusual...
... that's practically a minimum wage job on par with being a shift supervisor at Starbucks. And at most airports they're all contract staff - yes, even TSA is outsourced.
The people who are groping you for not taking the back-scatter scan work for a boss who owns the a company that contracts them to the TSA - they're so removed from any policy decision it's not worth venting unless you can see a senior person as they are usually staff.
In fact, you can see the pecking-order at airpots - the front-line contractor doing minimum wage tend to be black, latino etc and the senior staff are old white guys. The two-tier system has removed a great deal of diversity. Sad.
Very irritating stuff, particularly since it has absolutely zero bearing on security (why would the number of bags make a difference??), and so seems like a completely arbitrary imposition of force. I once chatted with someone who worked for the airlines and they said they didn't care about how many bags you carried (within reason), but the regulation is imposed by BAA (British Airports Authority).
So, our intern worked there for a month or two. Every time he let someone through with more than one bag he was told off by his supervisor after someone at the security checkpoint reported him, and eventually at one point when the guy was complaining about him once again, he had enough and he quit.
Why'd he do it? For the money. Easy money, not a tough job, not that risky. Yes, people think you're an asshole, but when you're a starving student with no money, you can cope with that.
I don't think being angry at these people would help any more than it would help to be angry at the piece of paper that a parking fine is printed on.
If someone is ready to be an asshole for money don't expect me to go easy on them because "they're just doing their job". You are responsible for what you do and "just doing my job" is not a legitimate excuse. If you're just trying to take the easy way out then I want to make your life a miserable living hell so you never think of taking this shortcut ever again.
I can't express how much I loath this non-excuse. People like Hitler are able to commit such atrocities because of literal armies of people "just doing their job".
We even saw some of that in action with the bailout. Recall that the first bailout bill failed, despite heavy pressure from Wall Street, because of a mostly-Internet-organized letter writing campaign. Then they turned around and passed it with minor edits a week later, when everyone was celebrating their victory.
The problem is that legislators typically work on an out-of-sight, out-of-mind basis, so once they count up all the letters and cast their vote, they forget all about general public opinion. Professional lobbyists know this, and so they live and work in Washington and make sure to schedule regular dinners and outings with the legislators so that whatever concerns are on their minds stay on the legislators' minds too.
Ordinary citizens don't have this luxury, and the collective Internet hive mind isn't exactly known for attention span. I bet that if you got a Reddit-scale letter-writing campaign going and kept it up for a year, with every person writing in once a week or so, you'd see meaningful change in this country. I also doubt that you could convince a critical mass of people to write in once a week for a year.
Might be an interesting political hack, though, and worth trying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969
and many other times.
The airlines have the power in this situation, if they protest, this will be changed.
From a government official's perspective, the truth is that when an attack happens, they're going to get blamed. People aren't going to blame the airlines, they're going to blame the government. The more bizarre and nonsensical the "security" restrictions, the better protected officials are from blame when the inevitable attacks finally occur.
There's nothing an airline official can offer a government to compensate for loss of shielding from blame. As long as Americans are pathetic and fearful, we will have the government we deserve.
I believe that is true for other security theaters as well. A large bank, for example, instead of hiring in-house security experts, might contract out their security to an outside firm. Not because it is necessarily cheaper or the consulting company will do a better job, but because they can be blamed if something goes wrong.
A security breach happens, shareholders are up-in-arms, C*Os tell them "we hired the best, we payed them a lot of money, if they can't protect our data, nobody can."
The security firm in the meantime has to do their best to project themselves as "the experts". Usually carefully chosen stock photography of people in the business suits smiling and talking on the phone on the front page of their website, and the ability of the salesman to play and _lose_ at golf does the trick.
TSA does the same thing. They are the scapegoats. So when shit hits the fan, nobody can point out to the politicians and say "you fucked up". Security theater is not pointless, it has an exact purpose, and that is to protect and serve (the government) from future blame.
Oh. Well, darn.
"the practice of airport security screening of airline pilots has spun out of control and does nothing to improve national security"
They would have deserved more kudos if they had stood up for passengers' rights as well.
This has even happened -- 217 people dead because the pilot wanted to kill himself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
Am I missing something obvious here? Pilots' protest seems totally misplaced.
In the scenario you described, the pilot dies ("A pilot does not need a box cutter to crash the plane. They have full control over the plane by definition."). Hence I am guessing your point is that we only need to be worried about suicidal pilots (who can't be stopped anyway, and who are very few in number), the risk of which it very low.
I was trying to point out that if you don't check pilots at security checkpoints, we will also have to worry about non-suicidal pilots (which is a much larger population), the risk of which is non-trivial.
Again, am I missing something obvious in your two statements? I am not supporting the TSA's gropers, I am just saying that pilots need to go through the same security procedures as the cattle. Otherwise there's a security hole. Are you disagreeing with this? If so, you haven't backed it up, as far as I can tell.
My hope is that if pilots and flight attendants are forced to be groped everyday, they will stop groping us cattle too.
Actually, let me refine that to merely point out that one could plausibly file a very expensive and uncomfortable-to-your-employer lawsuit over this; I wouldn't guarantee victory, but I wouldn't guarantee defeat, either.
The Gandhian strategy of civil disobedience, TSA wants more people to pass thru the porn machine. We as a country should request not passing thru the machine. Assume that more people require individual attention resulting in greater lines and longer delays at the airports. Delays that will not be acceptable to the airlines, TSA or even us the traveling people.
Small price to pay to secure the freedoms of those after us.
There are a couple of consequences that could happen as a result, (a) mandatory porn machine scan for everyone no exception or (b) a change in policy.
For a president who claimed that we were winning the war because the terrorist hated our freedoms, this loss of freedom should come as a shock. We might be winning the battle of the guns, we are losing the war of the minds.
--- Interim recruiting slogan for the TSA --- Come one , come all, we grope them all. White or color, young or old, women and men. Gay straight and transsexuals we like to feel them all.
(Small print): TSA is an equal opportunity groper. Guarantor : United states Govt.
If you could organize enough people to constitute 25-50% of a flight's passenger capacity, you could plan in advance to all fly to the cheapest/closest destination (so everyone is on the same flight, and no one has to spend too much). Maybe some publicity would result.
This was a while ago, though, after the initial shoe bomber I incident. Responses may be different now. Try to decide in advance what your goals are: are you hoping to make a scene or not? Likely you should not do not do things like this if it is not acceptable to miss your plane. I'd recommend choosing a final outfit that you would feel comfortable defending to a judge as not indecent to wear in a public place.
(I suppose I should mention: I personally have no problem with backscan X-ray so long as it is fast, safe, and effective. It's the security theater that I am willing to protest against, not the perceived invasion of privacy.)
It's clearly meant as intimidation. Your government disrespects you so much that it will subject you to a humiliating experience to intimidate you into accepting a different humiliating experience.
When my government shows me this much disrespect and intimidation, I start to wonder whether they're serving my needs, and whose needs they really are serving.
This is thuggery, and the only difference between the aggressive pat down, and slapping me in the face until I agree to go in the scanner, is in degree, not in kind.
However! I fly about every 2 to 3 weeks in and out of big airports and small airports. I have had pat downs and swipes and millimeter wave scans. I have even worked on next generation explosives detection technology(THz,Long Range, Surface UV). Yet, over the past 3 years of this type of mobile lifestyle, I have never observed or have been subjected to the types of harassment recent articles have detailed. Surely it happens, yes. But my experience both on the inside and out of this industry tells a different story. Privacy IS respected by people developing and deploying these technologies. Privacy IS respected by TSA employees who are concerned for the safety of each passenger.
Whether these policies or technologies are effective is another debate, but I just think there is a great deal of overgeneralization going on here. Maybe I'm just an outlier.
My point is that these changes are not implemented universally or equally. People shouldn't be so quick to paint TSA with a broad brush of criticism.
However, these new pat downs (if they are as widespread as I am lead to believe) would be where I would draw the line.
My question is, are children subject to the requirement of either a scan or a pat down?
I find it hard to believe that any law would allow the photographing of a child effective nude, much less the touching of "genitals". I would never allow my child(ren) to be subjected to either of these measures. Does this mean I should find another country to visit?
Even for adults, call me ignorant, but how is this not sexual assault? In any other situation, if I was subjected to a genital grope I'd be pressing charges.
If my child needs to be viewed naked by a stranger, or has to be groped to get onto a plane in the US, then yes we'll be finding somewhere else to visit.
It is a shame, my wife and I travelled across the US for our honeymoon 4-5 years ago and loved it. But I wouldn't subject my children to such a perverse security screening process.
Terrorists haven't won: the sacred lands they prize so highly are still "occupied". Rather, we've simply been dullards content to walk around in our socks, whistling 'God Bless America' to pass the time.
Personally, I'm much more comfortable with an authority figure in public than in private. I mean, photos of some TSA guy with his arm halfway up my ass are going to be a whole lot more embarrassing for him than for me. I mean, he could loose his job, while for me, the worst that would happen is my friends would tease me a bit.
Really, "what you would be willing to do when other people are watching" is often a reasonable ethical shorthand for 'the right thing' - allowing people to (optionally) release the recording of their interaction with law enforcement would go a long ways towards reducing abuses by law-enforcement.
On the other hand, what I'm really afraid of is getting put on some secret list, and video taping doesn't protect me from that.
Whether you prefer to let someone see you naked or grope you is a personal decision, but I imagine there are plenty of people who haven't flown in the last 2-3 years, and they should at least know their options before they get into security and blinded by authority.
"These images are friendly enough to post in a preschool. Heck, it could even make the cover of Reader’s Digest and not offend anybody." -- http://blog.tsa.gov/2008/04/first-significant-deployment-of....
Wow, I can't believe they actually said that.
See: https://www.sfoconnect.com/operations-security/sfo-operation...
Also the Rules and Regulations at SFO: https://www.sfoconnect.com/public/sfo-rules-and-regulations
Just wait until someone tries to smuggle something onboard using their iPad or Kindle. shakes head
"If it weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all."
Now available in a new, updated TSA version:
"If it weren't for TSA genital groping, I'd have no sex life at all."
I live in a first world country (New Zealand) and we only have metal detectors and x-ray machines (and you only have to go through them if your plane has more then 50 seats). They're quite lax about it as well I've gotten knives through (accidentally) both in my pocket and on a tray through the x-ray machine. Also our inbound customs care more about fruit than drugs or explosives: http://www.customs.govt.nz/nr/rdonlyres/9bec875b-dc37-4309-9...
I pretty much have to do what they want or be stuck here.
Hmm, for that matter, would those protect you from the high tech strip search?
If there is no evidence what so ever of their guilt (and obviously there isn't or they would be tried) why would it be rational to assume they might be guilty?
It makes sense for the photographer, but it makes no sense for most people who fly.
I hate traveling as much as the next person. Maybe more so since I do it regularly, around Christmas, every goddamn year. It's awful. It's hideously expensive. For my fiancee and I, it's costs more than $1000. And sometimes it's downright enraging. Of course I've questioned whether or not it's worth it, numerous times. My parents and I email one another. We talk on the phone. I play L4D2 with my brother online. But there's three hours' difference, and you might be surprised by how difficult that makes things. And for all of technology's virtues, nothing compares with having a once-a-year, sit-down dinner with the whole family; shootin' the shit in front of a warm fire; and so on.
For co-workers, not so much. Of course you lose something, but it's not as important a loss as not seeing family face to face.
I think the solution, for some, is to live close to the people who are important to you. Commute and telecommute to your job, not your family.
My choice was to take the good job, see the family, and put up with the brain-dead TSA regulations for the 3ish times a year that I fly home. I don't like it, but it's the path of least resistance that lets me arrange the rest of my life optimally. I suspect many other people make the same choice.
Most people who fly do so for business or commuting reasons. They can choose between their job and flying, or they can choose between their families and flying, and few are ready to make either choice. I know I'm not.
(As an aside, anyone who thinks a Skype video call is any sort of substitute for sitting in the same room with family obviously has no children and is almost certainly unmarried.)
Sadly enough, this is not an issue of good people or bad people -- I think the vast majority of TSA screeners are good people who want only what's best for the public. This problem has two parts, framing and execution.
The framing is a one-sided issue: who's going to argue that we need less security? It's a system designed to continue to turn the screws. Mark my words. It will not stop here.
The execution is even worse: top-down, one-size-fits-all, factory-processing of people. This makes for an expensive, cumbersome, and inflexible system. Oddly enough, the more standardized you make security practices, the easier you make it for real terrorists to take down the system. It's the entire basis of asymmetrical warfare. Small groups of highly-nimble adversaries working against a huge standardized behemoth. The U.S. should have made a conscious decision not to play that game. But it didn't.
When you have a problem that's defined poorly and executed poorly? Not much chance of improvement, I'm afraid.
Of course, if rail were ever to get popular enough again, they'd just institute the same scanning procedures there too.
I've investigated trains, but they cost nearly as much as a plane and take almost as long as the bus, so why not take the cheaper option?
I'd personally refuse to take any job that required air travel and wouldn't let me drive in lieu of the plane. I'm sure that would limit my professional options, but I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Trains are intrinsically less interesting to terrorists. Not uninteresting necessarily, but much much less interesting.
A pat-down that doesn't touch the genitals or other sensitive areas is not going to find any terrorists, it just gives the impression of security.
A pat-down that doesn't search body cavities is not going to find any terrorists, it just gives the impression of security.
I strongly disagree, David. Keeping this issue in front of smart people (many of whom travel extensively) is probably one of the best ways to initiate change.
In the US, politicians and the judiciary change laws. Those people do not read HN, and don't give a shit if a bunch of nerds who represent approximately .00001% of the electorate get their britches in a bunch over something or other. Posting political things here makes people feel good, but doesn't do one damn thing in the real world. To do that, you need to get out and engage with the political system. Clicking little arrows is, to put it bluntly, just wanking around.
And in any case, do you really want to go down the road where this site is utilized for the cause du jour? Want to see taser articles here?
Again, I have to disagree with you on this. HN is where I found at about this issue to begin with, and I have already: 1. donated to EPIC's http://www.stopdigitalstripsearches.org/ , 2. begun changing travel plans, 3. informed a number of friends and colleagues (non-HN users) who have in turned passed it on to others. Clearly, there are "real world" effects.
There are "real world effects" of pissing into the wind, too, but they don't really affect the wind much.
This thing even has serious health issues associated with it. You know Doctors stand behind lead shielding when they give X-rays, right? And I bet most doctors give less than 40 X-rays a day, but this thing has at least 40 times the radiation of an X-ray. Is dying of cancer convenient enough for you?