Because people are sheep. Has anyone here done anything to stop it other than bitch about it on an Internet forum?
There isn't anything especially interesting about my junk that would make me uncomfortable with a body scan. I do, however, hate the amount of fucking money is pissed away on this bullshit. The TSA doesn't fucking catch anyone....ever. Driving a car onto a highway is far more dangerous than getting on a plane. Terrorist attacks are an extremely minor threat and in no way justify the amount of money that is being spent toward failing to stop them.
The security theater bullshit annoys me as an unproductive waste of time and money - but I don't really give a shit if someone wants a high tech scan of my junk, or even if they want to give it a gentle squeeze. I'm more irritated about having to take my fucking laptop out of my bag every fucking time, and infrequent flyers who can't find a pair of fucking shoes and a belt that don't set of metal detectors and figure out that they need to take their laptop out before they get to the fucking gate. But the secret, impossible to appeal no fly bullshit is what actually makes me crazy. I know a pilot who's on the list. The guy is a boring as shit white guy with no controversial interests or opinions. It's gotta be a false positive or a name mix up - but he hasn't been able to work for a year trying to get off the fucking list. There are dozens of stories like his floating around - and it scares the fuck out of me. Toddlers and infants have shown up at the airport for their first flights and been unable to board because they're on the fucking list. If your income relies on being able to fly in US airspace, you're one clerical error away from having to start your entire career over in some field that doesn't require travel, and restricting your holiday options to cruise liners and road trips for the rest of your life. And yes, I recognize that I have no rights as a stinky foreigner - but most of the people being fucked by the no fly list are US citizens. And the reality is that serious threats fly using stolen identification information anyway.
I'm kind of amazed at all the people here that say they don't give a shit. It's strangers under the guise of authority and safety physically groping people in their genitals, and it's not even a very effective safety system. I'm not saying these kinds of 'safety measures' are going to lead to full-on strip searches and all that shit, but it's definitely not a good place to be right now. Not to mention the uncertainty over whether or not the body scanners are even safe (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/17/concern.pdf</a>). The airport scanners and new pat-downs are a relatively minor issue right now, but it certainly could become larger as the number of people upset with the new procedures increases. Already airline pilots are raising concerns over the procedures and urging others to refuse to be scanned. I just can't see it as something I would say 'okay, whatever, I don't care' to when it's physically invasive and not as helpful or efficient as other less invasive methods (i.e. the article about Israeli airport security methods).
Look, it's a search, the guy isn't getting some thrill out of it so suck it buttercup. It's a precaution, sorry I shook hands with your man, be on your way. Look...I've been searched before going into jail more than once. Talk about them wiping their asses with your dignity. It's practically a live sex show, and it happens again on your way out! I wish I was a kid. I could bury the memories.
Everyone should read this: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.schneier.com/essay-124.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.schneier.com/essay-124.html</a>
Honestly, I wouldn't care if the guy groping my junk was jerking off with the other hand. I know I'm probably atypical - but given a choice between a faster line that involved some groping, and a slower line - I'd chose the faster line every time. In terms of security - I'm concerned that humans are involved at all. The failure rate for humans is spectacularly high. Unacceptably high in any automated system - but putting a human in instead of a machine is standard practice for 'better security'. I'd be much more confidant in a fully automated system with industry standard failure rates - than any systems where humans have to do their job and pay attention. I've read previously that US Air Marshall service report that about one occasion in six, they get on board a flight without the security screening process detecting the fact that they are carrying a weapon. That figure is typical in my experience with human reliant solution - where we generally count on somewhere between 10% and 20% failure rate if we're relying on humans to catch errors or problems. Fundamentally - people aren't wired to pay attention all the time - TSA employed mouth breathers might only barely be human - but they aren't any better at actually focusing on their job than the rest of the population. Well engineered threat detection solutions advertise about 0.05% failure to detect rate. Beats the shit out of 1 time in 6, we won't notice that you're carrying a fucking gun. And doesn't feel you up on the way through.
It totally depends on the "people" in place. Take El Al. They train their staff like crazy, and they are behavioural experts. They're also making a killer salary, and are professionals in every sense of the word. They're not Jerry Springer rejects that couldn't get a job at McDonald's that will be groping your junk at JFK. I'll take El Al any day of the week over the morons in the TSA.
This is kind of a human wiring thing though. All the money and training in the world can't remove the human propensity to slack off. For example... conventional metrics are that between one in 5 and one in 10 events won't be caught. Lets assume that El Al are twice as good as the best teams considered for those conventional numbers (which I consider unlikely, but for the sake of argument - we're talking about one in 20 going un-caught. Lets say that El-Al doses their staff with enough Dexamphetamine and Cocaine that they don't blink and can't stop focusing and they're getting an incredible, miraculous, one in 50 failure to detect - or a 2% failure rate. The leading automated threat detection solutions quote around 0.05% failure to detect. I agree that I'd rather have the El Al guys than the TSA guys. But I'd rather have them backing up Skynet than actually be relying on them.
I think you're comparing apples and oranges. Your slacking off TSA guys are staring at images of x-rays on screens all day, and watching for pistols, or they're waving wands / feeling up people's junk - very mechanical, no thinking. El Al security does something entirely different. Everyone is screened, and asked questions about where they're going, why, who they know there, how they know them, etc. Sometimes the responses to various questions result in a higher level of screening, but often the staff are analyzing how the responses are given, so if you're stammering when you're asked how you know your friend who lives in Tel Aviv, that in and of itself can be cause for a higher level of screening. That could be more questions, database searches, or more thorough luggage searches. Of course, standard x-ray scans and the like are also done. And the system is expensive, time-consuming and labour-intensive. Perhaps x-ray machines can have built in algorithms to watch for pistols or explosives, but we're a long way away from being able to replace behavioural screening with machines.
Walk through Singapore airport some time. They run a chemical sniffer that's about 2,500 times as sensitive as a beagle's nose. If when you walk through the sensor corridor, you trip the alert for any of the prohibited chemicals (explosives, gun oil, etc) you trip the threshold for enough gun oil that you're probably carrying etc - the doors at either end of the corridor close and the nice security guards come and do a very thorough manual check. In the demo material they pick up when a mule is carrying a condom of cocaine in their stomach and a guy who's got a chunk of broken mirror in his pocket. They run a backup visual detector in case someone had their weapon vacuum sealed in a clean room before they ever handled it that and it is also spectacular efficient. When they were trying to sell us the system - they hadn't found anything that could consistently get passed it in the paired deployment they were speculating for the sake of argument that their failure to detect might be as high as one in 5000 (0.02%) - but they had no evidence that the failure rate was that high. We're a long way away from believing that digital solutions aren't all made with Microsoft engineering standards - but reality is that these systems beat the fuck out of human checks.
I think this is relevant: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/11/18/another-tsa-outrage/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/11/1 ... a-outrage/</a> Soldiers returning from the middle east were allowed to take their pistols, machine guns etc onto the plane with them but not nail clippers, as the clippers could 'be used to take over the plane', yet the actual guns the soldiers had with them were not a problem.
The arbitrary definitions of "weapon" are bizarre at best. I am an amateur photographer, and all of my photo gear is super expensive so I carry it on. The camera/lens bag rarely gets a second glance. What gets inspected closely and occasionally rejected is my tripod. I have a carbon fiber tripod that weighs 2.5 pounds, and it appears that the TSA guys dub it club-like. However, my 300mm metal-and-glass lens that weighs 5 pounds, hangs from a strap and could easily be used to beat someone to death, is passed through without a problem. As were my wire cutters/strippers and screwdriver on my last trip. But they weren't past the 7" limit so it's okay, right? Just another example of how illusory all of this security is. Scootah is entirely correct about automated systems being far superior for threat detection - but even assuming we want a human solution, employing semi-literate retards with no ability to reason is ridiculous.
Can somebody that knows more about this (i.e. everyone, ha ha) explain to me what exactly the goal of the pat down is? I get the metal detectors and the xray machines. What would they find in a standard pat down, that couldn't be hidden in your ass? (Well, not your ass, but an ass.) If you know anybody that's been in prison (not jail, prison) talk to them about the things that have been keistered inside. The metal detectors and wands will find anything metal, so what is it that the pat down will find? C4? Liquids? Gun powder? All of that could be hidden in an ass. If the current protocol is adding the pat down to locate things the metal detectors would not, what's the point if it isn't a complete search?
They have no common sense when it comes to security. They cannot think rationally for themselves. I flew shortly after 9/11, and was wearing a poppy. I was told that I'd have to remove it because it had a pin on it. I laughed when they said it, because the thought of someone trying to use a poppy as any kind of weapon is hilarious. They did not appreciate the humour of the situation like I did. Then I made the mistake of trying to rationalize and discuss it with them (I know... I was young and foolish). I basically said that you're letting me go through with a belt, multiple pens/pencils, and even a metal ruler, but not a poppy. If they were all sitting on a table, and you had to pick one to fight someone else, which would you choose? The poppy was the last thing I'd pick. The fact that I even made mention of that out loud got them all hot and bothered and to this day I'm amazed I wasn't given a short-arm inspection and put on a watch list. I have the actual document put out by the Canadian version of the TSA that outlines all of their policies and procedures, as well as a huge document erroneously released to the public in it's raw form (gotta love government idiots, Word files for download, and "track changes"). It's really a hell of an interesting read. I posted it up here the last time we did this topic, but if anyone's interested, I can try and dig it up when I get back home in a couple of weeks.
I haven't read enough to comment intelligently on the effectiveness of these screenings/gropings, etc...but a brief perusing of this article sparked a thought: Why not have a highly trained, armed law enforcement agent on every flight (well, not every flight, like in-state ones, but cross country/major city flights)? Surely they could cut one or two of the lowly TSA people to pay the salary? I'm not saying do away with the scanners and everything, but wouldn't a highly vetted, long-serving, gun-yielding officer deter some terrorists who wanna take over the plane with a kitchen knife? At least as much as the scanners alone would, no? As for the scanners, I don't know much about them, but do they show your face, or are they more X-ray-ish? If they don't show faces, why the fuck is this even an issue?
They post all sorts of information right before entering the security line. I wonder how many people would opt to go through the scanner if that was posted at each one.