GUWonder

Quite clearly you have a different, less comprehensive travel history than others and/or don't travel with water in bottles when clearing security checkpoints, fixed or otherwise. Gate-area and transit security screeners' prohibition of water in bottles has happened repeatedly when flying US carriers from beyond the US. It used to even take place at the TSA gate-area screenings in places like ORD, MIA, MSP, SFO, DFW, LAX, BOS, DCA, IAD and elsewhere in the US, but that ended rather quickly.

Who cares, as long as the cockpit door is secure and everyone and their belongings have been effectively screened to keep contraband WEIs off my flights? I don't care. They could more easily do way more killing and injuring of people landside, and landside is where the risks of "conspiracy" and actual acts of terrorism are greatest and would remain so if the TSA dog and pony show were very effective in interdiction of contraband WEIs at the primary screening checkpoint.


It doesn't do that in that way.

The current system is a bunch of silos that are but a sieve even for people actually on the no-fly list. All it takes is a will to break the law -- not like terrorists are above breaking laws -- or to be commissioned with challenging the system under color of authority -- to run circles around what you mention above.

It doesn't even require a willful circumvention of rules for a blacklisted person to get by the TSA, no less so when the TSA can't even proofread very well when checking IDs against boarding passes.

If there were any free terrorists in the US, they can even today easily get access to major US airports. It's not like any or all of our major US airports have fixed checkpoints on all roads, train/tram/subway lines, sidewalks and bicycle paths leading to our major airports.

I don't care if OBL's Egyptian successor is on my flight as long as he has been effectively screened for contraband WEIs. If I recognized him, I would have him arrested on landing.

Is that your idea? Ronald Reagan did that already. He was President of the country for more than 93% of the 1981 calendar year and for - little bit more than 7 years after the end of that year. Don't remember that? It wasn't my idea then and still isn't.

RadioGirl

Hogwash.

"This policy" (ID checking) is non-existent in Australian and New Zealand domestic airports, which were still part of "the first world" the last time I checked. Anyone can access the airside part of Australian or New Zealand airports to see off their friends, meet their relatives or just go to the shops and restaurants, as long as they've gone through the checkpoint and been screened for weapons.

Further, the ID check is so easily defeated by buying a ticket in a false name and photoshopping the boarding pass to match your ID that it's meaningless. You can even buy a refundable ticket in a false name and then cancel it, so you have all the paperwork to get through the checkpoint but no intention to fly.

The whole thing is simply theatre to impress the gullible. In that sense, it's clearly "working."

ou81two

GUWonder,

When you learn what paragraphs are, I'll tear apart whatever poorly put together thoughts you have up there. I'm not going to lower myself to reading a post constructed that way. Multiple quotes are used when you're quoting multiple people.

"Further, the ID check is so easily defeated by buying a ticket in a false name and photoshopping the boarding pass to match your ID that it's meaningless. You can even buy a refundable ticket in a false name and then cancel it, so you have all the paperwork to get through the checkpoint but no intention to fly."

Except they scan your boarding pass to make sure that the name on the boarding pass matches the reservation. They then check your ID against it. While not bullproof, nothing is, it makes is much harder for someone to get through without having their ID checked against the no fly list.

It's not theater. There's reasons why these people do what they do.

jkhuggins

You've neglected one important concept: verifying that the ID presented actually belongs to the passenger. Getting a fake ID that matches the name of someone not on the no-fly list is trivially easy --- as any underage college student can prove to you. For someone with serious intent to cause mischief, constructing a plausible fake identity is not an onerous task.

Just because there are reasons that they do these things doesn't mean that the net result isn't security theater.

ou81two

No, I didn't. See my qualifier there of while not bulletproof. Getting a good fake ID really isn't as easy as you would think. I'm surrounded by college students, hang out with some from a few different schools and know people looking in to get one. On an international flight, it means a fake passport which is much harder.

Regardless of what security folks in this country did you'd still have 90% of the same people complaining. There's valid reasons for pretty much every thing that these people do. All of which is summarily ignored by the hive mind complaining you see here.

Ever wonder why this forum is buried in such a far away part of the website? Think about that.

GUWonder

Fraudulent use of real passports is a daily reality, and those frequently don't get recognized at all as being fraudulently used until the flight is completed .... if even then. Australia is a great example as of late in this regard, and they are our security lapdogs.

It's theater, and the reason for the theater is to make the paranoid and gullible to believe the theater is effective security when it is nothing more than snake-oil.

It's easy as pie for a person on the no-fly list to play around with a few refundable tickets using a bit of online name/title and birthdate/sex change games to see how online check-in works for a domestic flight; and then they use an ID with the near-name boarding pass or even an exact name match boarding pass.

And that is without even the use of a fake ID or a fraudulently real ID. The TSA characters have no ability to reliably interdict fraudulently-acquired ID. And the TSA are pretty lousy in even interdicting fraudulently-used real ID for someone else.