Why It's Time to Break the Code of Silence at the Airport

Funny story - on my last flight, the patdown resulted in an alert for some banned residue on my clothing, so the TSA took me aside to a private cubicle, re-ran the patdown, came up clean, and then left me to pack my stuff up and go on my way. In this cubicle with me were two 5-gallon buckets filled with confiscated lighters and pocket knives. Someone thought it was a good idea to leave me to re-pack my luggage unsupervised in a room full of contraband with no additional security checks. I didn't take anything or do anything untoward, and I wanted to point it out to the agent who'd patted me down, but I'm sure that would have just flagged me as suspicious and I would get to expend extra time being thoroughly searched. If that doesn't tell you how hilariously bad security is, I'm not sure what will.

Let me tell you this - most of the security procedures in U.S airports are pointless and ridicules. Taking off your shoes and your belt. Holding your hands in front of a screen. Pat downs. We have the technology to avoid this (and have had it for the past 20+ years). If you've been to Israel, you know it's a completely different procedure, and I can guarantee you it's way more secure. They focus more on behavior profiling through multiple inspection points and with a series of questions they ask you AS YOU WAIT IN LINE for checking in your luggage. No fuss, no body strip checks, no taking off pieces of clothing. X-ray screening is done by simply walking through the machine, while your baggage passes a different machine.

Airport security in the U.S feels like the result of bureaucracy and procedure for the sake of appearance.

EDIT: clarified what I meant by profiling.

Depressingly, this is the same logic that keeps Americans from improving anything. Because they're constantly told they live in the best country in the world(TM), Americans are apathetic when it comes to making things better (healthcare, education, poverty rates, incarceration rates, living standards, etc.), because they think it's already "the best".

Perhaps the implied point is that by calling people to arms to speak up, the peer pressure (reason #2) will crumble, and those who do speak up will not be labeled crazy (reason #1). As for "you'll miss your plane" (reason #3), I'm not sure his solution, but I assume it would be something along the lines of "they can't make everyone miss their plane".

A decent article, but its conclusion paragraph "The next time a TSA agent asks you to do something you're uncomfortable with, say something. [...]" is bad advice. We need to speak up, but not at the moment of the offense when we have least credibility - it must be from outside the queue, where we have a stronger position.

As a side note, some of the posters rabid hatred for the TSA is borderline concerning. These people are normal folks with a crappy job doing what their bosses and the US government tells them to do. They aren't heartless demons whose sole existence is to make your air-travel uncomfortable. Every time a TSA post comes up (which seems like once or twice a month) I am shocked by the type of comments people leave here when they refer the the TSA and their employees. Frankly I expect a lot more from comments here than in other places on the web.

"But in a recent poll, one-third of Americans said they would be in favor of cavity searches to board a plane. No, you didn’t read that wrong. Cavity searches."

What the hell, people?

As in: Terrorist was going to board a plane, and the security that we all go through stopped him/her.

You get some surprising results if you google it... just wondering if any of you have any futher knowledge.

Spoiler: The answer seems to be "No".

I've flown domestically within Australia half a dozen times in the past couple of years and I don't think I've been asked even once for ID.

Obviously they screen your carry-on luggage and you walk through the X-ray machine, but it's reasonable and relaxed security compared to the US.

It's fine for non-travellers to go through security and meet friends or family right at the gate as soon as they get off the plane. Very civilized.

I went through the scanner and my bags did as well, but I forgot to empty my water bottle. In the past, TSA agents have asked if they could empty it for me and rescan it. This time the TSA agent said I would either have to throw it away or leave the gate and reenter the whole security line.

I'll admit that I should have dumped my water, but I was bewildered by how aggressively the TSA agent told me my options. This may sound like whining, but I've never had anyone talk to me like that. I asked if there was anyone else I could talk to and she said no. Not wanting to create a scene, or be taken away by the TSA to be questioned, I left the gate and reentered the security line.

I started talking to the person next to me in the security line and explained the situation, and for some reason, the TSA agent came over and basically yelled at me to empty my water bottle. I hadn't even gotten to the trashcan to empty my water bottle. And it is entirely unnecessary for a TSA agent to scold a passenger. At this point, I felt relatively shaken up by the whole ordeal. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a huge deal, but, man, I really hated being basically yelled at in front of everyone and having the TSA agent go out of her way to yell at me in line again.

I should have filed a complaint, but it seemed pointless to do.

1329 days ago I wrote here on HN, in reponse to one of the recurring complaints about airport security procedures, "Hear. Hear. I was just on flights out of town over the weekend, and it occurred to me that the terrorists have won by making air travel so inconvenient and annoying for every American who ever flies domestically. 'Maybe Secure Flight is a good use of our money; maybe it isn't. But let's have debates like that in the open, as part of the budget process, where it belongs.' This is the general answer for review of current security procedures: we should check whether they are worthwhile for the amount of improved security they promise to provide."

334 days ago another participant, who came to the United States from another country, wrote,

It's also the only place that made me take my shoes off before the metal detector, which I found quite humiliating

This appears to have been one of the calculations of the terrorist group that put up the shoe bomber

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_shoe_bomb_plot

to trying his failed attempt to blow up an airplane with a bomb hidden in his shoe. Some of the co-religionists of some of those terrorists consider it extremely degrading to be bare-footed in certain situations deemed to be "holy" situations (I know this from having been warned about how I oriented my feet in flip-flop sandals once when I was overseas in 1984), and thus they have probably been glad to humiliate Americans as Americans have reacted to the failed shoe bomb plot. My proposal is that United States airport security give up on requesting passengers to remove shoes. Yeah, maybe have chemical sensing devices with air intakes at floor level to screen for bombs on shoes, but let us all wear our shoes onto airplanes and throughout the insides of airports. The screening procedures at present appear to be an overreaction to the actual risk of a shoe bomb destroying a passenger airplane, especially in view of other countries not having the same screening procedure for airline passengers.

I've summed up my reaction to the past incidents of terrorism directed at Americans overseas or civilians in the United States in a more recent Hacker News comment: "It's important for all of us to remember the basic issue here. The basic issue is whether people in free countries, like most readers of Hacker News, are going to be able to enjoy the right of free speech throughout their country, on any subject, or whether any American or Dutch person or other person accustomed to free speech who happens to be within reach of attack by a crazy foreign person has to prepare for war just to continue to exercise free speech. On my part, I'm going to continue to comment on public policy based on verifiable facts and reason and logic, even if that seems offensive. I am not going to shrink from saying that people in backward, poorly governed countries that could never have invented the Internet have no right to kill and destroy just because someone in a free country laughs or scorns at their delusions. The people who are destroying diplomatic buildings and killing diplomats are declining to use thoughtful discussion to show that they are anything other than blights on humankind."

Allow me to reemphasize this point. The many participants on HN who criticize Transportation Security Agency "security theater" as a meaningless reduction in the freedom of people who travel to the United States are right on the basic point. If free citizens of free countries can't live in freedom because of fear of terrorists, the terrorists have already won. You and I should be able to speak our minds and express our opinions in the manner of all people in free countries--sometimes agreeing with one another, sometimes disagreeing, but always letting the other guy have his say. To engage in self-censorship because of fear of violent thugs is to be defeated by the thugs.

We should also be able to fly freely about the country with no more than strictly necessary security precautions. I want to be able to walk into an airport with my shoes on and walk calmly to an arrival gate to greet arriving passengers there. I used to do that. And I want to be able to carry a Swiss Army knife in an airline carry-on bag. Grandmothers and mothers and children should surely be able to board an airliner unmolested in a free country like the United States.

That said, I remember when conditions changed in the United States. I stood on top of the former World Trade Center in New York City twice while traveling with foreign visitors to the United States during my earlier frequent flyer days. Because I remember the peace and freedom I long enjoyed here to welcome visitors to the United States from around the world, I want the leaders and active participants in terrorist networks to identified through constant surveillance and intelligence, and I want terrorists to be attacked relentlessly where they live, so that they have to hide in caves while people all over the world who renounce their goals get to lead civilized, peaceful lives in the Twenty-First Century. Taliban delenda est. Al Qaeda delenda est.

AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several interesting comments. I think it is important to acknowledge that, yes, the United States government as a matter of official policy has engaged in assassination of foreign government leaders, and plotted the assassination of others, as well as committed and plotted break-ins in foreign embassies (but not random bomb attacks on foreign embassies, to the best of my recollection). I think the United States has been chastened by some of the results of those earlier policies. The movie Argo has been watched by many Americans, and it frankly acknowledges the assassination of an elected prime minister in Iran by the CIA back before I was born. I think now the United States is much more interested in information openness as a means to make sure that countries all around the world trade peacefully rather than waging war one one another, and I think that is the only long-term way to defeat terrorist networks. The current armed warfare strategy of drone attacks on specific terrorist leaders rather than mass bombing attacks on cities (as in World War II) is a step forward in war-fighting effectiveness and an improvement in reducing civilian casualties.

Yes, the United States is still second only to France as a country destination for foreign tourists (and rather more of the tourists to France can drive cars or ride trains to France than can many visitors to the United States). So as obnoxious as current TSA security procedures are to me and to many, they are not so obnoxious that people have stopped visiting the United States for fun.

Oh, yes, and my "half-Asian" children look very Central Asian, as one might expect, and my oldest son with his full black beard looks like someone from the latest news story about Al Qaeda. I'm not sure what his experience has been traveling around the country for his study and work. He barely remembers the old days before the TSA. Certainly we should also make sure not to harass citizens or visitors who happen to have the wrong name or the wrong pattern of physical appearance, but identify threats on the basis of more relevant information. Another top-level comment in this thread says that Israel succeeds in doing that for the most part.

Simple solution and nobody ever wants to talk about it. Sure it is more towards the long game but perfectly valid. The TSA budget is $8 billion, we should quit funding all of these crazy government programs. With a federal government budget of 1 trillion dollars, of course they are going to abuse their power. Iraq war, don't fund it. Afghanistan war, don't fund it. Drone operations, don't fund them. TSA, Department of Homeland Security, don't fund them. 3m

this is... interesting. I mean, I know this is very different for me because of the cultural expectations of me as a male, but personally? I'd /much/ rather have an authority figure violate me in public than in private. In public, they are restrained by witnesses; in private? well, who knows what they will do? and if I complain of what they do in private, well, it's my word against that of an authority figure. In public, there are witnesses.

Wait, what? While I'm sure it can't be 100%, I've missed dozens of flights over the years and never once was it ever suggested that I might have to pay a dime to the airline. Usually it's the next flight on the same route unless its full or a long way off.

imho you don't speak up against the TSA because it's designed to be a dominating experience. you don't speak up in prison either.

(To wit: the US government is forbidden from searching people without a warrant signed by a judge for that particular person and situation. Creeping judicial decisions have in effect destroyed that restriction.)

If you have small children you've seen this at work a million times. It could be about not touching a hot pot or not abusing the cat. Sometimes you can repeat your "don't do <x>" a million times and it simply does not register. Kids are wired that way, and, I suspect, most of us remain wired that way for some time.

When does the behavior stop? When they touch the hot pot and get burned or when they mess with the cat too much and they are attacked. Just to clarify, none of these things happened to my kids because (a) I got lucky and they tend to listen and, (b) we don't own a cat.

The point is that TSA and a bunch of other measures none of us like (Patriot act anyone?) were a reaction to an absolute failure to communicate, in no uncertain terms, that terrorism has severe and dire consequences. Almost unimaginable consequences that not one person on this planet would want to provoke.

We are not a "hot pot" or a "cat" in the eyes of any of these people. We are a country and a people to be messed with because the consequences just don't hurt enough. And so is much, if not all of the West and Europe. This is a problem when you have an ideology and people who are living 800 years behind the rest of the planet. No? Ha! Go ask their women, their homosexuals and anyone who dares express such vile things as wanting women to be educated. Maybe 800 years is too small of a number, maybe it's more like 1,500 years.

What consequences am I talking about? No point in going into it. The opportunity was lost over a decade ago. I am not sure I am smart enough to even begin to imagine what could be done today.

You have to turn the environments within which would-be terrorists are cooked-up into environments where not one person would even consider the idea of terrorism due to a clear understanding of the consequences.

Do that. Accomplish that. And you can shutdown the TSA, Homeland Security, the Patriot Act and all else that is making our lives miserable and expensive.

Yes. They won. Why would anyone doubt that? Look at all you've given up in the name of security. Sad.

I'm going to play the devil's advocate here. How on earth do you actually prove prevention techniques?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

http://wh.gov/dUK1

or here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/abolish-tsa-favor-...

It's not.

The TSA doesn't keep records of opt out rates. The random folks waiting in line around you probably don't recognize that you're opting out as a form of protest.

The only thing opting out accomplishes is letting a TSA agent rub his or her hands all over you.

IMO, the opt out is a genius maneuver by the TSA: They give passengers who have privacy concerns a sense that they're protesting, without them actually having protested.

Yes, the days before 911 were the good old days.

I have an older brother that didn't live with us. During the holidays, he would fly in and we'd go pick him up at the airport. On many separate occasions, the family would all wait at the exit gate for family and friends to get off. Can you even remember the experience of having a hundred people all patiently waiting for their loved ones to get off the plane, or being one of those people to exit the plane and to have all of your loved ones waiting for you right there?

One time when my brother was leaving for home, we were able to go with him on the plane and I got to sit in the pilot's seat. Soooo many buttons. For some reason, I still remember there being a little button with a Christmas tree on it. No idea what it was for.

So to your other points: modern airport security would have done NOTHING to prevent 9/11. Those guys didn't carry guns or large knives on board. They didn't hijack planes with water bottles and belts. They had fucking box cutters. You can't kill everyone on board with a box cutter. At worst, you can severely injure a couple of people, and by that point the passengers rise up and strangle your ass.

What allowed those planes to be hijacked is that pre-9/11 the universal experience of being hijacked was to do what the hijackers said. That was what we were all told, because up until then that's what happened. Hijackings were a way to make political statements, not necessarily to kill the passengers. You might end up in Cuba, or held on the tarmac for ransom or something.

What would have stopped 9/11 is if the public had a different mindset, being "take these assholes down at any cost". That's the mindset we have today.

There were a few fatalities back then. The Lockerbie Scotland incident was a bombing. It wasn't even a hijacking. The perpetrators were hanging out in Libya. In fact, that bombing was sponsored by Gaddafi. We didn't invade Libya in revenge for that.

The fact is, 9/11 happened. It was horrible. It brought to light that some changes were definitely needed in airport security, but it also brought to light that the passive reaction to hijackings was something that needed to change. The reason this is all fucked up is that we had a lame-duck president and government who over-reacted. If they had handled the incident responsibly, rather than initiating 2 wars that led to no capture of Bin Laden (remember, it was under Obama that the fucker got taken out), then we would be in a very different world today.

The TSA is a left-over remnant from a horrible event that happened 12 years ago. It was an over-reaction due to the climate of uncertainty and fear that existed at the time. Like all snakes set loose in an environment with no natural predators, it has gone on to swallow multiple government departments and their budgets and gotten so fat and dangerous no one is willing to fight it.

Its time to stop this bullshit, dismantle the TSA, set the various government agencies back on their own that it absorbed, start arresting these high-school dropout alpha fucks the TSA hires when they molest people and children, and put something rational and sensible in place.

Do we need airport security? Yes. Do we need this bullshit TSA theater we have now? No.

The next time you're flying and you're mistreated, make a scene. Ask the 10 people around you to record the interaction. You will likely miss your flight. Accept that. Its unlikely you'll be arrested as long as you don't hit anyone, you'll just be escorted from the airport or made to catch a later flight. Be rational and stand up for yourself like a human being with dignity.

We NEED everyone to start doing this, to make this into an issue. Stop being passive. Its an inconvenience now, but its the first step in making it better. Years down the line, you'll be proud of what you did. And you and your kids won't have to deal with this shit anymore.

I know I will.

Yes, the TSA does a questionable job, but the constant whining and calls to demolish it without the acknowledge of the need for changes from the "good old days" before 9/11 is not only sophomoric but downright dangerous.