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Lime Tonics posted:The TSA is the most worthless thing in the countries budget. I don't get why the terrorists won, oh, because the TSA lets them, *Ssssh.* Yes, they're worthless, but if you harp too much on that failure rate they'll start insisting that everyone unpack their bags at the checkpoint, making it take 5x as long and making the line at the checkpoint an even more tempting target for terrorists who can just bring a big roller suitcase packed entirely full of semtex and roofing nails right up to it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/get-ready-to-unpack-for-airport-security-1495640411 I'd seriously vote for Hitler himself if he promised to delenda est that useless titsuck of a government agency.
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Jul 6, 2017 15:37
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Phanatic posted:*Ssssh.* That's a fun post/avatar combo. Seriously though the problem with the TSA is that its hiring standards are slightly less than that of a Crappier McDonalds.
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Jul 6, 2017 16:08
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ashnjack posted:That's a fun post/avatar combo. Seriously though the problem with the TSA is that its hiring standards are slightly less than that of a Crappier McDonalds. I recall them getting in trouble for advertising job openings on the bottoms of pizza boxes in the Baltimore/DC area You know you're getting the best candidates when you're advertising on delivery pizza.
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Jul 6, 2017 16:37
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ashnjack posted:That's a fun post/avatar combo. Seriously though the problem with the TSA is that its hiring standards are slightly less than that of a Crappier McDonalds. Nah, the problem with the TSA is that it exists as all. Even if everyone in the blue uniform *wasn't* someone who couldn't work the fryer at McD's without requiring skin grafts, the TSA would still be a worse-than-useless and counterproductive approach to security. Terrorism is *incredibly* rare, so you run into the same problem you run into with a lot of medical diagnostics where false positives utterly dwarf the results: Say your airport is ATL. One hundred million people go through your airport in a year. One of them is a terrorist with a bomb (this is probably an overestimate). Say your TSA agents are 99% accurate, which is to say, that 99% of the time they're going to give you the correct answer: they''ll realize the guy's got a bomb if he has one and give the all-clear if he doesn't. So one time out of 100, they'll be wrong. So 100,000,000 people go through your airport. 99,999,999 of them do not have a bomb. Of those people, 98,999,999 will be cleared by the agents, correctly. But the agents will also say that 1,000,000 of them are carrying a bomb. That's over 2700 false alarms *per day*. Which means your airport would be useless. So the current situation, in which the TSA agents are actually *horrible* at detecting bombs, where they *miss* test bombs 95% of the time, is *better* than that, because bombs are, again, incredibly rare and TSA agents are actually empirically really good at letting people who do not have bombs go through the checkpoint. When presented with a device that they're intended to find, their false negative rate is abysmal, but that's okay because if their false positive rate were significant the lines at security would be obscene and air travel would come to a halt. The terrorists have already learned that the security lines themselves represent juicy, defenseless targets. What are you going to do, move the checkpoints out to the entrance to the terminal? Okay, well then the enormous line forms there. Move it even further out, and start stopping and sweeping cars where they enter the airport? Now you've got a big line of cars and trucks with gasoline tanks that someone can pull a Ryder truck full of ANFO up next to. We have a free and open society. In that kind of society, it will always be trivial for a dedicated individual to murder large numbers of people; prior to the OKC bombing the largest mass-murder in the history of the USA was committed with a pop bottle full of gasoline. The only airport security that's worth a drat is the metal detectors and x-ray machines (which will keep out a crazy person who tries to carry a gun or a pipe bomb onto the plane), secure cockpit doors, and the general awareness that you can't trust hijackers to land the plane safely so you'd better try to kill them. That stuff won't keep out dedicated, motivated, state-supported actors, but then neither will the TSA and the place to stop *those* people is *not* right before they try to get onto the plane. All this poo poo we've done is to try to stop people who literally can't manage to light their own underwear on fire. And we even fail at that, because that guy got onto the plane and was apprehended by passengers. It's ridiculous. Hubis posted:confirmation_bias.txt If you're going to claim that there're a whole lot of terrorist attacks being prevented by the TSA that we just don't see, well, I'd like to see support for that claim. frodnonnag posted:In this case the hitler avatar is pretty apt. Ah, yes, Hitler: noted opponent of oppressive state security apparatus. Well, maybe you'll enjoy flying even more when the TSA decides to ban laptops and e-books from carry-ons. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Jul 6, 2017 |
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Jul 6, 2017 16:48
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Phanatic posted:Nah, the problem with the TSA is that it exists as all. Even if everyone in the blue uniform *wasn't* someone who couldn't work the fryer at McD's without requiring skin grafts, the TSA would still be a worse-than-useless and counterproductive approach to security. Terrorism is *incredibly* rare, so you run into the same problem you run into with a lot of medical diagnostics where false positives utterly dwarf the results: confirmation_bias.txt
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Jul 6, 2017 16:56
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Hubis posted:confirmation_bias.txt In this case the hitler avatar is pretty apt.
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Jul 6, 2017 17:08
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Dr.Smasher posted:I recall them getting in trouble for advertising job openings on the bottoms of pizza boxes in the Baltimore/DC area
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Jul 6, 2017 17:12
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What's the bias supposed to be? The security line really is vulnerable and the only reason we don't blow up inside them is because nobody is willing to blow us up. It might sound frightening but really is no different than any other part of society.
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Jul 6, 2017 17:17
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Making sure that flights are safe is definitely a priority for them, but a higher priority is making sure that the public thinks that flying is safe. So what they do tends towards the public and theatrical, and they would continue to do it that way, even if a more private approach would be more effective. That they screen anyone and everyone, be super invasive, treat everyone like criminals, etc. is exactly the point, because it's designed to reinforce how safe people should feel after they've been vetted by security.
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Jul 6, 2017 17:18
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That's really the only way TSA saves any lives. If people didn't feel safe flying, they'd drive instead, and driving on the roads is way more dangerous than flying so you'd have more additional people dying in car crashes than were ever killed by terrorists.
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Jul 6, 2017 17:20
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Phanatic posted:pop bottle full of gasoline i think you mean a soda bottle
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Jul 6, 2017 17:24
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I can speak of my experience as a false positive at an airport. I was passing through Korea via Incheon back home the Koreans spotted an object that looked like a hand grenade in my luggage. Funny enough they have signs outside explicitly forbidding this, I guess they get this alot with people buying Korean war relics. They were literally scratching their heads as they X-ray my carry on for a full minute trying to figure what it was. This being Korea and not the TSA they finally decided ask me to open the bag. By that point I had figured out what they wanted much to their relieve and was allowed to move on. Total time wasted: 1.5 minutes, no one freaking out. I am guessing that TSA's treatment would have been a hell of alot worse. Locked in a room for hours causing a missed flight, questioning without a lawyer present, use of coercive interrogation, strip search, guns getting pointed, luggage destroyed. There is a need for security if nothing else to stop people bringing stupid stuff onto planes like pressurised cans, lighter fluid, smuggling and for biosecurity as bugs getting into a country can and does devastate industries.
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Jul 6, 2017 18:03
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Phanatic posted:Nah, the problem with the TSA is that it exists as all. Even if everyone in the blue uniform *wasn't* someone who couldn't work the fryer at McD's without requiring skin grafts, the TSA would still be a worse-than-useless and counterproductive approach to security. Terrorism is *incredibly* rare, so you run into the same problem you run into with a lot of medical diagnostics where false positives utterly dwarf the results: Friend you've spent too much time thinking about the tsa
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Jul 6, 2017 18:04
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oohhboy posted:I can speak of my experience as a false positive at an airport. So will you tell us what the hand grenade lookalike object you had was?
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Jul 6, 2017 18:28
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Captain Yossarian posted:Friend you've spent too much time thinking about the tsa I travel for a living. I used to blow things up for the military (in a remarkably safe, OSHA-compliant fashion). So not only do I travel for a living, I routinely travel with items that that are well outside of the TSA goons' laptops-and-diaper-bags experiences, and I've done so covered in explosive residue. You don't have to do this for very long before you realize what an utter and colossal waste of time and money the entire agency is, and how trivial an obstacle it is in the path of who actually wants to do us harm. SinineSiil posted:So will you tell us what the hand grenade lookalike object you had was? It's TSA policy to never imply ownership in the event of a dildo. It's always "the" dildo or "a" dildo, never "your" dildo.
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Jul 6, 2017 18:33
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SinineSiil posted:So will you tell us what the hand grenade lookalike object you had was? It was a Chinese TCM roller where you stick some sort of slow burning material inside and after it has heated the roller you roll it over where you are feeling pain. The burning stuff was likely full of nicotine or Chinese news papers. In the x-ray it looks like a German stick grenade with a fragmentation jacket.
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Jul 6, 2017 18:39
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Phanatic posted:That's really the only way TSA saves any lives. If people didn't feel safe flying, they'd drive instead, and driving on the roads is way more dangerous than flying so you'd have more additional people dying in car crashes than were ever killed by terrorists. I still drive anyway because road trips offer so many more advantages for me. Flying is faster, but on a road trip you don't need to arrive to your car 3 hours early to go through a long security check that gets delayed because one of your passengers forgot to take their shoes off before entering. You can stop for bathroom breaks, food, or cool things you see at any given point instead of being locked in your tube from A to B. You can use your phone all you want without paying for wi-fi.
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Jul 6, 2017 18:42
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oohhboy posted:I can speak of my experience as a false positive at an airport. The last time I went out of the country we had the airport overseas wishing us good luck and thanking us for visiting their country and got some food they were all cooking because it was a Friday. We got back to the US to the bellowing screams of a TSA agent demanding that our passports be out and sizing up people like it was Full Metal Jacket. Two people were taking for questioning over sun tan lotion and shampoo and a third guy was questioned for an hour because he left his backpack when he went to the bathroom and UNATTENDED BAG UNATTENDED BAG.
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Jul 6, 2017 18:51
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chitoryu12 posted:I still drive anyway because road trips offer so many more advantages for me. Flying is faster, but on a road trip you don't need to arrive to your car 3 hours early to go through a long security check that gets delayed because one of your passengers forgot to take their shoes off before entering. No argument whatsoever. I'd rather drive anywhere I can get to in a day, rather than fly. When I was working for NAVSEA in D.C. we had a job up in Buffalo right after they opened the airports back up after 9/11, and we loaded up a van and drove that poo poo. My current employer won't permit more than 8 hours a day of driving, though, so even if I'm just going to someplace like Fort Rucker they don't let me just POV down there. I have to fly to Atlanta or somewhere and waste time during a layover. I can't even fly to Atlanta and rent a car and drive the rest of the way. Space Crabs posted:We got back to the US to the bellowing screams of a TSA agent demanding that our passports be out and sizing up people like it was Full Metal Jacket. Two people were taking for questioning over sun tan lotion and shampoo and a third guy was questioned for an hour because he left his backpack when he went to the bathroom and UNATTENDED BAG UNATTENDED BAG. If you read the airpower thread you've heard these before, but anyway. Item #1: Shortly after air travel opened back up after 9/11, I'm supposed to fly from Dulles down to Norfolk so I can get on an LHD and ride to New Orleans on it. That day, I'd been working a test where we wired up and set off three 60-lb charges of explosive. The plume from each one drifted down right over our trailer, including over the backpack and coat I'd left lying on the ground outside the door. Dulles airport security (not even the TSA yet) picks me for a random explosives screening. I'm mentally preparing myself for the coming shitstorm as they swab down my backpack, my jacket, and my hands, and put the swab in the sniffer...and it comes up with a negative. If that thing's not picking me up as a positive, a dozen Tim McVeighs could drive a dozen panel trucks through that checkpoint without a care. Item #2: Different job. I'm doing a flight test with the 160th SOAR down in Kentucky, there's a problem with the helicopter, it's decided that I need to hand-carry the recorded flight test data back home as soon as possible. So I pull the recorder media (It's just a big solid-state hard drive in a sealed orange metal enclosure with some exposed electrical contacts), stick it in my carry-on, and head to the airport, where this thing shows up on the x-ray as an opaque rectangle. TSA says they don't know what it is, so they'll have to swab it for explosives. Okay, go ahead. *Ping*! It comes back positive, because it's been on a special forces helicopter for a month and who the hell knows what those guys get up to during training, they probably had three miniguns on that thing the week before. TSA's response to this was to say "Well, now we need to manually inspect your carry-on." Okay. Then they let me on a plane, with what could just as easily have been a brick of C4 wrapped in tinfoil. Of *course* it wasn't, and of *course* they knew it wasn't, because I don't fit the profile that they all have to pretend with deadly earnestness doesn't exist. Item #3: Same job, different place. I'm connecting in Cincinnati from Lexington. Since I know it's a little CRJ and that there's a good chance I'd wind up having to planeside-check my carryon anyway, I just check it at the check-in counter. Sure enough, there are a bunch of people who have to check their bag planeside, all those bags get the little pink tags and get taken away. I walk down the steps in Cincinnati, and there on the rack with all the pink-tagged bags the luggage handlers have pulled off is my bag, with a white tag on it. I say to the guy manning the rack "That's supposed to be checked through," he says "You got to take it with you," so I shrug and take it on into the terminal. Where I'm now sitting with a white-tagged, checked bag that could legally contain a gun and ammunition, or a box cutter, or a machete, or a pint of elemental mercury. A stewardess walking by noticed and asked me about it and I explained and she said "Well, that is not supposed to happen." Yeah, I know. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jul 6, 2017 |
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Jul 6, 2017 18:55
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Chillest airports I've ever been to are Irish and Icelandic ones. The staff seem a lot happier than in the US.
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Jul 6, 2017 18:55
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chitoryu12 posted:I still drive anyway because road trips offer so many more advantages for me. The crossover point is at about a 5 hour drive - anything longer than that and it's worth it to fly, anything shorter and yeah might as well drive.
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Jul 6, 2017 18:59
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Spatial posted:Chillest airports I've ever been to are Irish and Icelandic ones. The staff seem a lot happier than in the US. I can confirm that the Irish airports are chill as gently caress. Italy was a little higher strung, but that's just Italians in general, really. What was really fun was having to wait in line forever to get through TSA passport check, the security recheck, and running to the far end of the terminal at Dulles to make the flight back home. Also, I had a fun case of bomb detection on my work laptop back in December. Took like 10 minutes to clear me to move on after the full pat-down.
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Jul 6, 2017 19:31
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chitoryu12 posted:I still drive anyway because road trips offer so many more advantages for me. Flying is faster, but on a road trip you don't need to arrive to your car 3 hours early to go through a long security check that gets delayed because one of your passengers forgot to take their shoes off before entering. You can stop for bathroom breaks, food, or cool things you see at any given point instead of being locked in your tube from A to B. You can use your phone all you want without paying for wi-fi. That's not very OSHA.
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Jul 6, 2017 19:35
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Dienes posted:That's not very OSHA. streaming tunes, gramps
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Jul 6, 2017 19:43
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Captain Yossarian posted:I'm calling the police *calmly eats butterbread*
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Jul 6, 2017 19:46
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Jerry Cotton posted:*calmly eats butterbread* Now I want to call the police because you said butterbread.
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Jul 6, 2017 19:53
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Glagha posted:Now I want to call the police because you said butterbread. *äter en smörgås, alldeles lugnt*
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Jul 6, 2017 19:55
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Dienes posted:That's not very OSHA. I've only ever taken a road trip with other people who can drive as well. I'm honestly paranoid as gently caress about crashing so I never even touch my phone when I'm in the driver's seat and the vehicle is in motion.
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Jul 6, 2017 20:03
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If I was a terrorist I'd just bomb the huge rear end lines created by TSA or whatever security in other countries, actually I think some have
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Jul 6, 2017 20:26
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Modest Mao posted:If I was a terrorist I'd just bomb the huge rear end lines created by TSA or whatever security in other countries, actually I think some have Lines of huge asses only exist in the USA.
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Jul 6, 2017 20:28
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Modest Mao posted:If I was a terrorist I'd just bomb the huge rear end lines created by TSA or whatever security in other countries, actually I think some have Belgium in the last few years if i remember correctly.
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Jul 6, 2017 20:29
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Lame, blow up the executive office of Boeing or something instead.
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Jul 6, 2017 20:31
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Nenonen posted:Coffee is made of berries, not beans Technically coffee is made from neither berries nor beans, but seeds.
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Jul 6, 2017 20:40
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Coffee is made from coffee grounds unless you're a completely insufferable person  / 
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Jul 6, 2017 20:42
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Leave a bunch of backpacks with some Play-Doh, wires, and trashed circuit boards and electronic components dug out of the garbage in major airports. The ensuing shutdown of everything while they evacuate the terminals will cause massive nationwide disruption without needing to kill a single person.
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Jul 6, 2017 20:43
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Then go directly to gitmo when they identify you from the 200 security cameras that capture your entire path from home to the airport and find your fingerprints on the circuit boards.
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Jul 6, 2017 20:51
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Somehow I don't expect people who would blow themselves up or set themselves on fire or get in pitched gunbattles with cops and soldiers in order to kill people are going to be that deterred by the whole "might get caught and sent to prison" thing.
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Jul 6, 2017 20:55
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chitoryu12 posted:Leave a bunch of backpacks with some Play-Doh, wires, and trashed circuit boards and electronic components dug out of the garbage in major airports. The ensuing shutdown of everything while they evacuate the terminals will cause massive nationwide disruption without needing to kill a single person. They will shoot the nearest brown person to the bag you left
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Jul 6, 2017 20:57
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Synthbuttrange posted:Now you're reminding me of how people are stealing transformer oil and selling it as cooking oil. PCB is trans-fat free! Three-Phase posted:I think that what they did was tie all the stator leads together (six sets of wires) and applied a high DC voltage between that and the chassis of the motor. Not that I can really tell, my walkdowns are strictly visual and I don't do anything more than look into the manholes. So I just see this and have to kinda trust everything's in order under that tape. 
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Jul 6, 2017 21:02
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Phanatic posted:TSA says they don't know what it is, so they'll have to swab it for explosives. I once got my carry-on selected for a random explosives swabbing. My carry-on was a mesh-sided cat carrier that clearly and obviously contained a living cat and nothing else. I have no idea what they thought they were looking for.
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