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Old Dec 15, 2006 | 2:07 pm
  #144  
exerda
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Originally Posted by TSABOS
Btw, as of unintelligent, I can't speak for other airports, but you would be surprised how well-rounded some of us are (atleast at Logan), and how many gave up 6 figure jobs after 9/11 to work for TSA.
Some might question how intelligent it is to give up six figures to work for the TSA.


Originally Posted by TSABOS
Plastic bags - Do not keep you safer, atleast directly, they instead are a measuring tool, which helps regulate how much liquid is being brought onto a plane.
Too bad there are TSA screeners who use then quibble over whether a small container inside the quart baggie is 4 oz or 3.4 oz, etc. If this was truly about measuring the amount of liquid, there'd be no concern over individual item size so long as it fit in the baggie.


Originally Posted by TSABOS
Liquids - Are, unfortunatly a threat. Ask any MIT chemistry major, and ask him how unstable, how explosive, and how easily these threats are to mix, and use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_explosive. Get learn'd.

Any highschool student with half a brain and a chemistry book knows how to blow locker doors off when they're slammed shut.
If you explore this forum, you will find links where chemistry experts have been quoted as saying the threats, as described by the authorities, are not credible for various reasons. To summarize a few:
  • It is impossible to make any of the typically-discussed liquid-based explosives onboard a plane. You just can't mix them together; they require controlled conditions and time that isn't available on even transatlantic flights.
  • Most (if not the vast majority) of liquid explosives require constituent parts that will alarm the ETD machines. Proper screening would catch these materials without an all-out liquid ban.

Not to mention the fact that there are so many ways someone could STILL smuggle liquids onto a plane that the baggies and water carnival are sheer idiocy designed entirely for window dressing. And if the TSA is so worried about the threat of liquids being used in bombs, then why do they just dump them all in a trash can? If they had any expectation whatsoever that any of them were dangerous in any way, then this would be a huge disaster waiting to happen. Ergo, no one expects the confiscated liquids to be a threat at all.
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