Originally Posted by JS

I can thank my lucky stars that I am surrounded by fairly intelligent people. I know of only one person who believes all the airport security hysteria published by the TSA (and then some, sadly enough). If only the population average was like this, these people would be in a very small minority, and we could once again live life fairly unimpeded.

When I talk to this man about flying, such as taking multiple flights with the kids (e.g., our UA promo run in June), he says something like "Doesn't security clobber you with that kind of crazy itinerary?" My response is "They don't know because they only look at one boarding pass at a time, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't care. Besides, does it really make any difference how many flights I take in one day?"

Another one was when I mentioned websites that track flights or stream ATC communications in real time. He was shocked that this information was publicly available. I replied that a scanner would give you the same information, and besides, what could a terrorist possibly do with this information? If they have a rocket, they could just LOOK for a plane in the sky and shoot it. Hello!

The stupidest one, though, was when he relayed a story of when a screener forgot to ask him for ID. OMIGOD we're all going to die!!!

Excuse me while I barf.