TSA lets every passenger board with potential lethal weapons
 

I keep reading about how TSA needs to do a variety of offensive things to people all in the name of security.

Yet every passenger is permitted to board with at least three items that could be used as lethal weapons:

1. A leather belt and buckle.
2. Keys on a key ring.
3. A laptop computer.

I don't intend to give a tutorial on how these items could be used as weapons, but the methods should be obvious to anyone who thinks about them. Any terrorist who wanted to harm people on an aircraft would be knowledgeable about these, and I would assume that TSA must know this.

I should point out that in some of the secure areas to which I have been admitted over the years, it is common for keys NOT to be allowed into the facility.

Given the obvious potential use of permitted items as weapons, I cannot see how the alacrity with which TSA lays its hands upon the passengers bodies, or leers at their naked images from a private booth (my God, does anyone at the government realize how creepy that is!) is anywhere close to justified.

Poss. weapons?
 

:eek: IDs & Credit Cards could be sharpened to the degree
they could possibly be used to shave with or used as "boxcutters".:(

To say nothing of pencils, pens, cellphones and hands.

So they ban all those plus keys? Right.

Yes, and yet we are told that we have to submit to prison-level inspections to board an aircraft.

For that matter, you can garrote someone with a shoelace. Or a long circular knitting needle.

Intent is everything.

I'm waiting for them to confiscate all cell phones because they could be used to trigger an explosive. Now THAT'S when America will finally revolt!

Here's the thing: Al Qaeda doesn't have to actually down an airplane. In fact, for their purposes of maximum disruption to America, it's better if they DON'T, because they need for the plot to be discovered, which might not happen if the perpetrator successfully blows himself and everybody else to smithereens. All they need is a plot so outrageous in its implications (considering TSA's knee-jerk reactions and fondness for expensive machinery) that we would REALLY tie ourselves in knots trying to prevent the last one.

The only way TSA, DHS, and America is going to escape this insanity loop is to forget chasing "product" and focus on discerning intent. In the process, most of us would be considerably less inconvenienced than we are now. Some of us might even try flying again.

If the TSA messes with you, simply snap a CD in half and slice his throat.

Hannibal Lecter could have a field day on an aircraft....:eek:

Correct. AQ need not find a person willing to blow themselves up with a rectal bomb. Given TSA's record of mindless overreaction, AQ would only need to create a threat sufficiently convincing to TSA that such a bomb could be carried out. No one need even be arrested. I can think of many ways that such a scheme could be carried out. Look at the mileage that was achieve with the toner cartridge.

And none of the things they can carry or find on the plane is going to get them through the hardened cockpit door, so the maximum casualty count is going to be the passenger and cabin crew killed before the inevitable counterassault. No innocents on the ground.

The madman armed with everyday objects can get me at the supermarket, concert, darkened theatre, or work. I'm not worried about the statistics of him also getting me on a plane.

For certain the theatre performance at the checkpoints is unjustified. Yes.

How about the extending handle on a rollerboard? Airplane knives? Glasses distributed in F/C.

Human hands/feet?!?! :eek:

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it already has at the TSA

Neckties...I imagine if you wrap it around someone's neck tight enough you could easily choke a person to death

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Some of those yes!