Originally Posted by Bart
My bet is that enough protests from the airline industry, businesses that rely on air travel and civil liberties groups will pressure TSA to rethink this policy. My disagreement with the birdbrains at Washington who came up with this is over the relationship between threat conditions and threat countermeasures. If there is an increased threat, you increase the threat condition and increase the threat countermeasures. However, once that threat either goes away or is reduced, then you reduce the threat condition and reduce the threat countermeasures. This is basic stuff.
But folks who are paid a whole hell of a lot more than me and are supposedly a whole hell of a lot smarter than me seem to have forgotten this very basic, very fundamental and very simple security principle.
Shoe removal no longer concerns me. After all, as long as it's applied to everyone and not as a means of beatdown to specific passengers, it loses much of its offensiveness.
The birdbrains in DC have never grasped the difference between risk management and risk avoidance, and I doubt they're gonna get religion overnight now that they have gone off the deep end.
My children are allowed to bring frozen waterbottles to elementary school. There will be a lot of afternoons in the mid to upper 90s until November or so, and the teachers and staff realize that drinking (seemingly) boiling water from non-refrigereated fountains (all of which are outdoors and many of which are in the afternoon sun) just don't cut it. And you gotta realize - I'm talking about a Los Angeles Public School, where lotsa stuff is on the zero tolerance list. But they're allowed to bring water. Any guesses about whether that policy changes in three weeks when school reopens? It wouldn't surprise me if we get a letter from the school that starts off "The world changed on September 11, 2001 and changed again on August 10, 2006 . . . "
If it does, you're gonna read about an arrest in LA of a parent who is sick and tired of having their children violated in the name of some moron's idea of "security."
Last Thursday, the TSA violated them by confiscating their chapstick and water at a checkpoint. Last night, the chapstick was OK but the water still was a no-go. Only in the land of the free.
Too bad you aren't in charge. I'd still disagree with some of the policies of
BartWorld, but I doubt I'd be as livid about them.