this link may answer some of your questions

http://dontscan.me/

lol. i dont think anything. it is not an opinion. it is a fact. the tsa serves no real purpose. anyone who believes otherwise is ignorant. dont see the problem with calling the misinformed ignorant. i cant do a kidney transplant since i dont know medicine. i would be considered ignorant in that field. nothing wrong with stating it that way. get some thicker skin and get over yourself. this is a dicussion forum not ms. manners...

Thanks - but that information is about the WBIs, not about the "I'm going to wave my magic wand over your espresso" stuff.

As a previous poster stated, this used to be the "home of the brave and land of the free." Today, if there were no security the Cuban hijackers of the 60's and 70's would not be able to get access to the cockpit and the passengers would beat him (and they were all male) to a pulp.

I am old enough to remember when you walked directly from your car onto the plane without security and they checked your ticket once in the air. Guess what? 99.9% of the flights were just fine without any security system. I would fly without security today.

That said, I am not against the pre-Sept. 11 of security and would bring it back in a heartbeat. I would keep the level of screening we have for checked bags and improve screening of air cargo (which is where the threats are today IMO).

But the endless airport checks are unnecessary and intimidating.

The TSA boarding buses in ORL and Amtrak trains is a travesty. This mission creep, that many of us predicted, is what most of us fear. We like living in the U.S. because it is not like other nations in that regard.

Dial it back to pre-Sept. 11 at airports and drop the rest!

great post. agree. pre 9/11 was just fine. a little common sense combined with some screening. im sure no one thinks it's a good idea to walk on a plane with loaded pistols and samurai swords but most can agree that if someone wants to bring down an aircraft there's really not much that can be done and certainly nothing the tsa can do. swabbing drinks, limiting the size of toothpaste and searching for shoe bombs is insulting and just plain stupid...

Maybe MCO is the TSA testing ground for new security programs. :confused: With the diversity of travelers and the high number of foreigners it would be an easy location to see how the traveling public responds to the new TSA witchcraft.

my bad, I thought you were asking about NOS opt-out.

While I won't disagree with your general premise that "the security situation" is deterring some malcontents, I think your logic fails to take into consideration the reality of airport and airline operations in today's world with current security procedures when compared to those which were enacted because of the incidents you specifically mention.

At one point in my life, for several years post 9/11, I was a corporate-level, decision-making manager with a major US airline. While my departmental functions were not nestled in the confines of the legal and security departments, it was physically located amongst them. This fact simply means that I had water cooler conversations with the very people who do, in fact, work every day with TSA. They do, in fact, receive certain intel appropriate to their decision-making parameters. They do, in fact, have access to certain SSI documents.

While having lunch with these people, while taking a walk to and enjoying a coffee at Starbucks with these people, while picking up documents off of our shared printer, I can tell you based on fact, not hypothesis and not conjecture, that absolutely nothing the TSA does, including WBI, changes in any material way the manner in which airline security functions today.

So, to use your same goal of taking logic to its natural end, the 80's and 90's were terrorist-attack free on US-originating flights. Therefore, the WTMD worked just fine in deterring actual incidents. Period. There was no need to limit liquids, electronics, or liberties. And we all survived, terrorist free, while traveling within, and from, America.

Are you aware that the weapons used to carry out the attacks on 9/11 were put on planes by people who, to this day, are screened neither by WTMD nor WBI? That with current restrictions and security procedures in place, 9/11 would have happened anyway, and could very well happen again?

Looking at naked children and feeling up grandmothers will not stop another 9/11 based on current security procedure and past, proven, actual events.

And to the point on liquids, as part of my job function, I happened to be at a gathering with an executive at the company that provides the baggage screening equipment. As you are probably aware, when people imbibe at functions such as these, they tend to be a little more forthcoming with information they normally would not be. At this gathering he told me that the reason the liquids must be removed from bags is because they are not seen on the x-ray screens. So, the very people who would like to take liquid explosives on a plane can do so because there is zero reason for them to remove them from their carry on luggage. Often the reason a screener can “see” liquids in the bag is because of the shape of the bottle. That inconvenience can be easily overcome by someone determined to blow up a plane. And again, the very people who can get this stuff on a plane, the very people who got stuff on planes that brought them down are, to this day, not screened. At all.

You may also wonder how a flight attendant who began her work week at a major airport happened to be found carrying a loaded gun when she next checked in for her next day of work at a different airport. Sure, she was stopped on Day 2 of carrying a loaded gun, but that’s not how a terrorist intent on bringing down a plane is going to operate. That terrorist is going to bribe someone a lot of money to go to that airport and take whatever they want through that unscreened, unmanned checkpoint, or forge their own way through it, and get on a plane and take it down. Sending the flying public through a virtual strip search and subsequent sexual assault and battery isn’t going to stop it.

Perhaps you’d like to know that I had a colleague take a butcher knife on 4 different planes. Mind you, it wasn’t intentional; it was an innocent, thoughtless mistake. She took her bag of liquids out of her carry on containing the butcher knife, and sent it through not one, but two separate x-ray machines, in two different cities. She took off her shoes like a good citizen. She followed all of TSA’s commands. And she unwittingly, absentmindedly carried her butcher knife on 4 different aircraft. Sure, a WBI might catch someone carrying a butcher knife, but, in fact, the technology specifically designed to see it didn’t. Twice.

So to say that we’re all safer and better off because we line up and raise our arms above our heads and comply with unreasonable requests to be strip searched and pawed at in a manner that not even convicted criminals in prison endure defies logic. Putting questions of rights to privacy aside, the Fourth Amendment specifically restricts unreasonable searches. Period. End of story.

I don’t know about you, but I find a strip search of a person committing no other crime than attempting to board an aircraft unreasonable. And I will fight this nonsense every step of the way because I know, for a fact, even without GAO’s findings, that unnecessary radiation is useless. And I frankly don’t care what goes on in England. Or in Canada. Because I’m an American and a Patriot, and I support the Constitution.

Wow! Thanks a lot for this!!!

Are you running for office cuz I'd like to vote for you - several times in fact!

Well put (all of it)! Can you post the same ideas to the New "Republic" article referenced in this thread? Or even contact the New "Republic" and offer to write an article in response? Your personal experience would give credibility to the arguments we post here.

:-:

+1000000 ^

Ah, you must be a Democrat. :D

I'm flattered, and I'm considering it. The problem is, that I can't "cite any sources" so to speak, because these are all off the cuff conversations. I know the facts to be thus and true because these people would have had no reason to lie. Putting them out as "fact" is a whole other issue.

Nonetheless, my first read of that piece was that it was mostly conjecture and editorialization anyway, so I may give it a go from that angle. We'll see. I'll be sure and get some good FT feedback if I do.