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Originally Posted by Doppy
There's an error in your math. You didn't both to include non-Muslim terrorists in the above calculation. Of course the "statistics" are going to be biased in your favor if you bias the calculation of them.
That point being that profiling and risk assessment in the way it would be applied to our discussion is not dependent on the raw probability of something happening . It's based on what is MORE likely v. LESS likely. And that pointing out the minuscule mathematical probability of one group being a threat is irrelevant to what we're discussing. I'm aware that statistics can be slanted by the user to prove what they want. That's something else I was trying to illustrate. "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." ;) |
Originally Posted by PatrickHenry1775
All that being said, the other factors in my earlier post are still true. We did not experience any terrorist attacks aimed at transportation until 9/11, when al-Qaida terrorists, not Americans, attacked our country.
And here once again we see that many want to create a brittle system that's targeted towards yesterday, not tomorrow. |
Originally Posted by Bart
Out of the approximately 1.5 billion people in the world who are Muslim, what percentage of them are terrorists who target Americans that support your statistical "facts?"
Given with what we saw on 9/11, 19 Muslims hijacked and flew planes into 3 buildings, with a 4th being heroicly crashed by the pax on board. Compare that to the many more shoes that have been screened (I'm willing to bet more than 1.5 billion shoes have been removed since TSA's inception ala shoe carnival), with only one shoe bomb found. Yet TSA focuses much more resources on detecting a shoe bomb when it was at least 19x more likely that a Muslim would conduct a terrorist act. Statistically speaking, Muslims would be much greater threats than shoes. So I can at least see how the above argument for profiling could be made. Now with me personally, I figure if I'm going to die at a certain time regardless of whether I'm in a plane, car, or at work. So I don't fear the Muslims. I DO fear, however, that with some security practices I have seen, an incident could easily be blamed on Muslims and there would be ample opportunity to plant something in a carryon bag if a screener truly were racist. I think back to one time at SLC where my wife's purse was dumped with nothing of interest found, repacked, and taken back to x-ray while we HAD to stand back by the inspection table. I immediately thought I was glad I'm not middle eastern, because that was an easy opportunity for something to be planted. That was before TSA, but with some practices, abuse can exist. If any profile were to exist, I think it should be based on who is more likely NOT to be a terrorist, like an 85 year old grandma or a 3 year old kid. To address muling, at least in my book, I'd be much more willing to strap a suicide bomb on me (under duress, of course) than I ever would to put one on my child. I would hope that I would be screened and "taken care of" so I wouldn't have to die. :) Super |
Originally Posted by Doppy
Presuming that the past was a perfect indicator of what would happen in the future is what got us into the 9/11 mess in the first place. We assumed that hijackers would set planes down gently in Cuba, ignoring the body of evidence which said that many would actually like to crash planes into buildings.
And here once again we see that many want to create a brittle system that's targeted towards yesterday, not tomorrow. However, Americans should not be subject to more intrusive screening, such as secondary screening, i.e. patdowns, searches of bags, etc., unless traditional Fourth Amendment requirements, i.e. reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity, are satisfied. Statistics can be bandied about all day, but the simple common sense facts show that Islamic fanatics who are overwhelmingly male and young are the terrorist threats today. BTW, check this link regarding the Jordanian government denying that one of the suicide bombers was a woman. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9979747/ Given that our resources for screening are limited, doesn't it make sense to concentrate those resources on individuals, such as those from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc., who are members of the groups that are the perpetrators of terrorism? Again, all passengers must be screened, but the intrusive measures that take more time and hence cost more money should be reserved for those passengers who alarm the baseline screening methods and those who are suspicious. |
Originally Posted by PatrickHenry1775
For what seems like the millionth time, I am in favor of non-intrusive screening for EVERYONE, Americans, Canadians, British, French, Spanish, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, etc. TSA and DHS should spearhead development of technology that can quickly detect actual threats to airliners, specifically explosives and firearms. The WTMD takes care of firearms, and puffer-type machines should prevent the introduction of completed explosives.
Given that our resources for screening are limited, doesn't it make sense to concentrate those resources on individuals, such as those from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc., who are members of the groups that are the perpetrators of terrorism? Again, all passengers must be screened, but the intrusive measures that take more time and hence cost more money should be reserved for those passengers who alarm the baseline screening methods and those who are suspicious. I would argue that if we take the measures you advocate in the first paragraph, these "intrusive measures" should be taken if there is an unresolvable alarm, without regard to the age, gender, or apparent nationality of the person involved. But short of requiring a passport at each and every checkpoint, TSA is going to have no way of knowing if a pax on the Milwaukee to Chicago milk run is from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Phillipines, Los Angeles, or down the street. |
Originally Posted by mizzou65201
Now that's a statement I can agree with. Let's also not leave out the cargo hold.
TSA would argue this is already in place, and it's called Selectee Screening and the No-Fly List. I would argue that if we take the measures you advocate in the first paragraph, these "intrusive measures" should be taken if there is an unresolvable alarm, without regard to the age, gender, or apparent nationality of the person involved. But short of requiring a passport at each and every checkpoint, TSA is going to have no way of knowing if a pax on the Milwaukee to Chicago milk run is from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Phillipines, Los Angeles, or down the street. Regarding passports, if someone at a checkpoint is jabbering away in a foreign language, I submit that such a passenger is more deserving of a secondary search than an obvious American speaking an American dialect of English. Using the Israeli method of asking a few questions to gauge the reaction of the passenger would also assist in determining which passengers may require additional screening. |
Originally Posted by PatrickHenry1775
Regarding passports, if someone at a checkpoint is jabbering away in a foreign language, I submit that such a passenger is more deserving of a secondary search than an obvious American speaking an American dialect of English.
Weren't the U.K. tube bombers British subjects? If they grew up in the U.K., attending school there, profiling by accent or passport would miss them. As to profiling Muslims, how do you tell a Bosnian Muslim from a Bosnian Christian from a Bosnian Jew from a Croatian or a Serb or a Greek, Albanian, Italian, Bulgarian or Spaniard? By how they look? Or do you propose that everyone carry ID's stating their ethnic background? At what point do we stop being a free country and become a police state? Just to confuse the discussion, the majority of suicide bombers world wide in the past dozen years were not Muslims- the biggest single group were members of the Tamil Tigers. |
Originally Posted by Gargoyle
I often hear American citizens talking amongst themselves in foreign languages in the check-in lines for int'l flights. Typically the parents are naturalized (foreign born) citizens travelling with their native U.S. born children. Remember, the true strength of American comes from the fact that we are the greatest melting pot, the most diverse mix of people, in the history of the world. Harassing, er, I mean ssss'ing someone just because they speak another language just adds to the international impression of American arrogance and xenophobia, which adds to anti-American sentiment world wide, and is one way we help create petri dishes where those who hate the U.S. can thrive.
Weren't the U.K. tube bombers British subjects? If they grew up in the U.K., attending school there, profiling by accent or passport would miss them. As to profiling Muslims, how do you tell a Bosnian Muslim from a Bosnian Christian from a Bosnian Jew from a Croatian or a Serb or a Greek, Albanian, Italian, Bulgarian or Spaniard? By how they look? Or do you propose that everyone carry ID's stating their ethnic background? At what point do we stop being a free country and become a police state? Just to confuse the discussion, the majority of suicide bombers world wide in the past dozen years were not Muslims- the biggest single group were members of the Tamil Tigers. Regarding the Tamil Tigers, if they were in the U.S., they would not speak American English, so my suggestions would flag them for extra attention. This would not be a negative situation. We are fortunate that this group has concentrated on other targets. |
As to profiling Muslims, how do you tell a Bosnian Muslim from a Bosnian Christian from a Bosnian Jew from a Croatian or a Serb or a Greek, Albanian, Italian, Bulgarian or Spaniard? By how they look? Or do you propose that everyone carry ID's stating their ethnic background? At what point do we stop being a free country and become a police state? |
Originally Posted by PatrickHenry1775
Using the Israeli method of asking a few questions to gauge the reaction of the passenger would also assist in determining which passengers may require additional screening.
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Originally Posted by Bart
Depending on what you're talking about, there's only one type of profiling that exists in screening today: the SSSS policy, which is based on how a ticket is purchased. This, too, is dumb, and if you've read my comments regarding the pre-selection policy, I've consistently criticized this practice.
If you're talking about 85 year old grandmas and 3 year old kids being screened in general, I disagree that this is profiling. This is a follow-up to the primary screening method or an alternate to the primary screening method if the 85 year old grandma is a pacemaker patient who cannot pass through the WTMD. |
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Originally Posted by PatrickHenry1775
Given that our resources for screening are limited, doesn't it make sense to concentrate those resources on individuals, such as those from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc., who are members of the groups that are the perpetrators of terrorism? Again, all passengers must be screened, but the intrusive measures that take more time and hence cost more money should be reserved for those passengers who alarm the baseline screening methods and those who are suspicious.
Above, people are saying we should "profile" based on religion, which I guess would mean that everyone would have to carry around some sort of religious membership ID card. Here, you're saying we should do it based on country of citizenship. OK. So does that mean everyone should be required to carry a passport to travel? Regarding passports, if someone at a checkpoint is jabbering away in a foreign language, I submit that such a passenger is more deserving of a secondary search than an obvious American speaking an American dialect of English. Using the Israeli method of asking a few questions to gauge the reaction of the passenger would also assist in determining which passengers may require additional screening.
Originally Posted by JM
This is exactly what needs to be done. Unfortunantly, everytime it is suggested the moronic, out of touch with reality, PC-crowd screams bloody murder
We're talking about billions to hire and train the people to do questioning, and tens, maybe hundreds of billions in lost passenger time each year waiting to be questioned. Are we ready to give up privacy and incur these costs? I doubt it. People already complain about waiting 10-30 minutes to get through the checkpoint. Questioning everybody for an average of 5 minutes, times 670MM annual pax = 56 million hours of time used. But that's just the amount of time people would spend talking to the TSA. If there are 10 people in front of you to talk to the agent, you'll have to wait 50 minutes before you get your 5 minutes of interrogation. And we'd have to what, double, maybe triple the size of the TSA staff to have enough agents to handle the pax questioning? The biggest issue with "Israeli style security" is that handling a couple dozen El Al planeloads of people each day (40 El Al flights vs. 35,000 US flights) is not a big deal. Scaling up from El Al's ~ 3 million passengers per year to the US's 670+ million passengers per year, on the other hand, is a big deal. BTW, PatrickHenry1775 you complained above about a "police state." You don't think that having to undergo an interrogation before being allowed to travel in this country counts as a "police state?" |
To address the profiling aspect:
My BF and I travel together often, but as a pasty skinned red-headed female I never get second guessed. However, my BF fits the 'visual' profile, because he has dark hair, a darker olive/tan complexion, and sometimes sports a beard (or a five o'clock shadow that looks close enough). He will almost ALWAYS be pulled aside for a second, or third, or fourth screening, just because he looks Arab (he's 4th generation Jewish American, amongst the other 75% which is German, French, English and the rest of the melting pot). Does it inconvenience us? Perhaps. Do we resent it? Yes, probably at times. Do we make a big deal out of it? No. It's frustrating, but not the end of the world. Yep, it's BS...but I guess we've been through it enough to expect it, accept it, and know there isn't much we can do to change it, other than to have me carry our bags through security to lessen the time it takes. |
Originally Posted by PatrickHenry1775
Timothy McVeigh was most emphatically a terrorist. He was even lower than low because the Murrah Federal Building had nothing to do with the Department of Justice, the agency that ordered the Waco operation. Since McVeigh had a beef with Janet Reno, he should have bombed DOJ headquarters in D.C. In bombing the Murrah Federal Building, McVeigh killed and injured many innocent senior citizens there for Social Security issues and children at a daycare on site. I am confident that McVeigh is in hell along with Mohammed Atta, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot.
All that being said, the other factors in my earlier post are still true. We did not experience any terrorist attacks aimed at transportation until 9/11, when al-Qaida terrorists, not Americans, attacked our country. "November 15, 1979 American Airlines Flight 444 A mail bomb is sent from a post office in Chicago, and placed aboard an American Airlines flight bound for Washington, D.C. The bomb, equipped with a barometer to measure altitude, explodes as the plane reaches 34,500 feet." Sounds like a terrorist attack upon US commercial aviation to me... |
Sounds like some folks in this thread are suggesting that america institutes domestic passports. I think that is a really bad step for america and it's citizens -the soviets did this a long time ago to their citizens and there is absolutely nothing good that can come out of it.
In my travels i've seen domestic passports in third world countries used to oppress one group or another. This is not something that any democracy that cares for its citizens should do. As someone else pointed out, looking at someone won't tell the truth either; how do you tell the difference between a palestinian and a israeli for instance? Or an american and a person from checnya? and the chechnyans are all muslims (remember beslan anyone?). I think the idea of profiling based on ethnic origin is a bad one which seems to be advocated mostly by people who aren't in the class subjected to extra scrutiny. |
Originally Posted by Doppy
We're talking about billions to hire and train the people to do questioning, and tens, maybe hundreds of billions in lost passenger time each year waiting to be questioned.
Originally Posted by Doppy
The biggest issue with "Israeli style security" is that handling a couple dozen El Al planeloads of people each day (40 El Al flights vs. 35,000 US flights) is not a big deal. Scaling up from El Al's ~ 3 million passengers per year to the US's 670+ million passengers per year, on the other hand, is a big deal.
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Originally Posted by PatrickHenry1775
BTW, check this link regarding the Jordanian government denying that one of the suicide bombers was a woman. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9979747/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051113/...rdan_explosion |
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RACIST profiling: destined for failure ... and proven to not work.
"Key" bomb-making trainer working for Al-Qaeda-affiliated individuals: "closely-shaved, red-haired, mid-50s Caucasian male with freckles", "trained by [specified "western"] intelligence agency and special military unit". |
Originally Posted by Bart
What do you define as secondary screening? If you're talking about the SSSS-mandated screening, I agree with you. If you're talking about the secondary screening that occurs ONLY to resolve alarms at the WTMD or items that cannot be cleared by x-ray, then I disagree with you. By the way, how should such cases be resolved in your view? As for reasonable suspicion, court judgments have beaten this little horse to death: security screening is not the same as a search for evidence. But you know this already; you just refuse to acknowledge case precedence, which makes it difficult to hold a reasonable discussion/debate with you.
You ignore the other hazards posed to aviation that are not terrorist-related. How do you propose to prevent the accidental introduction of hazardous material aboard aircraft without screening all individuals? How do you prevent the use of weapons by people who do not necessarily intend to commit terrorist acts but certainly commit acts of violence? I'm talking about air rage passengers, people who may blow up an airplane simply for insurance purposes, disgruntled airline employees, and a variety of other potential acts of violence that are just as dangerous as acts of terrorism, the difference being that they are not specifically conducted for a terrorist cause. As for people who are specifically identified as members of actual terrorist groups, to paraphrase the comedian Gallagher: use DELTA....Don't Even Let Them Aboard. There is no reason to allow someone aboard who is known to be associated with a terrorist group. This is an area where the FBI should be free to step in and investigate the matter further BEFORE they board, meaning to DENY them from boarding until the matter is resolved. Regarding case precedence, please cite for me the United States Supreme Court opinion that holds that passengers are deemed to consent to a search and seizure of their persons and belongings even without reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity at an airport. If you can find such case law, then I will accept that passengers do not have Fourth Amendment rights, per the U.S. Supreme Court. I would add that if there is such case law, it would be from the same court that held that Negroes were property (Dred Scott), that separate but equal was constitutional despite the language of the Fourteenth Amendment (Plessy v. Ferguson), and internment of American citizens of Japanese descent was constitutional (Korematsu). Only one institution on Earth is infallible, and I do not think airport checkpoints are a matter of faith for the Church on which the Pope speaks ex cathedra. Before 9/11, what did the government or airlines do to prevent incidents involving hazardous materials, air rage, blowing up airplanes for insurance purposes, and the variety of other potential acts of violence just as dangerous as acts of terrorism? Even more to the point, how many such acts occurred before 9/11? Even more to the point, what is the government and airlines doing now to prevent such acts? Air rage cannot be prevented by TSA or anything short of forcibly restricting passengers to their seats (okay, sedate every passenger while on the airliner.) Failing to screen cargo is a formula for allowing airliners to be blown up for insurance or terroristic reasons. Any trained individual could use a belt, sharpened pencil, broken wine bottle, or even bare hands to injure or kill someone on an airliner. How is such an act just as dangerous as terrorism? Such an act would be a common assault, absent other factors such as a demand to be flown to a destination other than the one scheduled. Are we going to structure the airline industry to prevent such random acts that are not terrorism? What other facets of American life should be similarly screened? Grocery stores? Sporting events? Symphony performances? Malls? Risk management vs. risk avoidance, right. I humbly submit that the main risk factor relating to terrorism against U.S. interests is strongly correlated with Islamic extremists. |
Originally Posted by HeathrowGuy
Not quite true:
"November 15, 1979 American Airlines Flight 444 A mail bomb is sent from a post office in Chicago, and placed aboard an American Airlines flight bound for Washington, D.C. The bomb, equipped with a barometer to measure altitude, explodes as the plane reaches 34,500 feet." Sounds like a terrorist attack upon US commercial aviation to me... TSA screening methodology in place today likely would not have prevented this attack. TSA focuses almost exclusively on (some) passengers, ignoring cargo and ground personnel. SSSS screening does nothing to guard against cargo bombs, or for that matter those who are most likely to be suicide bombers. |
Why does it matter whether they intend to be "suicide bombers"? Presumably the TSA is concerned with the possibility that a terrorist will take a bomb through the checkpoint, set it up near a gate, leave, and detonate it remotely or through a timer. That's why we always hear warnings against leaving bags unattended.
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Originally Posted by Bart
We both agree that mandatory secondary screening, as indicated by SSSS on the boarding pass, is unnecessary and adds nothing to security.
We disagree on how to resolve alarms caused at the WTMD. You believe there should be a way to pin-point it to a certain area. I support the current policy of re-screening the entire body, this time with a hand-wand, and detecting/resolving each and every metal item. To me, this is a thorough follow-up to the initial screening process that eliminates any doubt that a person was concealing something on his or her body. A targeted or limited secondary screening is based on a guess of what probably caused the alarm. Perhaps we may someday have technology which allows us to pinpoint areas more accurately; however, our society gets hung up over the fact that this may result in images of naked bodies on some computer screen. Kind of hard to get to where we need to be with such Puritanical attitudes. I disagree that things can't be targeted in secondary. If my shoes meet the profile, but I didn't alarm the WTMD, swab my shoes. Look me over to see if I appear to have any suspiscious bulges on me. If I alarm the WTMD, wand me. If there's something that can't be resolved by the wand, then pat that SPECIFIC area. Again, pat down a specific area if an unusual bulge is seen. This stuff is done with bags all the time (except with SSSS when you pretty much have to dump everything). When I alarmed at SFO because of a battery, they stopped searching once they found the battery. They didn't dump my bag. Pat downs could be a lot more limited than they are now. Especially when you get one just because you dared not to take off the shoes. The imagers have nothing to do with a Puritanical attitude. More often than not, the ACLU is far from Puritanical (NAMBLA anyone?). It's just that the government has no damn reason to view someone's naked body on the screen, especially for a routine check. Do you guys REALLY need to see someone's pubes on screen to make sure they're not a threat? Do a wireframe or solid image that doesn't show any feature yet can show any contraband. What's so hard about that? Super |
Originally Posted by Big Mo
Why does it matter whether they intend to be "suicide bombers"? Presumably the TSA is concerned with the possibility that a terrorist will take a bomb through the checkpoint, set it up near a gate, leave, and detonate it remotely or through a timer. That's why we always hear warnings against leaving bags unattended.
*side note* this is post 1984. Ironic that I hit it in the TS/S forum. :D |
Originally Posted by Superguy
If TSA security was as good as it claimed, those things should never get inside an airport. Which would mean those "special" announcements aren't needed.
*side note* this is post 1984. Ironic that I hit it in the TS/S forum. :D |
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Originally Posted by Bart
That's the policy. The only catch is that we have to swab you immediately and not allow you to mix in with other passengers awaiting secondary screening. Still, this is do-able and should be done at airports across the country.
PWM got it right. After my wife's bad experience with the shoe carnival at DCA, she refused to take her shoes off and get the secondary. She was quite relieved when it was just a quick swab and she was done. IAD, on the other hand, completely botched it. At 615, they had a half hour wait, and the line wasn't even that long. When I complained for getting the full treatment because of my shoes and mentioned the new procedure, he said that having someone doing that would have slowed the line EVEN MORE. Now how can something that speeds up the line by not having to do secondaries slow things up? Agreed again. And again, that's the policy. The only disagreement I have with the policy is the upper-torso pat-down that is supposed to be done after the hand-wanding. I think this should be a judgment call based on the thickness of the clothing. In other words, if you're wearing a T-shirt or dress shirt, it would be pretty obvious if you were concealing anything underneath. If you're wearing a sweatshirt or layers of clothing on the upper torso, then would it make sense to pat down the upper torso for concealed explosives. Unfortunately, current TSA procedures don't allow us this flexibility. What should happen, according to procedure, is that they search until they find the item spotted in the x-ray, and then re-run the bag in the x-ray to ensure there's nothing else rather than do a complete bag search. The screener also has the option of doing a complete bag search, but that should be for small, relatively simple bags where it would make more sense to search the bag completely rather than x-ray it again (some bags are lightly packed and others are crammed with all sorts of stuff). Well, you already know my view about the shoe screening policy. I think we can scale it down to a random sampling rather than a mandatory screening on top of the ETD-sampling as discussed above. We disagree. If I'm going to rely on technology that scans someone's body, then looking at a cartoon representation of that person's body doesn't cut it. Has nothing to do with seeing someone's pubes or other body features; has everything to do with making sure that the image I see on the screen is that of the person being scanned. There's probably a technology possible that reasonably meets both of our concerns half way. The objections to the current technology is Puritanical. I don't give a damn about the ACLU or NAMBLA. Our society is ridiculously silly when it comes to the slightest possibility of someone viewing nude or semi-nude bodies under any circumstances, even at the doctor's office. In this regard, the Europeans are much more enlightened and practical about these matters. LEO's can only do strip searches in certain circumstances. As TSA has no LE authority, I think it's stepping beyond their scope to conduct a strip search, whether real or virtual. Super |
Originally Posted by bambi47
I think we're pretty good at picking up things. In my opinion, the announcements are because there a people in the airport that bypass security everyday. Most of the airline employees such as mechanics, baggage handlers, gate agents etc, plus the airport employees that bypass security daily, maintenance, construction workers, etc. These people have access to doors that we don't and use them rather than go through security and there's nothing we can do about it. I've seen airline employees going in a door where you have to swipe your badge and they bring 4 or 5 people in with them that there is no record of. That is where someone will likely bring in something prohibited. They could bring in a bomb, put it in a trash can or whatever and leave. No one would know they were even there.
If the concern is worrying about those on the tarmac ... I agree. However, I find it disconcerting that we're more worried about pax bringing scissors and the like on board and having shoe carnivals when those who actually have physical access to the plane are ignored. That's a huge vulnerability, and I think the ball is being dropped there. |
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Originally Posted by Bart
Well, for what it's worth, I disagree with the use of the technology just on general principle. If we're at the point where we have to scan people with x-ray like devices that allow us to see under their clothing, then screening has gone too far. I am one of the skeptics who believes that reasonable pat-downs, as we've discussed, is still the better alternative to these "virtual strip searches" as you put it. I argued that society takes a ridiculous Puritanical view only from the standpoint that we (as a whole) tend to giggle like school boys (or girls) when it comes to issues as these. We're actually pretty inconsistent. On the one hand, we're a pretty promiscuous and shameless society, and on the other, we're quite conservative and bashful.
Just to digress a bit: a woman came through our checkpoint dressed in a rather provocative fashion. She had on a camisol which showed off her silicone-enhanced cleavage, and a pair of pants with the sides cut out that pretty much revealed that she was either not wearing any panties or had a pretty thin thong on. She was also a selectee and had to undergo the mandatory secondary screening. I heard my screener offer her the option of being screened in a private room, which she declined. And my screener also explained each step of the process, including demonstrating on herself how she was going to pat down any sensitive areas. It was a textbook screening. Afterwards, the woman seemed upset, and I asked her what was wrong. She said she never felt so humiliated in her life. I managed to explain that she did nothing wrong, and that we were mandated to screen her in this fashion because of the SSSS on her boarding pass. I escorted her aside and had her sit down someplace out of sight so she could regain her composure, and she thanked me for my kindness. Still, I must admit that I was left scratching my head at how she could feel "humiliated" given the daring way she was dressed. Could be a guy thing that we men will never understand, and I'm sure women will sympathize with her. My point here is how there's an apparent contradiction in how we're fairly open about the human body on the one hand and very secretive on the other. My opposition to the imagery technology is that screening, in my mind, should be thorough yet not to the point of being overly intrusive. It's called "screening" not "searching." I'm not a big fan of the upper-torso pat-down (except for the circumstances I mentioned previously) and I wish TSA would construct better private screening areas (meaning more than just a broom closet), with a few structures on the checkpoint itself that could reasonably accomodate private screening. I think the reason most people reject private area screening is because they know they're going to be crammed inside some broom closet that also serves as a storage area where screening is just impossible to do. Yet here is where we also come across another contradiction. If we were to scale back on some of the things we do, there would be another cry on these boards about how sloppy, haphazard or just lazy we are by not conducting a thorough screening. ;) Ok, I think we agree for the most part on this. I agree that it seems contradictory that the woman would respond in such a way when she's flaunting what she's got. And I agree that private screening needs to be done in an appropriate facility. Maybe something could be done with these puffers that could be darkened or something? That could give them a dual use. Then again, they might not be big enough fora person and a screener. I've seen them as I walked past checkpoints in SFO, but didn't see any in use at the time. Personally, I'm with you on the risk management aspect of things. We can never reduce the risk to 0 on anything ... but we can take steps to mitigate things. A good start is with plugging the bigger holes like cargo, then fine tuning from there. |
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Originally Posted by Superguy
But aren't these people undergoing the same screening to get airside that everyone else does?
If the concern is worrying about those on the tarmac ... I agree. However, I find it disconcerting that we're more worried about pax bringing scissors and the like on board and having shoe carnivals when those who actually have physical access to the plane are ignored. That's a huge vulnerability, and I think the ball is being dropped there. |
Originally Posted by bambi47
That's my whole point. No, they aren't undergoing the same screening as passengers. They have acess to doors from the outside the gets them by security. The airlines have said they are trying to fix this problem, but its been 3 years. They bypass us constantly. We don't have access to those doors, and like I said, 1 person will swipe their badge and let 4 or 5 others in with them. The janitors will push their carts in the exit lane to be checked and then go downstairs and go through so they don't have to go through security. Am I the only one that see's a problem here? I don't understand why the TSA cannot enforce the rules when it comes to airport employees.
If pilots and flight crew have to be screened and they're ones manning the planes, why do janitors and fast food workers get a free pass? (rhetorical question) It doesn't make any sense. :td: |
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