petaluma1

Quite correct. 197 people per week are killed by drunk drivers in this country. A far greater concern than someone trying to bomb the plane you are on.

petaluma1

Point taken.

WillCAD

You have the right to travel by any means you deem fit and are capable of procuring for yourself.

Your mention of cruise ships is a complete non-sequitur: cruise ships are recreational activities, not transportation. They're full because people like to holiday on the sea, not because they're eager to spend 5 or 10 times the cost of an airfare to get from point A to point B.

And yes, you have the right to fly to Hawaii, unless the government can provide some compelling reason, supported by actual evidence, that your right to fly to Hawaii may be suspended, revoked, or abridged. "He wouldn't let us see his naked body" or "He wouldn't meet the BDO's eyes" or "He wouldn't say his name to the TDC" are NOT compelling reasons. Nor is, "He might be a terrorist!" Really? You want to prevent people from flying simply because you don't know them and they "might" be a bad person?

Prove it. Otherwise get the hell out of my way, I've got a plane to catch.

I define unreasonable as anything which abridges or denies me a Constitutional right without due process.

Interests be damned; the only thing that justifies a right being abridged or denied by the government is when it conflicts with someone else's rights - only at that point must two rights be weighed against each other to determine which trumps which. Anything with maybe/might/could/possibly/theoretically/conceivably/imagine in it is automatically less important than does/has/will/definitely, with very, very few possible exceptions.

I agree with you completely on that one; however, TSA has accepted such ridiculous pseudo-documentation (including Sam's Club membership cards) as ID in the past. To me, this merely illustrates the uselessness of the ID requirement as a security measure. ID doesn't matter.

TSA rules and regs carry the weight of law, but no law, particularly those regulatory codes which have never been subjected to public, Congressional, or judicial scrutiny, may trump the Constitution.

I must admit that the perv in the box is a more effective screening methodology than the false-positive-fest known as ATR. However, the reduced effectiveness would be an acceptable trade-off for the reduced invasiveness - if only the damn thing didn't trigger needless, frivolous mini-gropes on such a huge percentage of the traveling public.

And even the perv box models had highly dubious effectiveness. The machines, even with human viewers, could easily be fooled.

I know this was directed at petaluma1, but let me turn it around:

Are you so afraid of the possibility of a bomb being smuggled through the c/p by a traveler that you refuse to fly if the airport is not using whole body imaging? If you arrive at a crowded terminal and TSA has shut down the MMW and is using Pre-Check-level screening, i.e. the ETD swab, WTMD, and carry-on x-ray scanning, as the primary methodology that day, do you immediately re-schedule your flights to a day when they're using MMW as primary?

I somehow doubt that you do.

So if it's good enough when the lines get long, why is it not good enough all the time?

Boggie Dog

Just a thought. During my years in the Navy the Flight Surgeon could ground a pilot or crewman. The reason for being grounded was not stated other than being a medical issue. If I presented with a medical issue that made me not suitable for flight then the FS typically issued a grounding order.

I see no reason that a similar system could not be implemented for civilian pilots. There is no reason for the employer to know the particular reason for grounding but they do need to know if a pilot is fit to take control of an aircraft and how long the person is expected to be on the sidelines.

I would support a mandatory reporting system in the case of anyone in a safety roll such as pilots, police, and other such careers. That would still not resolve for those who don't seek treatment and as we all know risk is always present to some degree.

Schmurrr

Do you want said stranger looking at "revealing" naked images of your five-year old and your wife, even for a couple of seconds?

Feel free to strip down at the checkpoint if it makes you feel safer. You have no right to require that others do so. I guess you could make your five-year old strip down, though. You might convince your wife to do it, too. Seems abusive to me with respect to the child, but Anything for Safety!

Feel free to present your body cavities for inspection at the checkpoint, too. If you want to be treated like a prisoner despite not being in a prison and not being convicted of anything and not being arrested or even presented with probable cause, go all the way. Make sure your five-year old and your wife are in on this, too. Anything for Safety!

Accuse me of hyperbole if you like, but your position leads to acceptance of exactly this sort of thing. I am still aghast that most travelers think the nude-o-scopes are acceptable. They wouldn't stand for a physical inspection of their bodies or someone with a camera taking photos of their bodies, but the technology buffer and the government's "trust us!" assurances (backed by no publicly reviewable data sets and studies whatsoever) somehow make everything seem like rainbows and unicorns. If these people knew that their risk of drowning in a bathtub was higher than their risk of dying due to a terror event, would they accept government cameras in their bathrooms? Would they cede their liberty and human dignity even there?

saizai

Absolutely, yes. Also, drop the "we have to protect the womens" BS; it's degrading.

The likelihood of any risk of injury whatsoever, let alone from a bomb, to anyone from traveling by plane is miniscule. You're more likely to drown in the tub.

In fact, I made a video about the kind of thinking you're engaged in:

Which are deadlier: sharks or horses?

tanja

I dont belive in x rays unless is really needed by a MD.
We were told that the airport scanners would be viewed by the same sex....?
I remember an interview on TV about this. Then we saw a female checking males.
So much for that honesty by TSA.
Also some of us have heard/read stories from TSA who have quite. That the males would call in other TSA males to the "room that only one person suppose to be in " and told them "check out this beauty". So much for being profesional.
Do I have a problem with this. YES. They lied to us.
Like I have said several times before. If I get stopped for any reason. I dont mind stipping down in fron of 1 female. But scanner and patdown. NO WAY.
I want to see who "needs" to see me.
To me this is just "peeping toms" and weirdos .
Who ever accepts this have their own reasons. But I have mine for not doing it.
Respect that.

Dr. HFH

You're both right. Actually, if you look back through my posts, you'll see that I'm one of the more diligent people here about using terms like "s/he" or "his/her." Sorry for the slipup in this post. I should have said, of course, "spouse" and "child."

Cool that my posts have generated so much response. I do want to respond to them, as I'm a sucker for a good debate. Right now I'm in the middle of an eight hour transit at ICN on crutches and a wheelchair, so my opportunities for internet are limited. I'll be back, though, within a few days.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond, regardless of whether you agree with me or not!!

Carl Johnson

Don't bother. You're not debating. You're just presenting the question:

Would you be unwilling to do X in order to prevent Y. Anything could replace X and Y:

Would you be unwilling to own a pet bunny to prevent the earth from being pulled into the sun?

Would you be unwilling to eat a watermelon in order to prevent Florida from sliding into the ocean?

You have to put in some numbers or your formulation is meaningless. What is that chance of Y without X, and what is the effect your X will have on Y?

I actually know the numbers.

The chance of your Y is zero, because if there were going to be an attack on a plane, there would be one. This is because X is also zero - the TSA misses 70% of weapons presented at the checkpoint. So bringing back the cancer, brain damage, and obesity causing backscatter machines to replace the brain damage and obesity causing MMW wouldn't do anything to improve security.

saizai

I think one needn't even make a safety argument. I don't want to be strip searched, electronically or otherwise. I don't need any more justification.

tanja

I do aggree. Not me either. But if I am forced to a scanner I would like to tell them Look at me with one female TSA. Dont touch me cause that is going to cause problems that you dont want to.

Boggie Dog

With the scanners requiring ATR (in the U.S.) I find them much less objectional. What ticks me off is being treated like a criminal because I can't take the surrender position. Removal of the x-ray based Strip Search machines was a notable step forward.

saizai

I don't. For me it's an issue of being searched in the first place, not of personal embarrassment about my body. I don't care what software they use, it's still the government strip searching me, and I don't find that in any way acceptable.

That, too.

WillCAD

In that we differ, Sai.

AIT with the ATR system, to me, is no more a "search" than the WTMD. It's an automated scan.

The problem I have with it is that it's not effective or reliable yet; the false positive rate is huge, and each false positive triggers a physical search (targeted area rather than whole body) which IS objectionable to me. Hence, I still object to the AIT in principle, though I submit to it because opting out would subject me to the most objectionable search of all, a full-body rubdown with genital contact.

Carl Johnson

Also there's no terrorist threat against aviation, and if there were, screening equipment that produced no false positives or negatives and perfectly determined the intent of the person being screened would be ineffective in the hands of TSA clerks.

For people that are eligible, the Übermenschen lanes are great. Three times since mid 2013 I have been unable to use the Übermenschen lanes and TSA Shoulder worked twice. The third time their WTMD was broken and so I had to do the grope. I mourn every time I remember that I asked the clerk about "resistance" and then as I kept asking and he kept trying different euphemisms, I didn't have the nerve to say "I'm a doctor, can you use a term I might have heard in medical school?"

I know this isn't the solution, the solution is to scale back the TSA's activities to the scope of the actual threat - which would basically be to let everybody board with no checkpoints at all - but it helps make people's lives easier. Sai's successes - getting the TSA clerks to follow the actual rules instead of just making stuff up and doing as they like - help a great deal. The rules themselves are bad but not nearly as bad as the behavior of clerks who ignore the rules.